The Two Doctor Saltons at Old Hospital on College Hill

Dr. Russell A. Salton, Sr.

One of my favorite haunted locations here in West Virginia is Williamson Memorial Hospital, now known on the spooky circuit as the Old Hospital on College Hill, located in Mingo County. Spectral Research and Investigation (SRI) has already investigated this fascinating spot a handful of times, and plan on more visits in the future! And, similarly to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum and the former WV State Penitentiary at Moundsville, the stories and history of the hospital are far too numerous to be limited to just a single blog post. Therefore, I'm slowly working on documenting as many stories from Williamson Memorial as I can---both the haunted history as well as the day to day stuff.  Today, I'll be showcasing two of the doctors that were integral to the hospital's inception, as well as it's continued reputation as a premier medical facility in southern West Virginia.

So, there's a GREAT story that is told to visitors of the hospital. It is said that one of the founders of Williamson Memorial, Dr. Salton, Sr., was an animal lover. When his horse needed surgery, instead of entrusting its care to a local veterinarian, Dr. Salton brought the animal to his own hospital and personally escorted the beast up the elevator to the fourth floor surgery suite. Patients and staff on the third floor kept hearing what sounded like hoof-steps above them, and were shocked to learn that indeed, there was a large, hoofed animal above them. To this day, there are those that strain to listen for the phantom 'clomp, clomp' coming from the fourth floor or a disembodied whinny echoing from the old elevator. (Source: Old Hospital on College Hill Website)

One might ask himself, 'who in their right mind would bring a HORSE into a people hospital?' Honestly, I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the tale, but let's take a look at the doctor behind it!

Dr. Russell Arthur Salton, son of Robert and Margaret Salton, was born in Hamden, New York on  August 12, 1887. In 1911, Dr. Salton graduated from Baltimore Medical College and shortly thereafter, married his wife, Ella Robertson. After completing an internship at a hospital in Welch, WV under Dr. Henry D. Hatfield, he opened up a practice in Big Sandy in McDowell County.

By 1914, Dr. Salton found himself in Williamson, WV where he opened up a joint practice with Dr. George Conley (watch for a future blog dedicated to Dr. Conley!), which would later become the basis for the first hospital in town the two would open together. When that hospital was destroyed by fire, Dr. Salton and Dr. Conley would embark on a journey to create a state of the art facility, well ahead of its time, known as Williamson Memorial Hospital, opening to the public in 1928.

From all the accounts I've read, Dr. Salton was an absolutely brilliant and progressive surgeon who was able to save countless lives over the years. One story that sticks out to me is documented in the Matewan Oral History Project interview with Charlotte Sanders from 1990. Mrs. Sanders shares that Dr. Salton was able to save her mother's life and her fertility from a tubal pregnancy when she was a young a girl. Unfortunately, nine years later, her mother became pregnant again with a tubal pregnancy, and while Dr. Salton again saved her life, at this point, both fallopian tubes had to be removed. 

Dr. Salton himself had three children with his wife, Ella. Their daughter, Virginia was born in 1913. A son, Robert, came in 1915, but unfortunately died in 1919. Finally, Russell Arthur, Jr. came along on March 7, 1921. Russell, Jr. would follow in his father's footsteps and also become a doctor.  In fact, it would be Dr. Salton, Jr. who would eventually take over Williamson Memorial. More on that in a few...

On January 20, 1941 Dr. Salton passed away from a pulmonary embolism at the age of 53. He passed away in the very hospital where he spent so much of his life. He was buried in Fairview Cemetery in Williamson. At the time, his son, Russell Jr. was in medical school, preparing to carrying on his father's legacy.

Dr. Russell Arthur Salton, Jr.
Source: Find-a-Grave user MLDS

As stated above, Dr. Russell Arthur Salton, Jr. was born on March 7, 1921 in Williamson, WV. He attended Williamson High School, where he played varsity football and later gave back by serving as the team physician. In 1942, he graduated from the University of Virginia. He met his wife, Cornelia Thomasson there; she was an RN in charge of the newborn nursery at University of Charlottesville Hospital.

