Here’s the latest from the crossroads of faith, media & culture: 10/30/23

True terror? A filmmaker, author, and screenplay consultant, Stan D. Williams is known for his book The Moral Premise: Harnessing Virtue and Vice for Box Office Success defining a clear sense of morality as an essential ingredient in developing stories that will not only be financially successful but will stand the test of time. Should Wizard Clip Haunting, his new novel based on an actual early American ghostly legend be adapted to film, an opening around Halloween would seem appropriate.

JWK: I understand your novel is actually based on an actual legend. Can you tell me about it?

Stan D. Williams: The Wizard Clip haunted house affair of 1794-1797 in what was then Smithfield, Virginia (today Middleway, West Virginia) is cited as the best documented ghost story in American history. A simple Internet search will reveal hundreds of references, many reaching back to the 1800s.  My book, Wizard Clip Haunting, is a historical fiction novel that attempts to weave together the many well-documented and disturbing events and exorcism into a cogent, entertaining and informative tale.

The novel chronicles the historic, tragic and adventurous lives of four characters. The first is the focus of our story, Adam Livingston, an innovative Pennsylvania flax farmer vexed from early childhood with vague premonitions of tragedies. Adam’s first wife, Esther, was a devout Presbyterian who cared for her family and used her talent at the loom to help clothe the poor. She believed their good but meager life was God’s blessing. But, although Adam deeply loved Esther, he was pretty sure any success they had was due to his hard work.

Suddenly, during the harvest, Esther mysteriously dies and Adam loses their small farm. Thereafter, he and his two children migrate to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia where he acquires a much larger farm with great potential – but tragedy strikes when he rebukes Virginia’s culture of slavery. A couple years later, when Adam remarries, he takes revenge on God for Esther’s death and marries a woman who hates all religion; the results are unwelcomed and tragic.

Woven into Livingston’s story is that of Denis Cahill, who dodges death in Ireland, becomes a renegade Capuchin priest, lives through the catastrophic New Orleans Fire of 1788, and after, sails past storms and pirates into the young United States in search of his calling, a destiny he could never have planned.

The third character, who historically has come to be known as the Wizard Clip, or the Clipping Wizard, is an impatient and murderous Babylonian spirit who is tasked with Livingston’s and Cahill’s downfall by edging them closer and closer to the gates of hell.

The fourth character is the cursed plot of land that absorbs the blood of a murder…and serves as the stage for the Wizard’s hauntings. After lying fallow for over a hundred years, the land finally finds redemption as the Priest Field Pastoral Retreat Center in Middleway, West Virginia, which today you can visit.

At the halfway mark in the book, what in Narrative Theory is called the Moment of Grace, 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 Catholic 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, china flies off shelves, logs fly from the fire to orbit the gathering room, crops fail, animals die in bizarre ways and most peculiar, the sounds of scissors and the physical clipping of crescent moon shapes from anything made from flax linen.

Adam soon realizes 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 fail 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 when a Catholic priest appears all hell breaks loose. For reasons they don’t fully understand, the Livingstons and friends are catapulted along to a final and cataclysmic conclusion.

JWK: What drew you to this story?

SDW: I’m a professional story consultant and filmmaker. Since 2006 when my Hollywood story-structure book (The Moral Premise) was released, I’ve worked for writers and producers in the film industry – and a few novelists – helping their stories connect with audiences. On the side, I also produce and distribute Catholic apologetic media. In 2012 a Filipino man living in Australia, knowing my work, called me and pitched the Wizard Clip story to me as a film idea. I didn’t have the money to make the movie, so I wrote a screenplay. It got some interest in Los Angeles but no funding for the movie.

In 2014 I got curious about one of the character’s disposition after the exorcism, Fr. Denis Cahill. Research trips to New Orleans, Pittsburgh, West Virginia and Maryland convinced me that the story was not a movie but a novel, a long one. It had all the elements of a major Hollywood movie but it was deeply imbedded in American history and involved a number of historical characters from America’s founding. It was just too interesting to pass up.

JWK: Do you believe the haunting was real?

SDW: I completely believe the hauntings were real for a number of well-documented reasons. Middleway, West Virginia today still celebrates the hauntings with badges on the front of the homes that existed at the time depicting the disturbances. The badges depict a pair of scissors, a crescent moon and a magician in a top hat that stands in for the clipping demon. The town is nicknamed “Clip.” There are thirty-some versions of the story from various perspectives with basically the same record of events; some are eye-witnesses.

Four Catholic priests investigated the events, including America’s first bishop, Rev. John Carroll…All the priests were initially skeptical. Fr. Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin was sent by Carroll to investigate. Gallitzin later wrote “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.”

And then there’s a existence today of Priest Field Pastoral Retreat Center which sits on the 35 acres of land given to the local Catholic society by the former agnostic Adam Livingston in appreciation for what Fr. Denis Cahill and Fr. Gallitzin did in ridding his property of the demon.

JWK: What’s the message you hope readers take from the story?

SDW: The main message behind the true story of the events is the authority in human relationships and natural law. Based on my book The Moral Premise, all success stories must deal with a conflict of values – a vice versus an opposing virtue – that is true to natural law principles. Thus, every character in Wizard Clip Haunting is challenged to acknowledge and live by the authority of Natural Law. Some do, some don’t. Natural consequences follow.

The story also underscores the validity of the Catholic priesthood, the Mass and the Sacraments – even when priests are not in a perfect state of grace.

Lastly, and perhaps most obviously, the original story and the novel underscore the reality of the demonic world with cautions to take evil seriously and project one’s life with truth.

JWK: Do you see a movie here?

SDW: The story came to me originally as a movie and I wrote a screenplay – but as the Hollywood adage goes: “Write the book first…and sell a million copies.”  I would love to see a movie made.

JWK: Any ideas for casting or who you’d like to see direct?

SDW: I have not thought of casting. By the time this might get made potential actors would be too old and new actors would be on the market. I would direct, of course. LOL!
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All the Light We Cannot See drops on Netflix this Thursday (11/2). My review follows the trailer.

John W. Kennedy is a writer, producer and media development consultant specializing in television and movie projects that uphold positive timeless values, including trust in God.