So Supernatural - HAUNTED: The Greenbrier Ghost

Episode Date: November 11, 2020

A young woman in Greenbrier, West Virginia died mysteriously in 1897. Weeks later, she returned from the dead to identify the man who murdered her. 

When someone is murdered, the best witnesses are those who actually saw it happen, or at least someone who either witnessed the victim right before they died or who found the body afterwards. It would all be way easier if the murder victim could just point to the person who killed them. Obviously, that sounds impossible. But in the case of Zona Heaster's shoe, that is exactly what happened. Zona mysteriously died in 1897. But weeks later, her mother, Mary Jane Heaster, claimed that her daughter's ghost appeared to her in the middle of the night. On her lips, the name of the man who snapped her neck. This is Supernatural. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. This week's episode is about the Greenbrier ghost.

In 1897, a young woman was murdered in Greenbrier, West Virginia, but she returned from the dead to point out her culprit, making this the only time in American history that someone was convicted on the testimony of a ghost. We'll have all that and more coming up. Stay with us. In October 1896, 23-year-old Elva Zona Heaster was a single woman living in Greenbrier County, a rural area in West Virginia. Not much ever really went on there until a mysterious man named Edward Shue moved to town. Edward gets a job down at the local blacksmith's, but that's neither here nor there. What's most distinct about Edward is that he's a total thirst trap. He's muscular and tall with dark eyes and

slick clothes. Like all the other women in town, Zona wants a piece of that, but her mother, Mary Jane Heaster, disapproves. She doesn't like Edward at all. For one, Edward claims that he's 29, but he looks like he could be older. Mary Jane also hates how he's always bragging about himself and telling all sorts of stories that can't possibly be true. Like, there's just something off about Edward's whole persona. Of course, her mother's disapproval only works to make Edward that much more irresistible in Zona's eyes. So less than one month after meeting, the two lovers elope. For the first few weeks of marriage, things seem to be going well. Edward heads to work every day, and when he comes back to their little home,

Zona has a warm dinner on the table. They seem just like any other couple in Greenbrier. But three months in, things take a turn. January 23rd, 1897 starts off like any other day. Edward wakes up, gets dressed, and heads off to the Smithy, leaving Zona at home alone. Only today, Edward doesn't go directly to his shop. First, he stops by at his neighbor, Mrs. Jones's house. He has an errand for her 11-year-old son, Andy. Edward tells her that his wife, Zona, is feeling a little bit under the weather. She won't be able to deliver eggs from their farm to the store in town, so Edward needs Andy to do it. He also asks Andy to look in on Zona and find out if she wants anything else from town. Now, I should mention that the Joneses are one of the few Black families in Greenbrier, and this is 1897, so it's

definitely possible that Edward was used to having Andy run errands, and Mrs. Jones easily agrees to it, so this doesn't seem like an unusual ask. What is unusual is that Edward returns to the Joneses' home four more times that day, and each time he gets progressively angrier that Andy hasn't left yet, which like, sure, this guy seems pretty self-entitled, but checking in four times about a small errand is, it's just bizarre. Even Andy is a little weirded out by Edward's insistence. But after the fourth visit, he figures he better do what the irate white man wants. So Andy leaves his house and sets off for the shoe farm. The minute he gets there, things seem off. The first errand Edward asked Andy to do was pick up eggs from his chickens to bring to a

store in town. But no matter how much Andy looks, there are no eggs to be found in the coop, which is weird because normally chickens lay eggs on a daily basis, so it's almost as if someone had already come by and collected all the eggs, in which case Edward should have known, or maybe Zona's feeling better and did it herself. In any case, Andy still has to look in on Zona, so he walks over to the front door of the farmhouse and knocks. But there's no answer. Andy knocks again, but still nobody comes. After waiting around for a couple of minutes, he decides to try the knob, and to his surprise, the door is unlocked. When Andy steps inside, the house is completely silent and Zona is nowhere to be seen. Andy probably figures she's upstairs resting, but he decides to look for her in the kitchen first.

