Publisher's Synopsis
An epic historical tale based on documented supernatural events in 18th century Virginia from a master storyteller.
The Wizard Clip Haunting is a fictional novel of the 1797 well-documented historic events in what is currently Middleway, West Virginia, but was then Smithfield, Virginia. Adam Livingston, an innovative flax farmer vexed from early childhood with premonitions that predict tragedies, is at the center of the tale. When his first wife dies, he takes revenge on God by remarrying a woman who hates all religion. A mysterious sojourner lodges at the Livingston's home and in the middle of the night realizes he's going to die. He asks his hosts to fetch a Catholic priest to hear his confession and give him last rites. But the Livingstons refuse, having promised themselves in keeping with the times, that no priest would ever cross the threshold of their house. Before the stranger dies he curses the Livingstons, their house and farm. Immediately the haunts begin: strange noises, black vapor, wraiths of horses and wagons, house tremors, and most peculiar the clipping of crescent moon shapes from anything made from flax linen. They soon realize that the noises and the clippings are not practical jokes put upon them by neighbors, but by a demon their young daughter, Eve calls "The Wizard." When Adam finally decides to fight fire-with-fire, he recruits a variety of ministers to come to the house and exorcise it. But all fails, and the farm becomes the curiosity of the region with folks just dropping by with both tragic and comedic results. The haunts escalate, especially when a minister shows up, and all hell literally breaks loose when a Catholic priest appears, resulting in death and destruction as the Livingston's and friends are catapulted along to a final, cataclysmic conclusion.
The story is narrated by the real Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin, a former Russian prince and the first Catholic priest ordained in the United States. Gallitzin investigated the original events and wrote to a friend, "After three months of investigation, I was soon converted to a full belief of them. No lawyer in a court of justice did more than I, nor procured more than your unworthy servant." The story Gallitzin tells is not one but four, woven into a colorful, and at times, tragic tapestry of American history along with real and fictional characters. The first story involves a 35-acre plot of land that becomes the site of a deranged murder, a forged land deed, and a curse that results in its ownership being contested for a 100 years., today, the plot of land fulfills Adam Livingston's wish when he gifted it for the care and feeding of a Catholic priest for benefits received. The second story involves Adam Livingston and his family who are forced to deal not only with the hauntings, but their own imperfections that lead to disastrous and lethal consequences. The third story is that of a heroic but renegade priest, Fr. Denis Cahill. Having escaped anti-Catholic Ireland and finding his way to America by a circuitous route, the rebel cleric falls out with America's first bishop John Carroll, in part over the haunting events at Livingston's farm. But the residual anti-cleric sentiment left from England's penal laws, bring him often close to death, to say nothing of a particularly attractive Irish siren, Leticia. The fourth story is the source of the now famous hauntings, a persistent demonic poltergeist with a real name. Commonly known as the Clipping Wizard for its proclivity of cutting crescent moons from cloth, it does not hesitate to lash out with vengeance and death when its existence is threatened, and threatened it is.
