Halloween Island 3: Rise of the Moondog began on October 1. Thirteen downtown Manteo businesses are running themed pop-up bars, and a $5 passport sends every dollar to the Outer Banks Relief Foundation. Most October roundups treat that as a novelty bar crawl. In Manteo, the haunted stories and the crawl run through the same buildings, and many of those buildings carry the history of families who are still part of town. The ghost tour and the passport route go past the same doors.
The Haunted Buildings Are Open for Business
The Pioneer Theater is a good place to start. H.A. Creef ran it for decades until his death in 2012. His son Buddy then took over as the last Creef owner and sold the theater in 2023. Matt Marberry, who founded OBX Ghost Tours in 2015, told the Outer Banks Voice that Creef was strict about cell phones and would hold onto yours for the whole show. Since then, guests have reported phones flying out of their hands mid-movie. Tama Creef, H.A.'s niece by marriage, has stopped telling that story. She told the Voice her uncle would tell the kids to shut off their phones, "but be the first one to stand outside to make sure they got home safely." This month the same theater is on the Halloween Island passport as the Pioneer Monster Cinema.
The Roanoke Island Inn has an even better-documented story. Asa Jones built the ground floor in 1860. A second floor went up around 1910, and his son Roscoe lived there with his family while serving as Manteo's postmaster. State postal records show Roscoe held the job from 1922 to 1934. Co-owner Jason Borland says Roscoe stopped leaving his room after he lost the position, and county records put his death in 1953. Guests and staff describe small disturbances, mostly in rooms 3 and 7. "I am kind of protective of Roscoe's story," Borland told the Voice, adding that everything unexplained at the inn "has been completely harmless." Roscoe is buried in Manteo Cemetery, a few blocks away, under a headstone that reads "Father."
The crawl itself started at a downtown bar. Geno Seay owns the Lost Colony Tavern and organizes Halloween Island, and this month his tavern runs as the Ghost Colony Tavern.
| Downtown address | The story attached | Its October role |
|---|---|---|
| The Pioneer Theater | H.A. Creef's phone rule, now told as a ghost story | Pioneer Monster Cinema pop-up |
| Roanoke Island Inn | Roscoe Jones, postmaster 1922 to 1934, rooms 3 and 7 | Stop on the ghost-story circuit |
| Lost Colony Tavern | Owner Geno Seay organizes Halloween Island | Ghost Colony Tavern pop-up |
| 1587 Restaurant & Lounge at Tranquil House Inn | Named for the colony's arrival year | Platform 1587 Harry Potter Bar |
| Vineyards on the Scuppernong | Scuppernong grapes appear in the White Doe wine marketing | Witches on the Scuppernong Potions Bar |
Even the Invented Lore Borrows a Real Name
Some of Manteo's lore is plainly made up, and the people who tell it say so. Greg Smrdel runs Manteo Walking Tours and has written 15 books. He calls the White Doe legend, in which Virginia Dare turns into a white deer, "just fantastical." The story comes from a 1901 poem by Sallie Southall Cotten. Cotten later helped promote a North Carolina wine named for Virginia Dare, and the marketing claimed the dark scuppernong grapes got their color from Dare's blood.
This year's theme follows the same pattern. As Seay tells it, the Moondog started as John Borden, a colonist out fishing who got caught in fighting and fled toward Hatteras. Along the way his border collie bit him after being bitten itself. John Borden really does appear on the historical roster of 1587 colonists. Nothing else in the story does. The 2026 passport art is by Britton "Moondog" Ricketts.
"You have a built-in mystery that's 440 years old." Greg Smrdel, Manteo Walking Tours, to the Outer Banks Voice
Seay put it more directly: "This is the birthplace of America down here. The site of America's oldest mystery."
Where the Five Dollars Goes
Passports are sold at every participating bar for a $5 donation to the Outer Banks Relief Foundation. The foundation helps local families facing an unexpected financial crisis. In 2024, its first year, the event raised "several thousand dollars," according to Outer Banks This Week, and that money went to Western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene. This year it stays on the Outer Banks. Optional "Rise of the Moondog" shirts cost $30, and all proceeds from those also go to the foundation.
