The Devil Comes to Clay County: A Demonic December Story

Image created in ChatGPT

*Updated May 2026*

Recently, researcher and author, Tony Breeden (you can find his work on multiple platforms including the websites Tony Breeden Books and Exotheology) shared a pretty interesting article with me. The article, which comes from The Martinsburg Weekly Independent dated 14 November 1874, tells the tale of a young pedagogue returning home from what I believe is implied to be the home of a girl he is courting, when he runs into a terrible creature. 

It was November 1st, and rather late at night when the young man was headed home in an area of Clay County near Oakton known as Back Creek. He was at a crossroads between the properties of Samuel Murphy and the widow Woods when an 8-10 foot creature suddenly appeared before him. 

The creature had large feet, and long arms that ended in huge, dreadful claws. A long, flaming tale whipped around the devilish form. A long, flickering tongue added to the fear the young man felt, as the creature stood in front of him, menacingly for approximately three minutes. Then, with a terrible sound, it ran off into the woods, leaving the terrified young man dumbfounded. The newspaper surmises that this was the devil himself, out looking for a victim to devour. 

But WHY would the devil, or one of his many minions, be out in rural Clay County, stalking young teachers out courting? Was this a liquor-fueled hallucination, or a young man's psychosis manifesting in a most demonic way? Does the proximity to Halloween play a part in the sighting...or is this just simply a fun story designed to pull in readership to a small West Virginian newspaper during the dark, cool days of late fall?

Martinsburg Weekly Independent
14 November 1874
Read online at Chronicling America

Since the publication of this article back in December of 2025, I've come across some conflicting information. While looking over some of my old newspaper clippings, I realized that I had also clipped this exact same story via Newspapers.com...with some minor differences. 

In the article I found in the 23 November 1874 edition of the Weston Democrat, there is NO mention of a location called Oakton. The two names of people involved are the same, but this article seems to imply that the events did not take place in Clay County, WV, but in BERKELEY COUNTY, WV! This article also throws in a personal jab at the former governor of West Virginia, William Erskine Stevenson. Stevenson had served as the third governor of West Virginia from 1869 to 1871 and was not well-liked by the Democrats of the day, due to his progressive stances on infrastructure and his anti-slavery viewpoints. 

Is there any kernel of truth to this devilish story, or is this simply another example of yellow journalism? I'll let you decide. Stay spooky, fam! 

23 November 1874
Weston Democrat

SRC Worker Sees UFO in Clay County (1968)

 

West Virginia Rt. 4
Source: Wikipedia

We're trucking right along with UFO WEEK here at Theresa's Haunted History! Today's blog post comes from the October 21, 1968 edition of The Charleston Daily Mail, and tells the experience of a family of seven seeing a UFO in Clay County, WV. The article mentions that what the family saw is similar to what had been seen forty miles away in Summersville. Research into that is on-going...

An unidentified flying object was sighted Sunday night by a State Road Commission employee and his family as they were driving in Clay County.

"We saw it twice," Claude Keenan told the Daily Mail today. "It was a real tremendously bright object."

Keenan said he, his wife, and five children were traveling along W.Va. 4 in Clay County about 10:30 pm when they spotted the object overtop a car. 

"My wife said it was the first time she'd seen a falling star that close. The children were very upset," Keenan said.

"We tried to calm the children and when we looked again, it was traveling alongside a car and then disappeared."

"It looked like that UFO that's been seen around Summersville," Keenan continued, "and where we saw it was 40 miles away."

The Charleston Daily Mail
21 October 1968

Book Review for Booger Hole

Title:  Booger Hole: Mysteries, Ghost Tales, and Strange Occurrences
Author: Mary Lucinda Curry
Illustrated by: Elaine Douglas and Joe Holley
Published: 1990 by Frog Pond Printery
Book Photo: by Susanna Holstein who also reviewed this wonderful book on her wonderful  Granny Sue blog!

My favorite used book store is closing at the end of the month and in order to support a local business (and get some HELLUVA good deals in the process) I've been visiting about once a week to browse through leftover stock.  They must be pulling stuff out of the deepest recesses of storage because I've stumbled across some wonderful little gems that probably would be overlooked by most people.

One of those little gems is the book, Booger Hole, by Mary Lucinda Curry.  First printed in 1990, I wound up with the 1998 fourth printing edition that I found by complete accident.  I was reaching up on a high shelf to look at another book and realized that there was a teeny, slim volume stuck underneath it, invisible to the naked eye.  I grabbed it out of curiosity and was pleasantly surprised.  It was a book of West Virginia ghost stories!

Well...its kind of a book about West Virginia ghost stories.  The book is actually a very short primer on the rough history of an area of Clay County called Booger Hole.  Since the Civil War, Booger Hole, located off a section of Rush Run Hollow known as Richardson's Run, has had a seedy reputation.  It has been known as a place of thieves, murders, and spooky, supernatural experiences!

The author discusses the possible roots of this reputation and follows up with several tales of theft and murder connected to Booger Hole...some murders which to this day are classified as unresolved.  The second part of the book is a collection of ghostly and supernatural legends, passed down orally from various contributors including a gentleman who has lived in the area since the 1930s.  This is really a fascinating read.  It's well written, especially for a low-distribution publication, and the author cites plenty of primary historical documentation to back up the tales that have been passed down through the generations.  My absolute favorite tale in the book is a personal experience told by Wilson Douglas concerning what we would now call a vardoger experience!

Unfortunately, the somewhat cursed reputation of Booger Hole has continued on into modern day.  Just this past summer a group of local teenagers piled into a pickup truck with the intent of visiting Booger Hole's Chimneys.  The Chimneys is the name given to a group of chimneys of course...the only remaining remnants of long-ago burned down houses. According to the book, these are probably what is left over after local citizens, fed up with the reputation of murders in the area and fueled by the court case of Howard Sampson, set fire to homes and ran many of the Booger Hole residents out in 1917. Local legend says the chimneys house the ghosts of former residents and screams have been heard emanating from the old structures.  Around dawn, the pickup truck full of teens rolled over, killing one young girl and injuring 10 other kids.

That tragic incident aside, Booger Hole is a short book, but its jammed with a wonderful array of local history and legend.  This book is a must-have for any collection of WV folklore, history, or ghost tales library so obviously it fits right in on my shelf!  Unfortunately, a copy might be a little hard to obtain.  My copy has a publishing date of 1998 on it, so I'm not sure if the address is still valid or not, but below I'll add the contact information if anyone's interested.

Cindy Curry
Rt. 2, Box 82
Duck, WV 25063