My aunt lived near a grave yard and when the men would dig the graves she always sent them up some Kool-Aid to drink and sometimes sandwiches to eat. On one particular day there was a lady buried and she had some beautiful flowers and ribbons. My dad was out of town so we decided to spend the weekend with my aunt and make homemade fudge. My aunt and mother were talking about what a beautiful ribbon rug they could make when the caretaker got rid of the flowers. Well the more they talked about it the more anxious they become and decided after dark they would go up to the grave. While they were up there helping themselves to the ribbons a car drove by and they had to hide in the shadows of the grave. My mother accidentally rolled over on the grave and had a chill come over her and became afraid, so they left without getting all of the ribbons they originally wanted.

Later that evening, we were making fudge and all of us kids were helping my mom and aunt roll up the ribbons. All of a sudden my aunt screamed, “Oh my god, look in the window!” Talking about kids scattering we ran and hid under the beds and in the mist of us scurrying about my mom’s chair fell backwards and she hit her head. Well of course my aunt was teasing so she settled us all down and we went to bed. Later that night we awoke to the sound of scratching on the bathroom screen and we thought someone was trying to break in. My mom and aunt were afraid to get up. My mom decided she would go see what was making the noise. My aunt screamed and someone or something jumped on my back while I was in bed. I started screaming and soon all the kids were screaming and crying. Finally my aunt turned the lights on and checked my bedroom, the doors, and the windows; everything looked normal. So after a fashion we all went back to bed.

During the night a light snow fell and when my cousin opened the kitchen door to check out the snow a pool of fresh blood was outside the door. Well, my aunt decided it must have been from a hurt animal and thought no more about it. That evening she went to fetch the cigar box that held the rolled up ribbons and to her surprise the box was no where to be found. To this day we don’t know where the ribbons went or what caused the pool of blood. I’ve often wondered if it wasn’t the lady who took back what rightfully belonged to her.

Just this past month, I saw a really strange thing. I was sitting in my room, and I was lonely because my friends hadn’t called for days. After a few minutes the room got really cold, and I got scared. But no one was there. The temperature went back to normal, and I went to get a drink.

When I got back to my room, there was a boy who I never seen before. He had shaggy black hair, blue eyes, no shirt, black pants, and black socks. I asked him who he was, and he said “Oh, nobody.” He then disappeared. I had my parents locate and take me to the previous house owners. I mentioned him and they looked mighty sad. They said that was their son Adam, who died exactly a week before my family moved in. They said he was so upset about moving. I asked them how he died. They said that my room used to be a workout room and that he died from stress.

A few days ago, I saw him again, this time in the guest bedroom where I was cleaning. If I remember correctly, there use to be a bunk bed against the wall near the door where a shelf is now at. He was sitting on the shelf. He waved sadly and disappeared. I was freaked beyond words.

Then that night, I started to hear his voice in my head saying things like “Chocolate!” whenever I had chocolate near my bed. I keep hearing his voice today, and he seems like a guardian angel. I sometimes see him, and see him most in the guest bedroom closet.

Every year, the city park in Martinsburg, WV, fills to overflowing for its annual display of 4th of July fireworks. Today, the park is a wonderful green space with pavilions, picnic tables, miniature golf, and a swimming pool. During the Civil War, it was a large open space with a major freshwater source. Close to the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, the space was used as a camp by soldiers in gray and blue throughout the war. During those frequent times when the armies fought for control of the town, men died violently in the park.

A few years ago, one extended family arrived at the park several hours before the fireworks were to begin. They wanted just the right spot to spread their blankets and enjoy the goodies in their picnic basket. Altogether, there were twelve of them; five adults and seven children. After dinner, the children left the picnic site to roam through the gathering crowd while the adults lazed on the blankets and ignited a couple of firecrackers of their own.

The grandfather was the first to notice the smell. He turned his head in the direction of the offending odor and saw a teenage boy leaning on a nearby tree. The teenager didn’t seem to notice the family but, the family certainly noticed him and the pungent odor that seemed to be wafting off of him. They described the odor in various ways; old sweat, horse flop, rotting garbage, or the smell of rancid meat.

All agreed it was such an awful smell, they weren’t going to put up with it a minute longer. The father yelled at the boy saying, “Get out of here, Boy, you’re stinking up the place!” The teenage boy continued to lean against the tree, ignoring what he must have heard.

Outraged, the mother said, “That’s it! I’m going to get a cop!” And, off she charged with a full head of steam.

In a few minutes, she returned with a uniformed policeman. “He’s right over there,” she said as she pointed dramatically to the tree where she had last seen the smelly teenage boy. He was gone and her normally loud and rowdy family was utterly silent.