Dr. Salton, Jr. also served three years in the US Air Corps and was Chief Surgeon at Suisun AFB in California. His love of aviation continued his entire life as he continued to pilot his private plane and serve as Chairman of the Mingo County Airport Authority. 

In 1949, Dr. Salton, Jr. assumed ownership of the Williamson Memorial Hospital along with Dr. Woodrow W. Scott. When Dr. Scott left, he was replaced with Dr. Robert J. Tchou, who was unfortunately killed in a plane crash in 1977. A year later, Salton was ready to retire from the medical field and sold the hospital in 1979 to Health Management Associates of West Virginia, who would later build a new hospital a short ways a way from what is now known as The Old Hospital on College Hill. 

Dr. Salton was a member of the local Presbyterian Church and served as the President and Medical Director of the R.A. Salton Clinic, named for his father. He passed away on December 20, 1992 and was buried in Mountain View Memorial Gardens. 

I think that its really interesting that the old Williamson Memorial Hospital 'stayed in the family' for pretty much it's entire existence as a hospital. Almost everyone in Mingo and the surrounding counties has had their lives touched by either one or both of the Drs. Salton in some way or another. These two men dedicated so much of their time and energy to their work, saving lives and unfortunately watching others slip away. Dr. Salton, Sr. himself passed away right there in the hospital that he helped bring to fruition. It makes me wonder...do either of them walk among the many spirits that still call the Old Hospital on College Hill home? The next time you're investigating this awesome location, maybe ask a few questions tailored to the Salton Family. You never know what responses you'll receive!  

Dr. Salton, Sr. Obit
21 January 1941
Bristol Herald Courier

Further Reading and Sources:

*Much of the info for this blog post came from bios submitted by 'Sabrina' to Find-a-Grave*

Find-a-Grave for Dr. Salton Sr.

Find-a-Grave for Dr. Salton Jr. 

The Old Hospital on College Hill Website

The Old Hospital on College Hill FaceBook

Theresa's Old Hospital on College Hill Collections

SRI Old Hospital Video #1

SRI Old Hospital Video #2

Dr. Salton, Sr.'s Death Certificate

True Ghost Stories From Elkview High School

True Ghost Stories from the 

Students of : 

Photo from Elkview High School FB

For its Wednesday, August 16th, 1961 edition of the Hinton Daily News, the Summers County newspaper ran an interesting column. Noting how popular ghost stories were with their readers, they printed a collection of true ghost stories that were submitted by students from Elkview High School in Kanawha County, West Virginia. The school ceased being a 'high school' a few years later and undoubtedly some of those who sent in their stories have either moved far from the area or are no longer with us entirely. But, their legacy is alive and well, thanks to the spooky tales that were recorded in the newspaper and which will now be shared on Theresa's Haunted History! If you recognize yourself or a family member as one of these authors, please drop by and say hi!

A Locked Door, by Dottie Davis:

About two years ago we lived in a house that everyone said was haunted. They said that a girl who had lived in the house before we did had died, and that a person could hear her making noises every night. After we moved there, we found the upstairs of the house, the part the girl had died in, was locked. 

Every night about the same time, we could hear noises that sounded like someone walking. One night I decided to sleep at the bottom of the stairs. I went to sleep. Later I was awakened by something. I looked around the room and saw standing before me a vapory mist shaped like a woman. So I covered my head with quilts. When I finally got nerve enough to look again, it was gone. The next morning I told Mom about it, and she said she had seen it too.

A Night Visitor, by Betty Jane Pauley:

My brother Jim was born one month after my father died. Jim never asked about his father. He did not recognize his pictures. One night Jim awoke my mother and told he that he had seen his daddy. Mother looked amazed and she questioned him further. Jim said his father told him nothing. He said he had brown eyes, was tall, had wavy black hair, and wore glasses. Mother told him to go back to sleep. Mom knew that Jim had not seen any color pictures of his father, but he had described him as if he were right in the room. 

One night a month later, Jim awoke and said that his father had talked with him. Jim just walks away when he is asked about the conversation.

