Roanoke: The Real History of the Lost Colony & How Its Legend Haunts Pop Culture

In case you missed it, the American Horror Story season 6 is all about being a bloody “Roanoke Nightmare,” indeed. After promoting the new season without releasing a single frame of footage, the ever cryptic Ryan Murphy unveiled his “true crime” satire-meets-American Gothic to a surprised public last month, leading many to wonder… what is “Roanoke,” again?

In fact, several publications (who will go unnamed) initially asserted that the name infamously tied to the words “Lost Colony” was made up for the series, and that this fictional ghost story was set in Virginia (Roanoke is in present day North Carolina). But rest assured, Roanoke is a real place, and the ghost stories around it are every bit as strange—if not stranger—than anything American Horror Story has dreamed up. The legend of the Lost Colony has persisted for over 400 years and will likely continue to leave scholars confounded about what really happened on those soggy Outer Banks shores so many centuries ago… it also will likely continue cropping up in movies and TV shows as an ever-elastic basis for imaginative hocus pocus.

So join us as we examine the real history of Roanoke, and how its legend has evolved in media as varied as comic books to anthological TV shows.

The Real Colony of Roanoke

A small barrier island that is only eight miles in length, Roanoke rests on the northern coastal tip of North Carolina. Wet but seemingly fertile, the island was not the first choice of John White, the governor of the colony, when he and his settlement of 117 souls—97 men, 17 women, and nine boys—made landfall in July 1587. After all, it had already been the site of a previous colony that was lost to dangerous forces.

While the White Colony is viewed as the first serious attempt by the English to place a permanent foothold in the New World (Spain was already plundering plenty further south), it was in actuality the culmination of nearly a decade of false starts. Queen Elizabeth I originally granted a patent to one Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1578 to discover “remote, heathen and barbarous” lands not held by any Christian ruler or people. In other words, if Spain hasn’t set foot there yet, call dibs as quick as you can!

Unfortunately for Gilbert, that ended abruptly in a shipwreck during his second expedition to the New World. After his death, half-brother Walter Raleigh took over the patent that included potential tracts of land that spanned all the way from Spanish Florida to the arctic. Prior to John White’s doomed decision to set up residency in Roanoke, the barrier islands proved very attractive to parties sponsored by Raleigh, who never himself stepped foot in North America.

Conversely, White was on the first of Raleigh’s two earlier charters to Roanoke, the second of which ended in another “lost colony” of sorts. That eventual bloodbath was headed by Sir Richard Grenville in name, but led to infamy by the hawkish Ralph Lane. For in 1585, Grenville transported a military force onto Roanoke to set up a fort before returning home for supplies. Following the previous expedition, Englishmen had initially positive relations with nearby Native Americans, including the Roanoke and Croatan tribes, both of whom had representatives travel with White to England to meet Elizabeth’s court: they were named Wanchese and Manteo.

The friendly tidings did not last.

Lane would lead two separate, bloody warpaths against Native American villages over a matter of months. Local hostilities became so violent, with attacks on the fort, that when England’s beloved Sir Francis Drake passed by as a literal ship in the night, Lane and his men abandoned Roanoke—including three poor bastards on an expedition in the woods—to the Natives and caught the big boat home. By the time Grenville returned, he found the Lane Colony abandoned, and three Christian souls vanished. So he left another 15 men behind to defend the remnants of his failed enterprise with two years-worth of food before high-tailing it back to England. No white man ever saw the fightin’ 15 alive again.

Hence, when the White Colony landed in Roanoke to pick up those 15 and found only the remains of what was a massacre, they had little reason to want to stay. Unfortunately, ship Capt. Simon Fernandez forced White to abandon his initial plan to sail further north and place a settlement in Chesapeake Bay, which in modern day Virginia would eventually become the site of the first successful English colony, Jamestown. Instead, White and company were compelled to set up shop and repair relations with the locals as fast as possible… especially since colonist George Howe was killed a brief nine days after landing by American Indians while crabbing along the shoreline.

White, unlike Lane, at least temporarily soothed relations by having Manteo, who was now the first Native American to be baptized as a Protestant, make peace between the colony and the Croatans, his native tribe living on Hatteras Island. Intriguingly, Wanchese went a different way than Manteo, souring toward the English as an invading force. Legend has it he even participated in the force that killed Grenville’s Unlucky 15.

