cover image Blackbeard's Cup and Other Stories of the Outer Banks

Blackbeard's Cup and Other Stories of the Outer Banks

Charles Harry Whedbee. John F. Blair Publisher, $13.95 (175pp) ISBN 978-0-89587-070-4

These richly detailed stories set on North Carolina's barrier islands delve into a trove of folklore. The fifth entry in a series on the region ( Legends of the Outer Banks , etc.) presents ghost stories and tall tales narrated in a straightforward manner and enriched with the history and idiom of the area. Whedbee prepares a wry mixture of science and the supernatural in ``The Guns of Vandemere,'' where three unrelated phenomena (loud noises that sound like cannons firing; shellfish rushing toward the shore; a ghostly, swaying light) can either be explained rationally or traced directly to a series of events that caused the pirate Blackbeard's fiancee to die of a broken heart. In ``Horace and the Coinjack Charade'' Whedbee tells, with great humor and delicacy, a wonderfully off-color tale of a mule and a trumpet. Readers should pay particular attention to ``Blackbeard's Cup,'' in which the author recalls his own 1930s visit to Blackbeard's castle, where he drank from a silver cup reputed to be the pirate's skull. The author offers $1000 to anyone who can locate the elusive vessel. Perhaps reading these delightful stories would be reward enough. (June)