The Creature, by Sam Burdette:

One time in Ritchie County, West Virginia, there was certain haunted grave. Close to the grave, a boy lived alone with his mother. One night his mother became sick. There were two routes to the doctor's home. The boy could go the long way by-passing the grave, or short cut past the grave. Since he was in a hurry he chose the shorter route. As he was riding by the grave, something screamed and jumped on the horse's back. The boy had a large knife and immediately made a stab in the dark at the creature behind him. As the knife sank into the creature, the boy gave a long hard pull. The creature fell to the path and the boy rode on.

The next day the boy and some men returned to the grave. There in the path lay a large panther, the terrifying haunt of the graveyard. 

My Great Grandfather, by Jimmy Anderson: 

My great-grandfather was a jack-a-leg lawyer; and as the tales go, he was fair to midland. On one incident he was attending a church service. There was very little response in the form of "Amens" and the like, from the congregation. So the preacher asked why some one did not say "Amen." No one said a word. About five or ten minutes later a drunk rose and said "Amen." This made the preacher and the congregation so angry that they threw him out of the church.

For some reason, my great grandfather took the drunk's case to court and won it. Of course this made a lot of friends for him.

One time my great-grandfather got in an argument with some poor man who read in his Bible about the 'publican and the sinner.' He thought this meant he was supposed to vote Republican. My great-grandfather was evidently a strong Democrat. As a result, there was a big argument and my great-grandfather lost a friend.

My great-grandfather was never a man to back down. He once commented, in the presence of some people, that one of his neighbors was the biggest liar in the county. Word got back to the neighbor's husband. My great-grandfather and the husband met. The husband said, 'I hear you said my wife was the biggest liar in the county.' My great-grandfather promptly said, ' I don't recollect whether I said county or state.' That ended it all.

On one occasion, my great-grandfather found himself traveling through a town that had a notorious graveyard. People had seen ghosts in it. One evening after dark, my great-grandfather was riding his mule by the graveyard. He came upon a white clad figure sitting on a tombstone, but he was not about to back down from the ghost which he did not believe in. He got off his mule, pulled a pistol and thought, "By gum, I'll shoot it." He started to move up before he shot.

Upon investigation he found an old woman in a white dress waiting on a ride. 

Hinton Daily News
16 August 1961

Beans Mill Monster and UFO Sighting (1976)

Eyewitness Sketch
Source: West Virginia UFO's by Bob Teets

In July of 1994, Willis 'Willie' Spence contacted West Virginia UFO researcher/author Bob Teets about an encounter he had back in 1976 while working as a night security guard. Spence worked the 6pm to 6am shift at Crown Creek Coal Company's Beans Mill mine in Upshur County. One evening, a group of local boys approached his guard shack with quite the story. They said they had just heard that a woman living nearby had called the police department because there was a gray, hairy monster on her porch!

Despite the outrageous claim, apparently the authorities did do a check. It is said that they also saw SOMETHING, which they shot and wounded as they chased it back into the woods. Two days later, Spence would have his own sighting. As he was leaving work and returning home one morning, he caught a brief glimpse of some type of creature hiding behind a tree. He didn't get a great look at it, but noticed that it had a humped back, similar to how the woman had described the creature on her property.

Things seemed pretty quiet for awhile, but two weeks later, Spence would have an experience he'd never forget. He was chilling out in his guard shack, listening to the radio and sipping on a cup of coffee. He was interrupted by what sounded like two pieces of metal slapping together. He looked out and saw what he assumed at first was a helicopter. A bright light came over the trees, and into view popped what appeared to be a spinning top-shaped craft, 40 to 50 feet in diameter and flying at a 60 degree angle. The main body of the craft was gray, but it was covered with rectangular windows in shades of red, green, orange and purple. The lighted rectangular windows would dim and brighten back up, each time making a 'va-room, va-room' sound. It was surrounded by a grated deck with a five foot high railing. A light came down, and a section of it turned orange as it stopped spinning.

