Thousands of people are expected in Murrells Inlet Wednesday night for this year’s Halloween on the Marshwalk. 

The event is from 5:00-10:30 p.m. and features a children and adult costume contest, trick-or-treating and more than $4,000 in prize money. 

All the restaurants are helping in the judging with the final adult winners announced at Bovines at 10:30 p.m.

People down on the Marshwalk say they are ready for a fun night after some setbacks from Hurricane Florence. 

“It’s been a rough couple months around here you know, and I feel like for everyone to come out and just do something different, dress up and forget about the every day things that are going on it’s gonna be really great for our community,” Adam Gaudreau, Executive Chef at Bovines, said. “A lot of fun to see everybody.”

Legend has it that a couple of ghosts still haunt the area to this day. 

News13’s Maggie Lorenz sat down with  Christine Vernon, known as “The Pirate Lady.” Vernon is a professional storyteller down in the Inlet.

Folklore rumors that Alice Flagg still haunts the marshy waters to this day. 

“Not far from where the Marshwalk stands today there was a home,” Vernon tells. “It was named the Hermitage. It was built by Dr. Allard Flagg in 1849, and he asked his widowed mother and his little sister, Alice to come live with them. 

Alice was about 15 years old at the time. 

“And legend has it, she started a romance with a local turpentine salesman, oh no,” Vernon exclaimed. 

He would have been below the Flagg family’s social status. 

So the family told him to beat it and sent Alice away to boarding school. But she got sick there.

“The school contacted Dr. Allard Flagg to go all the way to Charleston and fetch her,” Vernon said.

That’s when her brother noticed something. 

“Something upon her neck. There was a ribbon, and on that ribbon was a ring, and not just any ring, she got secretly engaged to the local turpentine salesman, oh no!”

The story says Dr. Flagg threw the ring in the marshy water, and Alice died shortly after. 

And if you believe, legend says her spirit still haunts the Marshwalk.

“She might do an appearance,” Vernon said. “Because where the Hermitage once stood is the area where some people say they can still see her out in the marshy water still looking for her ring.”