The rules are simple. You collect a stamp at each bar, and a full passport earns an exclusive reward plus an entry in a grand-prize raffle stocked with local gift cards. According to the organizer's FAQ, all participating bars are open Thursday through Saturday. October 1 fell on a Thursday this year, so the organizers' promise of "five full weekends" works out to Thursday-through-Saturday runs starting October 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29. The Outer Banks Visitors Bureau sponsors the event, and Kellogg Supply Company presents it.
Here is the full passport route, with each pop-up name followed by the business hosting it:
- Ghost Colony Tavern at Lost Colony Tavern
- Goretega'z Zombie Apocalypse Bar at Ortegaz Southwestern Grill
- Dead Sailors Society Ghost Ship Bar at Outer Banks Distilling
- NouVeins Vampire Blood Bar at NouVines
- The Pioneer Monster Cinema at The Pioneer Theater
- Vicki B's Pop-Up Beetlejuice Bar at VB's Manteo
- Witches on the Scuppernong Potions Bar at Vineyards on the Scuppernong
- Madame Olive's Haunted Mansion Bar at Olive's Greek Kitchen
- PhanTom's Halloween Opera Bar at Old Tom's Beer, Wine, & Provisions
- Frankentender Mad Scientist Bar at Firetender
- Platform 1587 Harry Potter Bar at 1587 Restaurant & Lounge at Tranquil House Inn
- The Masquerade Pop-Up Halloween Bar at Salt & Cypress
- Kiiiller Cocktails at Kiiind Cocktails
The route sits inside Manteo's downtown social district. For anyone coming from up the beach, the organizers have advertised a Haunted Ghoul Bus to and from Halloween Island. The Pearl of Manteo also turns into "The Black Pearl" each October, a haunted pirate-ship-themed hotel steps from most of the bars.
The Back Half of the Month Fills Up
The crawl keeps going all month, and the second half of October adds more around it:
- October 14 to 17. The Outer Banks Bluegrass Festival comes to Roanoke Island Festival Park.
- October 23 and 24. The 7th Halloween International Film Festival takes over the Festival Park theater on the Friday and Saturday of the fourth crawl weekend. The program includes 31 films from five countries. Five were shot all or partly in North Carolina, including Paranormal Investigations, filmed partly on the Outer Banks. Costumes are encouraged on the Orange Carpet, and advance tickets are on sale now.
- October 28 and 29. The Elizabethan Gardens invites the public to carve a free jack-o'-lantern from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. for its pumpkin path.
- October 29. Festival Park holds its Death & Dying fall program, a guided historical tour that costs $5 or comes with admission.
- October 30. A Night of 1587 Pumpkins runs from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. The Gardens tries to light 1,587 jack-o'-lanterns, one for each year in the colony's arrival date. Trick-or-treating and pumpkin drop-off run until 7 p.m., when the contests start. Pumpkins carved earlier in the week can be found on the path that night and taken home. Dominion Energy sponsors the evening.
- October 31. The last Saturday of Halloween Island.
The stories behind those buildings are told nightly by the guides quoted earlier. On OBX Ghost Tours' booking page, a 7:30 p.m. tour on Tuesday, October 6, lasts an hour and fifteen minutes and costs $27 for ages 13 and up and $22 for children 12 and under. Tama Creef, an OBX Ghost Tours guide, spent 15 years as an archivist at the Outer Banks History Center. She carries an EMF detector, hands it to a volunteer at the spookiest stop and waits. "Sometimes it goes off, sometimes it doesn't," she told the Voice.
After the Pumpkins Go Dark
The downtown blocks get busy again in November. Manteo First Friday returns on November 6 from 6 to 8 p.m. It's a free downtown event with music and the Manteo Stroll, sponsored by the Town, the Manteo Rotary Club and Manteo Furniture & Appliance. The Outer Banks Environmental Film Festival, organized by the Peace Garden Project, follows at Festival Park from November 5 to 7. By then the pop-ups will be back to being Firetender, Old Tom's and the Lost Colony Tavern, and the passports will have been counted for the Outer Banks Relief Foundation.
Lynn grew up with these Roanoke Island stories, and she knows the families and businesses behind the downtown storefronts on the passport route. If a Halloween Island weekend has you thinking about owning a place within walking distance of the waterfront, or about what your Manteo home is worth, Lynn Bulman and her team at Howard Hanna Outer Banks Realty are happy to talk it over. Let's Connect.