But the kitchen is cold and empty like it hasn't been used all day. Still, Andy doesn't think too much of it. Zona probably just isn't feeling up to cooking. And at this point, he just wants to get this stupid errand over and done with, so he moves further into the house. But then he stops in his tracks. Lying smack dab in the middle of the dining room floor is Zona Heaster's shoe. Her eyes are blank, her mouth is wide open, and her head is turned slightly to the side. Andy doesn't have to move any closer to see that Zona

is dead, but he can't bring himself to leave without making sure, so he reaches out and touches Zona's arm. It's ice cold. Andy doesn't need any more proof. Zona is dead and he doesn't want to be seen anywhere near her body. He turns and sprints out of the house. Now, Andy doesn't go to the smithy to tell Edward what he's just seen. He doesn't even fetch the town doctor. Instead, he runs all the way home, which, if you think about it, makes a lot of sense. I mean, first of all, Andy is 11, so he's just a kid. He's probably never seen a dead body before, and either way, he's terrified. And secondly, like I said, Andy is Black. He's likely aware of the prejudices facing Black people, especially in a rural county like

Greenbrier and especially during this time. It's definitely possible that Andy ran home to his mother because he was afraid that he might get blamed for Zona's death. Andy tells his mom, Mrs. Jones, what he saw, and she instantly knows they have to tackle this head-on. They must inform Edward. So she takes Andy to the smithy and helps him explain exactly what happened. Immediately, Edward sprints home to check on his wife, and the worried people back at the blacksmith's forge send out a call for the town's only coroner, a man named Dr. Knapp. When Dr. Knapp arrives at the shoe farm, he doesn't find Zona in the dining room. Instead, both Edward and Zona's corpse are upstairs in the master bedroom. And the minute he enters, Dr. Knapp sees this bizarre scene. Edward is on the bed with Zona's body. He is clutching her in his arms and

sobbing. But that's not even the weird part. Zona's dressed in this stiff, high-necked gown, and there's a large scarf tied around her neck that completely clashes with her outfit, which might seem like a weird thing to be pointing out, but it was noticed because Zona was a better dresser than this. And sure enough, Edward explains that he has just dressed his wife in these clothes. He says the dress and scarf were Zona's favorite, and he wants her to be wearing them when she's laid to rest. Now, Victorian custom at the time does dictate that a dead woman's relatives dress her for the funeral, but it's supposed to be a female relative who does it. Still, Dr. Knapp seems to kind of just write the whole thing off as Edward's way of grieving.

What's more strange is that Edward's crying seems to escalate every time that Dr. Knapp tries to examine Zona's body, especially when he tries to take a look at her neck. Eventually, Dr. Knapp just gives up trying to examine her. He puts Zona's cause of death as everlasting faint, which is how doctors referred to heart attacks back then. And okay, the fact that Dr. Knapp doesn't try harder to inspect Zona's body is wild. Like, clearly Edward is acting weird, and most people would want an autopsy to know why their loved one died, but no one seems to call Dr. Knapp out on this. At any rate, Edward's strange behavior only escalates. During Zona's funeral, he stations himself by the coffin and refuses to let anyone else come close, not

even Mary Jane, her mother. Edward has also propped a pillow and blanket beneath Zona's head. When people ask him about it, he says he wants to make his dead wife more comfortable. But everyone who manages to catch a closer glimpse at the body before Edward shoos them away has the same thought. It looks like Zona's neck is a little bit loose. It's almost as if the bedding is the only thing keeping her neck propped up. But apparently, nobody calls this out. And before Zona's family knows it, her body is six feet underground. Still, none of this sits well with Mary Jane. In fact, Mary Jane is furious. Her young daughter suddenly dropping dead never made any sense. And after witnessing Edward at the funeral, Mary Jane's gut

is telling her that something is rotten in Greenbrier. She is desperate for answers. So Mary Jane prays for a sign. She asks God to show her what happened to Zona. And eventually, she receives an answer from the great beyond. Coming up, Zona's ghost visits Mary Jane. Now back to the story. A few weeks after Zona's funeral, Mary Jane is woken up in the middle of the night by a bright light. Now, this happens in 1897, so there's not a whole lot of details left to work with. But apparently, according to Mary Jane, the light was at the foot of her bed, and it seemed like Mary Jane isn't so much scared by it

