Earliest accounts of the Phantom Woodsman are of a stranger moving through out Appalachian hamlets in the thirties. Often the Woodsman was seen associating with local Native Americans and working as a hired hand in timber. A few town records in Georgia even show the Woodsman hunting ghosts for silver. The Woodsman was also the last known man to have spoken with Wicked John; who was fabled to have forged a new hell in Louisiana.

In the late seventies, Dr. Strange called the Woodsman into New York to handle a problem concerning the Wolfen, a Native American werewolf phenomenon. A small pack of Wolfen cubs were terrorizing the burroughs and were difficult to apprehend even by Dr. Strange or Shaman of Alpha Flight. They remained elusive by adapting ancient smoke-signal sorcery to the aerosol vapors of the burgeoning subway graffiti scene. Woodsman was able to capture the young Wolfen by becoming a part of the exclusive art scene in Manhattan. As graffiti writers became the new celebrities of the avant-garde, the cubs became vulnerable to Woodsman unaware of his mystic talents. After capturing them, Woodsman used his haunted axe to command the cubs’ spirits into retainer and they are now his faithful servants.

Ever since the Wolfen, the Phantom Woodsman has remained a behind-the-scenes player in the street art community, as well as an authority on the Supernatural Native American Underground. He is often consulted and enlisted by Dr. Strange, Alpha Flight and Moon Knight as a valuable ally in any paranormal conflict. Woodsman has also been rumored to spirit away earth’s mightiest to a cabin in Alabama each summer for a secret Moon shine festival run by a group of his boot-legger friends from prohibition, (who have mysteriously never aged.) This midsummer festival was where Woodsman met his wife the Dancing Sparrow