The Lantern

LMG is a niche media organization, serving the Carolinas and beyond, with a focus on paranormal, mysteries, folklore, the unexplained, and haunted history.

01/03/2026

Aloka, the Peace Dog, will soon enter South Carolina, en route to Washington, D.C. This is history.

12/28/2025

Is This Upstate Museum Haunted

Pickens County Museum of Art and History is on the National Register of Historic Places in Pickens, South Carolina. Today, it serves as a museum, but many years ago, it served as a jail, where lynching victim Willie Earle was housed. A 24-year-old Earle was tragically murdered in 1947 off Old Bramlett Road in Greenville, after a mob removed him from the premises.

Several sites online have listed the building below as haunted, where the reported cries of innocence still echo from within.

Written By John G. Clark Jr.

12/27/2025

Are The Downtown Railroad Tracks in Easley Haunted

Easley, South Carolina, is located in Pickens County, near Greenville. The town was built for railroad transport in the early days, with many crashes occurring. Some believe that the railroad tracks in the beautiful downtown area are haunted by the ghostly whistle of a train late at night.

Whether they are haunted is anyone's guess, but they do appear on at least one site.

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Written By John G. Clark Jr.

12/26/2025

Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button. I just released a South Carolina ghostly tale that has never been told, and I will release the Santa Claus murders tonight!

12/26/2025

The First and Only station in the United States operated by an all-Black crew of service members.

Richard Etheridge was the first in a long line of Black keepers of the U.S. Life-Saving Station at Pea Island on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. He served during the Civil War and was appointed to his position in 1880. Etheridge hired local black men from the community to serve. They were trained as dedicated watermen who rescued victims from the dangerous waters known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic.

Under his leadership, the crew earned a reputation for its discipline and professionalism. In 1896, he and his team rescued every crew member of the E.S. Newman during a catastrophic hurricane. Sadly, Etheridge died in 1900, but the Pea Island station remained an all-black unit until 1947, when it was decommissioned.

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Written By John G. Clark Jr.

12/26/2025

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12/26/2025

The Cold War, Western North Carolina, and "Smiley"

During the early 1980s, amid the Cold War, the NSA ran a secret listening post at a former NASA facility in Rosman, North Carolina. For reasons that remain unclear, someone painted a large smiley face on the site’s 4.6-meter radio telescope. The NSA believed the Russians were spying on the Rosman facility using satellites. Their suspicions were confirmed years later, when declassified Kremlin documents, released after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, included satellite photos capturing the grinning "Smiley."

Written By John G. Clark Jr

12/25/2025

The Ghostly Hit and Run Victim on Highway 52

On Highway 52, between St. Stephen and Kingstree, is a long, rural stretch of road. According to eyewitness accounts, the road is said to be haunted by a ghostly hit-and-run victim.

The story appears on page 164 of Sherman Carmichael's Strange South Carolina, with an eyewitness account of the ghost. Shane Cantley and some friends were returning from Charleston on a late night. As they drove, they saw a man in the middle of the road and applied the brakes to stop. As they slid, the apparition came through the car before it came to a screeching halt on the road. One gentleman got out because the scene was so realistic and wanted to ensure no one was hurt, but there was no one there except for the dead of night, and the car had no visible damage.

Legend says an incident occurred in this very spot decades ago when a man hitching a ride through the area was killed in a hit-and-run accident. Perhaps it was the man reliving the horrific end of his life.

Written By John G. Clark Jr.

12/25/2025

Who was the real Ebenezer Scrooge

Yes, it is Christmas, and it would be a great time to dive into some holiday history.

The namesake of the fictional character Ebenezer Scrooge was a man named Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie. Scroggie was a vintner and corn merchant in Edinburgh who won the first whiskey supply contract for the Royal Navy and the catering contract for the visit of George IV to Edinburgh in 1822, the first British monarch to visit the city since the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Through his mother, Scroggie was the great-nephew of the 18th-century political economist and philosopher Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations). In his diaries, Charles Dickens states that the Scrooge character in his 1843 novel "A Christmas Carol" stemmed from a grave marker he saw on an evening walk in the Canongate Churchyard in 1841.

