Due to the hunting nature of these hunted places, listener discretion is advised.
I'm your host Marc and this is State Hounds presented by Mountain State Mysteries.
Today I want to tell you about the legend of the Wizard Clip, a ghost story that took place in Middle Way, West Virginia in the 1820s.
Middle Way, West Virginia, maybe have forgotten place today, had it not been the center of supernatural occurrences reported there in the late 18th century.
The legend of the Wizard Clip is preserved in lore and in Catholic literature as a testament of the power of the Christian faith.
One of the earliest residents who arrived when Middle Way was known as Smithfield was 33 year old John Adam Livingston, a native of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he had made his living as a farmer.
In 1771, his father died and he inherited three parcels of land, 203 acres, 50 acres, and 97 acres near Smithfield.
His sister inherited another 180 acres adjacent, the two with their families relocated the next year.
Livingston took along his wife, three sons, and four daughters.
Livingston was no stranger to unexplained events. In Pennsylvania, the family had to live with a curse, experiencing mysterious deaths and disappearances of livestock, blighted and felled crops, disappearances of objects and possessions, along with scratching and odd sounds in the house.
They expected to find some relief in Smithfield, but it was not to be.
On a stormy night in 1794, a middle-aged stranger who appeared to be a traveler arrived on the Livingston property and the family took him in.
He felt deathly ill and called the Livingstons to his bedside, telling his host that he was Catholic and requesting the services of a priest for he feared he would not make it through the night.
Livingston, an anti-Catholic and Lutheran, said he knew of no priest in the area and even if he did, none would ever step foot into his home.
The traveler continued to beg for a priest, but Livingston turned a deaf ear to his specs. The man died and the Livingstons did not even know the name of the traveler.
In one version of the story, the man was a peddler who was taken in as a border, fell sick, and after several days he died.
In either case, on the night of the stranger's death, Livingston hired a man named Jacob Foster to sit with the corpse until he could be buried.
This is when odd things began to happen.
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The candles in the room flickered and went out, leaving Foster and the corpse alone in the dark. The candles were lit several times, but every time they would flicker and go out.
Livingston brought in two candles from the living room, but they too went out as soon as they were lit. Foster became spooked and ran out the house.
The body of the traveler was buried on the Livingston property. The following night, the piece of the household would be interrupted by the sound of horses pulling wagons galloping around the house.
The Livingston's would look outside, but nothing could be seen. Livingston's sleep was disturbed throughout the night. He rose repetitively and went outside, but he still saw nothing.
The house sounds were just a start to the relentless barrage of mysterious phenomenon targeted at the Livingston's. Within a week, his farm burned down and all of his cattle died.
His turkeys, chickens, and geese were found decapitated with their legs cut off. Some of the incident decapitations were witnessed.
Pottery and crockery inside the house were thrown around by invisible hands and smashed. Pieces of burning wood and balls of fire were thrown from the fireplace and rolled across the room.
Money vanished. A phantom rope appeared stretched across a road near the Livingston's that caused horses to stop in their tracks.
When the sound of clipping started, as though someone was wielding a large pair of scissors, in a single night, clothing, blankets, sheets, curtains, leather boots, and saddles were snipped into ribbons,
percrescent moon shapes. Even if they were locked up in closets, the clipping sound went on day in and day out around the clock nonstop for more than three months.
News of the strange ongoing swept the countryside and curious people came to witness a phenomenon for themselves.
One woman wrapped up her new black silk cap and put it into her pocket to avoid the supernatural cuts, but when she left the Livingston's house, she found that her cap had been cut into narrow ribbons.
The troubles went on and on. Livingston's health deteriorated in the unrelentling barrage. He believed that he was under attack by the devil and took to reading the Bible and praying, but to no avail.
He tried to find relief through ministers and various denominations, but though they tried, they were unable to stop the activity. He then sought help from a Pennsylvania Dutch faith healer at South Mellon, better known as Boucher, who asked to be paid.
Livingston told him he would pay him nothing up front, but would pay double if the man was successful. The man declined.
Three young men from Winchester came to confront the devil only to run away when a large stone from the fireplace began to fly around the room.
Then one night, Livingston had a dream that seemed to bring him a solution.
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In the dream, he was having a great difficulty climbing a high mountain.
At the summit, he saw a beautiful church and an imposing man dressed in a robe and he heard a disembodied voice say,
This is a man who can relieve you. The dream was so distressing that Livingston was groaning in his sleep and his wife woke him up. He told her about the dream and said that he would find the man in the robe.
The next morning, Livingston set out for Shepards Town to find a minister who dressed in robes. He was advised by a Nam named Joseph Mingahini that such description could only fit a Catholic priest,
that he should visit Richard McSherry's family who lived about four miles from the Livingston's. The McSherry's were Catholics and often provided hospitality to a priest when he made his rounds in the area.
Ms. Anastasia McSherry told Livingston he could find the priest in Shepards Town the following Sunday. The town had no Catholic Church, but traveling priests came to give mass in a large room belonging to a local family.
Livingston returned to Shepards Town as directed. When he saw the priest in his vestments, he broke down into tears and exclaimed,
This is a very man I saw in my dreams. He is the one the voice told me would relieve me of my troubles.
As soon as the service was over, Livingston approached the priest. Father Dennis K. Hill and spilled his waves. Instead of agreeing to help, the priest just laughed at him and said that his neighbors must be playing a joke on him.
The McSherry's and Menkeeney introverted, persuading Cahill to pay a visit to the Livingston home. Cahill finally agreed. They converged on the household where they heard persuasive, corroborating testimony from the Livingston family.
Neighbors and friends Cahill prayed and sprinkled holy water around the house. The mysterious clipper returned money taken from the locked chest by depositing it on the door seal between the priest's feet.
