This is about my grandmother she told me this story when I was little. She lived in Nolan, WV when she was little and this story takes place in her house I cannot remember the exact location but it is now a highway.

My Grandmother lived in a small house with her mother, father and five siblings. Her and her sisters shared a room and her brothers shared a room. There was a small room hooked to the girls’ room that nobody went into. One night the door to this room was left unlocked and my Grandmother seen an image in the doorway of this little room and ran out of the room to her parents.

Several months later, I guess one of her brothers got married. Well her brother-in-law stopped by one night because it was too far for him to walk home. He was mean as a snake my grandmother said he wasn’t afraid of anything so he stayed in the little room. Sometime in the night, he said he felt something pulling him out of bed by the foot and he didn’t see anything when he looked it just kept pulling him out of bed and almost got him out of bed. Therefore, he got up and walked all the way home sometime in the early morning hours. Strange things went on even though the door to the little room was locked until my great grandparents died and the house was knocked down and made into a highway.

One of the strangest poltergeist cases of all time haunted the home of a farmer named Adam Livingston, who lived in this small community at the end of the 1700’s…. some say, these strange events are still going on at the property today!

The Adam Livingston farm in Middleway became a place of both fear and curiosity in 1797, when people came to see the “Livingston Wizard” perform its strange magic. Dishes fell out of cabinets and broke on the floor, fires and lanterns went out with no one near them, things flew about the house by their own power, money vanished, livestock disappeared and died and strange screams and bells were heard around the farm.

One afternoon. Livingston saw a man stopped in the road with a wagon. The teamster demanded that Livingston remove the rope that was stretched across the roadway. When he said there was no rope, the driver angrily slashed at it with his knife…. but the blade passed through nothing. Another wagon came along at the same time and this driver also saw the rope but he couldn’t cut it either. Finally Livingston convinced them to move on.

A short time later, the strange events took another turn. Day and night, the family heard the sound of cutting shears in the house, snipping constantly with an irritating metallic sound. Items around the house began to be mysteriously cut apart… clothing, blankets, saddles, shoes, boots, anything that could be cut was scissored into odd spiral shapes.

A visitor to the house wrapped her good silk cap in a handkerchief before entering the house. When she left, she opened the handkerchief and discovered that the cap had been cut into ribbons… but the handkerchief had never been touched. Another visitor, a tailor from Middleway, planned to expose the stories as a fraud. He walked to the house, carrying a suit that was wrapped in a paper bundle under his arm. He heard the sound of the shears, but saw nothing. When he unwrapped the untouched paper, he found that the suit inside had been sliced into pieces.

What started these strange events in the house? It is believed that they were tied to a stormy night in 1794 when a stranger appeared at the door of the Livingston house and asked for shelter. They family took him in and fed him but in the middle of the night, Adam Livingston hears strange wheezing and gasping sounds. The stranger was coughing violently, and was barely able to speak, but he did manage to ask his host to summon a priest… the man realized that he was dying.

Livingston, being a devout Lutheran, knew of no priest in the area and besides, he had always sworn that no Catholic priest would ever set foot on his property! In the night, the stranger died and the next morning, some neighbors helped Livingston to bury the man in a corner of his property. A small cross was erected at the grave.

The bizarre phenomena began just hours after the burial and would continue for years.

The story of the haunting gained fame in the area and the ghost became known as “The Livingston Wizard”. The family was plagued by the events for years and Livingston implored his minister to conduct an exorcism on the property. The Lutheran pastor failed, as did an Episcopalian minister and three Methodists. One night, Livingston dreamed of a man whom a voice said could help him. He was a Catholic priest named Father Dennis Cahill. Some friends in Shepherdstown helped to track the man down and he came to the Livingston farm.

Father Cahill blessed the house with holy water and as he turned to leave, a satchel of money that had been missing for over a year suddenly appeared and fell onto the doorstep. It all appeared to be over at last…. but it wasn’t. The manifestations soon began again.

By this time, the story had spread as far as Baltimore and the Catholic diocese there sent Father Dmitri Gallitzin to investigate. After living with the Livingston’s for three months, he recommended an exorcism. Father Cahill returned to the house and the two priests, and the entire family, prayed for the spirit to leave the house. The horror was finally over.

Livingston was so grateful that he converted to Catholicism and in 1802, deeded 40 acres of his estate to the church. In 1978, a religious retreat called Priest Field Pastoral Center was built on the land.

