I was walking with friends at night along the tracks that lead west out of Oak Hill toward Dothan. This gap is where the railroad crosses between the valleys of Loup and Paint Creek. On the Oak Hill side of the gap, a lot of people live, but on the far side, there’s no one for miles. We didn’t mean to be out that long, but there we were. There was enough light to be able to see the rocks along the tracks, so it was scary, but we could still make our way back to our houses near Collins school.

When we got to where the Silver Gap is, we saw a gray form about the height of a person in the woods overlooking the track. It was really hard to make out, but it was there. It could have been a wisp of smoke or fog, but it stayed in the same place for a few minutes while we stood there and freaked out.

Finally, we got our courage up and began to move past it. Once we got past, it suddenly began to move and came down the bank to the tracks. We ran on ahead a little way and looked back. It was still there, standing on the track. It felt like it was watching us. Then it slowly started moving away from us along the track until it disappeared into the dark. A second later, we heard what sounded like a man cry in horror. At that point, we ran all the way back to where we could see the lights over near Round Hill Road.

I’ll never forget how it looked or how scared we were. I’ve never heard of anything about Silver Gap or why it’s named that or if someone was killed near there. But I know what we saw and heard.

This is a true short story from my newest book, Stories of the Fire House. Enjoy!

No collection of firehouse stories would be complete without at least a good ghost story. Ghost stories seem to be almost a tradition. Any station will have at least one they talk about. I can’t say that ghosts exist, but at the same time, I can’t say they don’t.

Over the years I have seen things that defy definition. Really, I think we all have. If you spend enough time dealing with death and tragedy more than likely you will see things that don’t seem to look right.

This account takes place early in my career. The beginning of the entire story begins early one Sunday morning. This was early spring, in March. The call came in around two or three in the morning. The temperature was in the mid-fifties, the road was dry. This call came in as a two-car motor vehicle accident with entrapment. There was a very seasoned police officer on the scene, he had discovered the accident.

During his normal patrol, he had come upon the accident. The scene revealed two cars from an apparent head-on type collision. A large amount of debris, and one car was on fire. In the car that was on fire was a young female. The other car was an older male. Both cars were sitting in awkward angles across the roadway. This was the main thoroughfare coming into town, however, at this time of the morning, there was no traffic.

The police officer called for rescue and EMS. He then began trying to extinguish the fire coming from the engine department. His radio transmissions showed that he was truly stressed. This officer was a Vietnam veteran having served two tours, he was not a stranger to trauma and death. This night he was pushed to his limit.

The accident scene was close to the station, so our response time was incredibly good. We arrived on the scene with one car on fire, the patient was still inside. The other car a gold-colored car was sitting a few feet from the blue car, the blue car was on fire. We usually rolled two medics on most calls, so we had enough ambulances. The beauty of our department was the fact that we had paramedics and EMTs on the fire truck. This was long before it became the normal protocol.

We were the leaders of a lot of the practices that are common today. We were also one of the first if not the first to be trained and carry the JAWS of Life on our engines, making them rescue trucks as well. We were also one of the first in the state to have these tools.

As the fire truck pulled up to the scene, the driver (engineer) set the engine up to pump. I was assigned the pump detail; the team was able to quickly extinguish the flames so that extrication could begin. After shutting down the pump detail I was able to assist in the extrication.

As I walked around the rear of the vehicle the crew had extricated the patient and placed her on the backboard. I picked up the head restraints and placed them on the backboard in place to stabilize her head. The Lieutenant removed them and continued to strap the patient down. I replaced the head’s immobilization once again.

The Lieutenant turned to me, grabbed the front of my gear. “She is gone, Ken! “He shouted at me. I then realized that she was deceased, it had never occurred to me that she was deceased. I did not realize that would be the start of chain events that would become a legend.

I was suddenly aware that the temperature had dropped, and it was snowing, yes in a matter of minutes the weather changed from a warm spring morning to a cold snowy morning. Meanwhile, the other medic and crews were working with the other patient, in the gold car.

They located that patient in the rear passenger seat, he had broken the seat on impact and was thrown to the rear seat. He still had a pulse, however, it quickly disappeared. This occurred in the presence of the medics, so CPR was started. But due to his injuries, his chest would not expand after each compression. They worked valiantly, with one person compressing down and another pushing his chest together to try and get his chest to rise.

The EMS crew transported the patient, taking the crew from the second EMS unit with them. A request was sent for the response of a third unit to transport the female patient that was pronounced dead on the scene. When the third unit arrived, the driver was in the unit by herself. I assisted with loading the body into the ambulance. The driver needed a partner to go to the Medical Examiner’s office.

