The Devil’s Knoll (Buies Creek, NC)
I have often spoken, in vague terms, of my encounter with the residual essence of a woman in the apartment where I lived for a spell while in film school in Michigan. This distraught spirit, perhaps sensing my native sensitivity to her realm, reached out to me, and to this day I regret that I reacted solely in fear.
I have said that I was a skeptic before this experience, and this is true; however, I have implied that this was my first experience with the supernatural, which is incorrect.
My first encounter, a full three years earlier, was significantly more intense; nonetheless, for years I did my best to put it out of my mind, to not probe its meanings. However, the more deeply I’ve been pulled into the world of the other – the more friends I’ve lost or failed to make, the more scars I’ve received and witnessed – the more I’ve felt the need to revisit what happened that night, that entire summer.
As it happens, the two boys with whom I shared my first Ghost Adventure, Charles “Link” Neal and Rhett McLaughlin, are now somewhat well-known on YouTube, and as they are public figures I will use their names in this account. Others will remain anonymous.
- - - - -
The summer after I graduated from high school, I accepted an offer to live with family friends south of Raleigh, in the small town of Buies Creek, North Carolina. The local construction industry was in need of fit, cheap, unskilled labor, and I satisfied all three requirements.
I brought with me only a few changes of clothing and my most prized possession – a state-of-the-art Sony camcorder – and when not at work (mostly cutting, moving, and nailing two-by-fours), I wandered the tiny downtown of this college town, sleepy with school out of session for the summer, experimenting with angles and the challenges of filming during twilight and late into the night.
The owner of the construction company, upon realizing that I was friendless – too young, too much the scholar, for meaningful connection with most of my workmates – but only a year older than his own son, soon invited me into the life of his family. Through his son, I met his schoolmate Rhett McLaughlin, with whom he was working that summer; and, a few days later, Link Neal.
Tall and thin, Rhett McLaughlin moved with an awkward grace typical of the high school athlete. I was acutely aware that even during the most casual conversation he was judging me, evaluating whether I was worth his time. It was unnerving, and, almost defensively, I said that I’d heard he too was into film; soon we were talking equipment and technique. When I told him I was headed into film school in the fall his expression darkened; “Sounds impractical,” he said, and the conversation turned.
Link Neal was not as tall but just as lanky; I do believe that he and I looked very much alike in those days.
I first met Neal at a pool party at my employer’s house, as he was also friendly with the family. He was sharing a lounge chair with an attractive girl whose name I don’t recall (and wouldn’t reveal here if I did); in what seemed to be a response to the coziness of their pose, McLaughlin introduced the girl first, and then said, much too loudly and almost angrily, “And this is Link. He’s gay and overcompensating.”
Half the assembled teens laughed, and a couple commented that this was public knowledge. The girl stuck out her tongue and rotated to embrace Neal; Neal, returning the embrace, mouthed something to McLaughlin that I didn’t catch; and I thought no more of it for a time.
I started to spend lunch breaks with McLaughlin and my employer’s son, travelling over from my own work site or joining them, pre-arranged, at one of the few local fast food options. When his schedule would allow it, Neal would join us as well, and I came to learn that he and McLaughlin had been friends since early childhood; had gone to camp together, had dated several of the same girls, and were, most evenings, making music together in their own band, with several other local kids. Still, I sensed an unease between them; when I asked my employer’s son about this, he said that he’d noticed it too; that perhaps it was due to that crack McLaughlin had made the day at the pool party, or perhaps he was jealous of the time Neal was spending with the girl – apparently girls had always been McLaughlin’s specialty - or perhaps their friendship was becoming stressed by the upcoming end of high school.
“Though I expect they’ll stick together,” my employer’s son said.
“That’s kind of weird, isn’t it?” I asked.
“They’re kind of weird,” he replied.
- - - - -
In early August, I was moved to a new construction site, a long cul-de-sac intruding into bramble-choked new-growth forest. The site had had a difficult time retaining workers due to its proximity to The Devil’s Knoll, a hillock that had remained bare even of grass after the once-farmland had been abandoned. It was purported to be where “Hell was bulging out.” No birds would venture into the 30-foot ring, and objects placed within during daylight would mysteriously be moved to the closest edge by next daybreak. Sometimes these objects would reek of sulphur, or show burns or other signs of manipulation.
Of course I was incredulous; and more than willing to take the time-and-a-half offered for normal weekday hours. Even after testing the powers of the knoll myself by placing a stray work glove in the center my first day and finding it in tatters several feet into bramble the following morning, I was solely curious about the motives and methods of local tricksters. That something truly supernatural was at play did not cross my mind.
