The Croatan Inn

I wrote my first collection of ghost stories mostly in tribute to the older books I read as a kid. Those stories delighted and terrified me, and I really wanted to make sure the ghost legends made their way to the next generations. So I wrote Haunting The Outer Banks, a collection of the stories I loved, but in new versions. Less wordy and flowery, more modern in the way people read now. But with the older book look, and an affordable price. Over time, the costs of doing business went up and up, but I tried my best to keep the cost down for the reader. I finally had to go up on the price, but in order to make up for that, I added a fourteenth chapter for my readers.

Now, since so many people already own the book, they shouldn't have to buy a new copy just to have one story. So, I'm including it here, for you. It's a fun, good story. But the place...

I loved the Croatan Inn, and Papaguyo's, so much. It was all that was right with the Outer Banks as I grew up, and I miss it so much. Read the story, and you might get an idea of why.

What is it that makes a ghost?

What makes a haunting?

It isn’t the object of these questions that is hard to answer. Ghosts are easy to define, even if we, collectively, have a broad and nebulous idea of what a ghost is. They range from a spooky sheet with cut-out eyes, to rattling chains and things that go bump in the night, or the more strict and somewhat terrifying idea of the spirit of a person long passed whose soul remains somehow attached to a place where they can not tread with mortal feet. Ghosts long for a place they can no longer belong, one that no longer welcomes them.

A haunting can become more complex, though it seems so simple. Any place a ghost lingers can be said to be haunted. A poltergeist’s playground, a spooky attic, an empty hallway, all are the residences for a ghost to haunt. But can a ghost haunt an empty house? If no one is there to hear it say boo, does a ghost just curl up and wait, in the cold and dark, cobwebs falling through it like gossamer in aether? Does a ghost need something to haunt in order to have a haunting?

And what happens when all of that leaves? Just where does the ghost go when the haunting is gone?

The Croatan Inn was a famous landmark on the old Outer Banks. Built in the early days, before the tourists, when shipwrecks were still in the memories of the locals, even before the U-boats plied their trade of destruction just off the coast, the Croatan Inn was born as the Croatan Hotel. It was built by husband and wife Russell and Bernie Griggs in 1933. Outer Banks artist and developer Frank Stick had sold the couple the piece of property for them to develop a year before. It benefited from two local nearby landmarks. The towering Wright Brothers Monument stood to the west, and just out from the hotel doors to the beach lay the wreck of the schooner Irma, which had sunk in 1925. By the time the Croatan Hotel had opened, it was attracting the big names in the development of the Outer Banks to come stay and party. Many times the deck of the Irma would turn into an impromptu bar, with the guests able to pretend in relative safety that they were pirates for a night. A crew of raucous brigands would go one last time into the storm on their embattled ship, their cannons much less loaded than they were.

The old hotel was beautiful, of course. Back then, even the simple roughshod beach cottages had a graceful demeanor. It had fifteen rooms and a large central restaurant with a line of windows that allowed the patrons to look out over the beach, back when there were no dunes to block the view. There was even a large fireplace in the restaurant to warm the guests on those occasional spring nor’easters or a chilly early fall night. The hotel was seasonal and closed up in the winter, which was commonplace for the Outer Banks at the time.

The windows all sported the cleverly simple design of Bahama shutters, though the locals probably never called them that. They were just sheets of wood, the same size as the window, hinged onto the top of the frame. They could be pushed out to allow for a breeze, even in the rain, and also provided shade on a sunny day so as not to let the light pour in and heat the rooms up. When a storm came, the shutters were simply pulled in by removing the stick that held them out, and then fastened down by a hook. The shutters would generally allow for protection from the salt, wind and rain that came from the hurricanes and storms off the fickle Atlantic Ocean. When the shutters were opened, it gave the old houses of the Outer Banks a contented, slightly sleepy look, as if they were just about to fall asleep in the sun. But not quite.

Back then, there were few houses built to the north of Nags Head. Most of the homes were down near Jockey’s Ridge. Kill Devil Hills was just starting to see the benefits of the new road that had just been built to allow visitors their first glimpse of the monument on the Outer Banks. So the Croatan Hotel was where people came to stay, if they were somebody.

And for a long time, longer than most people may realize, it stayed as the place to be on the Outer Banks. There just might have been different reasons why it was so popular.

The Croatan Hotel would at some time become the Croatan Inn, but it would still be a popular place to stay for a week in the summer, with regulars even pledging their fealty, in writing, to the Inn, promising to be back year after year. It would be sold in 1968, and again in 1972. By the 1980s it would again see another heyday, when Papagayo’s opened in the restaurant section of the hotel.

Papagayo’s was magical. The restaurant still retained its old charm, with wooden tables interspersed across the dining room, graced with Venetian candles to create a simple intimate mood as a couple would gaze across at each other, waiting for their meal, or perhaps, stirred with the delight of the evening, waiting for their meal to be over. Other tables would be pushed together, a horde of visitors, families, loud and happy kids, getting fruit punch and tacos, while the parents delighted at how delicious burritos could be. And they were. The food was as magical as the atmosphere. If any of them were lucky enough not to fill up, the intimate couple, the rambunctious kids, the surprised and tired parents, they would have saved just enough space on the dessert shelf of their bellies to order the deep fried ice cream. It was at the time an oxymoron of delight, a freezing scoop of vanilla encrusted in corn flakes, dipped in oil for such a brief moment, and served both hot and cold, at the same time. For a first-time visitor to the restaurant, surely this meal must be sorcery.