I volunteered to drive the unit with the body to Medical Examiners Morgue. The rule is that all accident fatalities be transported to the Medical Examiner for an autopsy. The ride to the office was quiet and reserved, body transports were always solemn. We arrived without incident.

We backed into the loading dock, a small non-descript building with a small loading dock in the rear. Located in a mostly residential neighborhood. The front resembled any other state office. Next door was a state police troop headquarters. We rang the doorbell and waited for the nighttime attendant to come to the door.

We unloaded the body and rolled her inside to begin the check-in procedure. We moved the deceased from our cot onto the stainless-steel table. These tables were designed to hold a body with a slight angle and a drain at the end of the table to clear any fluids that may need to be evacuated. There is a lip around the entire table to keep everything on the table. There is a shelf underneath to store any documents or belongings These tables or trays as they are sometimes referred to, allow the body to be moved throughout the facility without moving the body from the tray. The doctor can perform an autopsy on the table without moving the body over.

The cold storage at this facility is a large walk-in cooler. The night clerk itemized her belongings writing the items on his form as he cataloged each item. My partner completed our run form, to give him a copy. I finished placing the items in the bag and placed the bag underneath the tray.

I rolled the tray with the girl into the cooler. While my partner and the clerk finished with the paperwork. I positioned the tray in the cooler, Locking the wheels I glanced at the body as I locked the wheels on the tray. Now, this is where this tale starts to get a little strange you could say unbelievable. I understand if you don’t believe what I am about to tell you next.

As I locked the wheels on the tray, I glanced at the body lying on the tray. Her head was turned towards me, and there was a smile on her face. Her eyes were open, there was no life there, her eyes were open however they lacked any luster. The cold of the room seemed to increase. I stood quietly for a moment. Bowed my head and silently asked for her to find peace.

Sometimes people who experience severe trauma and die will have involuntary muscle contractions after death. The body is a strange piece of work. A lot of things can happen after the moment of death. I told myself that this was probably what had happened. However, the incident stayed on my mind.

I went back out to the entrance room. My partner looked at me and asked what was wrong with me. She had quite a concerned look on her face as she asked if I felt ok. I was apparently a little pale. I told her that I was ok. I asked if we were done. She said all we needed to do was make the cot up for the next patient. I told her we could do it at the station out of the cold.

We loaded up and began the drive back to the station. We decided a cup of coffee and maybe a sandwich was in order. We found a drive-thru on the way. We placed our order and pulled forward. She asked again what’s up? I told her she wouldn’t believe me, that it was just too crazy.

We took our order from the friendly girl at the window and ate as we drove. Remember this was back in the good ole days, we could do all sorts of things in the front of an ambulance that would send people screaming into the night if we did some of those things today. At one time you could even smoke in the front of the unit.

As we ate our sandwiches, I maneuvered through the light morning traffic. I told her the entire story, her eyes getting wide as I recanted the tale. I explained about the involuntary muscle contractions. I thought that might have been what it was. We both decided to keep the incident to ourselves until years later the story got out.

When we arrived back at the station most of the volunteers were still at the station. It was not uncommon for everyone to hang out after a fatality call. Unbeknown to us it was one of the earliest call debriefing mechanisms. We were a tight nit group, and we could always talk to each other.

As daylight broke, we were still talking and discussing the call, I received my fair share of ribbing over the head immobilization incident. We all were laughing about that when the officer that discovered the call came into the day room. His face was ashen, and he was concerned.

At first, he wanted to speak to the fire officers that had been on the scene, then asked if anyone had found a purse and forgotten to turn it in., we had identified the wrong person as the fatality. When the officer had gone to make death notifications, the person we had identified answered the door. His concern was that we had not turned the second purse in, maybe one of us had put the purse aside and forgotten to give it to the police on the scene.

No one remembered seeing a second purse, so just to be sure we made a second trip to the accident scene and searched for the purse. We were unable to locate the second purse, turned out the older sister had loaned the younger sister her Identification because she wasn’t old enough to get into bars. The two sisters looked remarkably similar.

This was a terrible accident, two people were killed, and unfortunately, both had alcohol in their system. The family was devastated, the other driver had been involved with the fire department years earlier. The accident left scars on a lot of people. The family of the girl buried their daughter in the town cemetery, they created a beautiful tribute to her at her gravesite. This gravesite overlooks the town below.

