The Greenbrier Ghost

Zona Heaster Image Source: here.

     In 1876 Elva "Zona" Heaster was born in Greenbrier County, West Virginia.  When she was twenty years old she met a man called E.S. Trout Shue - it was October 1896.  E.S. was short for Eramud Stribbling, but the papers called him E.S. or Edward, others called him Trout.  He was new in town, and looking for a blacksmiths job.  Well, he found a job, and the two got married.  Zonas mother, Mary Jane, didn't like him one bit.

     The marriage didn't last long at all, though, because on January 23, 1897 Zona was dead.  She was found in her home, lying at the foot of the stairs by a young boy named Andy Jones.  He had been sent there on an errand by Shue.  Naturally, the boy freaked out and ran home to tell his mom.  She called for the doctor and coroner to come quickly, but it took nearly an hour.

    When Dr. Knapp got there Shue had moved Zona's body upstairs to her bed, and didn't want anyone to touch her.  He had already dressed and readied her for the funeral, with a high collard dress and a shroud to cover her face.  This was especially strange because local woman were usually the ones to clean and prepare a body for burial.  As the Dr. tried to examine her, Shue wouldn't leave him alone with the body - he wouldn't even let him get close to her head.  

     All Dr. Knapp could see was that there was some bruising around her neck, but he decided to list the death as "everlasting faint."  Later, though, he remembered he had seen her two weeks before about "female trouble," so he changed cause of death to "childbirth."  It's actually unknown if she was pregnant or not.  When Mary Jane was told of her daughters death, she is said to have remarked "the devil has killed her."  Many believe she was referring to E.S. Trout.

Image Source: here.

    During Zonas wake Shue didn't want anyone to come close to the coffin, much less touch her body.  His emotions were all over the place.  One second he was crying, the next he would be getting on to people for disturbing his late wife.  He tried to convince them he was acting this way so that Zona could "rest easier."  Even stranger was the way he had tied a scarf around her neck, he cried and said it had been her favorite.  Her body was laid to rest on January 24, 1897.

     Well, Mary Jane didn't believe that her daughters' death had been some sort of freak accident, not for a second!  She was convinced that Trout Shue had killed her.  So, every night for a months she would pray that Zona would let her know what happened.  Sometime after the fourth week Zona appeared to Mary Jane in a dream.

     In the dream, Zona tells her mother that Shue was abusive to her.  On the day she died, he went into a rage because he believed she hadn't cooked any meat for dinner.  He was so angry that he broke her neck, which she proved by turning her head around backwards like an owl.  For four nights Mary Jane says she was visited by her daughters ghost.

     Mary Jane decided that this horrible man wasn't going to get away with this, so she went to see a prosecutor.  She spent hours trying to convince John Preston to reopen the case of her daughters death.  We don't know if he believed that Zona had visited her mother from the beyond, but he was convinced that something wasn't right.  So, he sent deputies out to talk to people again, just in case.  As it turns out, lots of locals had suspected foul play as well.

     Preston decided to go to see Dr. Knapp for himself.  The doctor told him how Shue had not allowed him to make a full and proper examination of the body.  When Preston heard this he thought it would be a god idea to exhume the body and have an official autopsy performed.  By law Shue had to be present for the autopsy.  He said he was sure he would end up arrested, but that no one could find him guilty of anything.  

     The body was dug up and autopsied in a one-room schoolhouse.  It took three hours to perform the autopsy, and it was obvious that she had met with foul play.  A report was published on March 9, 1897 that stated:

     "The discovery was made that the neck was broken and the windpipe mashed.  On the throat were the marks of fingers indicating that she had been choked.  The neck was dislocated between the first and second vertebrae.  The ligaments were torn and ruptured.  The windpipe had been crushed at a point in front of the neck."  Trout Shue was arrested for murdering his wife.

     During his stay in Lewisburg jail the townsfolk learned some interesting things about Mr. Shue.  It turned out that Zona hadn't been his first wife, or even his first wife to mysteriously die.  His first wife ended the marriage because he was very cruel to her, and his second died less than a year into their marriage.  Shue didn't seem too upset over the whole ordeal, he was sure he would be out soon.  He told whoever would listen that he wanted to marry seven women during his lifetime.  (What a strange thing for someone to want.)

Mary Jane Heaster Image Source: here.

     The trial finally started a couple of months later, on June 22, 1897.  Preston put Mary Jane Heaster on the stand, and she told all about her daughters visits.  Shue's lawyer was determined to make her out to be a lunatic for seeing ghosts.  He asked her all kinds of questions and tried to trick her into changing her story somehow, but she never did.  The town believed her story.  

     He was found guilty on July 11, and given a life sentence for the murder of his wife.  A lynch mob waited for him outside the jail, they wanted to see him hang for what he'd done.  The deputy sheriff wouldn't have any of that, and four of the mobs organizers ended up in trouble.  Shue ended up in Moundsville at the state penitentiary, but only lived three more years.  He supposedly died of some epidemic that was going around the prison.  His grave is unmarked.

Image Source: here.