[00:00:00] In 1590, a colony of 118 settlers vanished from Roanoke Island, leaving behind only the word Croatoan carved into a tree. No bodies, no blood, no signs of conflict. This enigma remains America's oldest unsolved mystery, predating Jamestown by 17 years. Historians rarely mention the Croatoan tribe's accounts of a reptilian entity capable of possession, inducing paranoia and violence among its victims.
[00:00:34] Governor White recorded abnormally cold temperatures and mysterious lights in the forest during the months before the disappearance. Tonight, on Midnight Signals, we explore the possibility that these colonists face something beyond our understanding. A force that breached the boundary between our world and realms unknown.
[00:00:53] Good evening, fellow Wanderers of the Night, and welcome back to Midnight Signals. I'm your host, Russ Chamberlain, and tonight we continue our journey into shadows of America's first mystery.
[00:01:04] Have you ever noticed how certain words seem to carry power within them? How some phrases, when spoken, send an involuntary chill down your spine. One such word has whispered through centuries, appearing at moments when reality itself seems to tear. This haunting syllable, Croatoan, echoes throughout history's most perplexing disappearances, connecting seemingly unrelated incidents across time.
[00:01:30] Edgar Allan Poe spent his final days in delirium at Washington College Hospital in 1849, repeatedly uttering this word with disturbing clarity before his death. Decades later, notorious stagecoach robber Black Bart vanished from his locked San Quentin cell, leaving only that mysterious word etched into his wall.
[00:01:51] Prison records reveal he had recently requested books about early American colonies. Then in 1921, the schooner Carroll A. Deering was discovered completely abandoned off North Carolina's coast. Meals still warm on the stove, personal belongings untouched in cabins, with that same word written in the captain's log by an unidentified hand. Most telling, the vessel drifted just miles from where the word first entered our historical record.
[00:02:20] These incidents form a constellation of mystery around a single point in time, 1590, when Governor John White returned to Roanoke to find the colony empty, with only Croatoan carved into a post. Conventional historians suggest this indicated relocation to Croatoan Island, now Hatteras. But this explanation fails to answer why White never found the colonists there, or why this same word emerges at scenes of inexplicable disappearances across centuries.
[00:02:49] The reto and tribe themselves held their island in both reverence and fear. traditions documented by 18th century ethnographers warned against visiting certain coastal areas after sunset, believing
[00:03:06] night created pathways for entities to cross into our world. On the island's windswept northern shores, where the constant sea breeze sculpts the weathered stones into natural arches, the tribe constructed ritual sites aligned with celestial bodies.
[00:03:21] These smooth, cold stones, some weighing hundreds of pounds, were positioned with inexplicable precision at locations where modern instruments detect magnetic anomalies.
[00:03:32] Places where Earth's energies behave in ways science struggles to explain. Their spiritual practice included specific taboos around naming shamans taught, that certain words acted as keys between realms. One elder's warning preserved in a missionary's journal states The name that invites crossing must never be spoken where the stars touch the water for what comes through may wear the face of those you love. But carry darkness within. word. Were they simply indicating their destination? Or were they documenting something far more terrifying? Naming the force that was consuming them. Their disappearance coincided with what the Croatoan called the Night of Thin Shadows. A celestial alignment occurring every 60 years when, according to legend, pathways normally closed would open. Modern geological surveys reveal anomalies, temperature fluctuations, and gravitational inconsistencies.
[00:04:33] mark boundaries between dimensions.
[00:04:36] A pattern emerges in A pattern emerges in historical investigations of the area. In 1738, surveyor James Bennett documented experiences of lost time and walking in circles despite maintaining straight paths. In 1850, historian Edward Graham's compass spun wildly at certain locations. 1926, the research vessel Endeavour experienced complete electrical failure offshore while all 12 crew members reported identical dreams of people walking into the sea. Cape Hatteras rangers have collected numerous accounts from visitors who speak the word as a dare. They report sudden temperature drops, electronic malfunctions, and sensations of being observed from just beyond their vision. Three separate visitors, years apart, described hearing identical whispers in Elizabethan English.