The spirit did not leave the house, however. The house was quiet for a few days, but then the clipping sound resumed. Cahill returned and conducted a mass. The mysterious visitor departed and did not return.
Livingston was profoundly changed by this experience and converted to Catholicism.
Cahill reported the case to his superiors for in 1797, a 27-year-old Catholic priest known as Father Demetrius A. Smith, who was sent to investigate the strange events in Smithfield.
Smith was born a prince, the son of German Countess and Russian Prince and ambassador to Empress Catherine the Great.
Smith came to the United States to serve as a missionary and eventually gained his fame, the apostle of the Alleghenes. Smith spent three months investigating the Livingston case.
At first, he was inclined to disbelieve the events, but soon after his arrival, the phenomenon started up again. Smith assumed the demonic forces were responsible for the investigation and undertook an exorcism with prayers.
While he prayed, the sounds of horses and rumbling wagons increased in volume and filled the entire house. The priest was so rattled that he stopped the exorcism. Smith knew he couldn't handle this alone, so he went and got Father Cahill and the two priests gathered the family to pray and commend the evil spirit for spirits to leave peace finally descended on the household once again.
The disturbance never returned.
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One day the family gathered in the living room when a bearded, shoeless man dressed in rags was presented, thinking he was another traveler the Livingstons offered him clothing and shoes. The men accepted but said where he came from was neither hot or cold.
They asked where he came from and the stranger replied, from my father. The family asked where he was going and he said to my father and I have come to teach you the way of my father.
The mysterious stranger stayed with the Livingstons for three days and gave them instructions in the Catholic religion. When he left, he walked out through their gate and started to cross a field and vanished.
The Livingstons believed he was an angel and referred to this event as a visit of the angel.
According to Smith, Livingston had been a Catholic for several weeks when he had a profound experience one night. A dazzling light appeared in the corner of one of his rooms and instantly filled the entire house with the blinding light.
Then the voice manifested and instructed Livingston in the sacrament's appendix in the Holy Eucharist.
The voice manifested often. Sometimes it would awaken the Livingstons saying, I want prayers and telling them that they should pray hard for perseverance and for the sinners.
The voice made the Livingstons pray for up to three hours at a time, which they later said passed like a few minutes. Sometimes the voice sang in Latin.
It said they should always obey the visible voice. The voice said it once had been incarnate and promised Mr. Livingston that if he preserved in his spiritual work, he would know who the person was before he had died.
The voice was always visible, safe for several occasions, when an arm manifested in the air and made a sign of the cross.
Livingston attempted to seize it, but was unable to do so. He died without ever learning the voice's true identity. He always assumed that in life it must have been a priest.
The voice was particularly concerned with praying for souls and purgatory.
Once Livingston doubled over in pain while he was working in the field. He said he heard the streaks of souls and purgatory.
On another occasion, the voice made the family get up three times a night to pray for a soul and purgatory.
One of his daughters said that souls and purgatory could have avoided their fate while living and so perhaps deserved to be where they were.
An audible voice began screaming for help. The voice said prayers were needed.
Then the Livingston smelled burning cloth and found an imprint of a hand scorched into a piece of cloth.
They gave it to Smith, who often showed.
For 17 years the voice directed the Livingston and it always provided a remarkable message.
It joined in the evening prayers and gave them spiritual instructions. It seemed to know their secrets. For one example, it chastised one of the Livingston's daughters for not making a confession about a sin through shame and told the entire family about it.
When son Henry refused to work in the fields without wages, he was stricken with a knee issue that rendered him bedridden for 18 months. The voice then announced that he had sufficiently paid for disrespecting his father and the knee was suddenly healed.
Another occasion, the voice insisted that everyone maintain a 40 day fast with three hours of prayer each day.
In addition, they were to observe March 4th every year as a holy day to commemorate Livingston's conversion to the Catholic religion.
The voice weighed in on many personal matters. It predicted a time of strife and war. Eventually, the Civil War.
It said that righteous family members would not be harmed. None of the Livingston kids were affected by the war.
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The better known version of the Wizard Clip legend is that the stranger was disturbed by noises the night he stayed at the Livingston's home.
He urged John to bring in a priest, but Livingston, being of the Lutheran religion, refused. Another version of the legend is that the spirit confessed to Smith that he had murdered Livingston's predecessor and revealed where the body was buried.
When Livingston made restitution and the body was given a Christian burial, the disturbance has stopped, but no record of any murder of any previous landowner exists.
So what was the true identity of the Wizard Clipper? Was it the angry spirit of a stranger whose final wishes were not granted? Could the Livingston's curse have followed them from Pennsylvania?
The voice of the legend told Livingston that his land would someday become a great place for prayer, fasting, and praise.
In 1802, Adam deeded 35 acres near O'Pinkwyn Creek to the Catholic Church out of gravitude and as a penance.
The land has now become known as Priest Field based on Adam's assumption that the voice was that of a deceased priest.
The land became a cemetery and in 1923 a chapel was constructed to honor the souls and purgatory and it became a vocal point for Catholics.
Today Priest Field is still owned by the church and is a spiritual education retreat center for men and women.
The property has a system of trails for walking and contemplation.
Along one of the trails is a large white cross that marks the grave of the unknown stranger.
It is mostly associated with an anonymous stranger who died at the Livingston's home.
However, there is no documentation to verify the connection.
The grave of the unknown stranger is a place for people to pray for the dead, which the voice told the Livingston's to do over and over again in their prayer.
Thank you so much for listening to the first State Hons episode that is kicking off spooky season here at Mount State Mysteries.
Stay tuned for the next episode dropping next Friday.
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Thank you for watching.