The Spook House Demon

Today I’m going to share a true story with you. It is very scary, and you may want to skip over it. I’ll tell you this before I start the story, I am still more than a little spooked over this, and I knocked around the idea of even sharing it with you all. I still have enough of the Scots-Irish superstitious beliefs in me to know that to tell a story like this could give “power” to the subject of this story. I’m not going to include any pictures or photo’s in this story, so there won’t be any way to associate this thing with anyone or any place.
Let me add that I don’t know what this thing in the story is, but I feel it important to tell you that even the Native Americans who travelled through this area would avoid it at all possible, they referred to this place as “the valley of the demons”.

To counter giving this thing power, I am going to start and finish this story with The Lord’s Prayer. Yes, I know I’m being paranoid, but you’ve not seen the things that I have seen, in regards to this, and I don't think I can be too careful. These things happened to my family over the past few years.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

It all started in about 1990, a few years after my Grandmaw Mary died. People always said that Grandmaw was so good, that she probably kept this thing at bay, but without her influence, there was nothing to stand in its way. All this occurs in my grandparent’s old house, which is about 100 feet from my parents house. A few months after Grandmaw’s death, people would get strange feelings when they were close to the old house, feelings like someone was watching you, or just a feeling or fear that’d make the hair stand up on your arms and on the back of your neck. The first time this thing was seen was in about 1993. Since the old house had a well, my aunts did their laundry in an old wringer washer that sat on the back porch of the old house, it was a lot easier than hauling the water up the hill to their house from the spring. One day, my Aunt Donna was there doing laundry with my little cousin Bub, who was then about 4 years old. As Donna was doing laundry, Bub would play around in the wash tub, and just do the things kids do when they are that age. All of a sudden, Bub stopped playing, and gasped out loud. Aunt Donna heard him and asked him what was the matter…why did he all of a sudden stop playing? He looked at her, and looked through the open back door of the house, and asked her, “What is that?” Aunt Donna looked but didn’t see anything, and she asked him what he was talking about, he replied, “That big black thing with the red eyes that is looking at me.” Well, Aunt Donna then got more than a little afraid, it was clear that Bub wasn’t making this stuff up, he wouldn’t resume playing or anything, he just stood in the yard and looked in the house. He kept saying, “Let’s Go”. Well Aunt Donna got afraid and they left, and later came back with my Granddad, who helped her wring out the clothes and finish up there. After that, Aunt Donna refused to go back over there to do laundry and they moved the old wringer washer up to their house where they had to carry water for it.

A few months later, my Uncle Tom needed a place to live so he moved into the old house. He lived there for a about six months, until one evening he came in from work, and walked in the door and started through the doorway that separates the living room and the kitchen. All of a sudden, he said this big black mass came out of nowhere, and grabbed him by the throat, picked him up off the floor and threw him against the wall. My Uncle Tom is a big man too, he’s 6 feet 4 inches tall and at that time weighed about 200 pounds. Getting slammed against the wall knocked the air out of Uncle Tom and as he laid against the wall, this thing grabbed him up again and just said two words, “Leave Here”. Well, that thoroughly scared Uncle Tom and he moved out the same evening. He said he didn’t care if he had to sleep in his truck, he would never stay there again.

