Coffin Hollow and Other Ghost Tales (3 page)

One night when he was drunker than usual, he flew past the startled new sheriff and out the door, yelling at a nonexistent foe.

He was found the next day lying beside the post to which Rusty used to be tied, with his throat completely ripped out. About the ground were the footprints of a large dog.

The sheriff had heard the howling of a dog or wolf the preceding night, but had thought little about it. No dogs or wolves were ever found in the area. Wolves were seldom seen, and there were no dogs — that is, dogs large enough to do the damage which had been done — except Rusty.

3: Coffin Hollow

On a point of land just below my home is a very old cemetery. This cemetery contains the graves of some Civil War soldiers who died during the Jones's raid. It is said that one of these soldiers was killed after being captured by the Yanks. This gallant Confederate soldier fought long and hard before being shot in the leg by some unidentified traitor. He was then taken prisoner, loaded on a wagon, and started on his way to prison.

Now a certain Yankee captain had seen his brother shot down by this soldier and hated him for it. He set out in pursuit of the wagon, caught up with it, and like the lowly Yankee dog that he was, placed a bullet through the rebel's head, killing him instantly. The reb was buried in the cemetery previously mentioned and was forgotten.

Some years later, however, the Yankee captain moved to Monongah and began courting a girl from Watson. To get to this girl's house, he had to ride past the cemetery where the soldier was buried. On the first night that he passed the grave, he heard a loud rumble and then that blood-curdling rebel yell. Looking up toward the cemetery, he saw the soldier he had killed, seated atop his coffin, riding it over the hill toward him.

The ex-captain gave a scream, wheeled his horse around, and ran for home. The ghost followed him only as far as the mouth of the hollow, there turning back to his grave. This went on for months on end, until one night some of the captain's friends found him shot through the head with an apparently very old and previously used bullet.

Now these men had heard the captain's story and also knew that the bullet had never been removed from the dead rebel's head. They quickly went to the graveyard and opened the dead man's grave. They found there, to their horror, that the bullet was gone from the reb's head and in his hand was a still-smoking revolver.

From that time on, the wild rebel scream has never again echoed through the hollow, nor has the dead soldier ridden his coffin over the hill. However, to this day, the hollow where this took place is still called Coffin Hollow, and I can still show you the grave of the dead rebel.

4: Earl Booth's Pot of Gold

In the late 1880s Earl Booth was considered a wealthy man. He owned a large farm in Barbour County on which he raised cattle and operated a saw mill. He was also known for his unusual trading ability.

Through his enterprises he accumulated a small fortune, but instead of putting his money in the local bank, he buried it at several locations on his farm. It was well known in the community that Booth did not trust banks and would not deposit any of his earnings with them.

Two strangers were traveling through the community, and when they stopped at the general store for supplies, they overheard a conversation about Booth's hidden money. After leaving the store, they made plans to go to the farm and torture the man until he told them where his fortune was buried. They waited until he was asleep and, after entering through a window on the opposite side of the house, slipped into his bedroom and awakened him.

When they threatened his life, he told them where some of his money was buried, and while one man watched him, the other found a shovel and went to look for the treasure. After digging a shallow hole, he uncovered a small chest of silver and gold coins.

When the man returned to the house, the two talked the matter over and decided they had been tricked. Booth refused to tell where the larger portion of his fortune was buried, and the two beat him to death. But before dying, he placed a curse on the two men and said that he would return as a ghost to protect his fortune.

Fearing they would be caught, the two left the community, planning to return and find the rest of the money. Three years later they came back to the Booth farm during the night and set up a camp in the forest near the farmhouse.

The next day they started to look for the rest of the fortune. While digging under a large rock, one of the men was killed when the weight of the rock shifted and crushed him to death. The other one, thinking Booth's curse was to blame, attempted to escape. However, as he was riding away, a neighbor recognized him as one of the strangers who had passed through the community on the day of the murder.

After some questioning, he admitted helping beat Booth to death. Although he had confessed the murder, he never stood trial. Two days later he was found dead in his cell. Apparently he had died of heart failure. He looked as though he had been frightened to death during the night.

No one has ever been able to locate Earl Booth's fortune. Some people believe Booth's ghost is still guarding the gold which will remain buried forever on his old farm.

5: Revenge of an Oil Worker

In the early 1900s, the oil fields around Smithfield were booming and men of all types gathered there to work at the oil wells.

While pitching hay one day, the son of a farmer fell on his pitchfork and was killed. A worker from one of the oil derricks came upon the boy, pulled the pitchfork out of his chest, and was standing over him with the pitchfork in his hand when four men came along and saw him.

Not knowing what had happened, they accused the oil worker of murdering the boy. They had had a few drinks, and since they were a hot-headed group and good friends of the boy's father, they decided to take justice into their own hands. One of the men got a rope and threw it over the limb of a nearby tree while the others dragged the protesting, innocent oil worker over to the tree. They slipped the noose over the man's head and around his neck, and asked him if there were any last words he wished to speak.

He spit in their faces and said that he would see to it that they would all die in the same way he did within thirteen days. They then hurriedly finished the hanging and decided that one of them would take the body and bury it. Jones was the unlucky one, and when the others left he loaded the body onto a wagon and started for the woods.

Along this road was a steep embankment about twenty feet high. Somehow Jones's horse turned the wagon over, flipping Jones out and down over the hill, where his neck was caught by two branches of a tree, and he was killed. When his body was found, there wasn't much thought of the incident — nor was the body of the oil worker found.

Three days afterward, a second of the four men was found hanging from the hay mow of his barn where he had seemingly tripped on a clean floor and had fallen onto a rope he had used to haul things up into the loft.

