Category: Urban Legends

In Riverton, West Virginia, there’s a tale that’s been told about a ghost in a log cabin.

Back in the 19th century, just after the Civil War, peddlers were a common sight in Appalachia, traveling through small communities selling wares the local folk couldn’t easily get, like kitchen utensils, tools and the like. And these peddlers were a common sight in West Virginia, around the town of Riverton.

Sometime in the 1890s a young couple moved into an old log cabin that had been there since the first settlers arrived. From the moment they set foot in that house, they were greeted with a nightly symphony of sounds, such as footsteps and chains slowly dragging across the loft floor above their bedroom. They made it a few months before their nerves were completely shot and they moved out.

It wasn’t just the spooky sounds that caused them to leave, though.

During the time they were there, the man and his wife checked out the cabin very closely. That inspection turned up blood stains on the upstairs floor, behind a door. The two scrubbed and scrubbed that floor to get rid of those bloody marks until the floor was completely clean.

Just as soon as they put away the mop, the bucket and the scrub brush and returned to the spot behind the upstairs door, they saw that the bloodstain had returned, darker than it was before. No matter how many times they cleaned that spot or how hard they scrubbed, the stain always returned, worse than it was when they started.

One night the couple had several friends over to the cabin, all of whom wanted to hear those haints they’d been told about, dragging their chains around upstairs.

They weren’t disappointed.

Soon the sound of footsteps and chains began to echo in the little cabin. One of the guests, who was feeling mighty brave after a few sips of the good stuff, called out:

“Come on down here and show yourself, if you’re brave enough!”

At that, whatever it was in the loft stopped, then turned around and headed down the steps, completely invisible. Those folks heard it walk to the door and saw the doorknob turn all by itself. The footsteps and the chains then headed back upstairs to resume going back and forth on the attic floor.

The guests quickly excused themselves and headed home, and the couple left at first light the next morning.

What was this thing in the loft? Folks say that one of those peddlers had been waylaid years before as he left town with a pocketful of cash from the day’s sales, robbed, then taken to that cabin in chains. There he was coldly executed with a bullet between his eyes behind that door in the loft.

The cabin itself no longer exists; it was burned down a few years ago. The ghost of the peddler apparently left for parts unknown when that happened for there have been no reports of him, his footsteps or the sounds of those chains dragging the ground behind him since the fire.