[00:05:29] The evidence suggested disturbing possibility. The word Croatoan wasn't merely indicating where the colonists had relocated geographically, but what had happened to them metaphysically. They hadn't just moved, they had transformed, crossed over, or been taken into whatever lies beyond the thin boundary between worlds.
[00:05:49] The boundary between worlds may have claimed most of the colonists, but what if one of them managed to leave behind something more substantial than a single carved word?
[00:05:57] Something tangible that continues to affect our physical world even today. 1937, nearly 350 years after the disappearance, a tourist named Louis E. Hammond made an unexpected discovery while traveling through North Carolina.
[00:06:12] A 21 pound stone bearing what appeared to be a desperate message from beyond time itself. The weathered rock carried inscriptions that would send tremors through the academic world.
[00:06:24] Ananias Dare, in Virginia, went hence unto heaven, 1591. And ye Englishmen shoo John White gover via.
[00:06:31] The reverse side told an even more chilling tale. Only seven colonists had survived, with the rest being murdered by native attackers. Most significantly, it was signed E. W. D. Eleanor White Dare. Mother of Virginia, wife of Ananias, and daughter of Governor White himself. Hammond brought his discovery to Emory University, where historians and linguists examined what might be the only authentic testimony from a Roanoke survivor.
[00:07:00] The stone surface displayed centuries of weathering, with mineral deposits embedded in the carved letters suggesting genuine aging. The inscription used language and abbreviations consistent with Elizabethan English. The Dare stone occupies a unique position in a sea of frauds. Following its discovery, 47 additional stones emerged, each claiming to continue Eleanor Dare's narrative. These subsequent stones were quickly exposed as obvious forgeries.
[00:07:30] Yet Hammond's discovery remains in academic limbo. Neither definitively authenticated nor dismissed. It exists in the same state of uncertainty as the colonists themselves. Dr.
[00:07:42] Heywood Pierce, who studied the stone, observed, While I cannot claim the first stone is authentic beyond question, It does not contradict any known historical facts at the time of its discovery. This stands in stark contrast to the forgeries that followed, which contain numerous historical inaccuracies revealing their fabricated nature.
[00:08:02] Modern analysis has deepened the mystery. The stone shows aging patterns extraordinarily difficult to replicate with 1930s technology. The patina, erosion patterns, and mineral deposits within the carved letters suggest centuries of exposure. Details sophisticated enough to challenge even modern forgery techniques.
[00:08:21] Academic debate lies something far more unsettling. Museum staff report the stone feels unnaturally cold to touch, regardless of ambient temperature. Electronic equipment malfunctions in its presence. Cameras fail, recording devices capture only static, and measurement tools give inconsistent readings when placed near it.
[00:08:42] Researchers who have handled the stone for extended periods report nearly identical dreams. Working independently and unaware of each other's experiences, multiple scholars have described dreaming of a woman in Elizabethan dress, frantically trying to communicate across a vast distance. She appears distraught, gesturing toward the wilderness and mouthing words that dreamers can never quite hear. The message contradicts the theory that the colonists peacefully integrated with local tribes. Eleanor Dare's alleged testimony describes violence. Father, soon after you go for England, we came hither. Salvages with murderers, weapons, at 10 o'clock, we were attacked.
[00:09:21] Most were slain. This account suggests a far darker fate than the historians have generally accepted. If authentic, the darestone reveals a mother's desperate final communication facing unimaginable circumstances.
[00:09:35] The inscription tells us Eleanor hid her daughter as violence consumed the colony. We can envision her desperation as she carved these words, hoping someday her father might learn what happened to the family he left behind. What energy might a stone absorb when it becomes a vessel for such profound human suffering? Objects present during moments of intense emotional distress have long been believed to retain imprints of those experiences.
[00:10:00] From psychometry in Western paranormal traditions to the Japanese concept of suku mo gami. The Dare Stone may have been a psychic anchor, a bridge between worlds allowing Eleanor Dare's consciousness to reach across centuries.
