Wrightsville Beach
By: Robert B. Corbett

Wrightsville Beach begins when Doctor David Smith and his lovely wife Brenda Pridgen Smith, and their two children, Dan and Betty, leave Boston Massachusetts and move to the Pridgen Plantation located just outside of Atkinson, NC. Doctor Smith is a geologist and an oceanographer of considerable fame. His wife, Brenda, earned her doctorate in education at Boston University. David, who was head of the science department at Boston University, gives up his prestigious position to become the second in command at the science department at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.
     When Brenda’s Boston family take their first look at the mega size Southern Plantation House, they are amazed! David will be working at UNCW next January of the following year. This gives Brenda’s Boston family plenty of opportunity to explore the nearly fifty thousand acre plantation. David and his children feel like they have stepped back in time over two hundred years.
     Read all about David and Brenda’s experience when the two are invited by Uncle Roy Henry to a party. The ghost stories are very intriguing! Brenda and her famous husband get up enough nerve to visit the grounds of a magnificent private chapel near the French Chateau, and the amazing garden behind the huge dwelling. When David and Brenda explore the strange cemetery on this property, they realize that they have crossed a line, a dimension that science cannot explain and will always deny possible.
     The Smiths move to a beautiful Spanish style mansion across the sound and Intracoastal Water Way at Wrightsville Beach, NC. The place is gorgeous! Doctor Smith, while doing research for UNCW, takes a team of scientists off the continental shelf in The Sea King, a large two hundred foot research ship. Doctor Smith wanted to learn why the region has experienced several earthquakes recently. The scientists come to the unthinkable conclusion that the entire continental shelf out from Wrightsville Beach is in danger of collapsing, which would generate a huge tsunami that would destroy the town.
     Doctor Smith is relieved of his position at UNCW because he has predicted a tsunami sometime between August and the end of September. Unfortunately, he was correct and the wave destroys the beach town. Wrightsville Beach will eventually rebuild. David’s boss, Doctor Fletcher, immediately loses his job at UNCW and Doctor David Smith is asked by Doctor Julia DeVann Corbett, the famous Chancellor of the University, to take his boss’s position as head of the science department.