Wild Mag of North River

At Indiantown, the story of a woman lost in the swamp survived in a remark about untidy hair. The remembered account says that people getting up in the morning would compare their hair to Wild Mag’s. Behind that familiar expression lay a disappearance, a search, and a return that the neighborhood remembered long afterward.²

To follow the story, begin at Indiantown Creek. The later storyteller directed readers south across the creek on Indiantown Road, then toward the first opening on the left, where fields had led to a clearing beside the water. The contributed map below marks the approximate place. Thoroughfare Island lies farther east in North River, beyond the wooded wetland. The road, the creek and the island give the account its bearings; they do not disclose the route the missing woman took.²⁴

A church group had gathered in that creek-side clearing for an afternoon picnic, according to the account. One of the young women wandered away. People searched for her, and when they could not find her, they believed that she had drowned or otherwise died. The storyteller placed the picnic around “the turn of the last century.” Since the post’s date is unknown, that phrase cannot yet give us a reliable year.²

The account describes six to eight weeks passing before fishermen began to hear unusual screams from the swamp on the Camden side of North River. Later the sounds came from Thoroughfare Island. Men went out to investigate and concluded that a panther was responsible. Concern for livestock turned the inquiry into a hunt. About a dozen men set off from Indiantown landing with guns and hounds in two boats powered by two-cylinder gasoline engines.²

The dogs picked up a trail on the island and followed it to the other side. There the men found the young woman, thin, scarcely clothed, and crouching before the hounds. They put a coat around her and brought her back to Indiantown. The search that had begun with the expectation of killing an animal ended, in this telling, with the return of someone believed dead.²

We have this story through a post whose author remains unidentified. That writer said a great-aunt had actually remembered Mag; a grandfather, too young to remember her himself, knew the account from his parents and members of the hunting party. Those family connections belong to the unidentified writer. Their recollection gives the story a neighborhood voice, but another source brings us much closer to the time of a strikingly similar event.²

A report from 1907

On September 24, 1907, the Concord Evening Tribune printed an Elizabeth City dispatch under the heading “Sad Finding of a Young Girl.” The dispatch was dated September 23 and relied on an informant recently returned from Camden County. Cries had been heard near Thoroughfare Island. A panther was suspected. On Sunday, men went looking for it. If the report’s Sunday was the day immediately before the dispatch, the search took place on September 22.¹

The newspaper’s men carried guns and axes. An initial search had accomplished little when someone proposed that they call out. A cry answered them. Following the sound, they formed a circle, ready to shoot what they supposed was a dangerous animal. Instead they found a young woman lying on the ground with very little clothing. The newspaper judged her to be about eighteen years old. They took her to a physician’s home at Indiantown, where she could not tell them who she was. Nor could the people described in the report identify her.¹

Thoroughfare Island, the cries, the supposed panther and the discovery of a young woman are a remarkable set of shared particulars. They make the 1907 report a strong possible connection to Mag’s story. But the newspaper named no Mag and mentioned no picnic, six-to-eight-week absence, hounds or Kight household. The two accounts may describe the same woman; we have not yet found the evidence that joins them by name.¹²

The woman who came home

The neighborhood telling continues where the newspaper leaves off. Local women gathered to nurse Mag, it says, and she lived with Ithram and Willa Kight. A separate local recollection gives those spellings and places their possible home near the north end of Trotman Road. The yellow arrow marks the junction with North Sandy Hook Road, a useful place from which to begin looking for the household, though neither the names nor its connection with Mag has yet been confirmed in original records.²³⁴

The later account says that Mag told of eating berries, leaves and worms, and of bears driving her from a place where she had dug for water. It describes difficulty caring for herself after her return and hours spent holding dolls. These are details preserved by the storyteller, not a medical history from which we can assign a diagnosis. They belong to the remembered life of a woman who, in that account, continued to need care after she was brought out of the swamp.²

Then comes the small household expression that outlasted the telling of the search:

“To this day, locals say that their hair looks like Wild Mag’s when they first wake up.”

Unidentified author, “Legend of Wild Mag on North River,” post preserved in the research collection; posting date unknown.²

In that expression, Mag’s name remained familiar even as her full identity slipped from the account. A person could know the saying without knowing the woman.²

The road still gives us an approach to the creek, and the map lets us look across to Thoroughfare Island. For now, the newspaper leaves its young woman at a physician’s home, unnamed. The neighborhood story carries Mag farther, into a house and among people who tried to care for her. Mag’s story continued there, after the boats had come home and the search was over.¹²