There is something fascinating and alluring about an old log house. A certain indescribable charm hovers over such a dwelling. The early settlers in North America built their homes in the New World with logs. The pioneers who pushed west from the Atlantic coast towards the Alleghenies and later towards the plains and the Rockies and then on to the Pacific coast lived in log houses and called these structures "home." Many log dwellings were built in Clinton County. A few of them still remain, but most of them have vanished.

Many people still living in the vicinity of Lock Haven like to talk of their younger days that were spent in these comfortable buildings. As was typical of the frontier, the first log dwellings in Clinton County were very crude affairs. The crude log cabin gradually developed into a neater and more serviceable log house. A second story was added; walls and ceilings were plastered, and cellars were dug. These homes were frequently built in two days' time at a "house raising." The log house became a very comfortable building in which to live. It was cool in the summertime and easily heated in wintertime. Many a fine legend has been told in these old log houses, and many a fine old legend that lives to this day has its scene laid in one of these snug and picturesque old dwellings that are surrounded in our minds by alluring and captivating imaginations.

In the late 1890's or the early years of the 1900's one of the last log houses in the vicinity of Youngdale (near the city of Lock Haven) was destroyed by fire. It was a two-story building, had a cellar and a cook stove and a "room" stove. One winter evening the engineer and fireman on a New York Central train approaching Youngdale noticed that this old log house was on fire. The engineer stopped his train, and the crew rushed in to extinguish the flames. They entered the burning building and found an old mother sleeping in a bed in a room on the first floor and found two of her grown sons sleeping soundly upstairs. The men and their mother were roused and pulled from the burning log house just before the roof caved in. They narrowly escaped being burned to death.

One of the sons who was rescued from the burning log house at Youngdale told me a weird story about that very dwelling which probably was handed down for over a hundred years. It is a story based on the supernatural, but it is different from most witch stories. After becoming familiar with the story one might almost wonder whether some person had spun a moral lesson.

My friend, who was almost sixty when he told me the story, a quarter of a century ago, has "followed the woods" all his life and grew up in an atmosphere saturated with superstitious beliefs. When he was a boy of thirteen or fourteen his grandmother used to tell him the story of Mr. Never Fear. The story was supposed to have taken place about 1850, when his grandmother was a girl just out of her teens, These were the glorious days before the Civil War, when large freight boats and swift packet boats carried freight and passengers up the West Branch Valley on the canals in summertime, and when the stage coaches kept a line of communication open with the east in the wintertime.

It was in the days before the large lumber camps opened in Central Pennsylvania, in the days when the settled portion of Clinton County was made up mainly of farmers. The story was as follows: Mr. Shadey was hotel keeper in the quaint little town that we know as McElhattan. Shadey was doing a prosperous business. He was born and raised in the log house already referred to and lived there with his mother all during his boyhood. His mother lived at the "old homestead" until the end of her life. She had saved a tidy sum during her lifetime, and this she hid before she died. It was commonly known that old Mrs. Shadey had money but after she passed away no one knew where it was.

Her son, the hotel keeper, became owner of her log house and its scant furnishings. The house was a comfortable one for that day, and Shadey hoped that he might rent it and turn it into a source of income. A number of tenants moved into the house and out again. No tenant stayed very long, none more than three weeks.  Each tenant came back to Shadey with the story that the house was “spooked,” “hanted (sic),” or visited by “evil spirits” “ghosts,” and “witches.” Gradually people in the community began to believe the corresponding stories of the various tenants of the old log house, and the old Shadey homestead came to be known as “hanted.”

The hotel keeper became exceedingly perplexed about the mysterious affair. He wanted to have the foulness of superstition removed from the home of his childhood, and he wanted to solve the mystery that darkened his mother's doorstep. He offered the “rent free” log house to any person who would live in it. This inducement failed to attract a long-term tenant. Coming to his wit's end, Mr. Shadley publicly announced that he would give a clear deed for the old homestead to anyone who would live in the log house.

