The Great Dismal Swamp is a marshy area in the Coastal Plain Region of southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina, between Norfolk, Virginia, and Elizabeth City, North Carolina. It is located in parts of southern Virginia cities Chesapeake and Suffolk and northern North Carolina counties Gates, Pasquotank and Camden. It is a southern swamp, one of many along the Atlantic Ocean's coast, including the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp in Florida, the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia, the Congaree and Four Holes swamps of South Carolina, and some of the Carolina bays in the Carolinas and Georgia. Along the eastern edge runs the Dismal Swamp Canal, completed in 1805.

With less than a week before Election Day, a Halloween skeleton holds a vote sign outside a home in Falls Church, Virginia, October 29, 2020. (Photo by Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

A woman rides a mechanical bull while tailgating before a college football game between the Arizona Wildcats and West Virginia Mountaineers at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona on October 26, 2024. (Photo by Ernesto Benavides/AFP Photo)

A young girl pulls on her braids during the Red Head Days festival in Tilburg, Netherlands, Saturday, August 30, 2025. (Photo by Virginia Mayo/AP Photo)

Angele Blank, right, and Virginia Promeyrat wait for the start of the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, Saturday October 31, 2015, in New York. (Photo by Tina Fineberg/AP Photo)

The Liberty Flames take the field before a football game against the Florida International University Panthers at Williams Stadium on October 08, 2024 in Lynchburg, Virginia. (Photo by David Jensen/Getty Images)

Period-costumed actors participate in the 150th anniversary re-enactment of the surrender of General Robert E. Lee to General Ulysses S. Grant at the Museum of Confederacy in Appomattox, Virginia, April 9, 2015. (Photo by Jay Paul/Reuters)

Two robotic legged squad support system (LS3) machines by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency follow a technician during a demonstration at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Virginia, on September 10, 2012. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Mallory S. VanderSchans via The Atlantic)