as she is confused. She keeps gazing at the light, trying to understand it, and gradually it starts to take on a physical form. Until, to her shock, Mary Jane realizes what she's looking at. It's Zona, solid as she ever was in life. Stunned, Mary Jane reaches out toward her dead daughter, but before she can make contact, Zona disappears. Mary Jane instantly has a feeling that she just saw her daughter's ghost, and she worries that she's lost Zona all over again, that her ghost will never come back. But after that first night, Zona's ghost visits Mary Jane three more times. Over the course of those three visits, Zona apparently tells Mary Jane a chilling tale. Now, this story is already pretty hard to believe, but allegedly, Zona tells Mary Jane that her last evening on earth did not go at all the way she had planned. Zona had cooked supper

for her handsome husband, Edward Edward to enjoy when he got home from work. But when he sits down at the table, Edward's face clouds over. He realizes Zona hasn't prepared any meat to go with the meal. Then he completely flips out. It's unclear what all he does, but according to Zona's ghost, Edward started breaking all of her things. He got so worked up that he eventually reached out and strangled her. And that's not all Zona reveals. She says he kept squeezing until her neck snapped right between the first and second vertebrae.

According to Mary Jane, Zona actually gets that specific. Then, as if to prove her words, Zona turns her head 360 degrees, showing her mother without a shadow of a doubt that her vertebrae aren't attached. Mary Jane is stunned, but before she can react, Zona disappears. And supposedly, that's the last time she ever sees her daughter's ghost. Okay, obviously, this story is completely crazy. The idea of a ghost coming back from the dead and twisting their head around is like something out of a bad movie. But if Mary Jane is aware how nuts her tale sounds, she clearly doesn't care. After Zona's fourth visit, she starts telling everyone in Greenbrier

about her nighttime apparitions. Now, this is a small town, and again, plenty of people witnessed Edward's behavior at the funeral, so it's not that outrageous to think he had something to do with her death. But when Mary Jane tells people what Zona's ghost said, they just feel sorry for her. They figure that the strain of losing a child has basically caused Mary Jane to snap. But she isn't about to give up. She heads right over to the offices of the county prosecutor, a guy named John Alfred Preston. If Mary Jane is expecting a different reaction from Preston, she's disappointed. Like everyone else, the prosecutor pretty much thinks she's nuts. But Mary Jane is so insistent that Preston decides to speak to Dr.

Knapp, the coroner who examined Zona. And when he meets with Dr. Knapp, Preston is shocked by what he hears. Now, Dr. Knapp could have lied to protect his reputation, but to his credit, he's totally honest. He admits that he gave up on examining Zona's body because every time he tried, Edward burst into tears. Now, Preston still doesn't believe in ghosts, but the fact that Zona's body was never examined disturbs him, so much so that he agrees to reopen the case. Mary Jane is thrilled, but Edward feels very differently. And when he hears his wife's body is to be exhumed, he is furious. But what can he do? Preston is the town prosecutor, and Edward knows he shouldn't

draw any more suspicious attention to himself. And just to show how skeptical everyone else is that Edward even did it, he's actually invited to be present for the day of the actual examination. Edward accepts their invitation, and he's literally in the same room as the doctors who are scrutinizing his wife's body. Their entire autopsy lasts for three whole days, and Edward seems nervous. He tells his friends that he knows he'll be arrested once it's over. But he also says there's no way that the police will be able to even prove that he killed Zona. Like, even if she was murdered, it doesn't mean he did it. Either way, on the third day,

the doctors finally get around to examining Zona's neck, and the evidence is all there. Zona has black and blue marks all around her neck as if someone violently strangled her. Not only that, her windpipe has been crushed, but by far the craziest thing that the doctors discover is that her neck had been broken. It's snapped right between the first and second vertebrae, just like her ghost told Mary Jane. With that, the doctor turns to Edward and says, well, Edward, we have found your wife's neck to have been broken. Then, just as Edward predicted, Preston charges him with murder and

takes him into police custody. Mary Jane is triumphant when her son-in-law is finally put behind bars. But then, news about Edward's past slowly starts coming out. As it turns out, he is even shadier than Mary Jane ever imagined. For one, Edward's first name isn't even Edward. It's Erasmus. And sure enough, he's not 29. He's actually 35. But what really gets Mary Jane is that Zona wasn't even Edward's first wife. She was his third. Apparently, 11 years before moving to Greenbrier in 1885, Edward married his first spouse, a young woman called Allie Esteline Cutlip. The two made their home in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, but their union was extremely unhappy. Edward was often violent, beating Allie so frequently and so severely that it became common knowledge around town.

