If you're ever in South Carolina and you run into a ghost called the Gray Man, just

know there's good news and there's bad news.

The bad news, well, he only shows up when a hurricane's about to hit, but the good news

is if you see him, your house will be protected, even as everything around it crashes down.

Or so the story goes.

I'm Dylan Tharest and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible

and wondrous places.

And today, we're doing a ghost story.

We're going to Paulie's Island, South Carolina, where the state's most famous ghost has

resided for more than a century.

It was the Gray Man.

How did he become a ghost?

And why do we keep telling his story?

After this.

Paulie's is a tiny barrier island at the eastern end of South Carolina on the Atlantic Ocean.

It's part of the state's popular beachy coastal resort region, but the town itself is tiny,

home to just about a hundred people.

At its best, it is astonishing.

The water looks impossibly blue.

But the trade-off is that the area is incredibly vulnerable to hurricanes.

It's been devastated by major ones throughout its history, particularly Hazel in 1954 and

Hugo in 1989.

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