Up in the mountains of West Virginia, folks say you can hear the disembodied sound of a fiddle echoing through the air over a century after a horrific accident killed the man who played it.
This episode of Southern Gothic is part of our Campfire Tales, a series of daily podcasts released during Halloween 2022!
“Off railroads, bus lines and main highways in Jefferson County West Virginia lies a charming little Village of about 300 inhabitants. This town has 3 names: Smithfield, Middleway and Clip— the last and best known being derived from the famous manifestations of the “Clipping Spook.””
The village of Middleway, West Virginia, is a community with a population of less than 500 people. Though the area was first settled back in the early 18th century, it has its place in history because as the home of legend that dates back to the late 1700s when a local farmer and his family became the victim of poltergeist-like activity.
A historic marker stands there in the community today, describing the infamous events as quote: “After the 1794 death of a stranger at Livingston Farm, Mysterious Noises and clippings of garments frightened Middleway Residents for years.” This is the mysterious, and highly documented legend of Wizard Clip.
Brownson, Sarah M. Life of Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin: Prince and Priest. New York: Fr. Pustet & Co., 1873. GoogleBooks.
Dallaire, Glenn. “The Wizard Clip - Adam Livingston’s Miraculous Conversion.” Miracles of the Church (blog). November 2011. https://www.miraclesofthechurch.com/2011/11/wizard-clip-adam-livingstons-miraculous.html.
Dallaire, Glenn. “The Wizard Clip & Mystic Voice - Newspaper Article from 1926.” Mystics of the Church (blog). February 2014. https://www.mysticsofthechurch.com/2014/02/the-wizard-clip-mystic-voice-newspaper.html.
Finotti, Joseph M. The Mystery of the Wizard Clip. Baltimore, MD: Kelly, Piet, and Company, 1879. Archive.org. https://archive.org/details/mysteryofwizardc00fino.
Grundhauser, Eric. “The Ghost Story Behind a Bucolic Catholic Retreat Center.” Atlas Obscura. November 7, 2017. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/wizard-clip-west-virginia-priest-field.
Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. The Big Book of West Virginia Ghost Stories. Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot, 2014.
Harvey, George, ed. “A Ghost that Advertised a Town.” Harper’s Weekly, 54 (January 1, 1910): 33. GoogleBooks.
Hauck, Dennis William. Haunted Places: The National Directory. New York: Penguin, 2002.
Helentjaris, Diane R. “A Look Back at the Catholic Ghost Of Wizard Clip.” Religion Unplugged. October 29, 2019. https://religionunplugged.com/news/2019/10/29/the-catholic-ghost-of-wizard-clip.
“The Historic Village of Middleway, West Virginia.” Middleway Conservancy Association. Accessed October 7, 2022. https://middlewayconservancy.org.
Huntington, Jedediah Vincent. Alban, Or a History of a Young Puritan, Vol. 2. New York: Redfield, 1853. GoogleBooks.
Musick, Ruth Ann. The Telltale Lilac Bush and Other West Virginia Ghost Tales. Lexington KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1976.
Whitney, Annie Weston and Caroline Canfield Bullock. Folk-Lore from Maryland. New York: The American Folk-Lore Society, 1925. GoogleBooks.
Wilson, Patty. Haunted West Virginia: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Mountain State. Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot, 2019.
When the Civil War drew to a close, the United States’ railway networks, particularly those in the Southern states, were in shambles. During the Reconstruction era, the rehabilitation of the southern rails and expansion of transcontinental railroads became a major undertaking, and as the importance of the railroad rose.
In the three decades after the Civil War over 170,000 miles of track were added to America’s railway system; it opened the western states for further settlement and reestablished the accessibility of the southern states. The accomplishment required a considerable workforce, and railway companies became a significant employers of thousands of men finally freed from enslavement.
The work was dangerous, physically intensive, and time consuming. It's unknown exactly how many men lost their lives to injury or illness while expanding the nation’s railroad system during Reconstruction, but the legacy of these men lives on in one of the most enduring folk heroes in American history...the ballad of John Henry, the steel-driving man.
Thurmond, West Virginia was incorporated in 1901, almost three decades after its founder Captain W. D. Thurmond took ownership of 73 acres of land bordering the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad line. The Confederate veteran envisioned a prosperous community to serve the many miners working in the coal mines of the New River Gorge, and reality quickly dwarfed his original dreams. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Thurmond became the most prosperous coal town in the state; however, much to Captain Thurmond’s chagrin, some of this success came from the notorious reputation of Thurmond’s Southside.
Between the vice of Southside and the location of Thurmond’s train depot, the community grew rapidly. People poured into town for both work and play. At the height of Thurmond’s boom fifteen passenger trains stopped at the historic train depot daily, serving as many as 95,000 passengers a year; but with every boom there is a bust, and once the coal industry began to wane, Thurmond could not survive.
On January 23, 1897, Elva Zona Heaster was found dead in her home in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. At the time, the cause was presumed natural; however, after her ghost purportedly appeared to her mother, it was soon found that the circumstances surrounding Zona's untimely death were much more sinister.
On November 12, 1966, five men digging a grave at a cemetery near Clendenin, West Virginia purportedly encountered a seemingly supernatural creature flying amidst the nearby tree line. Little did they know that this encounter would be the first of many to transform the sleepy town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia into ground zero for one of America's most infamous monsters.
Hear the legend, folklore and history of this tale on our Patreon member-ony series “Southern Gothic: The Monsters”
In 1926 Conley Snidow opened the Lake Shawnee Amusement Park in West Virginia, on land that many believe was once sacred to the indigenous tribes of the region. Land that these Native men even once attempted to protect through a bloody massacre of a family of settlers. Unfortunately Snidow’s amusement park would continue the location’s connection to tragedy, causing Snidow to abandon this once great amusement park for the prospering coal miners of West Virginia.
Today, almost half a century since it closed the gates, the Lake Shawnee Amusement park still sits abandoned, and exposed to the elements as what some claim is a playground for the spirits of the past.
