Fort Fisher Hermit

I'm going to start out by saying, if you want to know more about the Fort Fisher Hermit, please read the chapter in my first book, Did You See That? A GPS Guide to North Carolina's Out of the Ordinary Attractions. It contains a fairly complete, yet concise, tale of Robert Harrill's life and times, as well as information on his tragic death. Harrill's story is pretty amazing, and it was the reason my once short little book of weird places in NC became the much longer behemoth that it is now. After learning about Harrill and his life, I just couldn't write about him in a few paragraphs.

For those of you that don't know about Harrill, I'll give you a quick synopsis. He lived near Charlotte as a child and young adult, but after several bad turns for him, most which were not really his fault, he decided to run away to the coast, south of Kure Beach to the uninhabited shores past Fort Fisher. He was 63 years old at the time. He lived for 17 years in an old concrete bunker, and became known as the Fort Fisher Hermit, a celebrity on the coast for tourists and locals alike.

Sadly, not all people liked Harrill. Often, people would go down and harass the old man. It was something people would do "for fun." Ultimately, the "fun" probably cost Harrill his life. Some boys went down to see him in June of 1972, only to find him dead, tossed on top of a pile of junk in his bunker, with the signs of a struggle all around the sand outside. Police and the medical examiner ruled his death natural causes, essentially saying he died when his heart failed from being an old man living alone in a bunker on the beach.

Now, obviously, there is more to this story. As I recommended at the beginning, please read my chapter on Harrill in my book for more information. I've just got to say that this has always preyed on my mind some ever since I wrote the chapter. Who killed the Fort Fisher Hermit?

It should have been easy to figure out. Harrill had told some visiting locals that there were people out bothering him the day before, in a VW Beetle. A popular car, sure, but just how many were there around Carolina Beach at the time? I just got suspicious. I mean, it most likely was someone from the area, maybe as far as Wilmington, sure, which would really enlarge the search, but still, probably younger, probably male, probably more than one person. And as I learned more and more, probably known by other people as the likely suspect. I even remember an interview with a filmmaker, I believe, who was asked if he could discover who did it, and his response was something to the effect of, "I still have to live here."

Harrill's family even wanted to know, They were sure it was murder, or at least not natural causes. As it turned out, several people knew who the alleged attackers were. Michael Edwards, who headed the Fort Fisher Hermit Society, was told by other locals of overhearing the men who did the crime discussing it many years later. Four young men went to hassle the Hermit, pulling him out of his sleeping bag, and chasing him into the marsh, where Harrill then fell and went limp from a heart attack. The men put Harrill back in the bunker and left. Edwards went on to explain that it was more likely a bullying gone horribly wrong rather than an actual murder, and that the people were known in the community, and that they know that others know.

This is all alleged in an article in the Star-News from 2001.

And what bothers me? What just kinda creeps me out? Aside from the death, the bullying, the sad history? I'm surprised after all this time that nothing more has been done. I can understand letting the dead rest in peace, but it it just feels really creepy to know that there probably, possibly, allegedly, are a few men, now in their 60s, still walking around, knowing they caused the death of someone. And there are people who know who they are. And they are satisfied with the way things are like that. The horrors of the conscious...