Little did we know that this one accident would begin a legend, that is still probably talked about today. There were many aftereffects from this incident. These strange and unusual occurrences lasted for many years. I am not sure they may still happen today. I haven’t been there for quite a while.

One of the strangest occurrences involves the ambulance that the young lady was transported to the medical examiner’s office. The crews reported strange things that would happen in this ambulance. I, myself experienced one of these incidents.

The ambulances provided emergency services and non-emergency services. During one of these non-emergency transports, my partner and I both experienced a strange incident. While transporting a patient my partner, who was in the back with the patient, came to the craw space, an opening between the rear of the ambulance and the front seat. Most van-type ambulances had these opening.

He was shivering, asked me if I could turn the air conditioner off. Not an unusual request, the back can get cold. I asked if he turned the air off in the rear, to which he replied that it was completely off. It was at this point I looked at his reflection in the rear-view mirror. I could see his breath, small clouds of vapor as he spoke. I double-checked the air conditioner; however, it was not turned on. He looked at me again, as he looked at the air conditioner control.

I offered to roll the windows down to warm up the rear of the unit. The weather was warm outside. Before I could do anything the rear of the unit began to warm up. The rest of the transport was uneventful.

This unit was written up several times air conditioning malfunction, getting too cold in the rear. There were also reports of seeing a woman in the back of the unit. No one was ever found. Eventually, the unit was sidelined, parked over to the side for parts for the other units. The last time I was around this unit, it was parked beside the station, I believe it was being sold, it was a hot summer day. The windows were cold to the touch from the outside sitting in the sun. I can’t say this unit was haunted but I can say there some weird things that happened with this unit. Of course, the strange occurrences weren’t confined to the ambulance.

Another strange string of events involved the medic station itself. The medics were moved to an old apartment building that was set next to the station. This was a three-unit apartment building with business space and an old garage downstairs. In the hallway upstairs the medics were housed in an apartment. This apartment was closest to the stairs.

This station became known as the haunted station. Crews would report noises and shadows inside the station. On one occasion I had a new partner, I was working as a medic in that station. My new partner had his own room which was next door to my room. I was awakened by my partner standing over me, with his sleeping bag in his hand. He was glaring at me.

I sat up in the bed, looking bewildered. I asked if I had missed a call, thinking I had slept through the pager. He looked at me in disbelief. “You didn’t come in my room and pull my sleeping bag off of me?” He asked suddenly looking around as if he was looking for someone else to blame. I told him no, I was asleep. I asked him what happened.

He sat on the edge of the bed; his head bent down. “I heard this station was haunted, I didn’t believe in ghosts.” He said as he surveyed the floor. “I was sleeping in my bed; my sleeping bag was over the top of me. I felt my sleeping bag pulled away from me, I mean hard. It was on the floor when I woke up.” He said looking at me suspiciously. “I thought you were messing with me, but I can see you were asleep as well.” He said getting up from the bed.

I got up and asked if he would like something to drink. Neither of us could really sleep anymore that night. I fixed some coffee and we walked out to the landing at the top of metal stairs on the side of the building. I told him the story, explained what happened that night. He knew the family they were from the same area. He was still unnerved, but the rest of the night was peaceful.

On another occasion at this station, my same partner and I along with a couple of other firemen experienced an encounter. The building had three apartments at the end of the hallway, there were two doors. The doors formed narrow points, each opening into a different apartment. Construction was still underway in both apartments. The two apartments one on the left and one on the right. The apartment on the right was currently undergoing active construction, workers had tools and other supplies.

This night we had the medics door open, we began to hear noises coming from the apartment under construction. With everyone being a manly man, we decided to investigate the noises. These apartments were older, the doors still had the old-fashioned keyhole locks. These are the keyholes that a person can look through. There was a light on in the foyer area, looking through the keyhole we could see movement beyond the room. The light was bright and was the only light on in the apartment. We knocked on the door and yelled. There was no answer, only silence. We could still see movement beyond the foyer.

We pulled back, called for police backup. The officer arrived, who we all knew well. One of the benefits of working in a small town and a small department is the fact that you have relationships with just about everyone.

We explained the situation, the officer attempted to make contact as well. There was no answer, yet movement was still detected. The police backup arrived and monitored the side windows. We breached the door; the officer had his gun drawn. As we opened the door, the light went dark. Everyone instinctively hunkered down moving forward with the officer.

A thorough search of the apartment came up empty. The rooms were all empty. We were able to turn the rest of the lights on in the apartment. We couldn’t turn the light on in the foyer, however. There was no lightbulb in the socket. The very light, the only light that had been on, had no bulb in it.