Now, this was the late 1800s. When it came to spousal abuse, people were known to kind of just mind their own business to a fault. But apparently, Edward's behavior disturbs the other residents so much that one night, a group of young boys come knocking on his door. When Edward answers, they drag him out of his house and throw him into an ice hole. And just so there's no doubt about why they did it, they tell Edward that they attacked him because he keeps beating up his wife. And I should mention that none of the boys are prosecuted. On the contrary, townspeople line up to vouch for their character.

That's how disgusted they are with the way Edward treats his wife. A few months later, Edward is thrown in jail for horse thievery. Allie uses this opportunity to safely divorce Edward. She can finally escape him. But things don't go so well for Edward's second wife. After his release from jail, Edward moves to the outskirts of Pocahontas County, where he marries another young woman named Lucy Ann Tritt. But just eight months later, Lucy dies. Now, there are a lot of different accounts about how she died. Some people say Lucy fell and hit her head. Others claim that Edward deliberately dropped a brick on her.

Whatever happened, it seemed clear that there was some form of brain trauma and a lot of unanswered questions. But for whatever reason, Lucy's death is put down as an accident, and there's never an investigation. Fast forward to 1897, Mary Jane Heaster was probably reeling as she heard all these horrifying stories about her son-in-law. But Edward seems confident about his upcoming trial. Sure, Zona's neck was broken, but it's impossible to prove that he broke it. All the prosecution has to go on is some circumstantial evidence and the testimony of a ghost. Edward even gets a little cocky in prison. Not only does he admit that Zona was his third wife, he says he hopes to marry seven wives over the course of his life. Finally, in June of 1897,

five months after Zona's death, the trial begins. But even though Mary Jane is the reason they are all here, Preston doesn't want her on the stand. If anything, her testimony about a ghost can only hurt the case. Naturally, Edward's defense attorney takes the complete opposite approach. They can't wait for the jury to get a load of Zona's mom's story, so they immediately tap Mary Jane as their witness. The minute she takes the stand, Edwards' lawyers try and make her look stupid. They do this by asking her about her so-called dreams. But Mary Jane just keeps her cool. She calmly answers that she wasn't dreaming. She was,

quote, as wide awake as she's ever been, end quote. Eventually, Edward's lawyers realize they're not going to rattle her. Before long, she's let go. Then the prosecution calls Edward's shoe to the stand. And a whole new level of crazy is unleashed. Edward is seething and antagonistic. He accuses the prosecution of being driven by sheer spite. And throughout his testimony, Edward goes on these long, pointless tangents where he describes random events in detail. In short, his performance is a complete disaster.

And it comes as no surprise that after a brief deliberation, the jury returns and declares Edward guilty. By now, all of Mary Jane's naysayers have switched sides. This guy definitely murdered his wife. And it seems pretty clear this guy will get the death penalty, which was the standard back in 1897's West Virginia. But for whatever reason, the judge opts to give Edward life in prison, which, if you think about it, makes sense. Edward was convicted on the basis of some circumstantial evidence, along with a truly

terrible performance in court and an initial ghost story. Like, it definitely adds up, but it's not exactly a clear-cut case. Still, several Greenbrier residents are furious about this. They're convinced Edward is a murderer, and they can't stand the idea of him weaseling out of the death penalty. So not long after the verdict, a mob of about 20 angry men decide to bust Edward out of jail and hang him themselves. Fortunately for Edward, Greenbrier's deputy sheriff catches wind of this and he manages to talk down the mob. Then, just three years later,

Edward dies simply enough from a bout of pneumonia. So whether or not you'd call it justice, this guy is dead. He can't cause any more harm. But that's not exactly the end of the story. Because while this is the only time in America that anyone has been sentenced to prison, essentially because of a ghost story, it's not the only time ever. The same thing had already happened in Australia about 70 years before Zona's ghost made her first appearance. Coming up, a dead man points to his killer. Now back to the story. In 1826, in Campbelltown, Australia, a farmer named Frederick Fisher suddenly disappeared.