In the meantime, White’s colony seemed to be able to flourish where Lane’s failed. Unlike Lane, White led a group of families that were not employees; they each had a grant, and thus a stake, in the success of this grand enterprise. White, originally an artist himself on his first expedition who drew maps and paintings of locals, even had the bragging rights of being the grandfather to the first Protestant soul born in the New World. A literal face for America's future promise.

Virginia Dare was born on Aug. 18, 1587 to White’s daughter Eleanor Dare and Ananias Dare. Yet, on Aug. 27, White left his colony, daughter, and newborn granddaughter for England because the colonists arrived too late to plant crops and desperately needed new supplies. The governor departed with the hopes of being back for winter in the New Year—he didn’t return for three winters. By the time he stepped foot again in Roanoke on Aug. 18, 1590, the 117 colonists had vanished like ghosts. His granddaughter would’ve been three-years-old, to the day.

How Were They Lost?

John White desperately wished to return to Roanoke and his family. But due to the burgeoning war between Elizabeth’s England and the Spanish Armada, White couldn’t mount a successful sea voyage for years. By the time he returned, the fort was overgrown with grass and roots, guns lay strewn about across the cold ground, and chests once buried deep to protect valuables lay broken and bare, with their cherished books, pictures, and belongings withering in the sun. White had provided a coded signal to his colonists to leave in case of danger: a carved cross in a tree. However, he found two very different carvings upon his return. One tree had the letters “CRO” etched into its bark; another more explicitly read “CROATOAN.”

White’s personal belief, which still remains one of the most convincing, was this meant they had gone to live with Manteo’s people on Croatan Island (Hatteras). However, old John never could verify that since an approaching storm forced him to protect his two ships and return home to England. He never mounted another rescue attempt and died three years later.

So what happened to the Lost Colony?

There are plenty of theories about why they vanished, including starvation, slaughter by hostile Native Americans, murder by hostile Spanish soldiers, a variety of exodus stories, or some combination of all of the above. The potentially most appealing is that the “CRO” was short for “CROATOAN,” the island where the colonists were presumably forced to adapt to the Native American lifestyle.

Indeed, John Lawson, an English explorer and naturalist, wrote a century later in his 1709 work A New Voyage to Carolina that he met Croatans living on Hatteras Island who claimed to be descended from white settlers. He confirmed he believed as much due to them having gray eyes. Currently, the Lost Colony for Science and Research at Williamston is attempting to verify this by searching for arcane European/English DNA strands in the descendants of Croatans. Similarly, East Carolina University’s 1998 “The Croatan Project” might have corroborated this narrative since the group found a 10-carat gold signet ring from the 16th century on Hatteras island. Some genealogists have since claimed the lion crest on it is supposedly traceable to the Kendall coat of arms, and a Master Kendall was said to be one of the men Ralph Lane left to rot in 1586.

Conversely, others theorize that the colonists attempted to move to the much more commercially viable Chesapeake Bay (White’s original destination) but were long dead by the time Jamestown was actually founded in the location. This version is heavily influenced by John Smith (famed for being supposedly saved by Pocahontas) who claimed in 1608 that Powhatan, chief of the Powhatan tribe and father of Pocahontas, said they killed white colonists, who by the turn of the century were living in modern day Virginia with a group of Chesapian Natives. William Strachey, Secretary of Jamestown from 1610 to 1611, later added to this version of events, claiming that Powhatan asserted he personally led the killings.

Perhaps even most curious is the “Dare Stone,” which was discovered in 1937 by the Chowan River and about 65 miles west of Roanoke. The stone was first believed to be authentic by several academics at Emory University in Georgia until the thirst for more stones led to 40-some forgeries between 1938 and 1941. However, modern historians have begun speculating that the original “Chowan Stone” might be authentic, such as David La Vere in The North Carolina Historical Review.

The stone, at least, seems to have authentic Elizabethan English (unlike other blatant frauds) and provides a more believable historical record of events: the colonists moved farther west past wetlands until a horrific Native American attack in 1591 killed most of the settlers, including Ananias Dare and a four-year-old Virginia Dare. The stone acted as the last word of Eleanor Dare (signed EWD), painting a grim final portrait of the seven survivors lost in the woods.

However, there is plenty of reason to keep that stone (which has inspired dozens of hoaxes), as well as any other theory about Roanoke, as just that: a theory. One that attempts to understand the mysterious fates of those lost in America’s first blind steps in the dark. Still, Roanoke can live on in many other ways… including in a vast variety of fictions!

Click here to see how the legend has evolved from folklore to television!