This incident caused a memo to come down the line. It was strongly discouraged that any talk of ghosts was to be avoided. The memo blamed the fear the rumors were causing about the station. In short, be quiet, don’t talk about it.

With that memo out about the incident, it was only talked about in hushed tones, and never where someone may overhear the conversation. However, these incidents weren’t the only things going on there. Other incidents weren’t reported.

One such incident involved seeing the ghost in a window. Under the station had been an old garage. This business had a large window in the door. If we were dispatched for a car crash or a house fire that had a fatality involved, it was said she could be seen in this window. I must admit I saw her, or something a couple of times.

I experienced seeing her a few times. I was going through a divorce, a lot of stress. I am not sure how much the stress played into what I was experiencing. I would awaken in the middle of the night and the apparition of the young lady would be sitting Indian style beside the bed.

I confided in my friend. I told him about my issue. He had an out-of-the-ordinary suggestion. On the night of the call, there were two medics, one medic checked on the young lady in the car and pronounced her dead. She figured that the patient with a pulse took priority. This is classic triage and she was following protocol. However, she left the young girl and went to what she felt was a more viable patient. Again, this is perfectly ok. Sometimes with situations such as this, you must make split-second, life and death decisions. That comes with the job and you must follow through. It’s not pleasant, however, it is necessary.

My friend simply told me: “Next time you see her, just tell her that *Deleted Name* pronounced her. Tell her you didn’t have anything to with it.”

I followed his advice. I told the apparition this very sentence. The medic I named had moved on to another career. This was some time after the initial incident. That medic suddenly and unexpectedly checked into a mental health program. She admitted herself to the program.

I don’t know if anything I experienced was related in any way to this medic checking herself into a psychiatric facility. I do know that after I uttered those words, I was never awakened again by this apparition. However, she did keep in touch.

I worked in that station when I wrote my first book, The Crew. I initially wanted to dedicate that book to her. I felt like she had earned some recognition. I wrote that book on an older computer. We had a 3.5-inch disk drive. I would save it to the computer and the disk drive. The funny part is sometimes the disk would be scrambled, sometimes it was the copy on the computer. After I finally changed my dedication to my dad, the problems seemed to disappear. No longer did I have those issues when saving or retrieving the files.

I have since heard of rumors of things going on at that station. Over the years, the ambulances were bought out by the county. That station was used for a while, however, the station was closed and returned to the fire department. It is rumored that they had trouble staffing the station due to strange occurrences there.

Years later I returned to that town, I lived a few blocks from the station. I volunteered with the fire department. My new wife and I had an apartment a couple of blocks from the fire station. We had strange experiences while we lived there. My new wife was poked and shoved; I received a bite mark on my shoulder. We would feel someone sitting on the end of the bed. I am not sure she had anything to do with these things, however, they ceased after we moved away.

This story is one that will make you wonder. Are there ghosts, spirits, or demons? I will leave that to the reader to decide. I am still not convinced of exactly what I have experienced. One day we may be able to find out. In the meantime, we have a great story to tell around the campfire.

This story took place at my parent’s home in Brooke County in a town called Wellsburg, WV. My parents purchased this home back in 1995 and it was built back in 1910. They had it completely remodeled due to it being in very bad shape and they moved into it around the second week of January 1996.

All was quiet until March of 2007, I had purchased a wrecked GEO Tracker from our local junkyard and I put it in my parent’s garage and restored it over the winter months of 2006 and finished it in March 2007. While I was in the garage all the lights started to flash like a Morse Code SOS sequence, then all the lights went out. I checked the fuse box and everything looked fine to me so I called my brother-in-law, he’s an electrician and he came over and checked it out and said everything was fine. It made no sense to him, he left.

We had recently put up a new section of fence to keep our dogs in the yard and I told my mother that one of the fence posts may have hit an underground wire that runs from the house to the garage and it was possible that it finally short out.

I went into the house and turned off the main breaker then went back out to the garage and started to dig in the area where I thought the power wire was. I dug down approx 3 to 5 inches and hit what I thought was just a big rock or possibly part of an old foundation. The more I dug the bigger it got. I grabbed a large prybar out of the garage and worked at it and it finally came loose, then up and out, and flipped over.

As I stood there looking at it, I saw a date written on it. It was dated 1880, the rest of the writing below the date fell off. It didn’t dawn on me at that moment what I had just dug up so I yelled for my mother to come to look at it. She came out and said, “oh my god that’s a headstone.”

