Appalachian Folklore & Myths Series – Wizard Clip and the Priest’s Field: Poltergeist, Frontier Faith, and a Haunted Farm in the Shenandoah Valley
In the lower Shenandoah Valley of West Virginia there is a quiet patch of fields and houses that once answered to an unsettling nickname. Nineteenth century newspapers and twentieth century locals alike called the little village “Wizard Clip” or simply “Clip,” after a haunting that supposedly filled one farmhouse with the sound of invisible shears.
Today road maps label the place Middleway, and a pastoral retreat center called Priest Field borders the Opequon Creek where Adam Livingston once farmed. A state marker with a crescent moon and a pair of scissors stands near the village. Modern visitors see a bucolic Catholic retreat and a rural crossroads, but the legend that gave the town its strange name still threads through local memory, church histories, and a shelf of pamphlets, theses, and books that treat Wizard Clip as one of Appalachia’s most persistent ghost stories.
A stranger at Livingston’s farm
Most early written versions of the story place the beginning in the mid 1790s, when a German born farmer named Adam Livingston brought his family from Pennsylvania to what was then Smithfield, Virginia, later Middleway, and now part of Jefferson County, West Virginia.
According to the best known nineteenth century Catholic account, a stranger arrived at the Livingston house one night and asked for lodging. He fell seriously ill and requested a Catholic priest to administer last rites. At that time the lower Shenandoah Valley had very few Catholic clergy, and the Lutheran Livingston either refused or failed to secure a priest before the man died. The stranger was buried nearby without Catholic rites.
The burial did not end the story. Instead it marked the beginning of what later writers would call America’s first documented poltergeist case. Candles in the death room were said to gutter and die whenever someone tried to keep vigil. Heavy footsteps circled the house at night, as if horses were galloping just beyond sight. Crockery shattered on the floor without anyone touching it. Stones and embers supposedly leapt from the hearth.
Clipping sounds and invisible shears
The manifestations that gave Wizard Clip its name centered on the sound and mark of cutting. In Finotti’s 1879 monograph The Mystery of the Wizard Clip and in later newspaper summaries, witnesses remember a constant snipping noise as if large shears moved through the rooms. Clothing, bed sheets, curtains, and even boots appeared with half moon slashes and intricate cut out patterns.
One often repeated anecdote tells of a visitor who tried to protect her new silk cap by wrapping it in a handkerchief before she slept. In the morning the handkerchief was untouched but the cap had been sliced into ribbons. Other stories claim that ducks and geese in the yard lost their heads as cleanly as if severed by a blade. The cumulative effect in these early sources is less of a single jump scare and more of a grinding disturbance that wore down the family’s nerves and reputation over months and years.
The name “Wizard Clip” captures how neighbors first tried to make sense of what they heard. Protestant writers in the nineteenth century often described the events as sorcery or witchcraft, a “wizard” cutting cloth and leather with supernatural shears. Catholic writers leaned instead toward demonic oppression and ghostly vengeance for the stranger who died without sacramental care.
Priests, exorcism, and the consoling Voice
The haunting in most versions drove Livingston to seek help from clergy. After turning first to local Protestant ministers, who either declined to visit or accomplished nothing, he dreamed of a man in robes whose presence seemed tied to relief. When his wife persuaded him to attend Mass in nearby Shepherdstown, he reportedly recognized Father Dennis Cahill as the priest from his dream.
Cahill visited the Livingston farm, prayed through the house, and sprinkled holy water. For a time the noises and clipping ceased, then returned. A later visit with Father Demetrius Gallitzin, the Russian born Catholic priest who would later become known as the “Apostle of the Alleghenies,” ended the immediate disturbances after a Mass was celebrated in the house.
In some Catholic accounts the story does not stop there. After the shears fell silent, the Livingston family began to hear what they called a consoling Voice, a disembodied speaker who led them in prayer, instructed them in Catholic doctrine, and sometimes demanded long vigils and fasting. In these retellings the Voice remained with the family for years, acting as both spiritual guide and stern confessor.
Whether taken as literal fact, visionary experience, or devotional elaboration, the Voice section of the story shows how intertwined Wizard Clip became with questions of faith. The haunting is no longer only about a restless stranger or mischievous poltergeist. It becomes a narrative about conversion, obedience, and the power of sacramental authority on a religiously mixed frontier.