Except in his case, it took a couple of days for people to start asking questions. That's when his neighbor, George Worrell, pipes up. George says he spoke to Frederick shortly before he disappeared, and allegedly, Frederick just decided to move back to his original hometown in England. So definitely not a murder or a kidnapping. And even though Frederick's sudden departure is strange, it's not enough to keep anyone up at night. All of his neighbors basically move on. But just four months after Frederick's disappearance, something weird happens. One night, a local man named John Farley is walking home from the pub when he sees someone sitting on the fence by the creek. Now, to be fair, Farley's probably a little tipsy,

but according to him, he tiptoes a little closer to have a look. Immediately, Farley is stunned to realize the person is none other than Frederick Fisher, the man who supposedly went back to England. Frederick doesn't explain his four-month absence. Instead, he makes eye contact with Farley and slowly points towards the creek. Then, Frederick just disappears. Immediately, Farley goes from being confused to totally freaked out. Like people can't just vanish into thin air. It had to have been a ghost, which means Frederick didn't move after all. He's dead. Farley hustles back home, but he can't keep the scary experience to himself. The very next day,

he tells everyone that he's just seen Frederick's ghost and that it pointed towards the creek. Eventually, local authorities agree to search the area. It's not long before they fish out Frederick Fisher's corpse. It's unclear whether he appeared to have simply drowned or if he was visibly harmed, but one thing is clear. He never made it back to England like his old neighbor George Worrell claimed. In fact, word gets out that George has been selling off all of Frederick's things and pocketing the money. So far, he's been claiming that Frederick left the stuff to him, but after finding Frederick's body, the police go ahead and arrest him. George was eventually convicted of Frederick's murder, but as for John Farley, the man who turned him in, he eventually came clean.

According to a contemporary newspaper account, Farley admitted years later that he never saw Frederick's ghost pointing to the creek. He didn't even need a ghost to tell him where Frederick's body was because he witnessed the entire murder happen. Obviously, it's really weird to make up a ghost story instead of just going to the authorities, but apparently Farley was scared to tell the cops because he was afraid George Worrell, the murderer, would find out and come after him. In any case, the whole thing sounds a lot like Zona Heaster's shoes story some 70 years later. And as it turns out, this probably isn't a coincidence. Fast forward to 1986, author Katie Letcher Lyle gets really interested in Zona's story, so she decides to write her next book about the so-called Greenbrier ghost. In her research, Lyle comes across one detail that

very few people know. According to Lyle, Zona's obituary appeared on page three of the local newspaper, the Greenbrier Independent, in January 1897. And page one of that very same newspaper featured an article about Frederick Fisher's ghost. So, okay, the fact that this story was published the same day as Zona's obituary means that her mother, Mary Jane, could have definitely read it. And maybe she was inspired to make up a ghost story of her own. And I can't really blame her. If you think about it, Mary Jane never had a good feeling about Edward's shoe. She could see right through his tall tails, and she was worried when Zona married him.

Not to mention Edward standing guard by his wife's body like some sort of keeper of secrets. Obviously, Mary Jane could have just gone straight to law enforcement. But remember, this is the Victorian era. A woman's suspicions were more likely to be dismissed back then. So a desperate mother making up a ghost story for closure? Pretty understandable. Except for one thing. The vertebrae. How did Mary Jane know that Zona's neck was broken between the first and second vertebrae? That detail alone is so specific that it's hard to just accept that she coincidentally guessed it right.

And it's not like you can eyeball that kind of thing from several feet away at a funeral. I should also mention that Mary Jane never retracted her story. She went to her grave insisting that everything happened exactly the way she described it, which to be fair, this woman may have just wanted to preserve her pride. But at that point it's not like anyone would have blamed her for coming clean. We'll never know just how Mary Jane got it so perfectly right. Maybe her ghost will show up someday, ready to change her story. Until then, we'll just have to take her word for listening. I'll be back next week with another episode.

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