Legends of the Grand Strand

Moonlit nights. Shadowed trees heavy with moss. Blackwater creeks. Centuries-old cemeteries in quiet churchyards. Dark and powerful storms that seem to rush in from nowhere, leaving profound quiet in their wake.

These eerie but familiar traits of the South Carolina Lowcountry are the backdrop for many oft-told ghost stories. Over the decades, two such ghosts have become especially endeared to South Carolinians: Alice Flagg of the Hermitage and The Gray Man of Pawleys Island.

Alice Belin Flagg was the teenage sister of the wealthy owner of the Hermitage, a successful rice plantation located in the midst of a Murrells Inlet marsh. Alice had fallen in love with a young merchant, but in those times, a wealthy heiress would never be allowed to marry so far below her social standing. Nevertheless, the two lovers secretly promised to marry when Alice came of age. She hid her engagement ring by stringing it on a chain under the collar of her blouse, near to her heart.

While away at school in Charleston, Alice suddenly became seriously ill. She was sent home to be cared for by her brother, who was a physician. Alice clung desperately, but vainly, to life—passing fitfully in and out of delirium and dreaming of her young lover. One night Alice’s brother found her clutching the cherished ring. Lost in her fever and unaware of disapproving family members, she spoke out loud about her betrothed.

Her brother tore the ring from her necklace and threw it out the window into the dark, muddy marshland. Alice died heartbroken, never receiving her brother’s acceptance of her one true love.

Soon after her death, Alice appeared to several visitors to the Hermitage dressed in her beautiful white burial gown. Even today her spirit wanders the saltmarshes hoping to recover the lost golden ring. Visitors to her gravesite at All Saints Church in Pawleys Island have worn a path around her grave, believing that by circling it backwards 13 times, they can summon her ghost.

The legend of the Pawleys Island Gray Man dates back to the 1820s. A wealthy young planter was on his way to the island to propose marriage to his beloved. He never reached her. In his haste, he was galloping through the surf when his horse stumbled, throwing him to the ground. Tragically, his neck was broken, and he drowned in the surf.

Two nights later, a blurred, gray ghost in his likeness appeared to his beloved as she walked on the beach. The figure disappeared as she drew closer, trying to reach him. That night, she dreamed of a horrible storm at sea, and in the morning, she told her family about the dream. They left Pawleys Island for the mainland that day, narrowly escaping a deadly hurricane.

The Gray Man was seen before the infamous Storm of 1893 struck the coast, wiping out the settlement at Magnolia Beach just north of Pawleys Island. Since that time, the Gray Man has appeared before every major hurricane, including the disastrous Hugo in 1989. Those he shows himself to are mysteriously spared the storm’s destructive power. The Gray Man was the subject of an episode of the popular television program Unsolved Mysteries.