Just Guyton

More than twenty years ago, I willingly packed up a tent and went camping at a place called the Devil’s Tramping Ground.

I know.

There are several questionable decisions contained in that sentence. 😂

But before you start wondering what possessed me—and perhaps “possessed” is a poor choice of words here—I should explain something.

I didn’t go because I believed the Devil was pacing around a circle in the North Carolina woods.

I went because I didn’t.

And I was curious.

Apparently, this has been a personality trait for quite some time.

The Devil’s Tramping Ground is in Chatham County, North Carolina. For generations, people have told stories about a strange circular area there where vegetation has historically struggled to grow.

According to the legend, the Devil walks around that circle at night while plotting whatever it is the Devil apparently needs to walk in circles to think about.

I had heard another part of the story from my uncle.

Years before my trip—if I remember correctly, sometime in the 1970s or ’80s—he had camped there. He told us they had placed their tent inside the circle before going to sleep.

When they woke up, the tent was outside of it.

Now, there are two kinds of people in this world.

People who hear a story like that and say, “Well, I’m never going there.”

And people who say, “Really? 👀”

I was the second kind.

So more than twenty years ago, several of us went out there.

And yes, I deliberately set up my tent inside the circle.

Because apparently simply visiting the Devil’s Tramping Ground wasn’t enough. I needed to conduct my own extremely unscientific field experiment.

And you know what happened?

We had a good time.

But I do remember some eerie things about that trip.

As we approached the area, there was a murder of crows. Along the sides of the path leading toward the Tramping Ground, I remember seeing dead critters, including snakes, on the ground.

Now, were the crows holding a meeting about our arrival?

Probably not. 😂

Were the dead animals evidence that the Devil was somewhere ahead waiting for campers?

I certainly don’t believe so.

But when you’re walking toward a place called the Devil’s Tramping Ground and you already know the stories surrounding it, those aren’t exactly the welcoming decorations you hope to encounter.

The atmosphere was creepy.

That part I won’t deny.

But morning came, and my tent hadn’t been moved out of the circle.

And no, I did not see the Devil rambling around Chatham County.

What stayed with me wasn’t proof of anything supernatural.

It was the story.

And apparently, I’m hardly the first person that happened to.

The fascinating thing about the Devil’s Tramping Ground isn’t whether you believe the legend.

It’s how long the legend has survived.

Newspaper accounts were discussing the place by 1882, and even then it was described as something known to older generations. By the early 1900s, writers were describing the unusual physical appearance of the ground itself—a circular area with barren paths where surrounding vegetation seemingly failed to take over.

So whatever you believe about the Devil part, people really were puzzled by the land.

And when people encounter something they cannot readily explain, we do what human beings have always done.

We tell stories.

Over the years, those stories multiplied.

The Devil paced there.

Things left inside the circle overnight supposedly disappeared or were moved.

Other explanations involving everything from witchcraft to buried treasure eventually attached themselves to the place.

At one point, an old newspaper account even included a story about hunters and their dogs being chased away by some ferocious creature resembling a black bear.

Apparently that storyline didn’t test well with audiences because we don’t hear nearly as much about that one anymore. 😂

That is one of the fascinating things about folklore.

It evolves.

Some details survive.

Others disappear.

New ones get added.

And eventually it becomes difficult to determine where the original story ends and generations of retelling begin.

But underneath all those stories is something important:

There really is an unusual piece of ground there.

And scientists have actually studied it.

Older North Carolina accounts reported unusually high salt levels in soil from the barren area, which helped produce one popular natural explanation for why vegetation struggled there.

Later testing complicated that answer.

Researchers comparing soil from inside and outside the circle have found differences, but nothing that provides one simple, definitive explanation for the phenomenon.

More recent testing by a North Carolina Department of Agriculture agronomist found something particularly interesting.

The ground inside the Tramping Ground is extremely compacted.

One possible explanation is that roots have difficulty penetrating deeply enough into the soil. When conditions become hot and dry, shallow-rooted vegetation would have a harder time surviving.

But that still leaves another question:

Why did the ground become so compacted in the first place?

There are theories, but no definitive answer.

And there’s another possibility researchers have raised about why it remains that way.

People.

For generations, people have heard about the Devil’s Tramping Ground and gone to see it.

They walk around it.

They camp there.

They investigate it.

They dare their friends to spend the night.

Which creates a fascinating possibility:

The legend may actually help preserve the conditions that keep the legend alive.

People hear a story about a strange patch of ground.

The story makes them visit it.

Visitors repeatedly walk and camp on it.

The ground remains unusual.

Someone else sees it and asks why.

And somebody tells them the story.

It’s almost a folklore feedback loop.

And honestly, that might be more interesting to me than the Devil.

There’s another very human reason a place like this can feel unsettling.

Places with reputations attract people.

Sometimes people go there specifically to do things they probably wouldn’t do anywhere else.

The property has dealt with vandalism, damaged or stolen signs, and people leaving occult imagery behind.

So yes.

You can encounter creepy things in the woods without the explanation being supernatural.

Sometimes the creepy thing in the woods is another human being.

That may actually concern me more. 😂

I don’t know what happened to my uncle’s tent all those years ago.

I wasn’t there.

I know the story he told me.

And I know that hearing it helped make me curious enough to eventually go there myself.

More than twenty years later, I still remember it.

And now I’m telling it to you.

My uncle told it to me.

Other people told their stories before him.

People were writing about this strange little patch of North Carolina ground more than a century ago.

And people are still talking about it today.

Maybe that’s how legends really survive.

Not because everybody believes them.

Sometimes the skeptics keep them alive too.

Because occasionally someone tells you something so strange that even if you don’t believe a word of it, you still find yourself thinking:

Really? 👀

And before you know it, you’re packing a tent.

Some stories refuse to die.

—Guyton