[00:10:13] Each person who touches it potentially forms a connection with whatever remains of her consciousness, trapped in that final moment of terror and desperation. This raises a disturbing possibility. What if Eleanor Dare isn't gone? What if some fragment of her consciousness remains tethered to our world through this stone, eternally reliving those final moments?
[00:10:34] Perhaps the recurring dreams aren't dreams at all, but actual contact with a woman trying desperately to complete a message interrupted by death centuries ago. The most unsettling aspect isn't what the stone tells us about history, but what it suggests about consciousness itself.
[00:10:51] If objects can preserve human experiences across centuries, What other moments might be embedded in the artifacts surrounding us? How many voices from the past are still trying to be heard? If only we knew how to listen. Objects aren't the only vessels that can trap a human soul between worlds.
[00:11:08] In the shadowed woodlands where Roanoke settlers once walked, hunters speak in hushed tones about encountering an impossible creature. A white doe that vanishes when approached. Passes through solid objects, and demonstrates an intelligence that no natural animal could possess. Could America's first English child still roam these forests? Not as a ghost, but as something far stranger? The legend of Virginia Dare's transformation echoes through centuries of Outer Banks folklore. According to the story, Immortalized in Sally Southall Cotton's 1901 poem, but whispered about for generations before. The innocent first English child born in the new world underwent a metamorphosis.
[00:11:48] A jealous witch transformed the beautiful young woman into a white doe to prevent her marriage to a desirable chieftain. This transformation trapped her between human and animal, neither fully alive nor dead.
[00:12:00] The sightings across centuries reveal a pattern too precise to dismiss as coincidence. The accounts describe an animal with uncannily human like intelligence that studies those who encounter it with an awareness that sends shivers down the spine. This is no ordinary albino deer. Witnesses describe the creature passing through solid trees or fences, disappearing when approached, Only to reappear elsewhere watching the bewildered observer. The doe primarily appears to children or those in distress, explains a local historian who has documented these encounters.
[00:12:34] Children playing near the forest's edge report a beautiful white deer watching over them. Lost hikers claim a pale doe guides them back towards safety. these patterns suggest. Virginia's spirit manifests as a guardian of the vulnerable, a poetic transformation for an infant whose mother reportedly hid her during an attack as described on the dare stone. The geography of these encounters centers around a five mile radius encompassing the colonial settlement and surrounding forests where Eleanor dare claimed to have hidden her daughter. The spirit seems to have tethered to its mortal boundaries, unable to venture beyond the location of its trauma.
[00:13:11] One compelling account came in 1985, when park ranger Michael Harrington followed a white doe that deliberately led him off the established trail. It kept stopping and looking back at me, he documented in his official report. As if making sure I was still following the doe guided him to an area where subsequent archaeological surveys uncovered remnants of an early colonial structure previously undocumented.
[00:13:35] Virginia's spirit appeared to reveal something about her final resting place. The descriptions remain remarkably consistent across centuries. The doe is pure white without markings, larger than a typical female deer, with eyes described as knowing or human like. Hunter's report raising their rifles only to find themselves unable to pull the trigger.
[00:13:57] Overcome with a sense that doing so would be tantamount to murder. Others who attempted to shoot the dough, claim their weapons jammed or misfired working perfectly when aimed elsewhere. Native American spiritual traditions from these lands offer context for Virginia's fate, their beliefs frequently speak of souls caught between worlds taking animal forms, particularly those who died violently or with unfinished business. circumstances of Virginia's disappearance would create precisely the conditions for such a spiritual limbo.
[00:14:28] A child hidden during a massacre, perhaps never finding proper burial or peace. Appearances follow purpose rather than a random haunting. She emerges during forest fires, severe storms, or when visitors face danger. safely following what they described as a magic deer back to safety.
[00:14:48] The doe vanishes when adults arrive, leaving only the delicate hoof prints that sometimes end abruptly, as if the creature simply ceased to exist. What makes Virginia Dare's spirit unique in supernatural lore is how it manifests not as a translucent human form, but as a solid animal with spectral qualities.
