An hour among the ghosts will do no harm.
Edwin Arlington Robinson
After some people pass away, their ghosts are said to linger at the homes to which they were so attached during their lifetimes. One such place is Poplar Grove Plantation, located on US 17 at Scotts Hill, approximately eight miles north of Wilmington. Should you happen to drive past the magnificent plantation manor house late at night, be sure to look for a mysterious glow emanating from one of the front rooms after all the lights have been extinguished. This spooky illumination is associated with Poplar Grove’s resident ghost—the spirit of Aunt Nora Frazier Foy.
From 1795 until it was sold to Poplar Grove Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit corporation, in 1971, the majestic Greek Revival mansion was owned by six generations of the Foy family. James Foy, Jr., the son of a Revolutionary War Patriot, established the plantation. It once stretched from Topsail Sound to what is now US 17, encompassing more than 835 acres. Joseph Mumford Foy constructed the multistory frame mansion in 1850 to replace the original plantation house, which had burned a year earlier. Wood used in the house was hand-hewn and pegged, and the bricks in the foundation and chimney were made on the grounds.
Situated among stately oaks draped with Spanish moss, the mansion is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It and the adjacent fifteen acres were opened to the public by the foundation in 1980. Tours of the exquisite dwelling and its dependencies offer a glimpse of what plantation life was like in the antebellum South. Visitors are treated to magnificent interior furnishings and exhibits that depict the plantation as it was in the early and middle years of the nineteenth century.
During your tour of this historic gem, you will come face to face with the portrait of Aunt Nora. If you look closely at her painting, you will probably reach the uneasy conclusion—as have most visitors—that her eyes are staring back at you. Perhaps it’s because the eyes are tinted blue in a sepia print. But perhaps it’s more than that.
Nora Frazier Foy was the grande dame of Poplar Grove from the time she came here as the young bride of Joseph Foy in 1871 until she died in the mansion in 1923. A colorful character, Aunt Nora enjoyed jokes, pranks, and smoking her pipe. For a time, she served as the local postmistress.
If you ask a member of the plantation staff about Aunt Nora, chances are he or she will tell you that her spirit is playful. Workers in the basement restaurant have experienced myriad supernatural occurrences before and after business hours. When no patrons were on the premises, phantom footsteps and slamming doors have been heard. Commodes have suddenly flushed in empty restrooms. Music from an unknown source has enveloped the restaurant. Cooks have witnessed every pot and pan in the kitchen fly off the hooks and crash to the floor in one thunderous fall. Managers of the restaurant have been spooked by some of the weird happenings and vexed by others. Late one night as a female employee worked in the office, she was terrified when the pages of a notepad on her desk slowly began to riffle. On more than one occasion, the manager has locked the place tight at the close of business, making sure that the stoves and lights were turned off, only to have the first employee arrive the following day to discover the lights burning and the stoves hot.
Bizarre events have occurred on the upper floors as well. One day when no other human was in the house, something kept picking up the extension telephone while a manager was on the line in another part of the mansion. Another time, a tour director was alone in an upstairs room when she saw an old wooden cradle suddenly begin rocking without being touched or blown by the wind. Then it stopped instantly.
Betty Taylor, a surviving member of the Foy family, has personally experienced some of the unusual goings-on in the house. After numerous problems with the burglar alarm, she marched upstairs one night to tell the spirit of her ancestor to stop putting out the cat at night, because it set off the alarm. There have been no further problems with it since that time.
According to Taylor, the resident ghost may not be that of Aunt Nora. Rather, she believes it to be another member of the family, a person killed in the Civil War. At least one employee agrees. Referring to the portrait of Aunt Nora, that employee said, “I don’t believe [the ghost is] Nora. You just look at those eyes and let them look back at you, and you tell me she doesn’t have a place in heaven.”
But most people seem to believe that Nora’s ghost still lives at Poplar Grove.
A special windowpane in the house bears the names of Nora and her husband, etched there on their wedding day. More than a hundred years after that event, a gentleman was making his way to his automobile after an evening meal at the plantation restaurant when he heard the sound of galloping hooves. To his surprise, a fabulous carriage drawn by two magnificent white horses was traveling up the tree-lined avenue. As it drew near, he saw that it bore a man and woman dressed in formal clothing from an earlier age. In an instant, the carriage disappeared without a trace, except for the hoof prints of its horses in the driveway. Was this a vision of the arrival of Joseph Mumford Foy and Nora Frazier Foy on their wedding day? No one can be sure. But it appears certain that once Poplar Grove became Aunt Nora’s home, she never wanted to leave. And just maybe she hasn’t!