Ghosts : Almost Heaven , full of spirits W e love our Mountain St ate. And it seems even the dead somet imes find it hard to leave t hese hills and hollows behind.
Wizard Clip In 1794, Adam Livingston of Middleway, Virginia—now in the Eastern Panhandle—took in a passing stranger. The man fell ill and asked for a Catholic priest, but Livingston, a Lutheran, denied him. When he died, the family had no peace. Pottery was smashed. The barn burned down. Then, the clipping: uncanny sounds of shears, and fabrics cut
with crescent moons, so persistently that the town became known as Wizard Clip. Desperate, Livingston sought out a Catholic priest. The disturbances abated, but the story has two postscripts: Livingston converted and deeded property to the Catholic church that became today’s Priest Field Pastoral Center near Middleway. And even now, historical homes in the village display triangle plaques bearing scissors and crescents.
Not at Rest In 1932, Mrs. Mamie Thurman, clad in a polka dot dress, was discovered on 22 Mine Road outside her hometown of Logan, gruesomely murdered. She’d been in an affair with her landlord, a prominent member of the community, and, it was said, with other influential men as well. The jury quickly found the landlord’s handyman guilty, but many believed he was only hired to dispose of her body. Thurman may be looking still for the real killer: Drivers tell of a woman who walks 22 Mine Road, now Trace Mountain Road, wearing a polka dot dress. Stocking Lady At Oakwood Cemetery in Sistersville, stop to admire the gentle Stocking Lady who watches over the Stocking family monument— but don’t touch. The person who broke her arms, it is said, later lost one of his own in an accident, and the one who vandalized her face went blind. Best to keep your distance.
Greenbrier Ghost In 1897, 20-year-old Zona Heaster Shue died of natural causes, according to the doctor after the brief exam her husband, Edward, would allow. But when Shue’s spirit appeared to her mother to accuse Edward of murdering her, authorities exhumed her body. Her neck was broken—and her husband, it turned out, had a questionable history. Edward was convicted and sentenced to life, making our Greenbrier Ghost the only spirit to send a killer to prison.
68 wvliving.com • fall 2021
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