The Greenbrier Ghost: The True Story of Zona Heaster Shue

Drive west from Lewisburg on US 60 and, near the Interstate 64 ramp at Sam Black Church, a state historical marker tells a story that sounds too strange to be official: the only known case in which testimony from a ghost helped convict a murderer. A few miles north, in the little cemetery behind Soule Chapel, a headstone reads ‘Zona Heaster Shue, Greenbrier Ghost, 1876 to 1897’.

The Greenbrier Ghost has inspired plays, an opera, a novel by Sharyn McCrumb and an episode of Drunk History. It has nothing to do with the Greenbrier resort, except the county they share. This guide tells what the court records and newspapers show, what rests only on Mary Jane Heaster’s word, what historians make of it, and how to visit the grave and the marker.

The murder of Zona Heaster Shue

Elva Zona Heaster was born around 1876 near Meadow Bluff in Greenbrier County. In October 1896 she met Edward Stribbling Trout Shue, a blacksmith who had recently come to the area and who also went by Erasmus. They married within weeks, against the wishes of her mother, Mary Jane Heaster. Edward had been married twice before: his first marriage ended in divorce, and his second wife died less than a year after the wedding in circumstances nobody ever explained.

On January 23, 1897, Zona was found dead at home. The coroner, Dr. Knapp, arrived nearly an hour late, by which time Edward had dressed her himself in a high-necked, stiff-collared dress, against local custom. At the funeral he kept her family from getting close to the body. The cause of death was recorded as ‘everlasting faint’, later revised to childbirth, and a coroner’s jury put it down to heart disease. Zona was buried the next day in what is now the Soule Chapel Methodist Cemetery.

Mary Jane Heaster never believed the verdict. She later said that over four nights Zona’s spirit came to her and told her that Edward had strangled her and broken her neck. She took her account to the county prosecutor, John Alfred Preston. Whether Preston believed in ghosts is unknown, but he had his own doubts, and when Dr. Knapp admitted he had not fully examined the body, Preston ordered an exhumation.

The autopsy took place on February 22, 1897, in a one-room schoolhouse and took about three hours. The doctors found a broken neck, a dislocation between the first and second vertebrae, a crushed windpipe and finger marks on the throat. Edward was arrested. Talk of his two earlier marriages soon followed him.

The trial opened on June 22, 1897. Mary Jane was a key witness, and it was the defense, trying to make her look unreliable, that brought up the ghost. She held to her story under questioning, and once it was in front of the jury the judge could hardly tell them to forget it. On July 11 the jury found Edward guilty of first-degree murder after about an hour and ten minutes, recommending mercy, and he was sentenced to life. A lynch mob gathered but was broken up. Edward Shue died at the West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville on March 13, 1900, during an epidemic, and was buried in an unmarked grave. Mary Jane lived until 1916 and never took back a word.

The Greenbrier Ghost: what is record and what is legend

Mary Jane Heaster's story

The ghost exists in one source: Mary Jane herself. She described four visits in which Zona appeared, told her she had been murdered and showed how her neck had been broken. Nobody else claimed to see the ghost, and no record shows Preston acting on it alone. What is documented is that she pushed the case until it was reopened.

What historians think

Author Katie Letcher Lyle, who studied the case closely, argued that Mary Jane may have invented the ghost to get the authorities to listen to a grieving mother’s suspicions, and that Edward was convicted on earthly evidence. A newspaper report of the trial noted that the conviction rested on circumstantial evidence, and the prosecution never relied on the ghost. The marker’s wording is careful: the ghost’s testimony ‘helped’ convict.

Does Zona still appear?

There is no strong tradition of a ghost at the grave or the old Shue house. The story is a haunting in the older sense: a spirit that came back once to see justice done. Visitors to the grave leave flowers, stones and small tokens, and the headstone erected in her memory names her as the Greenbrier Ghost.

Where to look

• Zona's grave: A tall gray headstone roughly in the middle of the small cemetery behind Soule Chapel, in front of an evergreen; one side reads ‘Shue’.
• The historical marker: The black and white state marker on US 60 at Sam Black Church, near the I-64 ramp.
• Lewisburg: The county seat, where the trial took place, now known for its candlelight ghost walks and the Old Stone Church.
• The West Virginia Penitentiary: Edward Shue died here in 1900; the prison in Moundsville is now one of the state’s best-known haunted places.

Visiting Greenbrier Ghost

To find the grave, leave Interstate 64 at exit 156 and head north on US 60, then take the first left onto Smoot Road (WV 25) and follow the back roads toward Meadow Bluff: right onto County Route 60/32 for about three miles, then left onto Farmdale Road for a quarter mile. Soule Chapel is on the left, and the cemetery is behind it. The marker is about four miles away, back on US 60.

This is a working church cemetery in a rural community. Visit by daylight, park considerately, stay on the paths and leave the tokens on the grave as you find them. There are no tours or ghost hunts. To make a day of it, continue to Lewisburg for the Old Stone Church and the haunted General Lewis Inn, where the town’s candlelight ghost walk runs on fall weekends.

• Visiting A small church cemetery; visit quietly by day
• Ghost hunting No ghost hunting; this is a working church cemetery

Tips for your visit

• Download directions before you go; cell signal is patchy in the hollows.
• Read Sharyn McCrumb’s The Unquiet Grave for a vivid retelling based on the case.
• Combine the grave with the Lewisburg candlelight ghost tour on a fall weekend.
• Do not confuse it with the Greenbrier resort, about 25 miles east.

More haunted places nearby

• The General Lewis Inn: a haunted 1834 inn in Lewisburg
• The Greenbrier resort: the famous resort in White Sulphur Springs and its bunker
• Our West Virginia Penitentiary ghost hunt: the prison where Edward Shue died
• Haunted places in West Virginia

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the official website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as staff, visitors and investigators tell them, and we say where records contradict a story.

• Wikipedia: Greenbrier Ghost
• WV Tourism: The ghost who gave legal testimony
• Roadside America: Grave of the Greenbrier Ghost
• Find a Grave: Zona Heaster Shue
• WV Tourism: 13 spooky places that'll make your spine tingle
• WOWK 13 News: Mountain State ghost tales, 10 haunted places in West Virginia