Ms. B. and I spent a very fine, scalding hot day yesterday in Chapel Hill, dining, hiking, shopping, and otherwise doing our part to stimulate the economy. Snagged a baker's dozen caches, including several in Battle Park, near the UNC campus. Beautiful woods, these, and the hunt for one of the caches led us to Gimghoul Castle, which was built in 1924, the meeting place of the "Order of Gimghoul," a secret society for certain privileged UNC alumni. As one might expect, the castle is reportedly haunted—by the ghost of one Peter Dromgoole, who was, by some accounts, killed by his best friend in a duel (over a young woman, of course), his body hidden under a rock near the site where the castle was built. (Other tellings of the legend say that Dromgoole survived the duel and then fled to Europe, never to be heard from again.) In any event, we didn't encounter any ghosts—probably because it was broad daylight, and you know how ghosts dislike these hot summer days—but we did find the cache, and thus was Damned Rodan made very happy.Afterward, Ms. B. and I partook of some excellent vittles we had picked up at Trader Joe's, had a couple of drinks, and watched the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, which I'd not seen in a quite a while. I seem to recollect from last night bits and pieces of dreams about ghostly goings-on in some dark place, but I can't remember them clearly because I was asleep at the time.