Approximately 3 feet to the right of the headstone I found a small nameplate with “Lucy” written on it backward and also what looks like an Indian arrowhead. The power wire turned out to be fine and my mother contacted someone in charge of the cemeteries in our county and the guy told her they have no records of a cemetery being in our area and if there was one it must have been an unlisted private one.

Three to five days later we noticed caution tape was put around our neighbor’s business which is 40 feet from our backyard. A few cop cars were parked by his business but we didn’t know what had happened. A few days later my mother took our dogs over to his shop, which is a dog grooming business. My mother asked the owner, who at the time was also the mayor of Wellsburg, about what had happened. He told her a backhoe was working on his parking lot and it sunk down into a big hole and when they got it out they found human remains in the hole and that’s why law enforcement was there. The officers told them to cover it back up which they did.

My mother told him about the headstone and what the guy in charge of the cemeteries said. The mayor told her that back when our part of town was called Lazearville, our block was the cemetery. Supposedly, the bodies were moved to another cemetery but, as you can see, they didn’t move all the graves. He said they found a headstone underneath the floor in his business when they tore it up to replace the floor.

A few days later, our nightmare began. I was in my room reading a book around 2 am and I heard footsteps that traveled from the kitchen to the laundry room. My daughter’s bedroom door opened and in came a blue glowing ball of light about the size of a soccer ball. It hovered for a few seconds and then zipped into my bedroom and vanished at the foot of my bed. I rubbed my eyes and thought to myself am I half asleep or what?

The next day I told my mother about it and she said you only imagined it.

The next night around the same time I heard a noise in my daughter’s bedroom then a crashing sound. I jumped up and ran to her room. My daughter wasn’t in there she was in her grandmother’s bed because she was afraid of the dark. I noticed all of her toys, which were in a large cloth sack, on the floor at the foot of her bed and scattered all over her bed and floor. I put all of her toys back in the sack and put the sack back where it belonged. I tried to make sense of it and tried to recreate it but couldn’t come close.

The next day I told my mother again and she said, “John finding that headstone is messing with your head,” which I thought was neat finding that.

The next day it was my mother’s turn to experience something. She was in the restroom and we heard her yelling so I went and checked on her. She said to whoever is trying to get in the restroom that she would be done in a minute. I said, “mother nobody was back there trying to get in” and she said, “haha, quit playing jokes.”

The next morning I heard her yelling again and this time she was in the kitchen. When I walked in, her eyes were as big as saucers and she was shaking. I asked what’s wrong and she said something came from the living room and it walked right behind her and she said it sounded like it had heavy boots on and there was an ice-cold gust of wind with it.

“It” then decided to pick on my 9-year-old daughter the next day. She was in my mother’s bedroom watching TV and after my mother left the room to go to the restroom, we heard my daughter screaming. We ran in to see what happened and she said an old bald-headed guy wearing a suit walked along the bed then stopped, turned and looked at her, then turned back around, and walked through the wall.

We ended up calling for an ambulance because my daughter was so shaken up that she had an asthma attack and her inhaler wasn’t working. My daughter moved out and moved in with her mother and hasn’t been back here since.

I have a nephew named Adam, he was 11 years old back when all this stuff started to happen, he’s now 26 years old and now works for the Sheriff’s department. Adam said he will never come back to this house. He came to visit us and while he was here, he claimed that he saw an old man in the laundry room watching us while we were watching TV in the living room. My mother, dad, and I all looked and saw nothing. This happened three times, so I told him that I was gonna get my digital camera, and the next time he saw him to nudge me and I would start snapping photos, which he did.

I snapped several photos in a row as I walked from the living room to the laundry room. I did not look straight ahead as I walked, I was focusing on the small screen on the camera. It’s a good thing that I did because if I would have seen with my own eyes what was captured on the camera I would have probably crapped myself.

In the photos, there is what looks like a human skull and it was wearing an old-fashioned flat-top hat and as I approached the laundry room it turned its head and went out the backdoor.

On another day when my nephew was visiting, I was in the garage working on my vehicle. My nephew came into the garage and said uncle Johnny there is a little girl inside the house watching me out the backdoor. I looked and saw nothing. I had a digital camera in the glove box in my vehicle so I gave him the camera and told him to take a picture of her the next time he saw her. He came back into the garage and said here’s your camera back, I took photos of her. I went into the house and put the memory card into the computer and there was a little girl standing at the backdoor wearing a dress that others told us was from back during the 1800s.