Eyewitness Sketch of the
bottom of the craft
Source: WV UFOs by Bob Teets

Spence watched this craft for about three minutes, noting how beautiful it was, and how it evoked a happy feeling for him. Eventually, the craft went up and over a nearby mountain, out of sight. After this encounter, there were no additional sightings of that particular craft, nor the gray, hairy beast.  As seen in various other UFO cases (notably the Flatwoods Monster case of 1952), this case begs the question as to whether there was some sort of connection between the creature and the UFO. Was the creature an inhabitant of the UFO, either out exploring the West Virginia country-side (or perhaps even ESCAPING)? Did the occupants of the UFO send this creature down as a recon to see how it would react to our atmosphere? Or, were the UFO occupants sent to study this strange beast that happened to just be here naturally?

There could be no correlation at all between the sightings of the UFO and the sightings of the monster. It could all be a coincidence. But, after years of studying this phenomenon, I tend to believe that there is some over-arching force that links all this high strangeness together. Even today, many Bigfoot reports are accompanied by mysterious light anomalies and nearby UFO reports. I'll let you decide what to believe. Keep your eyes to the skies! 

**The information for this blog post comes entirely from Bob Teets' 1995 book, West Virginia UFOs: Close Encounters in the Mountain State.  There was a brief mention of this case in the West Virginia UFO Newsletter Volume 2, Number 11 (1996), but no additional information was given and unfortunately, I haven't found anymore substantial info on this case anywhere else. 

Spooky Art: Spirit by George Roux

Spirit, 1885
George Roux

I love sharing spooky art with you all! A couple of weeks ago, I saw this image come up on my Facebook feed from at least 3 different sources, and of course, I had to find out more. 

This is an oil painting by the French artist, George Roux. Roux, who was born in 1853 and died in 1929 was an artist and book illustrator. Roux is best-known for his illustrations for Jules Verne's science fiction works, but as seen in the painting above, also had a flair for the spooky and ethereal.

The painting in question is titled Spirit, and was completed in 1885. It depicts a man at work at his desk, interrupted by the ghostly sight and sound of transparent, glowing woman playing the piano. No definitive answer can be given as to who the woman is, or her relationship to the man, but he looks a tad startled! There's also no definite answer as to what melody the ghostly lady is playing. 

Spirit was purchased by a private collector in 2009, but luckily, the image is available online for everyone to see and enjoy...and speculate over! So let me know in the comments below: Who do you think the ghostly woman is, and what song is she playing on the piano? 

Beckley is Full of Beasts!

Eyewitness sketch of the Beast of Beckley
Source: The National Cryptid Society

My mom grew up in Beckley, West Virginia and my grandparents continued to live there up until their deaths in 1997 and 2005. As a kid, I spent a LOT of weekends and summers at my grandparents' house, where they fostered my love of all things weird and spooky. I didn't realize it until becoming an adult, that the very place where I learned so much about the paranormal was actually a hotbed of Fortean phenomena! Not only are there multiple locations with a haunted history, but the area has a high number of UFO reports as well. And, from what I've realized just recently...

Beckley is FULL of Beasts!

It probably all dates back well before the 20th century, but the general public first heard about a monster lurking around Raleigh County back in 1934. Although it was sighted for several years before and after, late Spring of 1934 was the year of the Fireco Varmint. 

Fireco is a small community, located about 14 miles south of Beckley. In May, newspapers began running the story about a strange creature being seen and harassed by locals. Described as being anywhere from 2-4 feet tall , 6 feet long, and with yellow-gray hair, this small but swift beast was known for attacking animals and being immune to gun shots. It was seen by two brothers, Thomas (18) and Lawrence (23) Roark, spotted the creature one night around 9pm and fired upon it with no results. The creature was seen in the same area later on by witness, Berlin Shumate.

15 year old Willis Wooten came across a headless dog and found tracks that were as big as a man's hand nearby. Wallace Bowling, however, had one of his cows attacked; the creature was found with its stomach split open and its intestines spilling out. Miraculously, the animal survived the attack with the quick help from a veterinarian. 

