In the winter of 1923, two brothers vanished from their remote homestead near Welch, West Virginia, and the official explanation was that they had left voluntarily, perhaps fleeing some undisclosed trouble. Nearly four decades later, a geology student stumbled upon a hidden cave containing their mummified remains and a set of disturbing journals that told a far darker story. The Caldwell brothers, Elias and Thomas, ran a successful timber business in McDow County and were known as private, educated, and modern-minded men who kept largely to themselves. They had inherited their father’s logging operation, expanded it significantly by 1920, and employed nearly 30 men before their sudden disappearance in the harsh winter of 1923.
Sheriff Martin Davis’s initial report noted no signs of struggle at the property, with two empty dinner plates on the kitchen table and the brothers’ automobile still in the carriage house. A nearby neighbor reported hearing an unusual rhythmic sound, like metal dragging over stone, coming from the direction of the Caldwell property on the night of January 31st. The sheriff dismissed the account as the imagination of an elderly woman living alone in an isolated area. With no trace of the brothers and no clear motive, the case was abandoned by spring.
It was not until June 15, 1962, that Martin Shelby, a 22-year-old geology student from Marshall University, discovered a small, concealed opening about half a mile from the old Caldwell property while conducting survey work. Inside a roughly 12-foot-diameter chamber, Shelby found two sets of partially mummified human remains lying side by side on crude wooden platforms. Beside each body was a tin box containing a pocket watch, a knife, a ring, and a small notebook. On the wall, someone had scratched a simple message: “We remain as one.
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The pocket watch bore an inscription to Thomas Caldwell from his father, dated 1910, and the rings were later identified by a former neighbor as matching those worn by the brothers. The journals found with the bodies contained entries spanning roughly three weeks in 1923, describing a growing obsession with a scraping sound emanating from the walls of their home. The early entries were mundane records of business and daily life. By early February, the brothers were writing about a persistent sound that only one of them initially heard.
Their handwriting deteriorated as the entries became more fragmented. By February 14th, both acknowledged hearing the sound, and described it as something deliberate. Their final entries, dated February 18th, spoke of a pact. Thomas wrote, “We have made our decision,” and Elias wrote, “The pact is made,” followed by a single phrase: “We will remain as one.
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A full autopsy in July 1962 confirmed both men had died after ingesting a lethal combination of laudanum and strychnine, a painful death that induced violent muscle spasms. The cups used to administer the poison were found beside each body, suggesting suicide. Detective William Gardner, who had grown up in McDow County, was troubled by inconsistencies. No mention of digging the cave appeared in either journal, and the cave itself would have taken considerable time to excavate.
Handwriting analysis raised further doubts. While the earlier journal entries matched known samples of the brothers’ writing, the final entries showed subtle differences and appeared to be imitations executed by someone attempting to mimic their style. In late August 1962, investigators discovered a hidden recess behind a loose section of rock wall in the chamber. Inside, they found mining tools, lanterns, and a third notebook.
The handwriting matched neither brother. Its entries, dated from December 1922 to February 1923, described a plan involving psychological manipulation and repeated references to wrongs committed against the author’s family. The unknown author described watching the Caldwell house, planning an approach, and preparing an underground chamber for an unidentified purpose. A December 30th entry noted, “The acoustics in their cellar are ideal.
The sound travels through the old stone foundation and resonates through the wooden floors. They will hear it throughout the house, though they’ll never find the source. ”
A February 20th, 1923 entry read: “The sound that tormented them in their final hours was nothing but a metal pipe dragged across their cellar ceiling as I walked the floors above. How easily the mind can be broken when isolated and afraid.
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It was former employee Ellenora Blackburn who identified the handwriting as that of Vernon Hulkcom, the brothers’ foreman who had reported them missing. The discovery transformed the case from apparent suicide to murder, though Hulkcom had died in 1957, meaning no charges could be filed. Hulkcom’s sister, Meredith Hulkcom Peters, explained that their grandfather, Samuel Hulkcom, had been August Caldwell’s business partner. When Samuel died in a logging accident in 1880, the property was transferred to August Caldwell alone, leaving the Hulkcom family with nothing.
A lawsuit contesting the transfer was unsuccessful, in part because a fire had destroyed certain documents in the county clerk’s office. Vernon Hulkcom had been hired as a common laborer in 1915, and by 1920 had risen to foreman. According to Meredith, her brother believed he was being denied what should have been partly his family’s birthright, and his comments about “justice delayed” were made only after he had been drinking. The case was officially closed in October 1962 with the conclusion that Hulkcom had carefully planned the murders, using psychological torture to destabilize the brothers before poisoning them and staging an elaborate suicide scenario.
The remains of Elias and Thomas Caldwell were laid to rest in Welch Cemetery. Questions remained, however, many of them centered on whether Hulkcom had acted alone. Ellenora Blackburn insisted he was not capable of that kind of elaborate scheme, noting that Hulkcom had an older sister, Catherine, who was considered brilliant but unstable. Catherine had left the county around 1900, but Blackburn suggested she occasionally returned and that Hulkcom would disappear for days without explanation.
Historical research revealed that Catherine Hulkcom, born in 1875, was a gifted student who traveled to Europe in 1894, spending time in Vienna, Berlin, and Paris—cities at the forefront of psychological and acoustic sciences at the time. After returning to the United States, she briefly worked at Johns Hopkins University researching the effects of sound on human physiology before being dismissed for unauthorized experimental protocols. A few years after the brothers’ deaths, a woman using the alias C. Harper rented a boarding house room in Charleston from 1926 to 1935.
A hidden space discovered during renovations in 1982 contained newspaper clippings about the Caldwell disappearance, property maps, plans for an underground chamber matching the cave’s dimensions, and notebooks filled with detailed notes on acoustic phenomena and their psychological effects. In 2020, a collection of letters between Vernon and Catherine Hulkcom spanning 1920 to 1925 was donated to the state historical society. One letter, dated December 12th, 1922, contained a passage that reignited public interest in the case. Vernon wrote about a device he had received from Catherine, described as ingenious and far more sophisticated than he had imagined possible.
He noted that even knowing what caused the sound, it still chilled him, and asked, “Are you certain this is the only way? ”
The letter was authenticated by handwriting experts and provided the strongest evidence yet of a conspiracy between the siblings. Some researchers have suggested the hidden third journal itself may have been part of Catherine’s design—a constructed narrative intended to outlive its subjects. The case remains officially closed, with the responsible party declared deceased.
The cave was sealed in 1963, and most original documents were later lost or degraded. The Caldwell property sits overgrown and largely avoided by locals, some of whom still report hearing strange metallic sounds in the wind.