[00:15:06] If Virginia's spirit remains searching for her mother who never returned, her transformation into a guardian of the lost creates a haunting connection to the Darestone's testimony.
[00:15:17] With no one to return for the hidden infant, did Virginia perish alone in the wilderness? Or did her consciousness transform into something between worlds? A protective spirit forever bound to the land that witnessed both her birth and her abandonment.
[00:15:31] Beneath the innocent veil of transformation lies a darker possibility. One that challenges not just how the colonists vanish, but why. While tales of spiritual guardians offer comfort, the Croat Toan elders whispered warnings of a malevolent force that simply didn't haunt these primeval forests, but invaded the minds of those who dwelled within them. What if the colonists' fate wasn't sealed by starvation or conflict with native tribes, But by an entity that turned them against each other, and ultimately against themselves. Early Explorers journals contain references to these warnings. Cryptic mentions of the sickness that changes eyes Croatoan shamans. These accounts were largely dismissed by European historians as primitive superstitions. Filed away and forgotten in favor of more conventional explanations.
[00:16:21] Yet these dismissed warnings may hold the key to understanding why an entire settlement would methodically dismantle their homes and disappear without a trace. The Kroatoans speak of the reptilian devil of the woods. An invisible presence that attaches itself to humans, gradually taking control of their thoughts and actions.
[00:16:41] The entity possessed its victims, transforming ordinary people into vessels for its influence. be identified by their eyes, which became subtly different in a way that was difficult to articulate, but unmistakable to those who witnessed it. The legend aligns disturbingly with documented behavioral changes among the colonists. Reports from neighboring tribes indicated escalating paranoia within the Roanoke Settlement before their disappearance.
[00:17:08] Witnesses described colonists becoming increasingly suspicious of one another, engaging in heated arguments over trivial matters, and exhibiting uncharacteristic aggression, while typically attributed to isolation and dwindling supplies, the Croatoan explanation suggests a more sinister influence.
[00:17:26] According to tribal beliefs, this malevolent entity thrived on negative emotions. It would attach itself to a vulnerable individual, experiencing fear or despair, then use that person to create discord within the community. Each conflict strengthened its grip, creating a cycle of escalating tension.
[00:17:46] As more colonists fell under its influence, the entire settlement became a breeding ground for emotions that sustained the entity's power.
[00:17:54] The crow Toin developed specific rituals to detect the entity's presence, arranging stones and patterns that would become unnaturally cold when the entity approached. They also used primitive mirrors made from polished obsidian or still water, which revealed subtle distortions when reflecting the faces of the possessed.
[00:18:13] These detection methods echo across independently developed cultures, suggesting a universal human intuition about reflective surfaces revealing hidden truths. The symptoms of possession described by the croton mirror, the colonist final known actions with chilling precision. The first sign was persistent insomnia with disturbing dreams. As the entities hold strengthened, victims began speaking in unknown languages.
[00:18:39] Perhaps explaining reports of strange utterances from the Roanoke settlement at night. Most revealing is the Croatoan belief that in the final stages of possession, victims became obsessed with carving symbols. An eerie parallel to the colonist's final message carved in a post. What if Croatoan wasn't a destination marker but a desperate warning?
[00:19:01] The methodical dismantling of the settlement, removing doors from hinges, taking down walls plank by plank mirrors the compulsive ritualistic behavior associated with deep possession. This suggests a horrifying possibility. The colony may have succumbed to mass possession, leading them to dismantle their settlement while in a trance like state.
[00:19:23] Imagine maintaining partial awareness while your body follows commands, not your own. Knowing something has taken control, but being powerless to resist. The colonists, may have walked willingly into the wilderness or sea led by an influence. They couldn't escape this explanation accounts for their disappearance. In the absence of evidence of struggle, there was no battle because the entity didn't want to destroy their bodies.
