The Brownstown Giant

Happy Giant Skeleton Saturday! Today’s tale of a giant skeleton unearthed in West Virginia is kind of a puzzler for me, so maybe there’s someone out there much more knowledgeable than me who can clear things up!  Anyway…

I found this story about Harry Berry finding a 14 foot skeleton near Brownstown, West Virginia. He was near the wharf landing and recent flood damage had partially unearthed the skeletal remains of an ‘evident Indian’ with a pipe and a tomahawk by his side. Remarkably, the skeleton was well-preserved. Although I’ve posted a photo of the article, you can see the article for yourself in the April 5, 1899 edition of the Wheeling Register, available for FREE at Chronicling America. 

The mystery comes in as I was trying to do some additional research. I started by trying to confirm exactly where Brownstown is located. I found a Brownstown, which used to be located in Cabell County along the Ohio River. Today it is part of Huntington. I also found out that Marmet, located in Kanawha County and along the Kanawha River USED to go  by the name of Brownstown and was absolutely still known under that name the article above was published.

But…I found several  sources that REALLY threw me for a loop. Apparently, a near-identical article to this one was published in the April 5, 1933 edition of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette! Among the minor changes in the article’s format, the name of the town changes from Brownstown to Browntown (No ‘S’). And, several websites that shared this version have noted that Browntown is actually located in Barbour County, WV. There is a Brownton located in Barbour County, and it is located very close to the Tygart River. However, the fact that the article was post-dated 34 years later makes me really wonder if that information is inaccurate as well. 

Okay, so things get even WEIRDER!!  I’ve also found several references, including a mention allegedly from the History of the Great Kanawha Valley that in Brownstown, WV, located ten miles from Charleston at Lens Creek (so the Marmet location would be correct) a GIANT skeleton as well as a  deformed DWARF skeleton were unearthed together! (Source: Opera News) However, another source (Anomaly Info) states that this information allegedly came from the book, A History of Fayette County, but was a 2014 hoax posted by the website, the Nephilim Chronicles. So yeah, maybe I should have just left this one alone, but I love a good mystery! 

If you have any information that can help clear up this mystery, I’d love for you to chime in. Let me know in the comments below, or find me over on Theresa’s Haunted History Facebook. Thank you and as always, stay spooky!