My new friends were thrilled when I told them of my new assignment, and that our bulldozers had made the area more accessible. McLaughlin in particular; and we soon worked out a plan to combine our low-light videography abilities to surveil the area all night from different angles, returning to our cameras periodically with fresh DATs and batteries but otherwise keeping as low a profile as possible.
Neal wanted no part of our adventure when McLaughlin laid out our plans during ‘band practice’ – which consisted of the three of us messing around in McLaughlin’s family garage, me trying to keep a beat on a friend’s third-hand drum set while McLaughlin and Neal worked out a harmony that McLaughlin could support on his new-that-summer electric guitar. McLaughlin called Neal several terms I cannot precisely recall, though I believe one of them was “chicken-shit.” Neal responded that McLaughlin was a pompous ass. McLaughlin then put forth a homophobic slur; at which point Neal departed.
McLaughlin was silent, expressionless, until we could no longer hear Neal’s vehicle; then he threw himself into our planning
- - - - -
That Friday night began clear and moonless, perfect for our trap. McLaughlin and I, with our video cameras, multiple DATs, flash lights, bungee cords, lure objects, and several pounds of extra batteries, drove to the entrance of the construction site, then hiked up the newly-cleared roadway to its end. During daylight, I’d carefully marked the start of a narrow path that led to the knoll, and we found it without trouble.
We arranged small, battery-operated LEDs around the knoll, as well as several lit votive candles and a half-dozen pebble-filled soda cans. We then affixed our video cameras to two of the closest trees, located approximately 120 degrees apart. Confident that our cameras were not visible (having covered any lights), we slipped out of the knoll.
Whispering, we made small talk for a while, then I asked McLaughlin the question that had been on my mind since the pool party weeks before: If he and Neal were as close as everybody said, as close as Neal seemed to expect them to be, then why was McLaughlin such a bastard to him?
McLaughlin’s reply was a jumble of justification. I don’t remember his exact words, but I do remember several thrusts: The world was cruel to its Neals, and McLaughlin was trying to prepare him; that Neal did actually frustrate him at times; and that, finally, he wanted Link Neal to accept his true nature.
“So he’s actually batting for the other team?” I asked, wondering, as I said it, whether in McLaughlin’s case the ‘team’ was actually ‘other’.
McLaughlin turned away, his expression unreadable in the dark.
- - - - - -
Shortly after midnight, one of the most intense experiences of my life began. The wind whipped up, and the lit candles went out all at once. Then, the battery-powered candles, and the pebble-weighted cans, flew outward from the center of the knoll in every direction.
I stayed down, but McLaughlin rose to his feet. “Hey,” he yelled, “who’s doing that?”
In answer, a shape rose out of the earth. Smelling of sulphur, blacker than the black of the night, with glowing eyes, and hands that issued blue flame.
I tried to yell, to reach McLaughlin to pull him down, to do anything, but I was rooted, made a statue, by otherworldly forces or my own fear, I cannot say.
An arc of blue flame left the thing and passed through McLaughlin, lifting and spinning him in its wake. I turned toward the destination of the flame, to see Link Neal standing at the path head!
The flame enveloped Neal. Now exuding a glow that in other circumstances might have been described as angelic, he leaned his head back and laughed, then sprinted away from the circle, down the path.
McLaughlin dashed after him; and, released, from whatever held me, I followed. I came upon them perhaps 50 yards along the path, Neal on the ground, supine, pinned by McLaughlin.
“Leave him!’ McLaughlin commanded, “Leave him now!”
“Never,” said the demon, in a harsh perversion of Neal’s voice. “This vessel is mine!”
“Leave him!” McLaughlin commanded, then, “Fight this, Link, flight this!”
Blue light travelled up McLaughlin’s body but McLaughlin visibly shook it off. “You cannot have me!” he said, then, “Come on, buddy, it can’t take both of us at once.”
Then his voice softened. “Come on, buddy, I can’t lose you, I’m here, I’m here, fight this for me, fight this with me…”
Neal’s glow faded into blackness; the winds quieted, the smell dissipated. Realizing I had my flashlight on my belt, I unhooked it and illuminated them; they lay, dazed, entangled.
- - - - -
Of course the cameras captured nothing. After returning McLaughlin’s camera the following day, I never spoke with either Neal or McLaughlin again.
- - - - -
Details of the evening were hard to bring into mind in the weeks that followed; and soon my summer in the south was over.
As the years have passed, though, and as I’ve learned more about human nature, I’ve thought about that summer, and that climactic evening. And, most specifically, about how Rhett McLaughlin freed Link Neal from whatever dwells in The Devil’s Knoll not through aggression, not even through bravery, but through the power of their connection, through the power of their love.
I have vainly sought to replicate this, with Aaron, with Nick, with my current expanded team; how much more effective would we be, how much less damage would we incur, if we could only care enough!
But even less than the powers of darkness, can the powers of light be commanded.