The other two men were getting jittery and began to suspect that the oil worker's prediction was coming true — and to wonder who would be the next. They didn't have to wait long to find out because the third man was found hanging by the neck between two of the steel crosspieces of an oil derrick nine days after the last accident. The next night, which if you have counted correctly makes thirteen days from the hanging of the oil worker, the last of the four men was found hanging from a rafter in his kitchen, where he had committed suicide, for an unknown reason.

It may have been coincidence, but all four men died, just as the innocent oil worker said they would.

6: The Shue Mystery

Edward S. Shue was convicted in the Greenbrier County Circuit Court at Lewisburg, West Virginia, in June 1897, for the slaying of his young wife. The evidence was entirely circumstantial and was dreamed by Mrs. Shue's elderly mother, who was sleeping in her home fourteen miles away from the scene of the killing, on the other side of Sewell Mountain.

In four separate dreams Mrs. Heaster's daughter rose from the grave and described how her husband had murdered her. The aged woman set about trying to get enough people to believe her story so that her daughter's husband could be brought to justice. But people laughed at her at first because Mrs. Shue had been examined by a reputable doctor who pronounced her dead of natural causes. However, Mrs. Heaster was so insistent about her daughter's visits that she soon had a number of believers in her cause.

Neighbors of the late Mrs. Shue heard the strange story and began to recall some very unusual incidents that had occurred just after the young woman had been found dead. Although they had seemed of no importance at the time, these incidents raised suspicions against Shue, the village blacksmith. He had never left the head of his wife's coffin while friends and relatives were paying their last respects. When the doctor rushed to her house, he had found Shue holding his wife's body tenderly in his arms. During the doctor's examination Shue did not once let go of her head as he cried and prayed for her to come back to life. But she was beyond help.

Shue had married pretty Miss Zona Heaster in November 1896 at the Methodist Church at Livesay's Mill. After their marriage they lived in a small two-story frame building that had been the residence of the late William G. Livesay, who had given the settlement its name. Shue, a towering man of unknown strength, had come to Green-brier County a short time before to work for James Crookshanks at his blacksmith shop. Miss Heaster had married him despite the fact that he had had two previous wives, both of whom had died suddenly.

The young bride became quite ill in January 1897 and for several weeks was under the care of Dr. J. M. Knapp. Shue seemed to be very concerned. On the morning of January 22, he appeared at the cabin of “Aunt” Martha Jones, mother of Anderson Jones, a Negro lad of eleven years who later became, and possibly still is, a respected resident of Lewisburg. Shue asked if the boy could go to his house and do some chores for Mrs. Shue. His mother said he still had work to do for Dr. Knapp. Shue finally made him promise to do the chores later in the day and came back four times to see if the boy could go.

About one o'clock Jones set out for the house. Nobody answered his knock, so he entered the kitchen. When he didn't see Mrs. Shue, he opened the dining room door and stumbled over her body. He raced to the blacksmith shop to tell Shue, who ran to the house while the boy went on to get Dr. Knapp. When the doctor reached the house, Shue had placed his wife on her bed and was holding her head in his arms, crying for her to come back. But strangest of all, although no one thought of it at the time, was the fact that he had placed an old-fashioned high, stiff collar around her neck and was holding it in place with some kind of scarf. Dr. Knapp immediately started investigating to see if she were still alive. All the time he was trying to revive the woman, Shue refused to let him examine her head.

The next morning Mrs. Shue's body was taken over the mountain to Mrs. Heaster's home and was buried in the family graveyard on Monday. Shue never once left his dead wife's side when others were around. He placed a folded sheet on one side of his wife's head, and some garment on the other side to keep it in an upright position.

Several days after the funeral Mrs. Heaster was awakened by a noise in her cabin home. She had been praying constantly since her daughter's death to find the real cause. As she looked around in the darkened room she saw her daughter standing there in the very dress she had died in. As her mother reached out to touch her, she disappeared. The next night the girl reappeared and talked freely to her mother.

It took four visits for the murdered woman to relate the entire story to her mother. Mrs. Heaster then enlisted the help of Prosecuting Attorney John A. Preston, who firmly believed the woman after talking with her. He began his investigation by questioning Dr. Knapp, who admitted that his verdict of heart failure could be wrong. They agreed that an autopsy would prove whether Mrs. Heaster's theory was right or wrong.

The next day Dr. Knapp and Preston went to Livesay's Mill and ordered Shue to accompany them to the grave. Preston ordered several neighbors to open the grave and had to threaten arrest before they would do it, because such a thing had never been heard of in Greenbrier County. Dr. Knapp worked for three days and nights before he found what Mrs. Heaster had predicted.

Mrs. Shue's body was returned to the grave, and Shue was arrested for first-degree murder by Sheriff Bill Nickell and was placed in jail without bond to wait for the June term of court under Judge J. M. McWhorter.

Preston and his assistant, Henry Gilmer, spent the intervening months collecting further evidence. Shue had asked Dr. William Rucker and James P. D. Gardner to defend him. Gardner was the first black attorney to practice in the Greenbrier Court. The case finally came before the court on June 30, 1897.

At the trial Dr. Knapp said Mrs. Shue's death was neither accidental nor a suicide. Anderson Jones told of finding the body, and others said Shue had been the only person seen at his house that morning. Still others told how he had dressed her with the stiff collar, a large veil, several times folded, and a large bow under the chin. It was also said that he hadn't acted like a normal husband who had just lost his bride of only a few months. Mrs. Heaster's evidence proved so interesting that Thomas H. Dennis, the editor of the
Greenbrier Independent
at Lewisburg, printed her entire testimony, something practically unheard of in the daily newspapers of that day.