The Greenbrier Ghost

Who doesn’t love a good ghost story? The tale of the Greenbrier Ghost of West Virginia is among the finest in 19th-century American history, and I think it deserves more attention. As you can see in the second slide, the ghost, Elva Zona Heaster Shue (first image), is commemorated on a West Virginia state historical marker with the following statement:

“Interred in nearby cemetery is Zona Heaster Shue. Her death in 1897 was presumed natural until her spirit appeared to her mother to describe how she was killed by her husband Edward. Autopsy on the exhumed body verified the apparition’s account. Edward, found guilty of murder, was sentenced to the state prison. Only known case in which testimony from a ghost helped convict a murder.”

The interpretive signage doth overstate the case. But nonetheless the actual story is fascinating. At age 23, the young Zona Heaster of Greenbrier County fell in love with a blacksmith named Edward Stribbing Trout Shue, who had recently moved to the area. They married in October, but only a few months later in January of 1897, Zona’s dead body was discovered by a neighbor boy at the foot of her stairs. When the local doctor came by to do the autopsy, he recorded the cause of her death as “childbirth.”

Zona’s mother, Mary Jane Heaster, was not satisfied with this answer. And about four weeks later she claimed her daughter’s ghost had come to her in visions, declaring that Trout had murdered her by strangulation. Mary Jane was able to convince the court prosecutor to open up the case, and re-examine Zona’s body. And with this second look, doctors did discover that her neck was crushed, bruised, and dislocated.

The court convicted Trout, but not because of a ghost’s testimony. Mary Jane might have made that part up in order to have another autopsy, and the local prosecutor perhaps was responding to locals who thought Zona had been murdered by her husband.

It is, however, a very popular local legend.