One morning I got up and went to the kitchen to get something to drink and two dogs that we used to have, they’re both deceased now, ran past me and stopped in the kitchen where the kitchen meets the living room and both growled and barked toward the livingroom. I stepped into the living room to look and saw a small dark mass moving along the wall so I left and went back to my bedroom and grabbed the digital camera and as soon as I turned the corner I started snapping photos. I captured a bald-headed man wearing a suit, he was seen in my mother’s China Cabinet glass window, and as I walked into the living room I saw his face in a mirror. He said something to me in a deep voice and I felt threatened so I left the living room. As I turned around to yell for the dogs I saw a picture frame lift up off the living room wall and thrown, glass shattered everywhere. I left the house along with the dogs and didn’t return for a while.

We decided it was time to get help, my mother asked our church and they didn’t want to be involved for whatever reason so we wrote to paranormal groups and a group came from Ohio called the Ohio Researchers of Banded Spirits (ORBS). They brought a priest with them. They captured EVPs and EMF hits in the garage and said they heard footsteps. They went into the house and captured more EVPs, EMF hits, and said they saw a 7-foot tall shadow person in the basement, which they captured on a thermal camera. They said it attacked the priest by trying to hit him.

The priest blessed the house, property, and us. He said it was gone and we shouldn’t have any more problems, which it seemed like it did work for the first couple of months before it started back up again with knocking at the front and back door and when my mother went to look, nobody was there.

The group that came here contacted a TV show called “My Ghost Story Caught on Camera”, then those people contacted us, and they picked us to be on that show, which aired on December 28, 2012, and was titled “Beyond the Grave”. We were also picked to be on “Paranormal Survivor”, which aired on October 20, 2018, and was titled “Buried Secrets”. The priest that came here wrote a book called “The Ekballist“, which is based on actual demonic encounters, and put this house in his book. The Ohio group said they investigated hundreds of haunted locations and this house ranks in their top 5.

The most recent harmful thing that has happened here was last year, my elderly mother was pulled out of her bed and it was captured on a nanny cam, a camera was put in her room because she said something kept touching her, which was also captured on camera. I was partially pulled out of my bed after I saw a shadow person in my bedroom. I have been scratched and a few others as well, that have visited us. My mother had bruises on her arm that looked like fingerprints and a few others said it looked like a bite mark. We saw small flashing white lights all of the time and it’s been captured on security cameras multiple times. An apparition has been captured a few times on the cameras and voices talking and objects being moved and thrown.

The last paranormal investigator that visited was back around June 2018. He wrote a book called “Real West Virginia Hauntings: Volume 1“, which also had a story about this house titled the “Wellsburg Devil House.” When he was here he stood in an area inside our garage that is sinking and asked if he was standing on anyone’s grave. A female’s voice responded saying, “yes.”

We’ve been trying to get someone to come out here since the last investigator was here, we have reached out to most of the paranormal TV shows, and we have had no response from anybody. We would like to find a group that could possibly bring ground-penetrating radar equipment or even cadaver dogs so that we can find out where all the graves are. The house also needs to be blessed again, it has been blessed 3 times now and it’s still very much here!

I have lived in the small town of Burlington my whole life. Burlington is rich in history that is extremely hard to find. One thing I do know is that not even a mile from my house, Indians brutally murdered a group of settlers.

With some background information in place it is time to tell my stories about the shadow people. I lived in the backwoods, meaning my nearest neighbor is more than one hundred yards away from my land. As a small child I would play outside by myself, and there is one day that I remember vividly. I was playing outside when I saw a “person”, as I called it back then, watching me from the tree line. I ran inside and told my dad, but when he came out the “person” was gone. I remember it was a silhouette of a man and everything was black. He had no face or anything. I now refer to it as the shadow person.

Years later, I was in my driveway playing basketball. Directly behind my basketball hoop is the woods. I was playing and I just happened to look over and saw what looked like the same shadow person from years ago. I ran inside to tell my mom and she came outside and ran into the woods chasing it. To this day she will not tell me what she saw, but she definitely saw something.

About two years ago, I was in my kitchen making popcorn in the microwave. Now the way my house is set up you can see the living room and back hallway from the microwave. At the time, my dad was outside and my mom was inside and we were the only ones home. So, I was standing by the microwave and out of the corner of my eye I saw someone walk the back hallway. I yelled for my mom, thinking it was her, and she didn’t answer. I went back the hallway and into the bathroom and no one was in there, and about that time my mom yelled from the laundry room (which is on the other end of the house). I went to talk to her and then came back into the kitchen and once again I saw the shadow person go back down the hallway. For some reason it wanted me to go down that hallway, and to this day I have no idea why.

