The Greenbrier Ghost
The Greenbrier Ghost
Zona Heaster Shue’s life was cut tragically short when she was discovered dead at the bottom of her stairs in her log cabin where she lived with her husband of just three month’s. However short her life may have been, though, her legend and her thirst for justice continued on long after her death.
Zona’s body was discovered by her neighbor’s child, Andy Jones just twelve years old, who often did chores for her. The young boy, after approaching the body and realizing Zona was beyond help, ran home to tell his mother. Together, they went to alert her new husband, Edward Shue, and the local doctor.
By the time the doctor was able to make a housecall, Edward had already been attending to his wife. He had moved her body up to their bed and re-dressed her corpse in a stiff-collared dress. This was quite aberrant, as it was common for the women in the community to handle all the washing and dressing of the recently deceased.
When the doctor went to examine the body, Edward began to melt down. He screamed and cried while holding his deceased wife’s head in his arms. When the doctor attempted to examine her, he refused to allow the doctor to examine some bruising he had noticed around her neck. Edward demanded the doctor leave, so he could prepare for the funeral. The doctor, unsure, listed the cause of death to be an “everlasting faint”, also known as natural causes.
At the funeral, Edward’s strange behavior continued. He was an outcast to the community, as he had arrived as a drifter and soon courted and fell in love with Zona. It was known he had been married twice before, both times his young brides succumbing to early deaths. He refused anyone to approach the coffin and lift the sheet that lay on top of his wife’s head. Those who attended the funeral noted his energy as manic.
Mary Jane Heaster, Zona’s mother, finally listed the sheet from inside the coffin when she noticed it had a strange smell. She lowered the sheet into a basin of water and the sheet turned back to white as the water turned red. She interpreted this bizarre reaction as a sign from Zona from beyond the grave that she had been murdered. So Mary Jane began to pray.
She prayed for her daughter and that is when Zona’s spirit came to her. Zona’s spirit visited her mother over the course of four nights to tell the story of her death. Zona revealed that Edward had hidden his true nature as a cruel abuser during their courtship. However, once they married he no longer put up a facade.
On the night of her death, he was driven to fury because she had not cooked any meat for their dinner. In this fit of rage, he broke her neck. It was at this point that the ghost of Zona turned her head around, like an owl.
Mary Jane rushed to tell John A. Preston, a local attorney in Lewisburg, to examine the body. Preston agreed to take on the case and soon confirmed that the doctor had never done a full review of the body. Preston also discovered that Edward really had been married twice before, his first wife dying from a broken neck when she fell from a haystack and his second wife died while helping him prepare a chimney.
After a few more weeks, the doctor and Preston were able to get permission to exhume the body. The doctor did a full autopsy, while Edward sat in the same room. At the end of the three days, on March 9th, the doctor confirmed that Zona had been murdered: “the windpipe smashed. On the throat were the marks of fingers indicating she had been choken [sic].”
Sheriff Hill Nickell arrested Edward, as he was the most likely suspect, and a tiral was set before Judge JM McWhorter on June 22nd, 1897.
Representing Mary Jane and the deceased Zona, Preston made no mention of Mary Jane’s ghostly experience. However, he did mention them, calling them “dreams.” While the defense attempted to mar Mary Jane for her visions, her testimony was so wholly compelling that it was printed in its entirety in the Greenbrier Independent on July 1st, 1897.
Below, transcribed in the Register-Herald, is a part of this testimony:
Answer: I prayed to the Lord that she might come back and tell me what had happened; and I prayed that she might come herself and tell on him.
Question: Do you think that you actually saw her in flesh and blood?
Question: Yes, sir, I do. I told them the very dress that she was killed in, and when she went to leave me she turned her head completely around and looked at me like she wanted me to know all about it. And the very next time she came back to me she told me all about it. The first time she came, she seemed that she did not want to tell me as much about it as she did afterwards. The last night she was there she told me that she did everything she could do, and I am satisfied that she did do all that, too.
Question: Now, Mrs. Heaster, don’t you know that these visions, as you term them or describe them, were nothing more or less than four dreams founded upon your distress?
Answer: No, I don’t know it. The Lord sent her to me to tell it. I was the only friend that she knew she could tell and put any confidence in; I was the nearest one to her. He gave me a ring that he pretended she wanted me to have; but I don’t know what dead woman he might have taken it off of. I wanted her own ring and he would not let me have it.
Question: Mrs. Heaster, are you positively sure that these are not four dreams?
Answer: 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.
Thomas H. Dennis, then editor of the Greenbrier Independent in Lewisburg, said of the case, “There is not middle ground for the jury to take. The verdict inevitably must be for murder in the first degree or acquittal.”
The jury returned after only one hour and gave Edward life in prison. He was set to Moundsville Penitentiary, where he would die 8 years later.
The blog image depicts ‘A sign on the roadway tells the legend of the Greenbrier Ghost. Location: West Virginia Status: Public domain. Photo by A. E. Crane‘ and is licensed under Public Domain by the US National Archives and Records Administration.
