Night at the
Devil’s Tramping Ground
A FIRSTHAND ENCOUNTER WITH BEAR CREEK’S MOST FAMOUS AND MYSTERIOUS BARREN CIRCLE
D
BY MORGAN CARTIER WESTON PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN MICHAEL SIMPSON
arkness falls over the Devil’s Tramping Ground on a muggy July evening, and the rhythmic hum of cicadas and frogs intensifies, their symphony punctuated by the occasional lowing of a cow or the startling yip of a coyote traversing nearby Falls Creek. The unsettling atmosphere has held a magnetic pull on both skeptics and believers for generations. Paranormal investigator Wyatt Dowdy notes the eerie quiet within the circle itself is one of its most puzzling features. “It makes everything echo,” he says. “I’ve never seen a breeze blow through the circle, either. It’s especially spooky when the sun goes down.” Wyatt says he heard voices just beyond the edge of the trees on his most recent visit to the site in May; Kevin Saunders, another investigator, captured on video what looks like human-shaped fog walking through the woods a few years back. Wyatt’s mother, Amy Dowdy, says she saw water running uphill at the Tramping Ground after a storm when she was a teenager. Amy was also present when Wyatt had his first paranormal encounter at age 4. “We were driving home from Siler City one day, and something darted across the road and scared us both,” Wyatt says. “We stopped, but there was nothing there.” He also experienced strange happenings in the 100-year-old Bennett farmhouse where he 44
CHATHAM MAGAZINE
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2023
grew up (though Amy and his dad, Eugene Dowdy, never have). “There was this playful spirit – it would do things like tickle my feet when I was asleep,” Wyatt says. “He has always been sensitive to things like that,” Amy adds. Wyatt made his first visit to the Devil’s Tramping Ground years ago as a student at Chatham Central High School in Bear Creek. “Growing up around here, my friends and I were familiar with the lore,” he explains, “[that] if you leave something in the center of the circle overnight, it will be gone the next morning. We snuck out of my buddy’s parents’ house to test the legend for ourselves, but when we got to the driveway, the pathway to the circle was pitch black. We all felt this overwhelming feeling of dread and got out of there without stepping foot inside.” This past spring, Wyatt filmed a video on the spot for his YouTube channel, Deep Chatham Paranormal. He brought along friends and fellow content creators Isaac Craig and Jeff Dooley, both of Charlotte, to help out. “We experienced quite a bit of activity,” Wyatt says. “After the sun went down, it picked up, and I saw what looked like a girl in white running into the woods. Then, we clearly heard the word ‘run’ on the radio scanner.” They listened. On our visit, Wyatt and his wife, Erica Dowdy, set up several pieces of equipment designed to detect anomalies: a REM pod and music box that respond to movement with a flashing light and loud tone, and a haunting
ABOVE Wyatt Dowdy sets up his equipment. LEFT Tamara Owens shows newspaper articles her family has collected over the years.