These are just a few of the stories from my home, which I still live in.

We bought a house which was also a log cabin that was built in 1766. It was located on WV 9, 3 miles west of Hedgesville, beside Tillman creek. The first night we spent there, I was sleeping on the floor when I felt something pushing up against me. It was a large dog laying beside me and he/she had stretched out thus touching me and waking me up. We did not own a dog at that time. I was so tired and exhausted from moving that I said the heck with it, I’m going back to sleep.

That same night I was woken again by a tall black figure standing in the doorway. I figured it was my husband (he had fallen asleep on the couch). I asked him several times what he wanted, but didn’t get an answer. There again, I said the heck with it and went back to sleep. The next morning he said it wasn’t him and that he had not gotten up at all that night.

Through the month we would hear loud footsteps pounding up the stairs, but no one was there. Doors would slam shut.

Another time a young man stood beside me. He was watching me clean the cobwebs. I saw him clear as can be, but he was a ghost. The space around us was bone cold and it scared me. So I went outside to warm up and get away from him. It was 90 degrees out that day. Other things like that have happened to me, but I won’t get into that. The house/cabin burned down. No more ghosts. We’ve rebuilt.

I refuse to mention the grocery stores by name but 7 years ago I was a manager at one in Southern West Virginia. It was getting close to closing time and I had heard ghost stories but I experienced it first hand. I was in the back doing my checks for the night. I came through to the bakery where I saw two little girls. I kind of did a double-take and they disappeared. I started looking for them when I heard a chilling voice say my name. Nobody was around. I checked the aisles and headed up front where my cashier girl and the stock guy stood, it wasn’t them. I did ask them if they heard or saw anyone. They didn’t.

Another night, I had come face to face with this thing in black. I did at first think it was a joke but it wasn’t.

Two months later this black figure returned, locking me out on the dock. The night cleaner heard me and let me back in.

There have been a few times where food would just fall off the shelves. It was mostly bread.
One day early around eight in the morning a customer swore she hit a person with her buggy and he disappeared.

In the 7 years that I have worked there, I didn’t know what to expect. Stuff happened frequently and we couldn’t keep night employees. If I didn’t have a family of six to feed I would have left too.

I guess a lot of people know about Wolf Creek near Fayetteville because it drops into the New River Gorge in a series of spectacular cascades. But I don’t suppose many know that the creek heads up in the plateau near Oak Hill and that it was named because of wolves. Wolves haven’t been seen in the state since the 1800s, except for one case I know about firsthand—the White Wolf that haunts the Whitlock Farm on Wolf Creek Road.

I suppose it’s a ghost wolf, not a white wolf, though that’s what they call it. Legend has it that the wolf prowls the fields around the old farm pond in the evening but that its favorite haunt is in the bend in front of the old Whitlock farmhouse. The farmhouse isn’t that spooky itself, though most everyone knows it because of its red-and-yellow brick. It’s as much a part of the landscape as the big oaks that shade the yard around it. They say that late, late at night people driving past the house catch a flicker of white in their headlights. That’s the wolf.

One night about 25 years ago we were driving back from a party in town and we saw the White Wolf for ourselves. We were coming through the bend in front of the farmhouse when my boyfriend decided he wanted to pull over in front of the farm and get romantic. Everything seemed normal, though a little spooky as there was no one living in the farmhouse then. I’d completely forgotten about the legend of the White Wolf because I was more worried about seeing a ghost looking out the farmhouse window at me, which is another story I’ve heard about that place.

At any rate, we were sitting there, talking, and the headlights were off, so you couldn’t see much in the darkness, but still, I seemed to see a kind of white form moving around outside the car. I thought it was a trick of the eyes at first, the way things look in the near-dark. But then I kept seeing it move, I thought, through the tall grass near the car. I told my boyfriend to be quiet a minute. He didn’t seem to notice anything and started laughing. But then all of a sudden it was standing there outside my car door and let out a howl so loud it was unbelievable. I could see its eyes looking at us, but I was paralyzed with fear and couldn’t turn my head. Jon fumbled with the keys and got the car started and back up right into Wolf Creek Road without stopping. Not that there was any traffic on the road at that hour anyway. We didn’t stop until we were a mile down the road and then just pulled over and cried, we were so scared.

I pass the farmhouse all the time now and haven’t seen anything since, but then I’m not wanting to see anything again, so I don’t look hard. Why the ghost wolf might haunt the farm, who can say? Maybe a hunter killed it, the last of its kind, there in the little levels along the creek. Maybe it’s guarding the house. Maybe people still see it from time to time. Every once in a while I’ll hear an old’ timer from Garten or Gatewood talk about it, but, for the most part, the legend seems to have slipped away.

