Qualla: Booger Hole, West Virginia

Booger Hole, West Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The name comes first. There is no way to talk about this place without acknowledging that it is, indisputably, called Booger Hole. The hollow lies in the Rush Fork Valley of northern Clay County, West Virginia, a few miles from the slightly larger community of Ivydale. The name was in use long before the events that gave it its modern reputation - in local Appalachian English, a booger is the boogeyman, the formless dread that lives in the woods and the dark. The hollow had the name on county maps and in newspaper records before 1917. Then 1917 arrived, and Booger Hole earned its name a second time, in ways that residents could not have predicted and could not, despite their best efforts, fully explain.

Booger Hole, West Virginia: Where the Hollow Is

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Booger Hole sits in the Rush Fork drainage of Big Otter Creek, in the rolling hills of northern Clay County. The road through the hollow climbs up out of the Rush Fork bottom and into a series of side hollows where farms were carved out of the woods in the nineteenth century. The...

Booger Hole, West Virginia: The Year of the Murders

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1917 a series of unexplained killings struck the community. Contemporary press accounts, including a feature in the regional papers titled Mysteries of Booger Hole, reported about a dozen homicides within a relatively short period. Victims included men and women, neighbors and...

Booger Hole, West Virginia: What People Believe

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Local folklore eventually attached the violence of 1917 to the name Booger Hole, suggesting that the boogeyman of the woods had been responsible. The historical record is clear, however, that the community already had the name before the killings - the spirits, if you wanted to i...

Booger Hole, West Virginia: Driving the Hollow

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

There is no Booger Hole signage. There is no historical marker. The hollow is reached by driving northeast from the small village of Ivydale on a series of county roads that climb into the Rush Fork drainage. Farmhouses and small cabins sit at irregular intervals along the road. ...