The tale of the mysterious “malevolent” creature, which was alleged to haunt the hills of western West Virginia, appeared to defy standard classifications for folklore collectors, according to a professor who popularized the tales of such creatures in the Mountain State in the 1960s. In 1965, the late Dr. Ruth Ann Musick published the tale of the White Thing and that of a handful of other “Strange Beasts,” as she termed them, in her book “The Tell-tale Lilac Bush and Other West Virginia Ghost Tales.” In 1954, Thomas A. Burford submitted the story of the White Thing as part of his study in a folklore course at Fairmont, and Musick wrote that Burford claimed “the tale was then common in Kanawha County.”