But have the strange events of the past really ended? Some say they have not…. A priest who was leading a tour group of the retreat had his metal-rimmed glasses snipped in two by an unseen force and tourists who have visited the site have reported camera straps, purses, clothing, and other items have been mysteriously cut to pieces.

This story was told to me by my grandmother. She and my Grandfather have lived in Eccles for as long as I can remember. They live in an old 2 bedroom coal-camp house.

The two bedrooms have adjacent doors and one can easily see into one room from the other. So one night my grandmother was startled out of her sleep for no apparent reason. She looked out into the hallway and saw a young girl that was about 4 or 5 years old.

Well at this time my mother was about 5 years old, so my grandmother assumed it was my mother. She was about to tell the girl to go back to bed, when she looked across the hallway. And there in the other room was my mother…fast asleep. When my grandmother’s attention was directed back to the young girl, the young girl turned and vanished. My grandmother still has no explanation to this day.

It was winter of 1994 and my mother had just gotten home from work. My babysitter was taking care of me. As my mom was going upstairs to her bedroom, she saw a little boy run across the upstairs hallway. She screamed and my babysitter almost dropped me. My mom told her what happened, and the babysitter thought she was crazy.

Shortly after that, my parents went to a party at a neighbor’s house. There my mother met these two old ladies who had lived in the neighborhood for a long time. My mom told them the story and one recognized the boy from the description immediately. She told mom it was a boy who lived in our house some thirty years ago and had killed himself due to depression.

There have been no more sightings of this boy in my house. We hope his soul is set free.

It was Halloween of 1980. My sister and I had already finished trick-or-treating and our parents decided to let us go five houses up the hollow (also called hollers) to visit my aunt.

After a few hours, my sister and I wanted to go home to get something for our aunt. When we mentioned it, her father-in-law started teasing us about the “Late Night Stranger” getting us. We had heard this story, and many others about ghosts, all our lives, so we didn’t think much about it and headed out the door.

There had been a light drizzle all evening long, which added an eerie touch to our surroundings. The holler was completely abandoned and was unnaturally quiet.

My sister suddenly put her hand on my shoulder and whispered, “Hey, where’s everybody at?”. I said, “I don’t know… maybe they all went inside. Let’s go.”

She hesitated a bit, then whispered, “It’s kinda creepy. Should we go back?”.

I grabbed a hold of her shirt sleeve and pulled her along. “Come on, Sis. What, are you scared or something?”.

We got about halfway home when she stopped and said she was scared. I turned to her and told her that we were almost home and she could make it.

When I turned back, there was a man walking towards us. He was a short distance away and I noticed that he was dressed in a black trench coat with a black hat on.

My sister’s hand tightened on my shoulder and she whispered, “Who’s that?”.

“I don’t know. Let’s just keep moving.”

We kept walking. As the stranger passed, I glanced up towards his face, but couldn’t see anything. His features appeared as a black blur.

He must have noticed me looking, for he said, “Good evening, ladies.” His voice was soft and strange. My sister and I didn’t respond but kept walking.

After a few paces, I turned around and then back, half expecting him to be following us, a child’s instinct, I suppose. What I saw was even more frightening. The street was completely deserted. There were no signs of anyone having been up or down the road. No man; no footprints on the wet cement; nothing at all!

There wasn’t a single place the man could have went or hidden in such a short amount of time. Yet, he was gone. A chill ran down my spine.

I looked at my sister in utter disbelief. She gazed at me with the same expression, then we both turned in unison and ran the rest of the way home.

I explained to my grandpa the details of the encounter. From the spot where my grandpa was sitting on the porch, he could see my aunt’s house. He claimed that he had only seen my sister and I come up the road, no one else.

We are all convinced that it was the “Late Night Stranger” that we had heard about in previous stories. Although I had heard of him my entire life, I never expected to actually see him, and I’ll always remember that night.

One night, when I was about sixteen years old, I had gone to bed and had been asleep for several hours when I awoke with a feeling that someone was in the room with me. As I looked down at the foot of my bed, I saw a woman with long white hair, dressed in a brilliant white gown. I could not see through her, but she appeared translucent. She was smiling at me and the look on her face was one of contentment. I was so horrified that I immediately covered my head with my blanket. I was afraid to bring the blanket down, in fear she would still be there. When I finally did bring it down, she had vanished. I told my father and mother this the next morning and my father laughed and told me I had been dreaming. I knew I was wide awake, though.

