Devil's Tramping Ground

A 1784 deed already called it "the poison field tract." The 40-foot bare circle still refuses to grow plants, and dogs refuse to enter.

The Chatham County Deed Book, in a 1784 entry, refers to a piece of land near Harper's Crossroads as "the poison field tract." That's eight years into American independence, and the spot already has a bad enough reputation that it's being called poisonous in a legal document. The spot in question is the Devil's Tramping Ground, a perfectly circular bare patch in the woods of Bear Creek, forty feet across, where plants refuse to grow. The local theory, then and now, is that the Devil comes here at night, walks laps around the circle thinking up new ways to make people miserable, and leaves the path dead behind him.

The local theory has proven remarkably difficult to disprove.

Rich Hayes, a soil scientist who lives in Chatham County and has sampled the ring multiple times, has been trying to find an agricultural answer for years. His tests have turned up elevated mineral readings inside the circle, specifically salts and certain metals, but none of them at concentrations that should kill vegetation. "None of the readings showed us that plants could not live there," Hayes said. Plants live everywhere else in the surrounding woods. They just don't live inside the ring.

The reports from people who've spent time at the site fall into a few recurring categories. Objects left inside the circle overnight are gone by morning, or in the morning are outside the ring entirely, sometimes thrown a considerable distance into the trees. Dogs refuse to enter. They stand at the edge and yip, or they back up, or they pull on the leash hard enough that their owners give up and walk them around the long way. Campers who have tried to sleep inside the circle describe an overwhelming sense of dread that builds until they leave before morning. Several have reported red glowing eyes at the far edge of the ring. A few have described a large dark animal, bigger than a bear, that has chased hunters and their dogs away from the site since at least the 1930s.

Haunting investigators have set up cameras at the spot and picked up what they describe as mist or smoke drifting through the clearing, no wind, no obvious source, moving in patterns that don't match anything else in the woods. Temperature drops are frequent and substantial. Translucent figures have been filmed walking the footpath that leads from the parking area to the circle, visible long enough to be recorded and gone before anyone can follow.

Alternative theories compete for the circle. Some historians think it was a ceremonial dancing ground for one of the Siouan-speaking tribes that lived in the area before European settlement, the bare path worn smooth by generations of moccasined feet. A local legend ties it to the Lost Colony: a Croatan chief named in the story is said to have died in battle nearby and been buried under the ring, his grave poisoning the ground. The less mystical candidates are moonshining (a still site would leave chemical residue and trampled earth), a natural mineral lick, or simple salt accumulation from groundwater.

None of those theories quite cover the phenomena. Moonshine stills don't move objects at night. Dance grounds don't produce red eyes. Salt doesn't explain the dogs. John Harden wrote about the Tramping Ground in his 1949 book "The Devil's Tramping Ground and Other North Carolina Mystery Stories," and his chapter is responsible for most of the modern legend, including the name. The Owens family has owned the property for more than a century and has largely left the site alone. Campers still come. Paranormal investigators still come. The circle stays empty.

What's unusual about the Devil's Tramping Ground isn't that there's a folk story attached to a weird patch of ground. It's that the weird patch of ground has been weird for at least 240 years of written record and nobody, including the scientists who've tried, has produced an explanation that holds up. A bare forty-foot ring in otherwise healthy North Carolina forest, walked smooth by something that doesn't show up on camera.