Please welcome guest author Jason Burns. Burns is an award-winning storyteller and past president of the West Virginia Storytelling Guild. Since 2006, his work with the West Virginia Spectral Heritage Project has researched and recorded nearly 600 ghost, monster, and witch stories from around the state. A former journalist, Jason holds dual Master’s Degrees in Sociology/Anthropology and Educational leadership. A native of West Virginia, he now resides in Morgantown.

The 1770s were a turbulent time in western Virginia, and Morgantown was little more than settlements surrounded by two forts – Fort Kern and Fort Cobun. Set on the eastern bank of the Monongahela River in the shadow of Dorsey’s Knob, Morgantown was literally the boundary of colonial settlement.  The land to the west over the river was the Ohio country where legal settlements were prohibited by royal decree. Tension between the European settlers and Native Americans of the region escalated during this time, and threatened the tenuous peace.

Early in the spring of 1778, a large Native American raiding party came into Monongalia County bent on revenge.  Their murderous rage was the answer to events perpetrated by colonial settlers in the wake of Lord Dunmore’s War of 1774, which included the murder of native families in the surrounding counties.

At the time of the raid, a group of settlers were returning with an armed escort from planting corn about a mile from Fort Cobun.  The natives hid in the bushes on both sides of the road to the fort, and effectively ambushed the party on their return – firing into the group before they even saw the natives attacking. 

Amazingly, most of the settlers escaped harm- only two men (and one horse), who had been part of the armed escort, were casualties of the skirmish.  Jacob Miller was shot through the abdomen, tomahawked, and scalped as he died.  Another, John Woodfin, who was shot in the thigh, was trapped beneath the weight of his dying horse. 

As the rest of the party escaped back to Fort Cobun, the natives captured John Woodfin. To make an example of those who would attack and kill Native Americans, Woodfin was taken to the rocks on the top of Dorsey’s Knob.  There, overlooking Fort Cobun, the natives tied him to two slender poles that had been driven into the ground and tied together to form an “X”.  With each of his arms and legs tied fast to a separate end of a pole, John Woodfin was then systematically flayed from the top of his head all the way to the base of his neck.  His skinless flesh shone blood-red as a beacon of warning to the settlers in the fort below. 

John Woodfin died of his hideous wounds on the top of Dorsey’s Knob. His bloody, disheveled corpse remained in view until the settlers found it safe to retrieve his body for burial in the small cemetery near the fort. However- as a result of his tragic death, John Woodfin is anything but resting in peace. 

Throughout the centuries since his death, there have been many visitors to Dorsey’s Knob who have encountered John Woodfin – or as he is colloquially called, “the red-headed man”.  

It is said that over the last two hundred and forty-two years, the Red-Headed Man has approached many unsuspecting visitors to Dorsey’s Knob. Day or night, he’s been spotted by families on picnics, couples in cars, and hikers exploring the heights of the town’s tallest point. 

But John Woodfin is not a happy ghost – to encounter the red-headed man is an encounter with an angry, vengeful spirit.  His goal is to approach a living individual, attack them, and steal the skin from their face and head to replace that which he lost.  During the attacks, his veiny, unhealed flesh still glistens with the gore of his wounds. 

There is protection against the “red-headed man” however – visitors who know the story will carry a small, handmade “X” (basically two sticks tied with twine) on their windshields or in their pockets. Evidently, John Woodfin still fears the apparatus to which he was tied and tortured on – even in a miniature version.

His bloody end came as an unfortunate side-effect of living during a most violent time.  Of course, you can’t have a ghost story without someone dying. And if you ever find yourself on Dorsey’s Knob, carry with you the cross of sticks, and say a kind word for John Woodfin.  He’s clearly suffered enough. 

More articles on Native American attacks on early settlers:

In desperation she started to sing the old German hymn(Opens in a new browser tab)

I closed my eyes and bent my head to receive the stroke of the tomahawk(Opens in a new browser tab)

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