Spook Hollow Farm

West Virginia folklore is FULL of ghost stories involving murdered peddlers, killed for the money they carried on them as they traveled the state, selling their wares to every holler and village they came across. Ruth Ann Musick, popular folklorist and author, collected tons of these tales, which she published in books such as The Tale-Tell Lilac Bush and Coffin Hollow. But, in most cases the hauntings associated with these violent crimes involves people seeing the ghost of the murdered peddler himself. I recently came across a story where the peddler surprisingly seems to be resting in peace—and those accused of the murder are the ones haunting the area!

On February 11, 1975, The Charleston Daily Mail ran an interesting piece by columnist, Adrian Gwin. The title of the piece was “Farming’s Good, But…It’s SPOOOOOKY at Spook Hollow!”

That winter, Mr. Gwin visited the W.D. Brannan family at their farm, located on Pigeon Run in Amma, WV. Mr. Brannan, along with his wife Deloris and 13 year old son, Jerry, welcomed Mr. Gwin to the modern, working farm known as Spook Hollow Farm. According to the article, W.D. Brannan spent 35 years working at Columbia Gas in Charleston, WV. Around 1955, he bought the farm in Amma and when he retired, made it his family’s home base. While traveling extensively in their RV, the Brannans always returned to Spook Hollow where they worked diligently, growing and canning produce and raising Angus cattle. 

The family claims that they’ve had no run-ins with ghosts, spooks, or haints at the farm, so just how exactly did Spook Hollow become Spook Hollow??

According to legend, back in the days of the early pioneers to the area, a French peddler was robbed and murdered. Although it was later revealed that two white guys were the culprits, that didn’t stop the residents from accusing two young Native Americans. They caught the two, and brought them to an old white oak tree to be hanged.  As the ghost story goes, when the rain falls gently, and the wind blows through the trees, you can stand beside the stump of that former grand oak tree and hear the two hanged Native Americas moaning, “Don’t doooo it!”

Interestingly, although the family has never encountered the ghosts of the murdered Indians, upon leaving the family for the evening and stopping to get a closer look at the stump in the gentle rain, got quite the shock! Feeling a noose slide around his neck, he panicked…but only for a moment. It was then he realized it was nothing more than an errant tree branch that had gotten caught under his chin. A simple enough explanation…but perhaps a friendly little reminder from the spirits to remember their story.