Zona Heaster Shue (the Greenbrier Ghost)

Zona Heaster Shue died in 1897 near Lewisburg, and a coroner first ruled that she died of natural causes. Her mother Mary Jane Heaster later testified that her daughter's spirit had appeared and told her she was murdered, and an autopsy found a broken neck; Zona's husband Erasmus Shue was convicted. The Greenbrier Valley Theatre stages the story and says it is the only known American murder conviction in which testimony about a ghost was part of the trial, and a state marker commemorates the case. It is the story of a real woman who was killed, told with respect.