Spooky Things

Recently I've been researching things like UFOs and the whole alien myth-or-fact argument. I have discovered that West Virginia is replete with stories of mysterious and spooky things--in my research Mothman and The Cornstalk Curse have been particularly relevant.

I have two friends that live in West Virginia, so I asked them if weird things ever happen where they live. Caina said not really, but she kind of wishes they would! Alicia, however, had a lot to say about it.

Here's what Alicia said:

So many. Most revolve around ghosts, from stories related to small-town, local family stuff (certain houses, roads, old forgotten grave yards, etc.) to bigger ones, like the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum (TALA) which decided to profit off that whole "Ghost Hunters" show from Sci-Fi Channel. (Well, the new owners were already renovating and opening TALA to the public for tours, etc. before the show came along, but, still. .. Hell, I don't know why I sound bitter about it. I'd probably try to profit off it, too, haha.) I think any place that has an old abandoned mental health hospital or prison or school will have those kinds of stories.

The old West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville is supposedly ridiculously haunted - it has a reputation for having been a very cruel and unusual punishment kind of place, so...

As far as closer to my neck of the woods is concerned, two of my favorites are my county's courthouse (where Sid Hatfield was killed) and the old Lake Shawnee Amusement Park (in the county beside us). I have no experience with the courthouse being haunted - I worked there for two summers and spent a big chunk of my life there because my mom and my best friend's mom worked there, and I never "saw" anything.

But, Lake Shawnee...freaks me out. The first time I drove by it, I had no idea what it was. I'd never heard of it or been there. All I could see was an old abandoned ferris wheel (maybe a hundred yards from me?) and I just got this overwhelming feeling that I was not in a safe place (actually, my exact thought was "This place is haunted - speed the eff up" - it was around one in the morning and I was alone, haha).

A year or so later, some channel did a show about it supposedly being haunted, and I had no idea where they were talking about until they showed that damned ferris wheel. I freaked out. You can see daylight pictures of the park HERE (and if you read some of the comments, ignore the ones about people hearing carillion bells - my alma mater is just a few miles from this place and has a 48-bell carillion, so, duh, I imagine it wouldn't be hard to hear them on a clear night, ha!).

I think one reason this place (and state in general) is so riddled with ghost stories (and perhaps ghosts themselves? ;) is its age. Maybe not so much its age, but the age of things that are still here. It's very common for public buildings still in use here to date back to some point in the 1800s. Many homes still in use were built in the late 1800s and early 1900s (my parents home, for example, is over a hundred years old).

And, of course, the graveyards. My friends and I use to frequent a forgotten one here in my town when we were kids - high on top of a mountain and with death dates in the 1800s. Never experienced anything scary there, though - it was always daylight :) My dad's family's cemetary (which is actually made up of a couple of old families local to where he grew up - not just his) is also very old; there's a grave marker there for a Confederate soldier.

And on a semi-related note (simply because you mentioned moths, haha), we get some absolutely GIGANTIC ones in this county - I'm talking, wings that span out past your ears big. I haven't seen any that huge in a while (not outside at night as much as when I was a kid growing up here), but I did run into what I think was a Luna moth a couple of weeks ago which isn't all that rare or too huge, but pretty :) I can't figure out how to paste the picture in this email, but HERE is a link to it.