“It’s been years since I’ve been here,” Tompos said as he looked around Nessly Chapel Cemetery off state Route 2 near the backwaters. “My memory is that there were more markers here, but now I look around and realise that this is what it was.

Tompos made the stroll through the cemetery remembering when, in 1969, a “witchcraft trial” was held in Hancock County.

“This cemetery was said to be haunted with people seeing strange lights around“, Tompos said. “It had a reputation of lights floating off the ground but those were just the rumors of the time.”

At the age of 22, Tompos was just nine months into his new job as a Hancock County Court bailiff when he was assigned to work a civil case.

“It was a real eye opening experience,” Tompos said.

That case involved Frank A. Daminger Jr. who sued 10 of his Newell neighbors because they accused him of being a “male witch who used his powers to seduce young girls,” according to court records.

Some of the events, whether it was the alleged sexual rendezvous or occult practices, happened at Nessly Chapel cemetery.

During the first day of the trial on November 3, 1969, Tompos was there as a 12 man Hancock County circuit court jury made a graveyard visit to the weathered tombstone where Daminger was alleged to have practiced witchcraft and a “Black Mass” ceremony.

The group made a countersuit, claiming that Daminger did practice and did give presentations of his supernatural powers in the Black Mass ceremony in the cemetery.

“It was said that he levitated wine bottles and did all these things,” Tompos said. “But as I recall, the whole thing ended up being more noise than effect. When the trial first started, however, we had no idea where it was going to go.

Tompos said Daminger was a “ladies man” and said personal relationships developed between Daminger and some of the women involved.

“They came up here to the cemetery as a meeting place,” Tompos said. “I think the relationships were found out and the husbands believed the ladies about Daminger putting a spell on them.

Daminger had a wife and two children at the time and worked training thoroughbred horses.

Tompos recalled that Daminger felt like he was under attack by those named in the lawsuit.

“They were burning candles, walking around in sheets, saying incantations and bothering him until he had enough.

The result was a trial in which Daminger looked to clear his name and the defendants wanted to prove that Daminger admitted to possessing supernatural powers.

“We played to a packed house,” Tompos said. “Life Magazine, Time Magazine, all the Pittsburgh papers were here. It was a very, very big thing.”

The man in charge was Hancock County Circuit Court Judge Ralph Pryor.

“Judge Pryor was one of the best judges I’ve ever worked with,” Tompos said.

A World War II veteran, Pryor was a gunner and was shot down during his last mission leaving him with a wounded leg, according to Tompos.

“He was highly intelligent and well spoken,” Tompos said. “The judge skillfully got through what I considered a difficult minefield of different problems and different personalities. He didn’t let it get out of hand.”

Despite the media attention, the judge was not without humor during the course of the trial, Tompos remembers.

“One of the funniest things is when we were just starting the trial,” Tompos said. “Judge Pryor joked with me and said if this was a criminal court case, we’d have to rent out the football field just over the hill from the courthouse to have a burning at the stake under old West Virginia law.”

The judge also realized that for everyone involved, reputations were going to be sullied,” Tompos said. “He said that if the trial went on, no one’s reputation would come through unscathed.”

The judge was successful in guiding the case to a logical conclusion in 1969, Tompos said. The trial was over by day two.

But walking around the cemetery on a clear day in 2007, Tompos remembered the time with equal clarity when he was in the middle of a once- in-a-lifetime event.

“When I was assigned the case just nine months after starting my new job, I knew that it would probably be the most prominent and well-known case I’d ever be part of,” Tompos said. “And after 38 years, it still is.”

The final part of this series will take a look at how the news media covered the trial, the reactions from the community, and how the Hancock County “witchcraft trial” of 1969 came to an end.