From haunted farm to Priest Field
Whatever actually happened inside the Livingston house, there is a concrete piece of the story that can still be checked in the records. In 1802 Adam Livingston deeded roughly thirty five acres of his farm along the Opequon Creek to the Catholic Church as “a field to sustain a priest.” The land became known as Priest Field, and for much of the nineteenth century it supported itinerant clergy who served scattered Catholic families in the Shenandoah Valley.
Today Priest Field is a diocesan pastoral center operated by the Diocese of Wheeling Charleston. Retreat materials and the center’s own website acknowledge the Wizard Clip story, framing the land as a place where a tormented family found relief and where a haunting helped shape Catholic presence in what would later become West Virginia.
The wider community remembers the tale in other tangible ways. A historic marker sponsored by the West Virginia Humanities Council and the William G. Pomeroy Foundation stands near Middleway, summarizing the legend and noting the years of “mysterious noises and clippings of garments” that frightened residents after the stranger’s death.
Within the village, the Middleway Conservancy adopts a crescent moon logo that echoes the half moon cuts described in early accounts. Its brief history of Wizard Clip lists nineteenth century pamphlets and multiple newspaper pieces from the Winchester Virginian, the Virginia Free Press, and the Shepherdstown Register, showing how widely the story circulated in the region’s press.
Printing the haunting: pamphlets, newspapers, and a modern monograph
One reason Wizard Clip has such a rich documentary trail is that writers began recording it while some participants and neighbors were still alive. In 1879 Joseph Maria Finotti, a Jesuit priest and bibliographer, published The Mystery of the Wizard Clip (Smithfield, W. Va.): A Monograph, drawing heavily on earlier oral testimony and correspondence from clergy who had visited the Livingston family.
Around the same time other writers and editors retold the story in newspapers and local histories. A Richmond paper in 1894 ran a feature titled “The Tale of Wizard Clip,” and an early twentieth century Berryville paper explained how the town acquired the nickname “Clipp,” emphasizing that some residents still claimed to have seen clipped garments with their own eyes.
Catholic historians returned to the story in the mid twentieth century. Raphael Brown’s 1949 booklet on Wizard Clip gathered earlier sources and framed the events as a dramatic example of frontier exorcism and miraculous conversion. West Virginia chroniclers working with the state archives later summarized the case for public audiences, and AppalachianHistory.net’s multi part “Wizzard Clip” feature drew on those archival notes, Finotti’s monograph, and a Wall Street Journal Halloween article to reintroduce the legend to twenty first century readers.
Most recently the story has received a full length modern study in Michael Kishbucher’s 2023 book The Appalachian Legend of the Wizard Clip: America’s First Poltergeist, published by The History Press. Kishbucher traces the evolution of the tale across Protestant and Catholic retellings, analyzes how the story changed as it was recast for different audiences, and situates Wizard Clip within broader Appalachian and American ghost lore.
Religion, frontier anxiety, and the work of a ghost story
Because the written record spans nearly two centuries, historians can watch the Wizard Clip narrative shift in tone and emphasis. Some Protestant versions stress witchcraft and warn against dabbling in the occult. Catholic sources highlight the stranger’s request for a priest, the danger of dying without the sacraments, and the eventual conversion of the Livingston family.
Modern scholars have also noted how the legend reflects everyday anxieties of frontier life. Hosting strangers on isolated farms was both a duty and a risk. Illness could arrive overnight. Religious minorities navigated suspicion from neighbors and struggled to secure clergy. A story in which neglecting a dying guest and denying his religious needs brings down years of supernatural disturbance reinforces the moral weight of hospitality and the perceived power of religious difference.
At the same time, skeptical threads have always been present. Some of Livingston’s neighbors later downplayed their family’s involvement or questioned the more spectacular claims. Newspaper editors in the late nineteenth century already framed the story as a curiosity from earlier days, leaving readers to decide whether the events were demonic, ghostly, fraudulent, or misunderstood.
Recent writers have suggested other possibilities a long running prank, a family member using the disturbances to push Livingston toward or away from certain commitments, or a mix of genuine misfortunes and exaggerated retellings. None of these explanations can be proven at this distance. What can be traced clearly is how the story has been used as a teaching tale about faith, hospitality, and the hazards of ignoring the spiritual needs of those who fall sick under your roof.
Wizard Clip in the wider Appalachian ghost landscape
In the larger map of Appalachian hauntings, Wizard Clip sits at an interesting intersection. It is not a classic “white lady” roadside ghost, a mine disaster haunting, or a Civil War battlefield story, though the region has plenty of those. It is instead a domestic poltergeist account that grew into a denominational emblem and then a community brand.
