Lou’s View 10/21

By Lou Bernard

I’ve been a paranormal investigator for a while now. If there’s a story of ghosts, monsters in the forest, or some unexplained event, I’m generally interested. I sort of collect a lot of these stories from Clinton County. But I’m not the first—There have been other people before me who were into this.
Isaac Gaines, for one.

Gaines was born to a family mostly consisting of Underground Railroad refugees; he was listed as half African-American on paperwork. He lived up in Keating Township during the 1800s. (Yes, I am aware that there are two Keating Townships, East and West. This has always seemed pointless to me, what with a population of maybe seven people between them.) Isaac Gaines had the reputation of being the go-to guy to solve paranormal problems, though they didn’t exactly phrase it that way back then. He became known as Loop Hill Ike.

Loop Hill Ike was a real guy, who lived up there, though his reputation became the stuff of legend. He was drafted to serve in the Civil War, but never did. When Captain Wilson Kress came to recruit him, Ike’s solution was to shoot Kress in the leg and go hide in the woods for a while until it all blew over. Twenty years later, the two men bumped into each other in a Lock Haven railroad station, shook hands, and called it good.

According to the legends, Ike was called in to deal with a lot of paranormal problems. (These were no issue for him. The Civil War, apparently, was. Gotta know your comfort zone.) In one story, during a dance held in Keating Township, the sound of heavy footsteps came into the room, as if someone invisible was wearing boots. The unseen boots began to dance, and Bud, the violin player, claimed he could see the ghost, and it was a local man named Bob, who had been murdered by his brother.

Bud continued to play, but tired out eventually. He called to Ike, who said he couldn’t play for someone he couldn’t see. So Ike found a plant called “Devil’s Dude,” and I have to assume that’s not the name they’d use in the wildflower guides. He placed it in his hat, extinguished the candles, and then he could see the ghost. He took the violin, played faster and faster, until Bob’s ghost danced so hard he fell through the floor.
Ike even tuned the fiddle afterward.

Loop Hill Ike had an associate, sort of, the ghost of a murdered woman in the swamps of present-day North Bend. She was known as the Swamp Angel. She would, upon request, come and help with your problems, and in several stories, Ike would consult with her. In one old legend, Loop Hill Ike went to the Swamp Angel for advice on how to lift a curse from a pregnant mother and her unborn baby. It worked; both the mother and baby were doing fine. (I’m sure they’re dead now, though. This was a hundred and fifty years ago.)

Loop Hill Ike was the guy you called when you had problems with the Giwoggle, which today is the official monster of Clinton County. Described as having the body of a wolf, claws of a bird, and feet of a horse, the Giwoggle was often conjured up by a witch. Local farmers would find their cows nervous, crops damaged, and Giwoggle tracks everywhere. In one story, a farmer found his cows attempting to smoke a piece of cornstalk, which is simultaneously amusing and terrifying.

So they’d call Ike. And he’d track down the witch and put a stop to the problem, often by casting a spell and then burning down her cabin. There’s a certain efficiency to his methods in these stories.

Loop Hill Ike is buried in the Furst-McGonigal Cemetery near the Clearfield border, but the stories remain. I kind of hope someone tells the same kind of story about me one day. “Once, when Lou was asked to help with an ancient curse…..”