WARDEN, West Virginia — The Warden County clerk has restricted access to six deed books after ink from property descriptions faded from their pages and appeared temporarily on the hands of people consulting them. Certified copies remain available from microfilm, and the clerk said no ownership record has been changed.
The affected volumes cover transfers recorded from 1911 through 1934 and are kept in a public records room beside the courthouse. Visitors normally use foam cradles and may photograph pages without flash. Clerk Iva Noll said the first transfer occurred Friday while a title researcher held open a 1926 deed with two bare fingertips.
A line describing 14 rods along a sycamore boundary lightened as the researcher read it. The same words appeared in dark brown script across the inside of her index and middle fingers, compressed to fit the skin. When she released the page, the boundary line was blank except for two pale impressions where her fingers had rested.
The writing did not smear and remained legible through handwashing. It faded after about 40 minutes, returning to the deed at the same pace from left to right. Noll closed the volume, photographed the page every five minutes and compared it with a 1978 microfilm image. The restored wording matched the film, including a misspelled landowner name.
Five other books behaved similarly during controlled checks. Ink moved only from legal descriptions, not signatures, tax stamps or marginal notations. Cotton gloves prevented transfer but did not prevent fading; words collected on the glove fabric instead. A sheet of clear polyester placed over a page acquired no writing and left the deed unchanged.
Noll removed the books after visitors began asking to hold deeds associated with their homes. Two local attorneys received scanned copies at no charge, and a survey closing was delayed until Wednesday so the original description could be checked after restoration. The county has not asked anyone to surrender photographs or clothing touched during ordinary research.
Iron-gall and aniline inks can fade, migrate and corrode paper under changes in humidity, said Mara Bell, a paper conservator retained by the county. Oils and moisture from hands may lift weakened material from a page. Bell said a transferred line could mirror the original on skin, but these lines remained readable rather than reversed and reappeared in the book after leaving no visible residue.
The condition has not followed every reader. Noll handled one volume without effect, while deputy clerk Len Orr drew a complete property description onto his palm without touching the printed line. The deed involved land once owned by Orr's great-grandfather, though Orr said he had not known the parcel number and the county found no similar response among two other relatives.
On Monday, Bell placed the six volumes in separate archival boxes and installed humidity cards. All readings stayed within the range used by the records room. Through the open lid of one box, the 1926 deed lost its sycamore line again while no one was touching it. The words appeared across the cotton tie wrapped around the neighboring box.
Staff untied both boxes and found no paper contact between them. The neighboring volume contains deeds from 1918 and has no entry for the parcel. Its cotton tie was replaced and sealed in an evidence sleeve. By closing, the transferred sentence had returned to the 1926 page, but the word “sycamore” remained on the tie in a second hand that does not appear elsewhere in either book.