In January of 1883, following a vast TB epidemic along the Shenandoah Valley, Walter Levitz ordered the construction of his new home in the rural valley. It was rumored that his generous income came from investment banking abroad, but no one in the surrounding area had actually gotten that information from its source. In fact, none of his new neighbors had ever made the acquaintance of Mr. Levitz. The construction of his home was promptly completed in the summer of 1885, and the neighbors eagerly awaited the arrival of their new neighbor, but he never arrived. The delivery of what appeared to be his furnishings only surrounded his eminent arrival in a greater mystique, but the arrival never came. Everyone slowly forgot about the mysterious circumstances. The phantom Mr. Levitz, along with his house, slowly vanished from the neighborhood conversations, to be replaced by troubled accounts of numerous livestock deaths and illnesses in the surrounding area. Over the next several months it seemed to the locals as if some plague of biblical proportions had descended on the local farms. There were accounts of docile creatures turning on each other and rabidly killing only for blood’s sake. This plague of madness devastated the local farm economy, but vanished soon after, and as suddenly as it had arrived. The local farmers did their best to reconstruct their lifestyles, but many had lost everything, and were forced to relocate. For those that remained in the area, there was a much greater danger looming in the near future.

With so many dead and dying livestock throughout the valley it was not long before nature applied itself to ridding the fields of the carcasses. Swarms of flies came down like rain to feed; flies like no man had ever seen before. Their only aim to consume and multiply, they, like a virus, devoured both the living and the dead. Every evening, when all sunlight had left the valley, these all-consuming swarms would feast, until one night they simply stopped coming. When the people came out of doors again they almost believed it all to have been a dream. Those who had been ranting about the apocalypse being at hand were struck dumb. After that no one spoke of the swarms, but quickly forgot, as if some possession had overtaken every mind in the land.

The swarms gone, life in the valley was once again concerned with reconstruction. But the people of the valley, like roots, were soon driven deeper into a darkness that they could not understand. The disappearance of members of the community, in fact, whole families at a time, became the dread and gossip all around. The local authorities warned of a maddened clan of kidnappers on the loose, but could do nothing to create any leads on the disappearances. Not a single body or drop of blood was anywhere to be found. The same people once again prayed for deliverance from apocalypse, and those who practiced the dark arts renounced their sorcery in the face of this new evil. Many claimed that this series of plagues was a holy punishment for mankind’s reliance on the metal age of machines. The people were divided and weak. Reports of ghost men, wandering the hills emerged. Someone claimed to have seen, face-to-face, one of those who had disappeared, moving through the woods south of town, his face a godless white. But the more frequent the disappearances became, the less the people would talk about them, until no one spoke of them at all. It was as if the townspeople believed that those ghostly creatures existed only if they were spoken of.

Only one man opposed the blatant evil, but even his name has been forgotten. All that is known of him is that he caused a great fire in the town around the turn of the century that killed many of the townspeople and destroyed six homes, one of which being Mr. Levitz’s. People still allude to this day to the great fire, and some talk about an earthquake that happened that very same night, but no one really believes that they were somehow related. They don’t believe that the ashes dancing in the air looked like swarms of flies being taken up to heaven. And they certainly don’t remember the screams that came from Levitz’s home as it shuddered and crumbled into blazing wreckage, especially not the man who bought Levitz’s lot at one-thirty-five Campbell Street. But you couldn’t really ask him if you tried, since his death six months later was ruled a suicide--since he ate himself to death. But then again, the world has changed immeasurably in eighty years, and a yuppie college town is no place for hauntings and legends.