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  • Writer's pictureDerek Faraci

The Story of Charlie No-Face


This Article Originally Ran On Blumhouse.com


Every town has its own urban legends, and most of them are based in some kernel of truth. When I was a kid growing up in Kew Gardens, New York every kid claimed that Kitty Genovese was killed on their block or that they had seen the “troll people” who lived in the tunnels. As we get older, we either forget these stories or we learn the truth. Kitty wasn’t murdered on 78th Avenue at all, she lost her life on Austin Street. There were no troll people, just poor souls who were homeless, many of them released from institutions that were shut down during the Reagan years.


These stories that make our ordinary neighborhoods more exciting are often rooted in sad reality, and none of them may be sadder than the story of Charlie No-Face.


As the legend goes, for nearly fifty years Charlie No-Face, also called “Green Man”, was a figure that, late at night, could be seen walking along the highway between Koppel and New Galilee in Pennsylvania. For near fifty years, the stories and theories grew and grew. It was a ghost, glowing green and searching for something lost to the ages. Or he was a monster of a man with a twisted face looking for victims.


What started as a little myth in Koppel grew. Teens would drive up and down the road at night hoping to get a peek at the unknown being walking the road. Each sighting brought out more gawkers from other towns. By the mid-60s, the short stretch of highway between the two towns was packed with cars on Friday and Saturday nights as people strained their eyes looking for the legendary man, paying more attention to shadows than to the car in front of them.


Those who hoped for a ghost sighting would end up disappointed - there was no ghost on State Route 351 - but the people who put their bets on the monster were a little happier, until they realized what their theories really meant.


You see, there was a man who walked the highway, a walking stick in one hand, a cigarette in the other. He didn’t glow green as the Green Man contingent believed, but he was, for the most part, without a face. For a smoke or a beer, Charlie No-Face would stop along the road and talk to those who searched him out. On the rare occasion, the walking man would share his story.


Born on October 29, 1910, Raymond Roberts had a life like most everyone else in Beaver County. When he was seven, Raymond’s father passed and his mother Louise married her brother-in-law who was a widower himself. Aside from the loss of his father, Raymond’s days were happy enough. He went to school and played with his friends, doing all the things that seem quaint to those of us who grew up with video games and 500 channels of endless cartoons and movies.


It was during one of those quaint times with friends that Raymond’s life would take a tragic turn. Just eight years old, Raymond and his pals were headed to the Beaver River for a little swim when they came across a railway bridge for the Harmony Line. Just a year earlier, in 1918, twelve year old Robert Littell died on the bridge when he came in contact with rail and was electrocuted while playing with friends.


Knowing about the Littell child from a year before wasn’t enough to keep Raymond and his friends from investigating a bird’s nest resting at the top of the bridge. Raymond began to climb the girders of the bridge when he made contact with a live wire, sending upwards of 22,000 volts through his nine year old body.


Raymond was taken to Providence Hospital in Beaver Falls where everyone, from the doctors to the reporter on the scene, expected him to die. The boy’s right arm had been burned off at the elbow, his eyes exploded from the electricity that coursed through his system and his nose was gone. The lower half of Raymond’s face was warped, with his lips and cheeks puffing out to a shocking degree. Somehow, despite all logic, Raymond survived. Along with his other horrible injuries, the boy’s chest was also scarred, but despite it all, he was alive and he was in rather good spirits.


Raymond went through a series of surgeries with the hope that his face could be fixed to some degree, but none of them helped. In the end, the boy was given a pair of dark glasses with a fake nose attached and was sent home.


From there, Raymond lived a quiet life. He listened to the radio for hours on end and learned braille, spending his days indoors making leather wallets and belts. A few times a week, Raymond would venture out and walk through a wooded path behind his parent’s house. The woods were his and his alone. No one else walked them, and they gave Raymond a chance to spend time alone. With a walking stick and one foot hugging the edge of the trail, the blind man could go off on his own and gain a sense of much needed independence. Aside from Raymond’s family and a few neighbors, the people of Beaver County soon forgot about the boy who was electrocuted.


In the 1940s, when the woods were cut down, Raymond had no place to walk. Choosing not to spend every moment of the day stuck inside, Raymond found a new place to walk - a stretch of highway. He would start around 10PM and walk a few miles, often coming home well after midnight, much to the worry of his mother.


It was during one of these walks that Raymond was first seen. Before long, the stories spread and Raymond became something of a local celebrity, despite his wishes to be left alone. As he walked the road, Raymond would try to keep out of sight or even try to hide if he heard a car coming, but often enough, he would be seen. Some of the teens who came to see the man they called Charlie No-Face - a name Raymond and his family weren’t keen on - treated him the way you may imagine teens would; they were assholes to him. Others, though, were kind. It was hard to understand Raymond when he spoke, but those that took the time to listen found a man who was kind and funny. Raymond would sit with the people who he came to consider, if not friends, OK, smoking cigarettes and having a few beers. He appeared to enjoy the better interactions with those who came to see him, though his parents didn’t like that Raymond was drinking.


Sometimes, Raymond would drink too much and get lost. On more than one occasion, his family had to go out to find him. Thankfully, they always did.


By the 1970s, sightings of Raymond slowed down. The man, now in his 60s, wasn’t going out as often. Over the decades he had a few close calls, even getting hit by cars on occasion, and between his injuries as a child and these accidents, walking was getting harder for him. Before the decade came to an end, Raymond quit going for his walks, but his story continued to spread, becoming more and more fantastical as it did.


The stretch of highway that Raymond walked became a point of interest for people making “legend trips”. Without Raymond actually being out there, the idea of seeing him became less of a curiosity to people and more of a fear - guys would dare each other to get out of the car and call for the Green Man to appear. Like so many other urban legends, rules were created, explaining what you needed to do in order to get the supposedly supernatural being to show up. In truth, all someone had to do was visit the Beaver County Geriatric Center where Raymond spent the last years of his life.


On June 11, 1985, almost sixty six years since his accident, Raymond Robinson passed away at the age of seventy-four. He was buried in Grandview Cemetery overlooking the Route 18 highway bridge that had replaced the railway bridge that forever changed his life.




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