The Wizard Clip Haunting: Invisible Shears at the Livingston Farm

Around 1794. Adam Livingston, a Lutheran, farmed near Smithfield, Virginia, on Opequon Creek.

A travelling stranger took lodging at the farm. He fell ill and asked for a Catholic priest. Livingston refused. The man died, his name unknown to his host. In the room where he died, candles would not stay lit. One version says the wicks were found cut.

Then came the sound. A constant snipping, as if large shears moved through the rooms. Cloth, sheets, curtains, boots, saddles and harness were cut, the pieces shaped like half moons, so that nothing useful could be saved. A visiting woman hid her new cap in her reticule. When she left the house, the cap was cut to pieces. The bag was unharmed.

Horses could be heard trampling in the house. Chunks of fire were thrust into the beds. The plates and all the crockery were thrown upon the floor. A large stone came out of the fireplace and whirled around the floor for upward of 15 minutes. No stone was missing. The cattle died. Chickens, geese and ducks were found beheaded. The barn burned down. A visiting Methodist minister had stones thrown at him. An Episcopal minister's prayer book landed in a chamber pot.

Rev. Christian Streit, a Lutheran, could not help. Neither could a conjurer from South Mountain. Fr. Dennis Cahill, an Irish-born priest from Shepherdstown, first laughed it off as mischievous neighbours. Then he blessed the house and said Mass.

Fall 1797. Fr. Demetrius Gallitzin arrived, a Russian prince turned priest. He stayed about three months. He had come, he later wrote, to investigate facts "which I could not prevail upon myself to believe; but I was soon converted to a full belief of them. No lawyer in a court of justice did ever examine witnesses more strictly than I did all those I could procure." With Cahill he performed an exorcism. According to one account, the disturbances then stopped. His report to Bishop John Carroll is lost.

A gentler phase followed. A disembodied voice taught Catholic doctrine, led prayers and gave warnings. Later retellings add a blinding white light at night and a barefoot, ragged young man. Finotti wrote that the voice continued to speak about 17 years. The Livingstons converted. In 1802 about 34 or 35 acres were deeded to the Church. The land became Priest's Field.

Not everyone believed. In 1798 the Potomak Guardian blamed Mary Ann Livingston "or some other knavish hussies". She answered on 12 September 1798 that "the trouble still remains in the Livingston family, at times, in a greater or less degree, in despite of Priestly art." Anastasia McSherry's sons disputed their mother's accounts. Jon Erik Gilot, archives director for the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, doubts that Livingston never learned the stranger's name. "I don't believe it." A ground-penetrating radar survey of the marked Stranger's grave found no human remains. Modern suggestions range from a long running prank to mental illness. None of these explanations can be proven at this distance.

Joseph M. Finotti gathered the Catholic testimony in 1879. Michael Kishbucher's 2023 book calls it America's First Poltergeist. Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World compared it to Skinwalker Ranch. Gallitzin became the Apostle of the Alleghenies and was declared Servant of God in 2005. Rev. Alfred E. Smith called it the truest ghost story ever told. A 2019 historical marker now stands in Middleway, where residents are still nicknamed Clippers.