About a year later, my Uncle Dan went through a divorce and he needed a place to live. He knew the story of what happened to his brother, Tom, but he said he really needed a place to live, and you know how mountain men are…really hesitant to believe something like this. Well, Uncle Dan talked his Uncle Wood to live there with him, so they’d be company for each other. They lived there about a year, but soon Uncle Dan started having really bad dreams. Every night it was the same. He was wrestling a black mass with red eyes that kept trying to kill him. Uncle Dan started sleeping with a Bible under his pillow, as a local preacher suggested, but every morning when Uncle Dan would wake up, the Bible would be moved from under the bed pillow to a shelf on the other side of the bedroom. During this time, Uncle Wood slept peacefully and said nothing was bothering him. Well, these nightmares continued for Uncle Dan for a few months, and eventually they got so bad that he started to dreaming that this thing was killing him…night after night, it would kill him in his dreams. Always before, he’d get away from it before it could kill him. Needless to say, every morning, Uncle Dan was visibly shaken. Well, after having one of these nightmares one night, Uncle Dan awoke to find an unsheathed hunting knife, with the blade against his throat and with him trying to pull it away. He said there was a force of some kind that was pushing the knife closer to his throat. After awaking to this, Uncle Dan moved out of the spook house to a little shack nearby. This left Uncle Wood there alone. Uncle Wood stayed there a few months after this, but eventually, even he admitted that he was starting to have bad nightmares, much like those that Uncle Dan had, and one morning Uncle Wood got up out of bed and left the house with nothing but the clothes that he had on his back. The covers on the bed are still in the same position as they were the morning that Uncle Wood folded them back and got out of bed. Uncle Wood then moved in with his son who lives in Randolph County, where he remains to this day. He, to this day, won’t talk about what went on during his last night in the spook house.

By this time, everyone in the community took to calling the old house, “the spook house” and everyone avoided it. Electricity was turned off to it, and the lines were even taken off the house, though the electrical appliances still remained in it. It became pretty common when you were walking by the house to hear a television start playing or hear a radio cut on. You could also hear doors slamming in the house, and then someone pointed out, there are no inside doors in the house, just little privacy curtains in the doorways. There is only a back door and a front door.

I used to mow grass near the spook house; I had just finished mowing one evening and started walking back toward my parent’s house. I heard what sounded like something running in the house, it was heavy running, nearly rocking the house. After hearing this, I wasn’t letting any grass grow under my feet if you know what I mean, and the running sounded like it was keeping pace with me, only on the inside of the house. When I got past the end of the house, there was a loud smack like someone beating the side of the house where the house ended. I told Dad about it, and he said, “Yeah, it’s that thing again”. He said it happened to him nearly every time he mowed over there. Needless to say, that was my last time of mowing near there.

Another few years passed and it became clear to us the thing seemed to be the most active when it was extremely hot, or extremely cold, or especially following a thunderstorm. This continued along the same lines until my mother got down sick with a muscle illness. This coincided with her starting into the Change of Life. Then we started to get little hints that the thing had started to come into our house as well. I remember lying in bed at night, and hearing a door slam in the spook house. You could almost count the steps between that house and ours. And all of a sudden a feeling that you were not alone would happen, then it would get really cold in my bedroom (which was the closest room to the spook house). This happened in the dead of the summer when nights hovered near 80 degrees and there was no air conditioning at our house. It would then get so cold you couldn’t hardly stand it. I took to sleeping with a Bible on my headboard, and when I felt the presence of something in my room, I would say “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, I command you to leave me alone”. This always worked, but this became a nearly nightly event. My brother, whose room was directly across the hallway from mine, and parents told of similar happenings.

It got worse after Jason and I started college, and it was just Mom and Dad at home. One time, Mom got a real clear sign that it had come into our house. My Dad always leaves for work at 5:30 every morning. One day, about 6 am, Mom heard the front door close and she heard Dad walked back to the bedroom. She asked him, “What’s wrong? Aren’t you going to work today?” He said, “No, I just want to be with you today, Linda.” Well, this struck Mom as odd since Dad never calls Mom by her name, but rather by Honey, or Sweetie. Mom then looked at Dad, who was standing by the bed, and noticed that he had on a different coat than the one Dad wore all the time. Then it dawned on her and she said, “You’re not Jake, You’re not my husband”. The figure that looked like Dad just let out a laugh and disappeared right before Mom’s eye’s. Mom swears she was awake during this, that is wasn’t a dream. Nearly every morning after that, something along the same lines would happen, and Mom, who I mentioned earlier was suffering from a muscle condition, started getting weaker and weaker. Mom had a diagnosis for her muscle condition, but her symptoms were too severe to be explained by the diagnosis. She saw several specialists who could come up with no reason why she kept getting weaker and weaker. Mom and Dad noticed that when they stayed overnight in Morgantown, where Mom was seeing the specialists, she would begin to feel better and regain some of her strength, but as soon as they returned home, she would take another turn for the worse. This, compounded with Mom’s complaints of being bothered by the thing from next door, led me and my brother to consult with several sources online that dealt with the supernatural to see if they could offer some advice.