Time dragged along, bringing no satisfactory results to the hotel keeper, until one winter afternoon a young man approached Shadey, announcing that he would like to accept the hotel keeper's offer and move into the log house. Mr. Shadey had been approached by many “brave” men who had moved into the log house and soon moved out again. He lost faith in the self-confidence of the applicant, and when this latest applicant appeared before him in the hotel on a winter afternoon, Shadey attempted to discourage him and intimated that he would not have enough grit to stick it out at the log house. The young man straightened, looked squarely at the hotel keeper, and said, "My name is Never Fear."

Shadey must have been impressed, for he gave the keys to the young man and sent him to the old homestead at Youngdale, a mile distant. Mr. Never Fear packed in some provisions and went to the log house immediately. The first evening was a cold one. The snow had fallen deeply the night before, but the young adventurer managed to get in some wood and water and make himself comfortable before darkness fell upon him. He prepared his supper by lamplight, and as he was about to cook his potatoes, meat, and dried beans, he heard a squeaking noise in back of him. He turned and noticed that the cellar door was opening slowly. Then out came a large black dog. It walked across the kitchen floor and disappeared as mysteriously as it had approached.

Mr. Never Fear held his nerve. He was not seized with terror, but he was puzzled. The next day was a beautiful one, and he spent it cutting wood and pondering over thoughts of the strange dog. The play of the sunshine on the snow-covered earth delighted him, but nothing could drive the thoughts of the phantom dog from his mind. On the second evening the new tenant again prepared his evening meal by lamplight. The wind was howling, and a storm was brewing.

After Mr. Never Fear had cooked his meal, he sat down to eat it alone. To eat a meal by lamplight in a lonely, haunted house on a black, cold, stormy winter evening all by one's self is not an attractive prospect. No sooner had Never Fear started to eat his meal than things began to happen. The cellar door opened slowly and creakily. A man emerged from the cellar-way, then another man. Then a coffin. Two men carrying a coffin!  And they walked across the kitchen and seemed to pay no attention whatsoever to the young man who had started to eat his supper. The young tenant must have been plucky, for he spoke up boldly, saying, "My name is Never Fear. What do you have in that coffin?" The two men carrying the coffin stopped, and the man at the head of the coffin said, "It was lucky for you that you spoke or you would have been in the coffin, too."

Both men turned and carried their coffin back to the cellar door. The man at the head of the coffin beckoned to Never Fear and told him to follow them. They went down the cellar steps, and Never Fear picked up his oil lamp and followed them. Down the creaky stairs into the black cellar they went on that stormy winter night. The men with the coffin went to one corner of the cellar. The man at the head of the coffin pointed to a large rock lying on the cellar floor. He said to Never Fear, "Move that rock and you may have anything that you find under it." Never Fear looked at the rock. It was of enormous size, probably weighing four hundred pounds. He shook his head and said that it was beyond his power to lift that rock. The man at the head of the coffin replied, "My body put it there. Your body can take it away."

Never Fear looked at the rock again, and then took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and pulled and tugged until he could feel the stone moving ever so little. He worked and worked and finally succeeded in rolling the stone to one side. He was surprised to find a pitcher filled with gold coins under the rock. He looked up but found that the two men and their coffin had disappeared.

Never Fear took the pitcher of money and climbed the stairs to the kitchen. He hid the pitcher and the money carefully and waited for new developments. For several days he turned over in his mind the mysterious doings of the first two nights. Nothing new occurred. He was not disturbed again by strange visitors. He then decided that he would go to McElhattan and speak to the hotel keeper. He met Shadey, reminded him of his bargain, and asked for a deed to the log house.

After slight hesitation Shadey procured the deed and the bargain was settled. Never Fear, with the deed now safely tucked in his pocket, urged Shadey to come to Youngdale to the log house, stating that he had something of interest to show the hotel keeper. The two men started for the old log house and upon their arrival Never Fear told Shadey about the dog and the men with the coffin and showed the hotel keeper the pitcher of gold coins. As soon as Shadey saw the pitcher of money he gasped and said, "That was my mother's pitcher. You can have the money but let me have the pitcher." The moral of the story probably was this: Old Mrs. Shadey was a wise woman and wished to leave her wealth only to a worthy person. She hid her money before her death and then reappeared on earth in various forms, so as to test men's courage. The faint-hearted were scared away by her, but the person with courage she guided to her treasure.

Stories with a similar plot were told time and again in Clinton County in private homes and in the lumber camps.