[00:19:48] It wanted to claim them. What makes this theory particularly unsettling is how it bridges the supernatural explanation and the psychological reality. Modern understanding of mass hysteria and collective psychosis offer scientific frameworks paralleling what the Croatoan describe in spiritual terms.
[00:20:07] Communities under extreme stress, can experience shared delusions and coordinated behaviors that defy rational explanation. The line between our world and others may be thinner than we imagine. While the psychological aspects of mass delusion offer one explanation for the colonists fate, physical evidence suggests something far more unsettling was at play in Roanoke.
[00:20:28] A phenomenon that transcends mental states and enters the realm of physical reality. Governor John White's personal journal entries reveal extraordinary boundary phenomena that historians have largely overlooked. In the months before his fateful departure for England, White meticulously documented atmospheric anomalies that suggested Roanoke existed at the edge of our world.
[00:20:51] The settlement experienced sudden temperature plummets during summer months. Severe enough to freeze water buckets overnight.
[00:20:58] These cold spots materialize like pockets of another world bleeding into our own. Concentrated in specific areas of the settlement that would later become focal points for disappearances. White's entries describe strange, dancing lights between the trees. Witnessed by dozens of settlers over several months.
[00:21:17] These luminous phenomena moved with apparent intelligence, hovering in place before darting away when approached. The colonists described walking through these areas as stepping through an invisible curtain, where sounds would momentarily muffle and the air would change texture against their skin. Modern paranormal researchers recognize these precise patterns. Unexpected cold spots combined with unexplained luminescence as classic harbingers of what they call boundary events. Where the membrane between dimensions temporarily weakens. Roanoke Island's unique geographical positioning makes it susceptible to such phenomena. The island sits at a convergence point where opposing ocean currents collide and magnetic fields exhibit measurable fluctuations.
[00:22:02] These natural conditions create what indigenous peoples recognized long before European arrival as a thin place.
[00:22:08] A location where our world barely maintains its separation from others. The Croatoan weren't speaking metaphorically. They were describing a physical reality they had observed through generations. During the final documented months before the colony's disappearance, a rare planetary alignment positioned Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars in a configuration that ancient cultures universally regarded as moments when boundaries between realms could dissolve. This cosmic alignment coincided precisely with the timeframe of the colonies vanishing, suggesting causation rather than coincidence.
[00:22:45] Indigenous warnings about specific locations on the island, places they avoid after nightfall. Believing them to be portals align remarkably with areas where modern researchers detect the strongest electromagnetic anomalies.
[00:22:58] What if the colonists encountered a temporary thinning between worlds, a dimensional breach that allowed them to pass through a boundary that later sealed behind them? This would explain the complete absence of struggle or signs of hasty departure.
[00:23:12] The careful dismantling of their settlement suggests not preparation for relocation. But a deliberate crossing over, taking with them what they could carry to a place they could not return from. Perhaps as the colonists went about their daily lives, the boundary gradually weakened around them.
[00:23:29] They noticed the unexplained cold spots, the lights moving through the forest at night. As the planetary alignment reached its peak, the boundary became so permeable that crossing between worlds became as simple as walking through an invisible doorway. This dimensional boundary theory explains why no trace of the colonists was ever found despite extensive searching. If they had relocated inland or been assimilated into native populations, some archeological evidence would eventually have emerged.
[00:23:58] Instead, they vanish completely as if stepping out of our reality. The word cro, aen carved into the post takes on a new meaning. Not just as a location marker, but as a warning about the boundary's nature. The colonists behavior before disappearing, their careful disassembly of structures, the absence of panic, suggest they were experiencing something gradual rather than sudden.
[00:24:22] Something that allowed them to prepare for a journey they somehow knew was coming.
[00:24:27] In 2012, the quiet sands of Hatteras Island surrendered a secret that had remained hidden for centuries. As archaeologists brushed away soil from a wooden spoon at what became known as Site Y, the object seemed to hum with an energy that transcended its humble appearance. One researcher later described how the wood felt warm to the touch despite being buried for centuries.