“We were all watching that kid,” said the grandfather to no one in particular. “He just disappeared in front of our eyes!” The older man turned to the police officer and said, “I know you won’t believe us but I’m pretty sure we just saw a ghost!”

That night, the police at the park received two other complaints about a foul-smelling teenage boy. He was never found.

The next day, I met with one of the officers who had been at the park and responded to one of the complaints. “Everyone who smelled and saw that boy described him the about the same way; 5 foot tall, torn brown pants, filthy red checked shirt, suspenders, no shoes, filthy feet, and a weird flat top cap with a small brim in the front. Do you think he could have been a Confederate soldier?”

Yes, indeed, officer!

Confederate soldiers were often ragged. Soap was unavailable. Caps with “weird flat tops and small brims” were worn by Confederate soldiers. They were called kepis.

In the summer of 1986, my family moved into a parsonage in Logan, where my father was to become the new minister of a church there. The previous minister, a Reverend Rush, had passed away. As a tall man, he was unable to go upstairs to use the bathroom in his last days, so another bathroom was installed next to the dining room on the first floor. The water heater was on the other side of the wall. All four bedrooms were upstairs, and the living and dining rooms and kitchen were downstairs. I was in college in Oklahoma at the time, but I visited my family during the holidays.

The first experience with the paranormal occurred one afternoon when I was away at school. My mother had gone upstairs to take a nap, while the rest of the family remained downstairs in the living room to watch TV. Several minutes later, my mother came downstairs and said, “Who keeps opening my door and looking in at me?” No one knew who she was talking about. The only description my mother gave of the intruder was that of a tall man. But no one had been upstairs.

My sister also had an encounter with something inexplicable. Night after night she complained to my father that someone was walking around in the overhead attic. My father, a non-believer when it came to the supernatural, dismissed my sister’s claim by explaining that she was probably hearing squirrels. My sister said, “Since when do squirrels walk on two feet?” Still, no investigation was made. Finally, one night my sister had enough. The walking was keeping her up, so she shouted for it to stop. It did.

During the summer of 1992, I taught an English composition class at the local community college. My father’s office was downstairs in the basement. One day I was down there by myself grading papers. My sister and my father had gone car-shopping together. No one else was home. While I was reading a student’s essay, I heard someone come through the back door on the first floor. Then I heard these heavy footsteps walking right over my head, which was where the dining room was located. Thinking my sister and my father had come back from car-shopping, I went upstairs to ask them if they’d found a car. But there was no one on the first floor. I called up the stairs but got no response. Then I looked through the kitchen window, which looked out on the car port. No car. That’s when I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Apparently, I’d heard the heavy tread of the late Reverend Rush.

Things seemed to come to a head in October of that same year. I was away in California at the time. What happened can either be explained as normal or as paranormal, but it almost cost my family their lives. Apparently, something went wrong with the water heater. It overheated and exploded, taking about a third of the house with it. Luckily, my family was unharmed, but their lives were forever changed.

The parsonage went through extensive repairs, and although my family moved back into it, things were never the same. Why, after having been there for six years, did the water heater suddenly explode? Just the day before the explosion occurred, a parishioner from the church had inspected the water heater and told my father that everything was all right. I mean, we’re talking about the same water heater on the other side of the wall of the bathroom that had been built for Reverend Rush. Coincidence? Even today, I don’t know.

My parents have since moved into another house outside of Logan. Since they moved, I haven’t been by the old parsonage, and perhaps it’s for the best. I hope that whoever moves into that house won’t encounter the same kind of phenomena my family and I did. But until someone does move in, I’m curious to know if there’s already somebody inside, waiting.

All through my life I have been very “sensitive” to paranormal phenomena. As a very young child (2-4 yrs old), I would play outside and hear my name being called from the woods around Red House Hill. I always insisted that I played with “people” in the woods. My mom and even later me, agreed that it was just my imagination.

When I was five years old we moved to an old house in Hurricane. It was a very strange house, my bedroom had one window on the right side, and a boarded up window on the adjoining wall. In the hallway outside my door there was a heating/air conditioning vent, with three little stairs leading down (no one could ever fit down there). My grandmothers room was centered in the middle of the house, with two doors and no windows. The front door that we never used had no doorknob, only a dead bolt you had to use a key to unlock from the inside or out. In addition to a normal semi creepy basement, and also another basement under the garage with stone slabs extending from three of the walls. Let me tell you, it was definitely a stereotypical haunted house.

For years we all saw things and never told one another. About a week before we moved out we were sitting outside telling stories, and we all started admitting to things we had seen. On more than one occasion my brother, nephew, nieces, and I had all seen a woman in a white nightgown. Sometimes standing in front of a wall fixing her hair in an invisible mirror, and many times running down the stairs and across the lawn with her hair flying back behind her.

