Dispatches: The Podcast of the Journal of the American Revolution

E277: HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: The Curse of the "Wizard Clip" with Brady J. Crytzer

·21 min·2 clips

Adam Livingston's wife finds all their clothes and bedsheets cut with half-moon shapes by an unseen force.

This episode of Dispatches is a Halloween special focusing on a supernatural story from the American Revolutionary era. Host Brady Kreitzer introduces the Wizard Clip, a haunting that occurred in 1794 in Western Virginia, now part of West Virginia. He sets the context by describing the frontier as a dangerous, culturally diverse place with superstitions from German, Scots-Irish, Native American, and other traditions. The story centers on Adam Livingston, a German Lutheran farmer, who takes in a sick traveler. The traveler, a Catholic, dies without receiving last rites, leading to eerie phenomena like candles blowing out and strange sounds. After the body is removed, the Livingstons experience the Wizard Clip, where their fabrics are mysteriously cut with half-moon shapes. The community names this phenomenon, and it spreads fear. Livingston seeks help from a German hex healer, but it fails. He then has a dream of a Catholic priest, leading him to seek Father Dennis Cahill and later Demetrius Augustine Galitzin. Galitzin, a Russian aristocrat who became a priest in America, performs Catholic rituals to cleanse the home. The haunting subsides but transforms into a consoling voice that guides the Livingstons to pray and convert to Catholicism. In 1802, Livingston donates 35 acres of his farm to the Catholic Church, known as the Priest's Field. The episode concludes with notes on Galitzin's potential sainthood and the historical significance of the site. Kreitzer emphasizes the frontier's lesser-known dark history and ties it to broader themes of religion and culture in early America.

As heard by us

A frontier deathbed leaves a family cabin caught between history, faith, and an unresolved haunting.

Dispatches turns a frontier deathbed into a compact, unsettling haunted-house story. Adam Livingston takes in a sick traveler who asks for a Catholic priest and dies before last rites can be given.

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Why you'd press play

You want frontier mystery where a sick traveler's death leaves candles blowing out, empty hoofbeats outside, and a cabin that will not settle.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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