Papagayo’s lived on into the summer nights. When the families went home and the couples sought out darker, quieter options, the nightlife kicked in upstairs. Margaritas were poured, and drank, and the reggae got loud. If the people could remember the nights at Papagayo’s, they likely remembered them fondly.

Papagayo’s fell into history, sadly. But it was replaced with another restaurant, Quagmires, which served its own brand of delicious food and drinks until 2006. Quags kept many of the popular menu items from Papagayo’s, and expanded the fun with a wide deck and a party lifestyle. In the 1990s, one of the expansion buildings was torn down. The building was getting older, and it needed more and more care to fix the saltworn wood. It was sold in 2005 with the hopes of refurbishing what was left, but the building was beyond repair. It was razed in 2006, and a condominium complex was built on the site.

So, where is the ghost?

Where is the haunting?

Now, when it was built, Russell and Bernie Griggs were running a successful business, even during the height of the Depression. But not everyone was as fortunate. Hettie and Spencer Gray had a daughter, Jeannette, but in the 1920s it was difficult to raise a child, and the loving Griggs couple offered to raise Jeannette. Jeannette grew up in and around the Croatan Inn, having the run of the place from the 1930s onwards. And what a place to grow up, with a wide beach, plentiful food in the kitchen, and a guest list that would have included bigwigs from the US government, foreign dignitaries, and wealthy socialites making deals and having clandestine meetings while barefoot on the beach. Jeannette would grow up to run the Inn in the warm months from spring, summer, and fall, along with a family-owned hunting lodge for winter visitors to escape the cold north. Jeannette, “Jimmy” to family and friends, would become a beloved part of the Inn. She would also become a devoted servant to the town of Kill Devil Hills, serving as its first clerk and treasurer.

She would serve her whole life in those varied aspects, though sadly, the life would be a short one. Born in 1923, she would only live 38 years, passing away of hepatitis in 1961. Her body would be laid to rest in the little town of Waterlily, alongside her father, and later her mother and brother would join her in eternal rest.

Her body might have been placed to rest, but her spirit seemed not to have joined in. Guests would tell of walking down the halls of the hotel, back in the 1960s, all alone, and something, or someone, would trip them or grab at an ankle. This was more than just a slip and fall. They would often tell that even as they walked in an otherwise empty hallway, they felt something reach out to pull at them. In the 1970s, workers in the restaurant would report several strange events, like dishes that were brought in haphazardly after being bussed from tables would inexplicably be stacked high near the dishwasher. Not just organized, but towering, too high to be safe, yet there they were, silently set into a tall column without anyone seeing it happen.

Guests would hear their names called when no one was around. Lights turned on and off. Pictures moved or taken down, all while no one was around, even inside locked rooms. Soft footsteps where no one walked, creaking doors opening on their own, all of the traces of a classic haunting. Guests and workers alike would often report the general unease of a presence, felt but unseen, that testified to a ghost looking over their shoulder.

Soon the vague ghost identity transformed into “Jimmy,” Jeannette Gray, the free spirit who in mortal form, loved the Croatan Inn as only someone who was devoted to their home could. Especially since she passed on too young, in a tragic way, it was assumed that the ghost was likely her. The ghost now had a name.

There were other thoughts about the Croatan Inn. The whole area had a bit of a spooky feeling. With shipwrecks offshore, including one just off the beach deck, there was always a feeling of something strange going on around the property. The Outer Banks has more than its share of ghostly visitors on its shores. Dark clouds of the remnants of people who passed away in shipwrecks, or lost too soon to a storm or disease when no doctor or treatment could be found. It happened all too often on the North Carolina coast. So it was no wonder that the land and the buildings that dotted the sand were seen to be haunted.

So, where is the ghost?

Where is the haunting?

At the beginning of this story, it was asked, what makes a ghost, what makes a haunting?

The legends say the Croatan Inn was haunted, and possibly by Jeannette “Jimmy” Gray. Whether there ever was a ghost or not, that’s not part of the question. There really was a legend that the Inn, and later Papagayo’s and Quagmires, was haunted by a playful ghost. The legend definitely is real.

But the building is gone, long gone, fallen to a callous wrecking ball with no feeling as to whose home this once was. Little pieces were saved, taken before the end, to be hopefully preserved by the people who loved the Croatan Inn with all its variations. But the building is gone. The land was wiped clean, and new buildings were put in its place. There is nothing left.

Where is the ghost?

What happens when a ghost no longer has a home? Where is Jimmy Gray? Without a reason to walk, nor a place, she has not been seen nor felt on the land or the beach. She doesn’t seem to appear in the nearby condominiums, or, if she does, no one has noticed. It is as if she simply disappeared into the salted mists of Atlantic waves.

Where is the haunting?

This is possibly a more difficult question. Without a place to haunt, is there a haunting? Even if Jimmy Gray still wanders the hills where the Croatan Inn once stood, unseen, unfelt, as no one is sensitive to her desire to remain there, can we actually call that a haunting? How can a ghost haunt a place when the place is no longer there?

I will put this idea to you, my readers, as I end this new book and this final chapter. I say there still is a ghost. I say there still is a haunting. At least for a while longer. Maybe Jimmy Gray finally is at rest and her ghost appears no more. But the Croatan Inn is still a ghost, of sorts. It died a slightly less than noble death, but the history and presence of the old hotel and its restaurants still remain in our memories. We wish it was still there, and because of that, it remains still here, in our hearts and memories, a bit like a ghost that wanders through the clouds of our reminiscences. Losing the place haunts us, trips us up when we aren’t looking, calls our name in the dark, and still brings a smile to our face when we think about it. The Croatan Inn is the ghost, we are haunted by its absence.