This week, for Halloween, we are taking a look at not a fan submitted story but one of my favorites. It’s very famous locally, and I live very close to Greenbrier. Some of you may have heard of it—it’s the story of the Greenbrier Ghost.
In late 1896, a 23-year-old woman named Zona Heaster met a drifter who had recently arrived in Greenbrier County, West Virginia: Erasmus “Trout” Shue. He was a tall, muscular man with a troubled past, including a previous marriage that ended in divorce and a second that ended in the suspicious death of his wife. Despite her mother Mary Jane’s immediate and vocal disapproval, Zona and Trout were married after a very brief courtship.
Their life together lasted only a few months. In January 1897, Trout sent a young neighbor, Anderson Jones, to the house to see if Zona needed anything. The boy found Zona lying dead at the foot of the stairs. By the time the local physician, Dr. Knapp, arrived, Trout had already moved Zona’s body upstairs to their bedroom. He had washed her, dressed her in a high-necked gown with a stiff collar, and placed a veil over her face. Trout was so distraught and so protective of her head and neck that the doctor was unable to perform a thorough examination. Dr. Knapp initially listed the cause of death as “everlasting faint” (and later “childbirth”).
Following a strange funeral where Trout guarded the head of the casket, Zona was buried. However, her mother, Mary Jane Heaster, remained convinced that foul play was involved. She began to pray for a sign, and according to her testimony, Zona’s spirit appeared to her over the course of four nights.
The ghost allegedly revealed that Trout had been abusive and, in a fit of rage over dinner, had broken her neck. To prove the claim, the spirit reportedly turned its head 180 degrees until it faced backward.
Armed with this “evidence,” Mary Jane convinced the local prosecutor to reopen the case. Zona’s body was exhumed, and a formal autopsy revealed the “Greenbrier Fracture”: her windpipe had been crushed and the first and second vertebrae were broken.
Trout Shue was brought to trial, where a unique legal blunder occurred. Thinking he could make Mary Jane look unreliable, the defense attorney questioned her extensively about her “visions.” This allowed the entire ghost story to be entered into the official court record. The jury found Shue guilty, and he was sentenced to life in prison, where he died three years later during an epidemic. To this day, a state historical marker stands in Greenbrier County, in memory of the only time in American history that the “testimony of a ghost” helped convict a murderer.
