JOURNEY DOWN
LEESON RUN
PART -3 of 3
Let me begin with a correction regarding last week’s article…I am so pleased to announce that Mrs. Bessie Poling, wife of James W. Poling is still very much alive. I have never been so happy to be misinformed. I apologize for the error, Bessie. I hope you will be with us for many more wonderful years. I would like to thank her granddaughter, Misty, for letting me know this. Mrs. Poling is one of the sweetest and kindest ladies you will ever meet. We are so blessed to still have her around.
I have since received a few photos from the Leeson Run area that I wanted to share with you. The first one is the old log barn that used to stand behind the old Hoalcraft house. It has been gone for many years. Behind the barn was a wonderful stand of butternut trees that I loved to go and gather from.
The old barn behind the Hoalcraft house.
The next photo is the entrance to Burl Nutter’s farm off Leeson Run.
Entrance to the Burl and Edna Nutter Farm
This photo is of the old Flanagan house. It is no longer standing. It is officially Cabin Run, but I am including it because it is located at the intersection of Leeson Run and Cabin Run. There were many church meetings held at this house as well as others. It was a time when churches were a distance away and families would alternate homes in which to conduct their services. My father remembered that he and the other children would sit on the stairs or in a corner of whichever house at which they were in and knew they were expected to be very quiet and respectful.
The old Flanagan house.
Now for the tall tales and scary stories regarding Leeson Run…
Legend has it that there is the sound of a small child crying at the Hoalcraft house where the baby was killed when the open window came down on its head. (I do not know the name of the family that was living there at the time.) My brother and sister had to walk past the house each time they walked to school and returned home from school. My sister, Jane Richards Doak, was scared to death to go by it when she was attending first grade at the Leeson Run School. Our older brother, Ray Richards Jr. would always take her by the hand, and they would run as quickly as he could, encouraging her little legs to give their best each and every time they went past it. To this day, many folks from that area remark that there is an odd air surrounding the site. I’ll leave the debate to those who choose to comment on it.
Next, there is quite a story that surrounds the old Smith house, located next door to the Porter Reese house, with an old oil well between the two. I have been inside it many times during my own youth. It was both scary and intimidating. The house was a 2-story structure, built of square logs. It had been setting down the small grade in a beautiful meadow since the 1800s.
My father, Ray Richards, lived there for several years as a small boy in the late 1920s. He said that he was never happier than the day they moved out of that house. He, among so many other “old-timers” in the area, stated that the door leading to the upstairs would never remain closed. When it was closed, he and his siblings would hear the door shortly after it was closed unlocking and gently creaking as it reopened. They could never find anyone near it at the time of the incident. It didn’t take long for them to decide to leave it open. As long as they did that, they never had a problem with the stairway door again. Except, of course, for the footsteps that were heard nearly every night going down those steep, narrow steps into the living room. They never found a way to resolve that issue. The unknown entity was said to also have a chain that he dragged behind him… Eerie stuff, to say the least.
The Old Smith House
The reason for the ghostly apparition was said to be the man who once lived there was alleged to have been murdered there and buried beneath the front porch. My father and his siblings always believed that the chain must have had something to do with the murder.
The identity of the murdered man was never determined for certain. You see, his head had been cut off and discarded in another location, possibly in a swampy area on or near the property. Some say it was found and later buried with his body at his final resting place. Others say it was never found.
I only know that my father was asked by his sickly older brother, Porter, to fetch him a cool drink of water from the well in the wee hours of the night, nearly every night. He said that he would go to the well as fast as his little four-year-old legs would carry him and return inside running so hard that he was spilling part of the water. He said that he was scared to death to be out there at that hour of the night because something felt unholy out there. Still, his brother did not like the water from the water pail that was in the kitchen because it was not cold enough. (Now that’s brotherly love, isn’t it.)
We never knew who the murdered man was or who murdered him. We must remember that times were hard and rough in the early 1800s in Doddridge County. Law was a precious commodity, strived for but not guaranteed.
That property was owned by the Porter and Cassie Reese heirs. After their death, and the death of their children, it was sold by an heir, disassembled by the purchasers, and was said to have been reassembled at another location.
I am left wondering, “Did the haunting spirit follow the house, or did it stay at the site of the horrible murder site?”
Until next time…
God Bless
Patricia Richards Harris, President
Doddridge County Historical Society