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This is one of my favorite times of the year.

While I enjoy summer’s warm weather, I don’t mind when it starts to cool off a bit as Fall arrives. The crisp, cool mornings and evenings just make it easier to appreciate the colorful leaves that have started falling from the trees. (Unless, of course, you step on one of those leaves in the dark and get startled by the unexpected crackling sound… as I did earlier this week when throwing out some trash.)

It’s also harvest season, so I get to enjoy the smell of freshly dug peanuts and the hum of tractor engines making their way from field to field. The dust can be a little irritating, and getting stuck behind slow-moving equipment can be a little annoying. But it’s also just nice to see the payoff of a year’s worth of hard work, all neatly bundled together in a cotton module or resting in a trailer full of peanuts or soybeans.

On a smaller scale, my little garden has just about wrapped up for the year too, but I’ve enjoyed the fruits – or should I say “vegetables” – of my labors over the past few months.

But, of course, what I really enjoy about this time of year is the approaching Halloween holiday. I love spotting spooky decorations in people’s yards as I drive around. It’s neat to see how creative people can be with a plastic skeleton or a simple scarecrow.

To be honest, I’ve always enjoyed the aesthetic of spooky things like ghosts and vampires and other creepy-crawly creatures for this season. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched “The Nightmare Before Christmas” over the years! (Enough times to quote much of movie from memory now…)

Ghost stories and eerie legends are some of my favorite things too. You know I can’t resist a good story, and those kinds of tales involve a lot of mystery that keep me intrigued. I can’t help but get swept up in reading about those stories.

North Carolina tales are particularly interesting to me because they’re “close to home,” so to speak. I’ve shared some before that I’ve come across over the years, but I figured it’d be fun to share them again. After all, the point of a good legend is to tell it more than once.

There is supposedly a monster that lurks in the depths of Lake Norman, located north of Charlotte. “Normie,” as the creature has been nicknamed, is as elusive as the fabled Loch Ness monster (“Nessie”) over in Scotland. No one has been able to get any real proof of the lurking lake monster yet.

That hasn’t stopped people from searching though. So far, the most interesting things discovered, however, has been an airplane that sank into Lake Norman in the 1970s and was never recovered from its murky depths. Divers found it in 2013 and left it to its watery grave.

Chatham County is home to two different legends I’ve heard before that both sound interesting to me (though a bit far-fetched).

The first is an old story stretching back to the 1700s about a certain sandbar in the Cape Fear River. People visiting Ramsey’s Tavern often reported seeing mermaids sitting on the sandbar, washing their hair and singing. Eventually, the locals started calling the sandbar Mermaid Point.

Whether the mermaids were real sea creatures taking a vacation from their saltwater homes or just figments of drunken tavern-goers imaginations is up to you. Either way, the tavern is long gone and the sandbar has been swallowed up by the river now. Only these old tales remain.

The other story out of Chatham County is the “Devil’s Tramping Ground.” That sounds mysterious and spooky, but in reality, it’s just an ordinary-looking patch of ground where nothing seems able to grow anymore. Anything you plant there just dies, leaving only dirt behind. Even scientists who’ve tested the soil can’t figure out a reason why that happens.

The legend, which dates back to the 1800s, is that the devil walks around in the circle, which keeps the soil barren and dead. I’m not quite sure why he’s picked that particular spot, unless he simply enjoys the scenery there.

There are plenty of ghost stories and legends originating along North Carolina’s coast. One particular mystery is that of the “Carroll A. Deering” ship which ran aground offshore of Cape Hatteras in January 1921. When the weather cleared up and rescue boats were finally able to approach the ship, they discovered it completely abandoned.

No one has ever been able to figure out what happened to the crew, though many explanations have been offered. Some of those have been paranormal explanations, such as a brush with the fabled Bermuda Triangle and other similar theories.

The most reasonable explanation is that the crew was rescued by another nearby ship which then sank due to the poor weather conditions, but we’ll never know for sure. And so, the mysterious legend of the Deering endures.

I have an old copy of Charles Harry Whedbee’s book “Legends of the Outer Banks and Tar Heel Tidewater” which includes that Deering story. But there are several other interesting tales within its pages too, though many are clearly outlandishly exaggerated.

And we have plenty of local ghost stories and legends right here in the Roanoke-Chowan area, such as the mysterious lights at Early Station and the Brown Lady of Chowan University.

Murfreesboro Historical Association recently hosted a ghost tour, which I unfortunately missed, but maybe they’ll do it again next year because I’d love to hear more spooky local tales.

I hope everyone enjoys Halloween this year. You can celebrate with some spooky stories or just a fun costume and some holiday-inspired foods. Whatever you do, remember to have fun!

Holly Taylor is a Staff Writer for Roanoke-Chowan Publications. Contact her at holly.taylor@r-cnews.com or 252-332-7206.