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Greenbrier Ghost

In the months leading up to Halloween, images of the ghosts, ghouls, and other spirits of the dead pop up everywhere. Ranging from cute, smiling sheets to ghastly, screaming figures, our obsession with the spectral is on full display.

This fascination, of course, cannot be simply limited to one time of the year. America’s cultural mythos - long, varied, and full of half-truths - is full of ghost stories. Those stories end up passed down and told from one person to another over and over. They have created whole industries, with seemingly every city now having ghost tours and a plethora of books on the subject. Louisville itself has several of the latter (many of which sit on my own bookshelf) with our countless Victorian buildings, cemeteries, haunted inns and one well known (if perhaps overblown) tuberculosis hospital. As interesting as the tales of ghostly women and ever watchful specters are by themselves, nothing quite beats hearing someone tell you one of their own personal tales of the other side.

These stories, however, are often relegated to just that: stories. Even the most believable person has only their own words. Sure, sometimes they bring with them “evidence.” These can take the form of photographs, video, audio, etc. Even those must be accepted as untampered and unobscured, which isn’t easy to prove. And that’s if they can’t be chalked up to something natural or easily explainable. Theoretically, it doesn’t seem like the sort of thing one would expect to be used - much less hold up - in the court of law.

Enter the incredible tale of the Greenbrier Ghost: the only time in America when the words of a spirit were used to convict someone.

Mrs. Zona Shue, née Heaster, had only been married a few months when her body was discovered by a young boy, having been sent to the house by her husband, a Mr. Edward (Trout) Shue, to gather eggs in the morning of the 24th of January, 1897. When the boy finally made it to the home, he found her lifeless body stretched across the floor. When the local physician, a Dr. Knapp, arrived, Mr. Shue appeared to be cradling his wife’s cold body, crying. Failing to resuscitate her, he declared her deceased. Her heart had failed, he claimed.

The first signs of something being amiss began thus. It was noted, first, that Shue refused to let Dr. Knapp anywhere near his wife’s head, and proceeded to put a stiff, high collar on her that was wrapped several times with a veil or shawl up to her chin. During the funeral, he refused to allow anyone near her body, and when anyone did, he made sure to stay by her head. Witnesses claimed her head seemed to droop to the side when not properly held in place. While perhaps some of this could be simply the actions of a grieving husband, his demeanor and behavior did not match. “…that in his conversation and conduct, after his wife’s death, he seemed in good spirits, and showed no proper appreciation of the loss he had just sustained.” And it really didn’t help that Shue’s previous two marriages ended in death. While this seemed to attract a bit of suspicion, nothing came of it. And nothing may have ever come of it, had it not been for Mrs. Mary J. Heaster, Zona’s mother.

Mrs. Heaster hadn’t particularly cared for Shue from the get go. It shouldn’t come as a shock that she had her own worry and concern that her daughter’s death wasn’t natural. So, in her own words, “I prayed to the Lord that she might come back, and tell me what happened; and I prayed that she might come herself and tell on him.”

Tell on him, she did.

According to Mrs. Heaster’s testimony, some of which was published in the local newspaper Greenbrier Independent, Zona appeared to her mother four times. The first time, she simply appeared. It was the third night that Zona explained how she died: a neck broken in a fit of rage over having not prepared any meat for supper. Although, the first night she gave her mother quite the hint as to what happened by turning her head completely around as she left. Mrs. Heaster took note of her daughter’s appearance, told her neighbors, and from them found she was “exactly as I told them she was,” as in looking just as she had when she died. Zona proceeded to return four times in total, telling her mother various things and repeating that her widower killed her over meat.

After her fourth and final visit, wherein Zona told her mother she had done all that she could, Mrs. Heaster enlisted the aid of her brother-in-law Johnson Heaster. Together, they talked to some of the witnesses present, and then - convinced that foul play was involved - contacted the county prosecutor, John Alfred Preston, who then brought an inquest to Judge Homer McClung. Dr. Knapp and two other doctors were contacted, and an autopsy was agreed upon. They began it on February 22 and finished on February 25, 1897. It would be here that a new cause of death was discovered: a broken neck. Shue was arrested the next day.

The trial got underway June 23, 1897. The prosecution, it should be noted, was relying entirely on circumstantial evidence, with Mrs. Heaster their prime witness. Considering this, it should come as no surprise that the defense tried their best to pick apart her supposed visions.

Q. Mrs. Heaster, are you positively sure that these are not four dreams?
A. Yes, sir. It was not a dream. I don’t dream when I am wide awake to be sure; and I know I saw her right there with me.
Q. Are you not considerably superstitious?
A. No, sir, I’m not. I was never that way before and am not now.
Q. Do you believe the scriptures?
A. Yes, sir, I do. I have no reason not to believe it.
Q. And do you believe the scriptures contain the words of God and his Son?
A. Yes, sir, I do. Don’t you believe it?
Q. Now, I would like if I could, to get you to say that these were four dreams not four visions or appearances of your daughter in flesh and blood?
A.  I am not going to say that; for I am not going to lie.

Mrs. Heaster absolutely refused to budge. If the defense wanted to pick her story apart and make her sound as though either she was lying or not of sound mind, they failed.

Following this, Shue himself spent a day on the witness stand. If the defense decided to rely on him to make the case for himself, between going into incredible detail regarding things of no consequence and trying to appeal to the jury by suggesting they look into his face and judge him guilty, it really didn’t work. 

It took the jury an hour to come back and convict Shue of murder in the first degree, recommending life imprisonment. Shue was taken to Moundsville Penitentiary (itself an allegedly haunted prison) where he died in 1905.

A mighty question now stands: did Mrs. Heaster really see Zona’s ghost? Opinions on this are rather firmly split. It may very well have been a desperate mother’s attempts to find out the truth of her daughter’s death, with an assured conviction as to who and what was responsible by utilizing local superstition. She, herself, swore she did see her daughter’s spirit up until her own death. One such as me, who can’t help but love a good, dramatic ghost story, tends to want to believe the latter. Either way, it’s most unlikely that visions given by or of a specter would be admissible in a modern-day murder trial.

One final tidbit is on Zona’s ghost itself. While she hasn’t been seen since, there is a road marker near the cemetery where she was buried denoting the story. If you’re so inclined to try and catch a glimpse of her, make a road trip to Greenbrier, West Virginia. Maybe ask her to turn her head all around, just to see if she can still do it. (Actually, don’t do that she’s been through enough.)

Citations:
Deitz, George; “The Greenbrier Ghost,” in The Greenbrier Ghost & Other Strange Stories, Dennis Deitz, pgs. 9-24. South Charleston, W.V.: Mountain Memories Books, 1990
“Foul Play Suspected,” Greenbrier Independent, February 25, 1897
“Mrs. Mary J. Heaster, the Mother of Mrs. Shue, Sees her Daughter in Visions,” and “The State v.s. E. S. Shue,” Greenbrier Independent, July 1, 1897
“Shue Convicted of Murder,” Greenbrier Independent, July 8, 1897