Years later, after I had married, my wife and I were staying in the house with our newborn daughter. We had been sleeping in a different room from the one in which I had my experience. My wife was in the room alone, awake, when a woman dressed in a white gown, with her hair in a bun, wearing an old time sun bonnet, appeared standing in the door way. She was staring into the room at our daughter’s bassinet. Like me, my wife also threw her blanket over her head. She said she pulled the blanket down and the lady was still there in the doorway. She was so frightened that she pulled the blanket over her head again. My wife said a feeling of comfort came over her and when she pulled the blanket down a second time, the lady was gone. I asked her later if the woman had white hair. She told me that she did. I then told her of my own sighting of the lady when I was younger.

Except for the sunbonnet and her hair being up, the descriptions of the lady were the same. I grew up in the house that was built by my great grandfather back in the 1800’s. It is located in the town of Ravenswood. The house has always been in my family, so I would say that whoever visits there is some past relative. I like to think that perhaps she is a guardian angel. After these two experiences neither I, nor my wife, have had any encounters with her again. To my knowledge, my wife and I are the only ones who have ever seen her.

My mom told me this story, since it happened when I was about a month old. She was getting ready for bed one night, waiting on my dad to get home from work. All night she had heard this one song in her head, “There’s a stranger in my house.” I forget who sings it (Ronnie Milsap), but my mom kept hearing it, all day long.

After my dad got home and cleaned up, he and my mom decided to go to bed. My mom told my dad she had a bad feeling about putting me in my room and that she wanted me to sleep with them. So, I slept with them that night.

Mom says she couldn’t have been asleep more than twenty minutes, when she was woke up by everything in her kitchen rattling and banging. She wakes my dad up and he tells her to get me and run next door to my granny’s house. When we got there, my parents ran to the back room, which was straight across from our kitchen, so they could look and see if they could see anything in there. As soon as they got to the window, they say a white blur darted from our kitchen into the street light between the two houses and the light got as bright as possible and then just went completely out.

I grew up in a very rural area in West Virginia in a large two story house built by my grandfather. The house sat in a narrow valley with cemeteries located upon both opposite hillsides. One of these cemeteries holds my sister who died at the age of three, and having been born about four years after her death, I never knew her.

Another sister, also older than I, had a room across from mine and my brothers (we three shared the same room, which was larger than hers), both on the second floor of the house. One night when I was about six years old I awoke in the dead of night to hear my sister sobbing in her room, the sound muffled by her closed door. I lay for a long time listening to her, wondering if I should check on her and ask if she was all right (or wake one of my brothers to do it). Instead I simply lay there, somewhat paralyzed by the sound of the sobs as they ebbed and swelled.

I remember that at some point I realized goosebumps were chilling my arms, and pulled up my covers around my neck to warm them. I also remember that the sobs had at some point taken on a sound that I found hard to correlate with my older sister. They sounded too young for her. At some point I fell back into slumber and woke to the smell of eggs, bacon, and coffee being prepared by my mother in the kitchen below. I dressed and went downstairs.

Seeing my mother I quite casually asked, “Mom, what was sis crying about last night?” She turned to me with a stunned look on her face, halting her work to blurt out “What?” “I heard her crying really late last night, just thought you might know why, that’s all.” Her face had gone white as she stood motionless looking at me. “There’s no way you could have heard your sister last night” she said, “she stayed with her friend Tina out in Spring Valley.”

I could have swallowed my tongue, Spring Valley was over thirty miles away. The goosebumps of the night before returned to my arms at that moment. A moment that I both cherish for the realization of my possible contact with my deceased sister, and fear, for the very same reason.

This event took place about 23 years ago, when I was 11 years old. I lived on Grasslick Road where I just learned about the murders that took place there. I knew nothing of these events as a child.

I was alone at the house and had gone out to the barn to get the tack for my friend and me to go horseback riding. While in the barn I heard a female voice say in a very excited voice, “Help me, help me, please, help me!” Then there was a blood-curdling scream. My first thought was that someone had fallen out of the loft of the barn. I ran up the stairs yelling,”Where are you?” No one answered me. I proceeded screaming the same thing and running all around the house, barn, and other sheds. There was no sign of anyone around. I felt a cold chill and ran down the road about a mile to where my friend was waiting to go horseback riding.

Yesterday, I learned that the murder either occurred at that house or down the road. The murderer did live in my house.

During court testimony, the sister who survived the attack reported that while she was running away down the very same road, she could hear her sister screaming for help as she was being killed. Now, I am certain that this is whom I heard that day in the barn by the house.