By LOU BERNARD

For The Express

(Editor’s Note: This is the first in a week-long series of “haunted stories” written by local historian Lou Bernard just in time for Halloween scaring.)

– – –

I may have, a time or two before, written about the Giwoggle. A sort of artificially-conjured werewolf created by a witch, they were native to the Keating area in the 1800s. Stories about the Giwoggle go back to around 1870, when Keating resident Belle Confer told them to her grandson, who grew up to write them down in Keystone Folklore Quarterly magazine.

I heard from a lot of people recently who sent me links to stories of bipedal wolves being sighted in the Clearfield County area. Witnesses have, since August, spotted wolves that walk on two legs strolling around the forest, surprising people. Everyone thought to let me know about this because a bipedal wolf is a pretty good description of a Giwoggle.

But what it’s doing down Clearfield County, I don’t know. It’s here in Clinton County that the Giwoggle is the official monster.

Didn’t know that part, did you? I bet you didn’t even know that Clinton County had an official monster. Well, we do, since July 2011. The county commissioners, with some prompting from me, declared the Giwoggle the official monster of Clinton County. Why we don’t have T-shirts and coffee mugs with this thing on them, I’ll never know.

The Giwoggle was described as a kind of humanoid wolf, with dark eyes, and bird claws for arms, and horse hooves for feet. This was to confuse trackers, who could never be certain whether they were following a bird, a horse, or an actual Giwoggle. Brilliant, in a way.

They were, according to legend, conjured up by a witch. Apparently there were plenty of witches living up on Keating Mountain in the 1870s. If a witch was offended or angry, she’d cast a spell to create (or summon; the story’s not real clear on that part) a Giwoggle, which would then attack the local person or family the witch was angry at. The Giwoggles’ tactics ran more toward harassment than flat-out injury; they would damage crops, frighten livestock, and spread sickness.

There have been a few Giwoggle legends, all of them from up in the northern Clinton County area – East and West Keating. If you think about it, population-wise, the number of Giwoggles is probably equal to the number of people up there. If the Giwoggles ever decide to vote in local elections, we’re all going to be in trouble.

If you discovered you’d been selected as the target of a Giwoggle, however, there was always hope. This came in the form of Loop Hill Ike, whom legends describe as a sort of paranormal problem-solver. You could tell your problems to Ike, and he’d fix them. The thing I love about Loop Hill Ike was that he was very often a mix of magical mysticism and hard-headed practicality. Most of the legends involve him casting a spell to find the witch, and then grabbing his shotgun and burning her cabin to the ground.

I was absolutely mindblown when my friend Justin Houser of the Clinton County Genealogical Society informed me that Loop Hill Ike was a real guy. Isaac Gaines (his real name) was born in the West Keating area in June 30, 1837. Both of his grandfathers were escaped slaves who settled in the Keating area, and Isaac lived his whole life in the northern part of Clinton County. So Loop Hill Ike was a real guy. Is it possible that the Giwoggles could be real, too?

Isaac Gaines is buried in the Furst-McGonigal Cemetery with some of his family. And again I’m going to refer to the genealogical society here – I looked him up in their cemetery indexes, which we have at the library. The Furst-McGonigal Cemetery is in the books, but it’s technically over the border… in Clearfield County.

Which may explain all of the recent Giwoggle sightings over there. Loop Hill Ike is over in Clearfield County, buried forever. Who’s to say that’s not why there are Giwoggles there? Maybe they’re spending their time in the forest, lurking around the grave of their oldest enemy.