WILMINGTON - “Did you see that?” whispered Nick.
“Quit it,” said Lucy. “You’re just trying to scare me.”
Nick and Lucy sat huddled together around a campfire and peered into the darkness of the adjacent tree line.
The flickering of the flames threw shadows against the thick, stubby undergrowth of the surrounding forest in a way that reminded Nick of a group of tribal pygmies, dancing around the perimeter to a peculiar drum beat.
The couple had spent the day hiking through the woods of Bear Creek, North Carolina, and had stumbled upon this clearing just as the sun was setting overhead.
Now, at full dark, Nick was beginning to realize where they were.
And he was scared.
“Luce, be quiet,” Nick said, without taking his eyes off of the trees just outside the ring of campfire light.
Shaped in a flat, nearly perfect circle, the clearing where Nick and Lucy now stood motionless was about 40 feet in diameter and completely devoid of plant life.
Despite the dense overgrowth of forest that encircled them, nothing covered this patch of grey soil except broken twigs and dead leaves.
Even the air was still.
Nick had grown up in Siler City, about 10 miles north of where they now sat, and often heard his grandfather ruminate about a mysterious spot, set deep in the woods of Bear Creek.
The legends and stories about the area where rushing back to him now as he looked around at their campsite.
Nick’s grandfather had described this place as “the spot where the Devil himself would emerge from beneath the ground to think up new evilness to inflict upon the world, trampling and killing any vegetation beneath his hooves as he walked.”
Other old men from Nick’s town corroborated his grandfather’s description, adding that objects placed in the center of the clearing would be moved or tossed out of the ring by sunrise.
All of this ran through Nick’s mind as his eyes locked on something moving just beyond the tree line.
Something big.
Lucy saw it too and the hairs on her arm stood to attention as Nick grabbed and squeezed her hand tightly.
As they stared, hand in hand, all silent except for the crackle of the fire, two red, glowing eyes popped into existence out of the black void that was the darkness of the forest.
The disembodied eyes hovered for a moment and then, whatever creature they were attached to, lurched forward, snapping branches as it went.
Nick and Lucy did not wait around to meet their uninvited guest.
They ran and never looked back.
To this day, it is unknown why nothing grows on the Devil’s Tramping Grounds of Bear Creek, North Carolina.
The soil within the barren ring of dirt has been tested and has come back within normal chemical and PH ranges.
In fact, the dirt within the clearing has actually become more fertile than the surrounding forest due to the number of campfires that have contributed ash and mineral nutrients over the years.
And yet nothing grows there.
Theories as to why this is the case have persisted for hundreds of years with each generation adding their own stories to the legendary camping site.
Who knows? Science may one day discover some unforeseen clue to finally resolve the ages-old mystery surrounding this eerily quiet patch of barren dirt, hidden in the middle of North Carolina.
After all, the Devil is in the details.
