Haunted Happenings from the Goldenseal Past

I was five years old when I first learned about the Flatwoods Monster, also known as the Braxton County Monster, the Phantom of Flatwoods, or simply the Green Monster. It was an experience that was burned forever into my mind.  During the early 1950’s, my family and I lived in Summersville, and I loved to go on fishing trips with my dad and other relatives. On one of these fishing expeditions late one summer, we spent most of the morning fishing up and down the Elk River, just above Sutton, in Braxton County. Tired and hungry, we retreated to a local restaurant for lunch. This restaurant was located at the “Y” intersection of routes 4 and 19, about half-a-mile south of downtown Sutton. We were seated in a booth near the window and had just finished ordering our food. We were making small talk with the waitress when she looked at me and commented, “You’d better look out, or that monster will get you.”

Why would someone offer that kind of “helpful” advice to a five-year-old kid? Her words, nonetheless, had the desired effect, and I felt the blood drain from my face in terror. I looked to my father for reassurance, or a conspiratorial wink, or a smile indicating that the waitress was kidding. But there were none!

An uncomfortable silence fell over the afternoon dining crowd, and the room took on the stale air of a funeral parlor. In quiet, hushed tones, conversations slowly resumed. My young ears picked up bits and pieces of dialogue laced with words such as “fireball,” “spaceship,” “red eyes,” and “10-feet tall.” My heart thumped painfully against my thin chest when I heard the phrase, “Eat you alive!”

Apparently, the fear in my heart was communicated clearly on my face. A burly gentleman leaned around our booth and commented, “Don’t worry about the monster getting you, kid. You’ll smell it before it gets near enough to grab you.” The diners around us erupted into gales of hearty laughter that reverberated around the room for a good two minutes. I looked questioningly at my father, still hoping for some form of reassurance, and he began to explain.

Recently, some people in the nearby community of Flatwoods had an unusual experience, he said. A fireball, it seems, had fallen from the sky. A few residents witnessed this phenomenon and had gone to investigate. When they got there, they discovered a hideous monstrosity with fiery red eyes. Some of the search team reportedly were overwhelmed by a highly noxious odor and ran for their lives. My father finished by saying that he wouldn’t let the monster get me.

I felt a little better, but my once-strong interest in bass fishing was now completely overshadowed by a nagging fear of monsters. My thoughts strayed, and I felt a desperate urge to retreat across the mountain to the safety and comfort of home.

That episode in the restaurant left an impression on me so intense that still today I am repulsed and fascinated by the Green Monster.

Jenny, as the local ghost story goes, lived in an old storage shed near the Federal Armory in the mid-19th century. She, like other poverty-cursed residents of the industrial town, suffered through the humid summers and cold winters of Harpers Ferry with only a shanty to protect her. One winter night, Jenny drew too close to her fireplace and her ragged dress caught on fire. Screaming, Jenny fled from her shack and ran down the railroad tracks – head on into a locomotive. The night train killed Jenny, Shirley says, but it could not silence her screams or extinguish the flames.

“Watch the trains pass this point in the old Armory yard,” writes Shirley [Dougherty] in her book, A Ghostly Tour of Harpers Ferry. “You will be able to tell which engineers have met screaming Jenny by the slack speed by which they guide their trains over this section of track.”

Fifth Street Road is one of the major thoroughfares leading south out of Huntington. The three-lane blacktop road makes a long, steep climb up Fifth Street Hill from its base at a stone bridge across Fourpole Creek to its crest. From there, the road levels off briefly before it slopes down to the 1-64 interchange and then goes south into Wayne County.

For more than 50 years, there has been a story in circulation that late at night when it is raining, a young woman stands at the top of the hill and beckons motorists to pick her up, only to vanish when reaching her destination. The mysterious rider has been dubbed by cab drivers, “The Ghost Girl of Fifth Street Hill.” The first published account of this ghostly tale was in a Huntington newspaper on October 30, 1942. The article states that a few days earlier, a driver for the Black & White Cab Company left off his fare at a dance hall on Fifth Street Road early in the morning. At about 4:30 a.m., he started back toward Huntington. It was then that he encountered the mysteriously vanishing hitchhiker.

According to the cab driver, “When I got to the top of Fifth Street Hill, a girl hailed me from the roadside. I stopped, opened the door, and she got into the rear seat. It was pretty cold, but she did not have any coat or hat on, just a skirt and thin blouse. I thought that was funny and said,

‘It’s pretty cold without a coat, isn’t it?’ And she replied, ‘I haven’t worn a coat for nine or 10 years.’ l asked the girl where she was going and she told me to let her off at the bottom of the hill. I drove down the hill at about 20 or 25 miles an hour, stopped at the house, and turned around to collect my fare and let the girl out. She was not sitting in the seat. I thought maybe she had fainted or something and fell off the seat, so I looked down on the floor. But there was nobody there. I looked back up the road and couldn’t see anybody, so l drove back to the taxi headquarters. I said to the dispatcher, ‘I’ve just been gypped out of a quarter.’ and I told him what had happened. He said he had heard of that same thing happening to a Yellow Cab driver about a year before in the same place, and called up the Yellow Cab office and asked them about it. They said it happened to one of their drivers.”

