Outdoors

A deadly 1781 clash between Patriots and Loyalists on Hilton Head and Daufuskie became the foundation for a darker island legend — one in which the violence did not end with the Revolution.

William Eddings Baynard died in 1849, but Hilton Head folklore says his journey to Zion Cemetery never truly ended. On dark, rainy nights, a ghostly funeral procession is said to travel the island once again.

Confederate surgeon Dr. Edward S. Buist was killed during the 1861 Battle of Port Royal. Generations of Hilton Head storytelling transformed his wartime death into the legend of a headless figure wandering the former Fort Walker battlefield.

Long before Harbour Town became one of Hilton Head’s most recognizable destinations, Native American communities lived along the island’s waterways. An old island legend connects that history to a restless Yemassee warrior said to remain beneath Harbour Town.

History and folklore diverge in the story of Hilton Head’s Lady in Blue. The enduring island legend tells of Caroline Fripp, a young woman said to have kept a lighthouse burning through a deadly hurricane — and whose mysterious figure is still associated with the tower.

Mysterious scratches inside an old mausoleum at Zion Cemetery became part of one of Hilton Head’s most unsettling legends: the story of a young girl said to have been buried alive.