MOUNT AIRY, N.C. — Mount Airy may be known as the fictional land of Mayberry on "The Andy Griffith Show," but the town has a darker history than you may think.
The land of Mayberry is seen as eclectic, where nothing can go wrong, but did you know the actual place where hometown hero Andy Griffith grew up was actually named the Hollows?
Mount Airy is proud to represent the Griffith name, although more history in the town has happened.
The Mount Airy Museum of Regional History has been doing ghost tours for almost 14 years. It started as a one-time thing, but with so much popularity, the tours now take place Friday and Saturday nights from May through November.
Dan Terry is one of the guides for the tour and the only one who is a ghost hunter. Terry has had a love of the paranormal for years, writing books about hauntings and even hosting a podcast, "Most Haunted with Dan Terry."
His father would tell him ghost stories from his family, and shows like "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" and personal experiences, got him into ghost hunting.
“Every night we would hear someone walk up the sidewalk, jiggle the door and walk away, and I would get up and look and there was no one out there,” Terry said.
When he got his license at 16, he began ghost hunting, except when he was in the Coast Guard.
“Ghosts aren’t scary, you get scared, but if you just stay calm think about it, they don’t hurt you. I have been kicked, bitten, pushed and scratched,” said Terry, who says he has performed hundreds of ghost explorations.
“You can’t let the movies scare you,” Terry said.
He has been giving tours with the museum for about two years, which goes through the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History and the town.
Terry says depending on what tour guide you get, the stories may be different like a fire fighter attached to a cracker jar, or a little boy who is attached to a tricycle, with a visitor even claiming to have taken a photo of a ghost.
Terry says what makes the museum's tour different is the use of historical documentation of the events that happened in the town, including a random skeleton hand found in the wall and what he says was America’s second mail bomb.
“The good thing about it is the history is pretty accurate. And I will say, if I don't know, I don't know. There's places it's haunted. We don't know why or who, but overall, we get the history down,” Terry said.
The stories told on the tour provide a fun way to learn history of the town while being interactive.
“You learn history, have some fun, meet some people, meet some ghost people and have a good time,” Terry said.
Although Terry says the town isn’t haunted by Griffith, ghost tours provide an economic boost to the town as part of dark tourism, which is when travelers visit places filled with death or tragedy.
“People come in here, some towns the night before, stay at a bed and breakfast, stay a place that's allegedly haunted, have breakfast, get lunch, have a late supper. Yeah, it's good for everyone. Any tourism is good,” Terry said.
He encourages those to look into what ghost tours are near them to learn more about their town.