One source said to sprinkle a ring of salt all the way around our house, and to mark every door, window, or entry point (including where water and gas lines come in the house) with a cross. We did this, everywhere you looked at our house, there was either a figure of a cross, a paper cut-out of a cross, or a permanent marker drawing of a cross. This did help quite a bit, but then every morning, and sometimes throughout the day, Mom would be awakened or alarmed by a sound coming from our yard. She’d look out the window and see a thing in the yard that would be moaning as if in agony and looking in the window at her. It never would cross the ring of salt though. Mom described the thing as having a body of a large cat about 10 feet long and 3 feet across. She said it had eyes that looked like rectangles that kept radiating inward. She said it was kind of purplish in color and it glistened, and it had huge ears. She said its claws looked to be about 6 inches long and curved inward, much like a cat. This kind of reminded people of a description of the Wampus Cat, but Mom suspected that the thing from next door was just taking the form of what we’d always heard that a Wampus Cat looked like. Mom said it would cut an awful shine out there in the yard, and dig at the dirt and throw dirt in the air. When Dad would get home from work later that evening, she’d tell him about it and he could see places in the yard that were dug up by what looked like claws. Mom would try her best to ignore this, and after a few months she was starting to regain some of her strength. About this time, my little cousin, Mernie, was just coming into womanhood, and the thing started getting stronger again, especially when Mernie would visit. Mom wouldn’t let Mernie out in the yard without someone with her. Everyone was really afraid. It got so bad that Mom and Dad even considered moving away, but after much discussion, they figured that if that thing was drawn to Mom, it’d probably just follow them wherever they moved to.

It was also around this time that something started going on with the water at Mom and Dad’s house. They got their water from a well that was beside of the spook house. The water had something in it that looked and felt like little pieces of black felt. We thought for a while that it could be coal, but it was smooth like felt and was some type of cloth. This substance clogged up the faucets and the drains, and Dad had to remove the little filter screen from the faucets because this felt-like substance was stopping up the water lines. Someone suggested that it could be the water line itself, that it was peeling away from the inside, so Dad dug up and replaced every piece of water line that ran from the well to our house. The problem continued. Then, something else happened with the water, it started leaving a film on you. Mom and Dad didn’t notice because they bathed in it all the time, but everyone else could that didn’t live there all the time but just visited. The film would settle on your skin and you couldn’t wash it off. It was an invisible film but you could still feel it on you. Shirley, Jason and I always felt fortunate to return back to Morgantown, where we lived, so we could wash this film off of us. Then, someone suggested that the thing next door might be trying to get in the house through the water line, so they put a cross on each faucet and on the water lines as the came in the house and at the water heater. Almost at once, the black felt-like substance stopped, but the film persisted.

After this went on for several months, I talked to a fellow who deals with the supernatural, and I explained everything to him, and he suggested that this was a very young entity (or demon, for lack of a better word), that was mischievous and was probably disturbed by a change in the natural surroundings, he added that there may be a otherworldly portal near there. He further suggested that this change might be a number of things and could I think of anything that was changed about the time this thing started becoming active. I thought on it a few days, and remembered about the time that Grandmaw Mary passed away, there was a big thunderstorm that came and blew over the giant old willow tree that stood between our house and the spook house. I mentioned this to the fellow, and he suggested to replant a willow tree in the exact spot of the old one that blew over, and to say a prayer over it as soon as it was planted. We were desperate, and Dad planted a young willow tree in the same spot, and he and Mom said a prayer over it when it was planted. Immediately, Mom was no longer bothered by anything, all the feelings and film in the water stopped. It was almost instantaneously. Since that time, every once in a while you can still get feelings of someone is watching you when you are near the old spook house, but nothing like before. It doesn’t bother us anymore and we don’t bother it. But we do make sure that willow tree stays alive.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Haunted Hills of Halloween