The story ties a farmstead haunting to the growth of Catholic institutions in the Valley, to a specific tract of land given in thanksgiving for relief, and to a small town’s willingness to wear an eerie nickname for generations. When contemporary travel writers call Wizard Clip “America’s first poltergeist” or “the Catholic ghost of Priest Field,” they are drawing on that layered history of religion, land, and local pride.
For Appalachian historians, Wizard Clip also reminds us that frontier religion was more diverse than simple Protestant stereotypes suggest. Priests on horseback, German Lutheran farmers, Irish Catholic laborers, and free Black and enslaved worshipers all crossed paths in the Shenandoah Valley during the years when this story first took shape. A haunting that turns on confession, Mass, and a donated “priest’s field” offers a rare window into how Catholic presence on that landscape felt both fragile and powerful.
Why Wizard Clip still matters
More than two hundred years after the stranger’s death, there is no way to resolve what truly happened inside the Livingston house. The clipped garments are long gone. The half moon symbol survives only on historical markers, logos, and souvenir prints.
What endures is a narrative that continues to tie Middleway and Priest Field to a wider sense of Appalachian mystery. The story links religious tension, the ethics of hospitality, and the occasional strangeness of rural life into a single memorable case. For those interested in the history of ghost stories, it offers one of the earliest poltergeist narratives in the United States with a solid paper trail. For those interested in Appalachian religion, it shows how a community interpreted unexplained events through competing Protestant and Catholic lenses.
When we walk the grounds of Priest Field or drive through Middleway today, we are not simply passing a quaint legend. We are moving through a landscape where land deeds, church records, and local folklore still overlap. Wizard Clip invites us to listen closely to how frontier communities told stories about fear, faith, and the forces they believed moved just beyond the edge of candlelight.
Sources & Further Reading
Finotti, Joseph Maria. The Mystery of the Wizard Clip (Smithfield, W. Va.): A Monograph. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co., 1879. https://archive.org/details/mysteryofwizardc00fino
Gallitzin, Demetrius Augustine. Letters and papers referencing the Wizard Clip events, 1790s–1820s. Summarized in Joseph M. Finotti, The Mystery of the Wizard Clip (1879) and later Catholic reprints. https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcmassbookdig.mysteryofwizardc00fino/
Middleway Conservancy Association. “Wizard Clip.” Middleway Conservancy Association, Middleway, West Virginia. Accessed January 13, 2026. https://middlewayconservancy.org/wizard-clip
Middleway Conservancy Association. “The Historic Village of Middleway, West Virginia.” Accessed January 13, 2026. https://middlewayconservancy.org
Kishbucher, Michael. The Appalachian Legend of the Wizard Clip: America’s First Poltergeist. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2023. https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/products/the-appalachian-legend-of-the-wizard-clip-9781467153812
“Wizard Clip.” Historic marker text. William G. Pomeroy Foundation and West Virginia Humanities Council, 2019. https://www.wgpfoundation.org/historic-markers/wizard-clip/
Dalton, Kelly. “The Tale of Wizard Clip.” UncommonWealth (Library of Virginia blog), October 31, 2025. https://uncommonwealth.lva.virginia.gov/blog/2025/10/31/wizard-clip/
Brown, Raphael. The Mystery of the Wizard Clip. New York: St. Paul Guild, 1949. (Reprinted online as “The Mystery of the Wizard Clip” at Our Lady of the Rosary Library.) https://www.olrl.org/wizard-clip/
Helentjaris, Diane R. “A Look Back at the Catholic Ghost of Wizard Clip.” Religion Unplugged, October 29, 2019. https://religionunplugged.com/news/2019/10/29/the-catholic-ghost-of-wizard-clip
“Wizzard Clip.” Appalachian History: Stories, History and Folklore of Appalachia. Multi-part series summarizing Finotti and later sources. Accessed January 13, 2026. https://www.appalachianhistory.net/tag/wizzard-clip
Hauck, Dennis William. Haunted Places: The National Directory. New York: Penguin Books, 2002. (Entry on Wizard Clip, West Virginia.) https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/77513/haunted-places-by-dennis-william-hauck/
“Priest Field Pastoral Center.” Diocese of Wheeling–Charleston. Accessed January 13, 2026. https://priestfield.org
Southern Gothic Media. “Mystery of the Wizard Clip – SG091.” Southern Gothic podcast and blog, October 7, 2022. https://www.southerngothicmedia.com/blog/sg091-mystery-wizard-clip
Author Note: As an Appalachian historian, I am drawn to the way this story knots together land, faith, and a haunting that never quite lets Middleway become ordinary.