Excerpt from Tar Heel Terrors by Michael Renegar

1The Little Red Man: Is He Back?

Old Salem Village, Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Modern-day Winston-Salem is one of North Carolina’s biggest and busiest cities, home
of the Reynolds tobacco dynasty and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. Long before these companies
came to the area, it was actually two small towns: Winston and Salem. Salem was one of the first
of three Moravian settlements located on lands called the Wachovia Tract. The other settlements
were Bethabra and Bethania.
People may be surprised that one of North Carolina’s most famous ghost stories comes to
us from this humble, conservative Christian group. Some seem to believe being a person of
Christian faith precludes belief in ghosts. That is nonsense!
Andreas Kremser, a man of unusually short stature, moved from Pennsylvania, settling in
Bethabra in 1766. Six years later, Andreas moved to the larger settlement at Salem. There he was
assigned the job of chimney sweep.
The Moravian culture is one of humility, sacrifice, and service. Andreas was quite
unhappy with his assigned duties. Apparently, he wasn’t the best chimney sweep either. There
was a serious outbreak of measles, and whether rightly or wrongly, it was blamed on Andreas’s
insufficiently cleaned chimneys. Instead of humbly accepting criticism, Kremser grumbled that
most of the chimneys were poorly constructed, and furthermore, the work load was too great for
him alone.
Thus Andreas did not remain the chimney sweep. He became a cook, but that didn’t
satisfy him either. Finally he became a shoemaker. This profession stuck and Andreas remained
a cobbler for the rest of his life. The little man in his red coat was a familiar sight around Salem.
Like most unmarried Moravian men, Kremser lived in the Single Brothers’ House where
he and the others learned many trades and participated in community service. Though sometimes
abrasive, Andreas did his part, albeit with some grumbling. This seemed to amuse his
compatriots rather than annoy them.
The single brothers began excavating the cellar under their home in preparation for an
addition. Late one night after church services, tragedy struck. Andreas and the others began
digging out the lower portion of the earthen wall, expecting the overhanging upper part to fall
and be removed.
One brother looked up and saw the dirt beginning to crumble and sag prematurely.
Desperately, he cried out a warning. All but Kremser, who was on his knees digging deep in the
wall, managed to get clear. The brothers watched in horror as the earth caved in. Andreas
Kremser was buried alive!
Frantically, the brothers worked to free Andreas. Finally, after what seemed like an
eternity, the men caught sight of their compatriot’s red coat. They pulled Andreas free. He was
still alive but in great pain. One of his legs was terribly mangled, and they feared that he had
internal injuries.
A doctor was summoned, and he did his best to treat the gravely injured man but to no
avail. Around 2:00 a.m., March 26, 1786, Andreas Kremser died at the age of thirty-three.
Apparently, though, Andreas was not yet ready to slip this mortal coil and face his Creator.
Not long after the accident, the men and boys in the Single Brothers’ House began to
sense the presence of the late cobbler. It began with mysterious rappings that were heard by
many. Invariably, when someone investigated, they found nothing. One brother recalled,
however, that the noise resembled the sounds made by the little shoemaker's hammer. Before
long, they were attributing the strange noises to the ghost of Andreas Kremser, which they
nicknamed the Little Red Man.
It wasn’t long before they actually began to see the Little Red Man! He would be seen
floating down the hallways, identifiable by his distinctive red coat. Sometimes, it was just a
glimpse or a flash of red as he disappeared around a corner. Other times it was merely a
movement caught out of the corner of the eye.
Eventually, the Single Brothers’ House was converted into a widow’s home. This didn’t
curb or perturb the Little Red Man. Sometimes he would even play with the widow’s children,
the little ones having no idea who their playmate had been.
One evening, two men were standing in the cellar where Andreas Kremser met his end.
As they discussed the now-famous ghost, he suddenly appeared right in front of them! When the
startled men tried to seize Andreas, their hands passed right through him. With a gleeful chuckle,
the Little Red Man dissolved before their eyes.
Andreas Kremser continued to haunt the Single Brothers’ House well into the twentieth
century. His ghostly antics seemed to end, however, when a traveling minister performed an
exorcism, thus ending the saga of the Little Red Man. . . or did it?
In January 2003 during a phone conversation with Burt Calloway, coauthor of Triad
Hauntings, he related an intriguing story that had been told to him. It seems that a woman and
her husband were cleaning the Single Brothers’ House. He was working upstairs and she was
downstairs. No one else was present and the building was locked up tight. As she was leaning
over to clean an antique table, the woman suddenly sensed that she was not alone in the room.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a movement. She thought she glimpsed a very short person,
but when she turned to look directly at whoever it was, there was no one there! However, she
saw a flash of something disappearing through a doorway—something red!
The woman thought that her husband might be playing a trick on her. Calling his name,
she went to investigate. A chill went through her as she heard his faint reply from the top floor of
the house. When she went upstairs, she found him working away. He swore he hadn’t taken a
break or moved from the room he was in for over an hour!
Was it the Little Red Man, returning after all this time? Was it just the woman’s
imagination, prompted by a remembered ghost story? She swore to Burt that the tale wasn’t
consciously on her mind until after the event.
If it was Andreas Kremser, why had he come back? Or maybe he never left at all.
Perhaps he was just hiding all that time, lying dormant, respecting the religious sensibilities of
the community and the times. Perhaps the new activity in the house had awakened the ghost.
Maybe he was just biding his time till someone open to such things presented him with the
opportunity for some ghostly fun. Maybe he’ll reveal himself again soon, the playful little spook!