by Nikki Everett

Created on: December 21, 2009   Last Updated: December 22, 2009

In the history of American justice, there is only one ghost who has ever been allowed to testify in the solving of its very own murder case – The Greenbrier Ghost. The famous apparition of Zona Heaster Shue would convict the murderer and bring about well deserved justice.

Elva Zona Heaster was born in Greenbrier County, West Virginia sometime around 1873. Erasmus Stribbling Trout Shue, known to all as Edward or Trout, had moved to Greenbrier in 1896 to start a new life. He was a strong, well built blacksmith and rumour has it Zona had fallen madly in love with the handsome fellow.

Zona’s mother, Mary Jane Robinson Heaster, instantly disliked Shue and had a feeling the seemingly amiable man was hiding something. Only a couple months into their marriage, on January 23rd, 1897, Mary Jane Robinson Heaster’s worst fears would come to pass.

Greenbrier County was unsettled wilderness for the most part in the late 1800s. There were no paved roads and rural farms were few and far between on this rugged but beautiful landscape of rolling hills nestled in the Allegheny Mountain range. Trout Shue had already gained more blacksmith work than he could ask for in the mountainous countryside filled with cattle and horses.

Trout was busy working at the blacksmith shop that cold January day when he sent a young boy, Anderson Jones, to his house under the guise of checking to see if his wife Zona needed anything from the store. The little boy found Zona on the floor at the foot of the stairs. She was stretched out with one hand on her abdomen. Her head was turned to one side and her eyes were wide open and staring. The boy tried to shake her lifeless body and found it already stiffening and cold.

Petrified, the boy ran home and told his mother what had happened. Dr. George W. Knapp, the local doctor and coroner, was summoned to the house but did not arrive for nearly an hour.

When Dr Knapp finally did arrive, Edward Trout Shue had moved Zona’s body to their bedroom and had laid her on the bed already dressed in her finest clothes – A high-necked, stiff collared dress and a veil over her face. Normally, the custom of that day was for the women in the community to wash and prepare a body for burial.

The doctor tried to examine Zona’s body to find the cause of death but Shue acted stricken with grief, cradling his wife’s head and sobbing. When Dr. Knapp noticed some bruises on her neck and tried to investigate Shue became so violently angry

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