[00:24:50] if it still carried the heat of the hands that once held it. This wasn't just a historical artifact, It was a psychic beacon transmitting across time itself.
[00:25:01] Physical objects carry more than their material existence.
[00:25:04] Consider the slate writing tablet discovered during these excavations. Its faint inscriptions nearly invisible to the naked eye, yet appearing with startling clarity in photographs. The writing exists in two realms simultaneously.
[00:25:18] Visible only when captured through technology that sees beyond our limited perception. What force allows these markings to manifest more clearly in images than to the human eye standing before them? The excavation team at Site Y experienced phenomena that defied conventional explanation. Equipment failed without cause. Battery powered devices drain inexplicably. Most disturbing was the persistent sensation of being observed from just beyond the periphery of vision. One archaeologist described it as feeling watched by the eyes that somehow existed centuries ago. It remained fixed on our every movement. The team's journals document these occurrences with scientific precision, attempting to rationalize experiences that refuse to be contained by reason. These discoveries align with ancient concept of psychometry, the notion that objects absorb and retain energetic imprints from powerful emotions and experiences of their owners. This phenomenon appears with surprising consistency across cultures throughout history.
[00:26:22] When we touch these memory infused relics, we inadvertently access these imprints, creating a bridge between past and present, between those who vanished and those who seek to understand their fate.
[00:26:33] Museum curators who have handled Roanoke artifacts report consistent emotional responses. conservator at the North Carolina Maritime Museum described uncontrollable tears while cleaning that simple wooden spoon recovered from Site Y.
[00:26:48] I felt overwhelming grief, she reported. Not my own grief, but something ancient and desperate flowing through me. She had no knowledge of the object's provenance before handling it. Yet later research revealed it matched construction techniques used by Roanoke colonists. Equally remarkable are the shared impressions reported by sensitives who have independently handled these temporal anchors. Without knowledge of each other's experiences, They describe identical scenarios.
[00:27:17] A hurried departure under cover of darkness, paralyzing fear directed towards something moving within the forest, and a desperate journey towards water. One psychometric reader held a pottery fragment and immediately described small family units preparing food stores for a journey they knew would be dangerous. findings at Site Y, where preparation by individual families rather than communal efforts. The artifacts themselves exhibit behaviors that challenge our understanding of physical reality.
[00:27:51] A clay pot in temperature controlled storage dropped 15 degrees below ambient temperature. Then return to normal without explanation. Most unsettling are the accounts of objects that appear to change position when unobserved, as if attempting to communicate through movement what they cannot express through sound.
[00:28:09] These material touchstones may serve as anchors for consciousness detached from physical bodies. If the colonists cross dimensional boundaries as previous evidence suggests, Perhaps fragments of their awareness remain tethered to our world through these possessions. Objects they crafted with their hands.
[00:28:27] Items they imbued with purpose. Each potentially serving as a conduit for consciousness straining to communicate across an impossible divide.
[00:28:36] This intersection of consciousness and matter suggests something profound about Disappearance itself. The colonists may not have vanished entirely. They may exist in a liminal state where fragments of their awareness continue to reach across centuries through these material anchors. Their terror, their confusion, their desperate need to be understood, all preserved in humble objects that connect our world to wherever they now reside.
[00:29:02] Our journey through Roanoke. Mystery comes to a close, yet the story itself refuses such finality as historian Thomas Paramore noted the biggest questions of all remain , an absummation for a disappearance that has captivated America's imagination for centuries. Perhaps that's the true nature of Roanoke's curse. The colonists exist suspended between presence and absence. Their story unfinished, like quantum particles in multiple states.
[00:29:31] They occupy that fragmented space where certainties dissolve into possibilities. Their essence lingers in artifacts they touched and lands they walked, while forests whisper their secrets through rustling leaves. When the darkness falls over the outer banks, remember that on Roanoke, history accumulates in layers.
[00:29:51] The colonists aren't lost. They wait in that shadowy realm where past and present converge. What if the veil between our world and these historical echoes is thinner than we dare imagine?