In the autumn of my 10th year, my family got the idea to have a big old-timey Halloween Party. We planned for weeks to make this a night that everyone would remember. Each of us kids had something to do, whether it was cutting wood for the huge bonfire, getting hay bales for the hay wagon, or right down to the smallest detail of picking apples for the apple-bobbing tub. My job was decorations and invitations. I had hand wrote several invitations and cut out decorations. Luckily, my brother helped me out, for he was far better at such things than I. Otherwise, we’d have had decorations of mutilated paper pumpkins and perhaps a paper chain, which remains to this day pretty much my extent of decoration making.


Home in Pendleton County.

When Halloween finally arrived, the whole family was abuzz, so much that you could feel the excitement in the air. On the day of Halloween my uncle Fudgy went squirrel hunting and killed several squirrels, which he also brought back home to skin out. Well, this gave me some added inspiration for decorating, so I tied the squirrel tails to some sticks and stuck the sticks into the top of some pumpkins. I created Pumpkins with lovely little squirrel tail hats. I’m sure it looked better to me than anyone else since the squirrel tails were inevitably matted with blood, but to me they were a masterpiece.

At about 4 o’clock, the older family members lit the bonfire. It was a huge fire with flames licking up above the tops of the trees, and as it started getting darker it illuminated the whole yard. At about the same time that the bonfire was lit, we loaded up on an old hay wagon that my mother had borrowed from a neighbor, and commenced on an old-fashioned hay ride. My cousin Buck pulled the wagon with his tractor. We had all of the family and many friends and relatives piled onto the wagon. We went down the holler a-whoopin and a-hollerin like a pack of banshees. It was Halloween, and we were all going to have a great time.

Scene's like this just breed "spookiness".

The wagon went out on the main road for a couple of miles and then down Roots Run, a narrow little dirt road that went almost all the way into Riverton. Upon getting to the end of Roots Run, we turned up Horse Ridge that would take us through the Bland Hills and then home. The excitement heightened as the hayride proceeded on the winding and narrow roads of Bland Hills. With the old oak trees hanging over the road and passing the old abandoned houses, it really added a spookiness to that Halloween. Someone started telling ghost stories. There was one about a headless horseman who frequented these parts and whom you could still hear some nights as he followed people going from one house to the other. They said you could hear the horses hooves on the road when he followed you. They told of the time that Oren Bent was coming out of the Lane and was chased by the headless horseman, he said it started chasing him just after passing the old Bennett cemetery and chased him all the way home. He said the rider was carrying his head in his left hand and that sparks was flying off the horses hooves as the horseshoes hit rocks in the road. Just then we passed a couple of horses along the road, which added to it. I was getting scared.


A farm nestled along the route of the hayride.

As we passed one house, a black dog came out and chased the haywagon for a few hundred feet, which gave the inspiration for yet another ghost story about a black dog. This dog would brush up against your leg as you were walking in the dark, but when you would shoo him away, there’d be nothing there. My granddad then told us of his experience with the black ghost dog one night after returning home from work. He was walking up our holler and felt a dog brush against his leg and heard a dog panting, thinking it was one of our dogs he hollered at it to get, but when it didn’t, he dropped down his dinner bucket to hit the dog. His dinner bucket clanged against the rocks of the holler road and my granddad knew immediately what he was dealing with. In all the stories about the ghost dog, it always started following you at the old stone cow barn in the holler and would leave you at the apple tree near the top of the hill.