The festivities of Halloween bring about tales of ghosts, goblins, witches, and of course the Devil himself. Year after year, we engage in the transmitting of horror stories, done solely to entertain ourselves and others. However, Halloween season 2015, I had an encounter with the undead; one I will never forget.

I’ve long believed there is more out there than we can see. It is said, Sam Hein was celebrated by Celtics with the belief a realm existed between the living and the dead, and during this time of year, that realm was at its thinnest. If you would have told me this before, I wouldn’t have believed it. I do now.

Institute, West Virginia, once called “Piney Grove,” is a tiny town with a hidden history. Its origin was born out of the ashes of a love story between slaveholder Samuel I. Cabell and his slave wife Mary Barnes. The land on which WVSU rests was once home to a plantation. Slaves worked local salt mines for Cabell, and many died in captivity. Samuel did write wills setting said slaves free upon his death, though he later recanted those wishes. Taking this into consideration, I believe those spirits I encountered there to be of dead slaves.

For reasons I cannot explain, I felt their presence at night. In fact, I once awoke to a tall, pudgy man standing on the side of my bed. As I shifted my position, he walked to the bed’s foot and disappeared. I was in shock. A second encounter occurred when I took the trash out one evening. As I made my way back to my front door, I felt the presence of several men around me. I could feel their eyes watching me, though I was the only person outside. I could feel their anger as they watched me make my way back into my house. I assume, because I am black and light-skinned, they mistook me for a house slave. I’ve felt the slaves inside my home, strolling the hallway at night. I’ve felt them in my kitchen. I’ve also seen the spirits of a small, Caucasian girl wandering my home. She took to my son, following his birth, visiting him in his room time and again. She skipped to and fro, splitting her time between his room and mine. There is also the spirit of an old man. I’ve smelled his cigarettes early in the morning, and his whiskey late at night. I have no clue who these people were, minus the angry slaves I’ve encountered. I can honestly say for sure I believe spirits are real, and the dead don’t always rest peacefully.

My three friends and I were headed home from the Wayne Pioneers football game Friday night around 10 pm. We were talking and listening to the radio when I rolled up on fog. I then saw him, he was hitchhiking. He was wearing a green soldier uniform and packing a duffle bag. I looked through the mirror and he disappeared. At the next wide spot I turned around and drove back, but he was gone. There were no houses around. Where did he go?

A year later my mom and I saw him walking at night.

I live in Mingo County. I was 18 when this happened to me. Since this was our Senior year in 1999, my friends and I decided while off on Christmas break we would go sledding since we had 7 inches of snow.

We bundled up and walked to the end of our holler. We all lived in the same holler. I always loved snow and having fun.

Kim, Sarah, Mary, John, Lee and I went up the hill. Kim and I got on my new red sled. We took off first with Mary and John behind us and Sarah and Lee behind them. We hit a stump and sailed into the air and landed almost in the creek. I was shaken up, the sled was on me, and I had to push it off. I didn’t see Kim anywhere. I started calling her name. I saw that she was hurt and laying next to the creek. She grunted and I noticed her leg was bleeding. I started shouting for the rest of my friends. I tried picking her up and I saw yellow boots next to her body. I looked up to see a red-headed girl wearing a yellow snowsuit.

“I’ll get help,” she said.

The next thing I knew, she was gone. My friends came over all worried. John scooped her up.

“Did you see her? I asked.

“See who?” Sarah asked.

“That girl”, I said.

We all started walking toward the road when John’s dad in his 4 wheel drive Ford truck pulled up.

“Dad she’s hurt.” John said packing his little sister.

“That girl came and told me.” Mr. Messer said.

“What girl?” I asked.

“Your friend with the red hair wearing the yellow boots.” He replied.

We never did see that girl again. We didn’t know who she was until I attended Southern College and my new friend Emilee Watts was at her house working on a project and I used the bathroom and low and behold I saw a picture of that red headed girl wearing those yellow boots!

I immediately asked her about the girl.

Here is what she said, “That’s my sister, I was 5 when she went missing. We never found her body. She might be alive. Her name was Rachel. I like to believe she’s alive.”

“How old would she be?” I asked.

“30,” she replied.

I knew that she had to been a ghost cause she was our age.

I was spooked out. I didn’t tell her the story. I figured I’d let her believe Rachel ran away with some boy.