The Ghost Story Behind a Bucolic Catholic Retreat Center

WHILE MYSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY OFTEN mingle, it’s decidedly not often that religious sites are founded on straight-up ghost stories. That’s what makes the pastoral center near Middleway, West Virginia, known as Priest Field, so fascinating. Priest Field, a 38-acre outreach and ecumenical center operated by the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, would not exist in the form it does today were it not for a centuries-old haunted house story known as “The Legend of the Wizard Clip.”

The origins of the bizarrely named “Wizard Clip” mystery go back to the late 1700s, when Virginia was still being settled, and before West Virginia had become its own state. The story begins with a man named Adam Livingston, a devout Lutheran who moved to the area in the early 1790s. According to The Mystery of the Wizard Clip, a published account from 1949 that is still sold at Priest Field, Livingston arrived there from Pennsylvania, where he had owned a great deal of land. For unknown reasons, his Pennsylvania property had begun experiencing a host of calamities, from his cattle dying off to his barn burning to the ground. Looking for a fresh start, Livingston and his family packed up and moved. But as it turned out, his troubles were only beginning.

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