As we were nearing the end of Bland Hills, my grandfather pointed out a nearby hill and said that was where a Civil War battle was fought, he said that when he was a kid, he and his siblings sat on a nearby hill and seen the whole battle being fought before their eyes…and this was 70 years after the War. Many strange happenings still occur on this hill. Many local people tell of seeing wounded soldiers wandering around and my brother even saw a man carrying his head under his arm…and the man was wearing Confederate butternut-gray. With all these scary tales, coupled with the surrounding landscape that just breeds a sense of mystery, I was getting thoroughly scared by the time we got back home.


An old family cemetery, a common site throughout Germany Valley.

At the end of Bland Hills, we got off the hay wagon and parked it where our neighbor instructed us. We walked the little piece up the main road and then up our holler. It was fairly well dark by this time, and we could see the glow from the bonfire by the time we made it halfway up the holler. My great-grandmaw Mary met us at the little footbridge and had some apple cider which she handed to me to carry for her as she continued on up the hill to the party with the rest of us.


The old cemetery where the Civil War battle was fought, it is on this hill that people still see visions of the past.

When we got back the most memorable thing was the huge, blazing bonfire. The older kids were roasting hotdogs, and hamburgers in foil were cooked in the hot coals. My mother told everyone to tear into the multitude of cakes and pies that she had been baking throughout the day. On the front porch there were hay bales to sit on and a huge metal tub full of water with apples floating in it. Bobbing for apples was but one of the games that evening, as well as taffy pulling. However, those two activities were cut short due to our ne’er-do-well cousin, Dank, showing up. Dank buried his head down into the tub of apples and came up with a big red apple in his snaggled teeth. My uncle Wood said that it was no wonder that Dank could get an apple every time he dunked his head in the tub for one, since Dank could practically stab them with his “snags”. So bucked were Dank’s teeth that it had long been said that he could eat corn off the cob through a woven wire fence. Nobody else would take a turn bobbing for apples after Dank because he was not the cleanest person in the world and nobody wanted to stick their head in a tub of water after Dank’s head had been in there “slarshing” around. The same thing happened at the taffy pull. Nobody would eat the taffy after Dank handled it, and we couldn’t very well tell Dank that he couldn't join in the fun. Luckily, Dank left early on in the evening, so we all dumped out the water and washed the washtub. We then filled it back up with water from the spring, and placed more apples in it...one’s that didn’t have Dank’s “fang” marks in them. We all had a great time after that because everyone joined in the festivities.


A foreboding feeling sits upon the mountain.

After we all had eaten our fill of various autumn themed delights, we all sat around the huge warm fire and listened to more ghost stories. There is nothing like listening to local ghost stories on Halloween night while sitting outdoors. We all thought that the various shadows and sounds outside of the illuminated circle was, of course, spirits coming to get us. Someone told a story of Alice Veach, who was known to be a local witch. They told of how she could make pins stand up in the middle of a frying pan just by saying some words over them, and how she could make people sick, or kill livestock, just by looking at them a certain way.

After the ghost stories, stories were told about wild animals that roamed these woods, often killing unwary persons. They told of large mountain lions that chased people and of unearthly creatures such as Old Fon, the goat man, who was said to live up on North Mountain Rocks. It was said that Old Fon could lure children up to the rocks by humming a song of enchantment. When the children got up to the steepest cliffs, he shove them off. My grandmaw Mary said the only way to get away from Old Fon was to call him by his name and tell him to his face, “Leave me alone, Old Fon.” Upon hearing that, he would run into a cave in the rocks and leave you alone. There were also tales of the snallygaster, who walked these hills and hollers looking for mischief, killing dogs, burning barns, and sucking the life out of livestock.



"The Snallygaster",based on handed-down descriptions, drawn by my brother, Jason Burns.


Also, tales of the wampus cat were told. It was said that the wampus cat could make you paralyzed with fear, and he preyed especially on women who were going through the change or on girls who were just coming into womanhood. It was said that once the wampus cat mesmerized you, he would thereafter continue to appear in your dreams, until it would eventually drive you insane.

