Little Red Man

In 1766, the town’s earliest settlers felled the first tree in what would become Salem, North Carolina. It was the third settlement built by the Moravians in Forsyth County with plans for it to be a church community owned by the church. Everyone who lived here had to be church members, the idea being that, from here, evangelism and commerce would spread to help support the church and its work with missionaries around the world.

Unlike a lot of the Moravian communities in Europe that were focused on communal living, the Moravians began building individual family homes. To keep unmarried men and women apart, there was a “single brothers’ house” on one side of the square and a “single sister’s house” on the other.

For this article, we are only concerned with the Single Brothers' House

Single Brothers' House

The Single Brothers' House was designed by Wachovia administrator Friedrich von Marschall and built under master mason Melchior Rasp and master carpenter Christian Triebel, the original half-timbered section was completed in 1769. As Salem grew, so did the number of the Moravians' "choir" of single men, and in 1785–86 an all-brick addition was built onto the south end, designed to blend seamlessly with the timber-framed original.

Inside, the Single Brothers lived, worshiped, ate, and worked together under one roof, sharing a dining hall, sleeping quarters, a prayer hall, and a kitchen. Skilled tradesmen among them, including at least one shoemaker, rented workspace in the building or in the adjoining Single Brothers' Workshop, built in 1771 to give craftsmen more room to practice their trades.

When you step onto the reconstructed Single Brothers' House in Old Salem today, and you'll find costumed interpreters demonstrating trades much as they were practiced in the 1700s — including shoemaking. But for generations of Moravian residents, this building was the site of something else entirely: the restless spirit of a shoemaker who never left. They called him the Little Red Man, and his story is one of North Carolina's oldest and most enduring ghost stories.

A Real Man Named Kremser

Unlike many local legends that are only loosely associated with any real event, the Little Red Man's story is anchored to an actual person and a documented death. 

Andreas Kremser was born March 7, 1753, in Gnadenhütten, Pennsylvania, part of a Moravian community that had come to America seeking refuge from religious persecution in Europe. As a young man he traveled south, settling first in Bethabara — the earliest Moravian settlement in North Carolina — where he apprenticed as a shoemaker. He later moved to Salem and took up residence in the Single Brothers' House.

By most accounts, Kremser was a small man with a playful, mischievous streak. Although he was a shoemaker, his size landed him an additional job cleaning the community's chimneys.

A Fatal Accident

On March 25, 1786, some of the Single Brethren, including Kremser, were excavating the cellar beneath the Single Brothers' House to make it deeper to provide more storage space. While in the process of digging, to avoid having to dig away a natural dirt bank, they decided to undercut the bank, and let it fall down on top of itself — a risky and deadly decision.

Working late into the night, while digging in a trench to undercut the bank, the bank of earth collapsed, burying several men. Most escaped, but Kremser was trapped beneath the dirt. He was pulled free within a few minutes, but not before suffering multiple broken bones and internal injuries. As a result of the injuries, he died a few hours later. He was mourned by the community and buried in Salem's God's Acre cemetery. He was 33 years old.

The Haunting Begins

Not long after Kremser's death, residents of the Single Brothers' House began reporting strange sounds echoing through the halls at night — a rhythmic tapping, like a shoemaker's hammer striking a last. Alongside the sounds came quick glimpses of a small figure, dressed in red like the jacket and cap Kremser reportedly wore the night he died, darting through hallways and around corners. These sightings continued for decades.

Salem's Moravian community changed over the decades and so did Single Brothers' House. By 1842, the southern portion of the house had become home to the Widows' House, where unmarried women and widows of the congregation  lived. This residential use continued until 1961.

The sightings didn't end when the Single Brothers' House changed function, the ghost stories carried over with it. The residents began calling the spirit the "Little Red Man," a name that has persisted for more than two centuries.

One well-known account involves a young girl named Betsy who was visiting her grandmother at the widows' home. Little Betsy was deaf from an early childhood illness, but could still speak. She knew nothing of the accident, the ghost, or the building's ghostly reputation. One day she rushed in from the garden excitedly describing a friendly little man in a red cap who had beckoned to her with his finger as a child signals another to play — a description that matched the decades-old legend she had never heard. 

Over the years, the women of Salem would tell stories of the “Little Red Man” every time they heard a strange noise. According to local folklorist accounts, the haunting became persistent enough by the early 1800s that church leaders eventually called in a minister to formally address the spirit, though reports of the Little Red Man still continued for years afterward.

Fading With the Lights

The most curious detail in the whole legend concerns its ending. According to Eric Elliott, longtime archivist for the Moravian Archives of the Southern Province, reported encounters with the Little Red Man tapered off around the same time electricity was installed in the building's sub-basement in the early twentieth century — leading some to wonder whether flickering shadows and unfamiliar noises came from old wiring, rather than a genuine ghost.

Today

Today, the building stands restored as a working exhibit within Old Salem Museums & Gardens, where visitors can watch real shoemakers ply Kremser's old trade in the very rooms where his ghost was once heard and seen. The electricity that may have quieted the legend a century ago hasn't erased it entirely — the Little Red Man remains one of the most requested stories on Old Salem's ghost tours, proof that some Winston-Salem legends are sturdy enough to outlast the explanations meant to debunk them.