Somehow Dickens misread this as ‘mean man’ and later wrote in his notebook: "To be remembered through eternity only for being mean seemed the greatest testament to a life wasted."

You may be watching the movie "A Christmas Carol" tonight. Dickens couldn't have been more wrong about the real-life man, named Scroggie. But that doesn't mean that you have to.

Written By John G. Clark Jr.

12/24/2025

The Legendary Moonshiner- Popcorn Sutton

Marvin Popcorn Sutton was a mountain legend, plain and simple. Born and raised in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, he spent his days running the backroads between there and Cocke County, Tennessee, making moonshine the way his people always had. Popcorn wasn’t shy about what he did. He told his story in books and home videos, showing the world what honest mountain living looked like. Folks around here still trade stories about Popcorn.

Making moonshine was in Popcorn's blood, handed down from the folks before him. He got his nickname after a scuffle with a popcorn machine at a bar, and it stuck, just like things do around here in the Appalachian Mountains. The law came knocking plenty of times, but he always bounced back, never letting it stop him from doing what he loved. Moonshining wasn’t just a living for Popcorn—it was who he was, and he shared it with anyone who’d listen, whether it was in his shop, on film, or out by the still.

Unfortunately, Marvin Popcorn Sutton passed away on March 16, 2009. Today, Popcorn is remembered as a pioneer and a piece of mountain history.

Written By John G. Clark Jr.

12/24/2025

The Devil's Tramping Ground

Ten miles south of Siler City in western Chatham County, North Carolina, is a 40-foot clearing that forms a perfect circle. Why? Nobody knows. But inside this circle, life refuses to grow, leaving nothing but what appears to be evidence of a bonfire that went bad.

The spot sits ironically on a road named after it, Devil’s Tramping Ground Road. Many rumors circulate of what trampled the earth bare. Some believe a dark supernatural energy is at play, especially when items are left in place in the circle at night and mysteriously moved or gone in the morning.

Some say the devil is responsible for the circle – that he stomps the grounds at night, contemplating what evil action to perform next. And if not Satan, perhaps witches? After all, the legend dates to the 1600s.

For a more scientific explanation, studies conducted by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture on the landmark have shown unusually high salt content, indicating that the tramping ground is sterile.

Stories of Native American tribes that once occupied the land continue to resonate. One theory is that the natives who owned the land had a sacred space where they would hold ceremonial dances, forming the perfect circle we see today.

While we may never know who named the circle or why it continues to grab our imaginations, the Devil’s Tramping Ground is one spot that will forever live on in the pages of North Carolina folklore.

12/23/2025

The Mysterious North Carolina Road to Nowhere

Fontana Lake in western North Carolina is known for its haunting past and for unkept promises. If you drive this stretch of road, there's a good chance that you will find the mysterious Road to Nowhere, with a sign to greet you.

The road was supposed to be Lakeview Drive—a promise from the government to replace what was lost in the 1960s. But construction on the project stopped, the budget ran out, and all that’s left is a tunnel and a broken road. People started calling it the Road to Nowhere, and the name stuck.

When the Fontana Dam was built in 1941, the governmentwas supposed to have built Lakeview Drive as a replacement for Highway 288, which was flooded by the new lake. Fontana Lake didn’t just cover roads when it was constructed—it swallowed entire communities, dreams, small churches, and the memories of families who had lived there for generations.

If you ever find yourself exploring the Great Smoky Mountains, check out the Road to Nowhere. It’s just one of many North Carolina secrets, each with a story that’s worth telling.

Directions: From downtown Bryson City, head north on Everett Street and continue on Fontana Road for about 2.5 miles until you reach the national park entrance called "Lakeview Drive." This scenic drive travels another six miles to the "Road to Nowhere Tunnel.” Consider these half-day and full-day hiking options:

Written By John G. Clark Jr.

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