Since the first sighting, the hitchhiking host has reportedly been seen hundreds of times. A November 1958 newspaper story reported that “she never says a word and she always disappears from the car like a puff of smoke when it reaches the stoplight at the bridge.”

This is a true story of an event that took place on top of Allegheny Mountain, South of Mount Storm, Grant County, in May 1965. The event took place at the Little Stoney River Dam, west of Maysville, near the large coal-fired electrical generating plant located on top of the mountain. The Little Stoney River Dam supplied supplemental water for the electrical facility and played an important role in its overall operation. Fred Becker was caretaker of the Little Stoney River Dam at that time.

On June 15, 1965, I decided to drive up to the Little Stoney River Dam to visit Fred Becker. Fred was a member of one of the churches where I served as pastor. Fred met me as I was getting out of my car and remarked that he was glad to see me. He invited me into the house for a spell. Sitting down at the table, sipping fresh-brewed coffee, and nibbling at a piece of homemade stacked coconut cake, we discussed local current events for a little while.

Fred remarked again how glad he was that I had come to see him, because he had something that he felt was very important to share with me. Fred asked if I had time to listen to a true story. I told him, “My time here is your time.” Fred took a long sip of his steaming coffee and began.

“It was several weeks ago, about May 15, or near abouts,” he said. “It was a typical late afternoon here on the mountaintop. A gentle breeze was stirring the leaves on the trees and kicking up small waves on the surface of the dam, reflecting the twilight of the evening’s approach. The azure sky was displaying a few long stratus clouds, exhibiting a natural beauty to behold in the sky. The frogs were croaking, the katydids and crickets were singing, and the birds were darting from limb to limb, making chirpful sounds. The white tail deer and her spotted fawn had appeared on the back side of the dam, and some crows were pestering the grey squirrels who were barking at them. All of nature seemed to be in harmony. As I was walking toward the house, I realized that all of nature had become silent. The stillness was so quiet that one could have heard a pin drop on the ground. I scanned the sky very carefully, but I saw nothing unusual. A short time later, I saw it! I stopped right in my tracks. The object that I saw was something not of this world! I will call it the ‘thing,’ for the lack of a more appropriate name for it.

“The thing was making a loud shrieking and roaring sound, emitting a large trail of sparks in its wake. Little wonder that my friends of nature who sang to me each evening had become silent! On and on it came — shrieking and roaring and emitting sparks, not only from the rear end, but from all over its body. Closer and closer it came, louder and louder its shriek and roar. The flaming thing lit up the area as if the sun had just come up. It appeared to be about eight or 10-feet long with a trail of sparks 10-feet long, or so. I surmised that if it remained on its course, the thing would surely hit the mountaintop nearby. Suddenly it happened! The thing struck the top of the dam reservoir, plunging right into the middle of the water surface. As the thing hit the water, it gave off a loud hissing sound, sending steam, vapors, and water into the air like a geyser. Rain-like stuff showered over the area of the dam. As the thing began to sink, there was a loud explosion under the water. Again, the thing sent up a larger sheet of steam and water all over the surface where it came into the dam. And then a great silence covered the area. A short time later, my nature friends resumed their evening ritual. The hoot owls and the screech owls joined in. The whippoorwills began calling to their mates, and everything seemed to be back to normal here on the mountaintop.”

“I later decided to drain the dam,” Fred continued, “to see if I could find or recover anything the thing left behind, something which may now be lying in the soft mud on the bottom of the reservoir.”

“So I drained the dam. After the dam had drained dry, I gathered up my gum boots and a little bucket, and I started walking through the muddy bottom. I was going alongside the Little Stoney River, which was flowing on the bottom of the dam, looking carefully along each side of the stream for evidence of something that might have fallen into the soft mud. As I got to about the center of the dam’s bed, I saw a hole in the soft mud where something had entered the mud. I reached down and found the object.”

“Washing the mud off of it, I discovered that I was holding a piece of something from another world. Placing the chunk into the bucket, I looked around and discovered several more pieces of the thing, washed them off, and placed them in the bucket. Checking the soft mud carefully, and finding no more pieces of the thing, I took my bounty to the front of the dam and set it down. I then closed the gates to the dam, and Little Stoney River began to refill the reservoir again. Washing my boots off, I picked up my bucket and bounty, and headed for the house. I placed my pieces of the thing on a shelf, where I could admire them from time to time, while sitting down to sip a cup of fresh-brewed coffee.”