By the summer of 1936, the Fireco Varmint was back, but it has grown to 10 feet long, and was also snatching the heads off full-grown hogs. So, what in the world were these citizens seeing, and what was killing their pets and livestock?  

Some say that the Fireco Varmint never left the area, and perhaps has even been sighted in modern times, but the newspapers largely gave up on documenting the unknown creature. However, in 1959 another monster showed up on the radar. Well, kind of.

The Raleigh Register
23 October 1959

In October of that year, the local newspaper ran a couple of articles about the 'East Beckley Monster.' Residents in that area were convinced that something was stalking their neighborhood. Newspaper offices were flooded with calls, but the Beckley Police Department adamantly denied the existence of anything supernatural. When residents brought up the fact that the police were out late one night shooting at what they believed to be the monster, the police calmly explained that it was simply a pack of wild dogs. 

Oddly enough, none of the newspaper articles mentioning the beast bothered to actually describe its physical characteristics in any way. I really wish they would have, though. If we had some sort of description, we might be able to link it to the Fireco Varmint or even to ANOTHER Beast of Beckley that would appear on the scene decades later!

On March 9, 2019 the website for the National Cryptid Society published an account submitted by a user going by the name of Raven. Raven and Raven's family had seen a mysterious, terrifying beast near their Beckley property, dating back to at least 2001-2002. It was Raven's little brother who saw it first. Around 8 pm one summer evening, their mother got a call from their grandmother saying that they needed to come pick the little brother up from her house. She only lived a very short distance away; in fact, they could SEE the grandmother's front porch from their own house. Usually, the little brother had no issues in going back and forth by himself, but this time, he had seen something that had scared him BADLY. 

When they finally got him to talk about it, he described a black creature with yellow eyes. The beast stood taller than the boy's father (who was quite tall himself at 6'6'') and smiled at him with sharp teeth. Even at the rate the Fireco Varmint seemed to 'grow,' it seems unlikely that THIS beast was the same 'species.' 

Not long after the brother's encounter, Raven and a friend decided to look for the beast themselves on the grandmother's property. Raven, feeling uneasy, stayed back while the friend went down over a small hill. That would prove to be the wrong course of action, as Raven soon noticed crouched in the brush, a dark creature with not two, but FOUR yellow eyes staring back. The friend also reported seeing the beast, and the two quickly got out of the area when the creature roared at them and picked up a branch. The next day, the two friends returned to the site and found claw marks in a tree where the beast had been.

The last time Raven personally saw the creature was in November of 2014 after returning home late one evening. Looking out the window towards where the cars were parked around 3 am, Raven noticed the outline of a horrific creature that was pitch black, humanoid in shape, and thickly built. It was tall...at least 6'8'' by estimates. After staring Raven down for a few minutes, it ran off. 

Raven's brother had seen the beast as recently as a month before the story was submitted to the website, and it was reported that even after Raven moved away, screams and roars continued to be reported in the area. However, the creepy part is that wherever Raven went, the beast seemed to follow. From across town to even vacationing in South Carolina, Raven could FEEL the beast nearby. 

The Beast of Beckley seemed to be more active in the summer months, and would sometimes be accompanied by unexplained lights in the woods. Skeptics tried to pass off the sightings as a black bear, but I think that some of the reported behavior suggests that not only was this NOT a black bear, but perhaps a creature not of this natural world. Since that report was published, at least one other independent witness has come forward and claimed to have seen the exact same thing in the general area. 

Are we dealing with multiple 'types' of beasts, reported over the span of nearly 100 years, or is there some thread connecting the Fireco Varmint, the East Beckley Beast, and the Beast of Beckley together? I'd love to know YOUR thoughts, and if you've had an encounter with an unknown creature in the Beckley/Raleigh County area, please let me know in the comments below...or find me over on Theresa's Haunted History of the Tri-State FaceBook!  

Sources and Further Reading:

The Fireco Varmint-Theresa's Haunted History Blog

Legend of Beast Resurfaces Near Fireco, WV-WV Explorer

The Raleigh Register. 23 October 1959

Beast of Beckley-The National Cryptid Society