My childhood home in Germany Valley.

As the ghost stories were told and the tales of the supernatural were winding down, so was I and I fell asleep on my Daddy’s arm. When I woke the next morning, there were the remnants of a party and the memories of a Halloween Party on the mountain that would last me a lifetime.

Horsemen Hauntings

Germany Valley abounds with the tales of ghostly horses and horsemen. I thought I’d share a few of them with you.

I remember a story about an apparently benevolent ghost horseman who frequented these parts, and whom you could still hear some nights as he followed people going from one house to the other. This occurred on nights in the full moon, and people could see it just fine, it never spoke, and it rode just a few yards behind a person. As far as I know, this horseman never harmed anyone, it would just scare the heck out of you.

Not the Headless Horseman in the lane, but here is an artist rendering of another West Virginia Headless Horseman. Drawn by my brother, Jason Burns.

There are also tales of a not so friendly headless horseman. My granddad told me about a headless horseman that haunted a particular stretch of road, locally known as “The Lane”. The story took place in the summer months, and that this headless horseman chased a local man named Oren Bent. Oren was riding a lazy, old sway-backed horse named “Nelliegur”, and he was coming out of The Lane one evening about dark, after visiting some friends. The headless horseman took after him just after he passed the old cemetery and it chased him all the way home. He said the rider was carrying what he took to be his head in his left hand. Oren said it looked like a big round thing that was wrapped in white cloth and it was dripping blood. Oren that sparks was flying off the horses hooves as the horseshoes hit the rocks in the road. Oren said the horseman rode up beside of old Nelliegur, and the ghost horse snorted and scared her, and she took off running as hard as she could. Nelliegur hadn’t been known to break out into a run for several years prior to this, and was considered to be the laziest horse in five counties. The next day, when Oren told the community of his ordeal, the men doubted his word and followed him up to where this supposedly took place, and the men tracked Nelliegur from where she left the friends home the previous evening. She had been plodding along as usual, until just after passing the old cemetery, where she broke into a flat run. Oddly enough, beside her hoof prints were the hoof prints of another horse that was very large, and every few feet or so, there were droplets of blood scattered in the dust of the road. The men were shocked, nobody around there could explain the hoof prints of the large horse, nobody around there had a horse that large, nor could they explain the droplets of blood. For the next few weeks, Oren couldn’t get Nelliegur to go anywhere near The Lane, in fact, she would lie down in the road to keep from going through that section.

Burns Holler Road

It has long been known that Burns holler is also haunted by a headless horseman. To this day, you can be lying in bed at my parents house, and on some quiet nights you can hear the sound of a shod horse walking (or running) up and down the holler. Everyone in my family has heard this on several occasions, and we don’t make a big deal out of it. I remember one night about 8 O’clock I was walking back from my Granddad’s house up on the hill and I was heading toward home. To get from my granddad’s house to our house, I had to walk down off the hill, around the turn and down through Burns holler before crossing the creek and walking up the hill to our house. On this night, just as I rounded the turn in the road, I heard the unmistakable sound of a horses hooves clanging off the rocks and clomping up the holler road toward me. I just about pissed my pants. I took off running as hard as I could, I practically jumped across the bridge over the creek, and hell-belled it toward home. I was really stepping it off, until I forgot about the little drainage ditch near my grandmaw’s old house, and I tripped in it. Well, I just rolled with the fall and hit the ground running, I didn’t miss a beat! I was just sure the headless horseman was right behind me. I was breathing so hard though, there was no way I could’ve heard it if it was. I know what I heard that night though, and at that time, there were no horses within miles of our holler. I have never been able to come up with an explanation for that one.

One thing for sure, I learned a lesson that night, and after that I always made sure I was home before dark or else I had a big flashlight with me. There’s always been weird stuff that goes on in Burns holler after the sun goes down.

Does anyone out there reading this have stories about a headless horseman from your neck of the woods?