Sliding Hill (Point Pleasant Area)

The following information is from Robin Bellamy's book, Haunted Hospitality (2007):

Sliding Hill Creek is a small stream that juts off from the Ohio River at a point between Hartford City and New Haven.  Sliding Hill Road, for the most part, runs adjacent to the creek.  The area gets its name from the red clay that makes up the hillside, making navigation, especially in days before modern machinery and vehicles, VERY difficult.

Legend states, however, that during the colonial period, a paymaster was robbed and killed on the road across from Sliding Hill. The killers, hearing soldiers approaching, buried the gold coins the paymaster had on him, hid the body, and then fled into the woods.  The soldiers, upon finding the body, pursued the killers, who were then caught and killed themselves.  The money was never located, but for over 200 years, locals have claimed to see the apparition of a man walking down the road, only to completely disappear.  Is this the spirit of the murdered paymaster...or one of his killers still searching for his looted bag of gold?

The WV State Archives' website does mention that they have a newspaper clipping from the (Pomeroy, OH) Tribune-Telegraph (n.d.) entitled "The Haunt of Sliding Hill."  I did try to verify the legend by simple online research only, and came up short.  I would assume that any colonial era soldiers would have been from the Fort Randolph site, located in present-day Point Pleasant, but found no mention of a murdered paymaster.

If anyone has any additional information on this story, please pass it along!