by Mallory Roseman. “When my grandmother was a girl, she lived with her family in a haunted house. It was a small mill house in Mooresville, NC. People said the house used to be a gambling den, and that a man had been murdered there for being unable to pay his debts. Supposedly, the guys who ran the gambling den dismembered the debtor, and hid his body somewhere in the house. My grandmother did not know if that story was true, but she did know that weird things happened in th

Wendy Hua I have two uncles on my mom’s side of the family.  Both are younger than her by several years.  When they were very young, they lived next to a neighbor that kept koi in giant clay tubs in their yard.  One day, when they were playing in the yard, they felt a surge of sympathy for the koi fish.  They thought the fish were very sad, living in a wet and cold home that never saw the sun, so they decided to do the koi a service and help them sunbathe.  One by one, they t

by Tyler Gilmore My brother is really smart, and when he was young he was especially inquisitive. Once, when he was about three, he was asking our grandfather why the light inside the refrigerator came on when he opened the refrigerator door. Our grandfather showed him that there was a button that was pressed when the door was closed and that when it was released the light would come on inside. But that was not enough for my brother. He wanted to know why; why did the light h

My great uncle was named Custer Crawford. As Custer grew up, it was discovered that he was very smart. He went on to get his Ph.D and later become a professor at a college in Georgia. He grew up in the country near the NC/SC border in the mountains. The story goes that “he was so smart, he was stupid”–which was a well-known phrase back then to denote someone who had a large IQ but very little “common sense.” Of all the vignettes about Custer, the best known one is that when h

There has always been a story that circulates within my family about where my grandfather got all of his tattoos.  I once asked him as a child where he got them and he looked at me and said “During a bad time in my life” and that was all.  I later found out that he had been in jail for two years during the 50s (1956-1958).  At 16 he broke into a local liquor store with a couple of friends and the cops were called.  He friends got away but he was left behind and arrested

When my uncle was eight, he and a friend were cutting a neighbor’s grass.  My uncle held the grass up with his hand, and his friend wielded the clippers.  The friend missed the grass and clipped off my uncle’s ring finger.  While my grandma bandaged his hand, my mom had to run around the yard, find the finger, put it in a bag, and take it back to the house.  All three of them went to the ER, and for days afterward, my uncle had to sleep with his wrist tied to the bed post to

My Grandparents have had a beach house at Oak Island NC since my mom and her sisters were young children; once their school ended each summer they would pack up the station wagon and spend the summer down at the beach. During their summers, items around the house would sometimes “mysteriously” disappear or become misplaced after one of them had used it with or without permission from my grandmother. Now like many children, my mother and aunts did not like getting into trouble

This is the story of my ancestors who played an interesting role in revolutionary history and the local history as well. The genealogy of this story is, in itself, interesting enough. The Poindexter family is a direct line to my mothers side of the family, the Matthews. My great grandmother was originally a Poindexter before marriage. And there have been many other cross family tree connections since the early 1700’s. The focus of my story however, begins with Betty Donnaha.

My father’s family is from rural Georgia, and his uncle, Lloyd Whippoorwill Harris, was known for being quite a character; among other things, he was infamous for his awful excuses. Whether out of distaste, disinterest, or sheer laziness, Lloyd would avoid partaking in unsought activities by crafting thinly veiled, and often nonsensical, explanations for why he couldn’t participate. He would use these silly alibis to avoid going to anything from a theatrical production to bru

Relaxers are a popular way to restructure your hair—to use chemicals to alter the protein chains in hair. In the African American community, relaxers are especially popular for straightening typically coarse or kinky hair. However, relaxers are usually detrimental to the hair because they deprive it of moisture and then break down the structure of the hair. While many Black women choose to get relaxers anyway in the pursuit of straighter hair, I never even had the opt

Back in the early 50’s, my grandma was a young divorcee with an 8 year old daughter by her first marriage, and my granddaddy was a young widower. When they met, my grandma had taken a bookkeeping class at a local college and her teacher recommended her to my granddaddy, who had recently returned home from the war and started a furniture business. He hired her and they soon began dating after meeting at work. However, Burlington was a pretty small town at the time, and

Here’s a photo: Thanks! Jacob Lusk B.A. Biology #Folklore #stories #myths #folk #Family #UNCChapelHill #anecdotes #ncfolklore #legends #unc #families

To my knowledge, there is not a large cache of stories told in my extended family: my younger brother parents and I live in North Carolina while the rest of our family lives between Maryland, Wisconsin, Montana and California. We do not get to see them very often, and as a result are simply not close with much family other than ourselves. Thus, my brother and I have few stories to tell about the wild things our grandparents and beyond have supposedly done. We do have one dev

My grandmother would always tell my sister and I some interesting stories about my Uncle David when he was growing up. These anecdotes ranged from putting mashed potatoes into the vacuum cleaner after dinner one night, breaking more than his fair share of bones (sometimes even two at once!), and writing a poem for his class the morning it was due–and winning a prize for it! One of my favorites that she would often tell us all around the dinner table is of the time that my Unc