This story was told to me by my mother, and was also told to me by my best friend’s mother. There are a lot of witnesses to this story, and most of them grew up on Paddle Creek. Some people believe Paddle Creek to be haunted. At night you could hear screaming in the woods. My mother told me it sounded like a woman screaming and would raise the hair on the back of your neck, so they called it the “Screaming Thing”.
Some people believed it to be an old crazy lady that lived down the road from my best friend’s house. Some believed it to be a big cat at one time, but there is no such cat in these parts. The funny thing is that you could hear it on one side of the woods than a few seconds later on the other side. There is no old lady or big cat that fast, and some believed it to be a ghost of some kind. Some people would see black figures at the time of the screaming.
My mother was coming home from church one night when all at once a black figure sailed out from a tree, over her head, and went over a hillside. Then the screaming started, mother hurried home. People have tried to chase it down, but every time they would find nothing, hunters would wait for it, just to come home empty-handed. No one can catch it, and no one knew what it was.
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Honestly, my first thought would be that there were TWO big cats calling to each other, explaining why the sound was heard on opposite ends within moments. There are many places where the DNR will SWEAR that there are no such cats left, but locals are adamant that they’ve been seen and heard in recent years.
However, I also wonder if perhaps there may be some ties to the legend of the BeanSidhe, or banshee. I’m not sure exactly where this location is at, but much of West Virginia has a strong Irish heritage.