The Death House of Pasquotank County

Near the southern tip of Pasquotank County close the coast of the Albemarle Sound is a now abandoned house now considered one of the most haunted houses in North Carolina. In the early part of the 1800’s Thomas Lynch Shannonhouse and his wife built the once beautiful house in the middle of the swamp hoping to raise a happy family. What the house became was a spot of heartache, death and horror.

When Thomas and his wife passed away, their son John took over the property. His favorite among his children was his daughter, Ellanora. And so for her 16th birthday John gave his daughter a gift that would make any young girl happy; a horse. The girl loved the animal and for the next six weeks she rode him every day.

Unfortunately, one Sunday while the girl was out riding she was thrown from the horse and badly injured. She hung on for two days before whispering to John “But Father, I can’t die so young.”. With that, she passed on.

John’s grief then turned to rage as he screamed this curse into the night: “My most cherished possession has been taken from me. I hope all who inhabit this house may know the pangs of death which so pained me.”.

It seems John’s curse worked. For since the time he uttered those words until the last owners left in the mid twentieth century, at least one person has died in almost every family who lived there. Soon after Ellanora’s death John Shannonhouse sold the house to a man named Stanton. Soon after purchasing the house, two of his children contracted diphtheria and died. The house then was transferred to a farmer named Lister. Three of Lister’s children died of disease.

It was around the time of the deaths that people who lived in the house claimed there was a spirit in the house. A farm hand who died of tuberculosis claimed he’d seen a girl on a white horse riding down the road. But no one had gone down the dead end road that day.

In 1923 shortly after her family moved into the house, Mrs. Markham was swinging on the front porch with her young son in her arms when she saw someone riding a horse on the road. The rider was a young girl dressed in brilliant white. After she go no response from her greeting, Mrs. Markham began to walk towards the girl. Suddenly, the girl vanished. The next day her baby became sick and within a week, he was dead.

The Markham’s moved in the 1930’s after another child became ill. Luckily, he survived. Other families were no so fortunate. One after another, those who stayed in the house lost loved ones to illness or accidents until the early 1970’s when the house was abandoned for good… except by the girl and her pony.