When I was about nine, I had hidden some stickers and other “top secret” things underneath my mattress. I came around the corner towards my bedroom door and saw a boy with dusty blond hair kneeling next to my bed and lifting up the dust ruffle. I yelled “HEY!” and he looked up startled and dropped the fabric. Without thinking much more about it I ran to tell my mother that my brother (who was also blond) was in my room going through my stuff. She looked perplexed for a moment and told me that my brother was spending the night at a friends house about 15 miles away. Needless to say I slept in my parents room for a few nights.

We have many other stories of dolls moving on their own volition, dolls with stationary or painted on eyes blinking at us. Until I was almost 13 years old, every night I would stuff all of my dolls and stuffed animals into the closet and close it tight.

Finally, a year before we moved out, my Father died. The night before the funeral, I couldn’t bear to sleep on the other side of the house away from my mother, but also didn’t think she would want me sleeping in her bed. So, I decided to sleep on the couch, which was better than nothing. Just as I was settling down to sleep, I felt a presence in the room; then came the sound of someone settling into the arm chair beside me and sighing softly. I knew from that moment on then my Daddy was watching over me.

Even after moving out of that house, I have experience many paranormal things…

It was Halloween night. My sister, my friends, and I were walking from her house to Bolivar Heights; we always go up there Halloween night. We were walking through the path heading towards where the old cannons were, when we saw three people standing there. They were dressed like the soldiers during the Civil War.

We thought they were part of a reenactment. We asked ourselves why they would be out at this time of night.

I yelled out, “Hey, why are you guys here at this time of night?”

Right before our eyes, they disappeared. My sister, friends and my self took off running after that we never went back to Bolivar Heights at nighttime.

My brother Matt, younger cousin Travis, and I have become somewhat of amateur ghost hunters. It all started after a normal Friday of drinking beer and playing with an Ouija we had just purchased. Travis had just received a JVC digital camcorder and we decided to start filming the rooms where we played with the board. Right away we started to catch tons of orbs on film. I mean we have showers of them!

The night before last, my brother was sleeping in my daughter’s room (it’s the most comfortable bed) and heard a thumping in his room. He said it was around 5 in the morning. Anyways, he takes the digital camcorder in there and leaves it recording. After about a minute of him leaving the room the curtains and blinds begin to pound furiously as if someone were standing behind them punching outward (the window will not open nor is there an air vent there).

The following night he slept in his own bed, because I had my daughter, and I didn’t have to work. He decided to sleep with the camera. Again around five in the morning he wakes to a pounding sound and turns the camera on. He laid in bed just filming the darkness, when the lights turn on by their self! Nothing surprises me anymore at this house.

“The house I live in doesn’t seem to have a history to it, but we do live across the street from a graveyard.”

This story was told to me one night, I didn’t believe it until I saw it. The town of Rowlesburg was created during the Civil War. It was a great valley along the river that was created by the railroad. The mountains around it created a great place for the soldiers to hide. This story starts in the 1800’s, I was never told the date.

A young couple was placed in an arranged marriage, the husband could not be happier. A young bride who was vary beautiful, a great job and any thing a man could want. The wife though was vary unhappy, she did not love this man. The man she loved was a blacksmith but the blacksmith and her dad did not get along, so they had been forbidden to merry.

The night before the wedding the young woman and man were heading to the town where they were going to be married. They had caught a late night train, as the train went through, the woman just kept looking out the window not talking or anything. The man asked what was wrong, she told him. This ensued an argument where the man hit the women. The women ran out of the car they were in and into the place between the two cars. The women then jumped and landed on the ground right before the man caught her arm. She made it and ran, she ran to a house that was next to the train tracks. Pounding on the door she found no one was there but found the door unlocked.

She ran inside and ran up the stairs trying to hide. When she thought she found a spot she just stayed there, she calmed down. Hearing nothing, she stood up and walked out into the hall. Then she heard footsteps. They came closer, and then silence. She just stood there being able to see nothing in the dark. She decided to find a light switch as she felt around the wall she found it. When she turned it on there was her fiance head cut off. He was carrying an iron pan from the kitchen, then it came down on her head with a heavy thud.

The next morning the two bodies were found. She was found in the house, her head was smashed with a heavy object. Her fiance was found by the train tracks, it looked like he had jumped from the train and got stuck under the rails.

Now every foggy night around the anniversary of their deaths you can hear a train that comes down the tracks. As the train comes to the bend where they jumped you can see the ghostly figure of a young women jumping off the ghost train followed by a man. The women stands up and runs across the street and into the house. You never see the figure of the man stand back up.

If you stand there long enough some say you can hear the agonizing cry of the man as he’s carried under the train.

The next part is in the house, the young woman’s sprit has seemed to never die. She still roams the halls of the old house, her favorite spot is the room where she had hid. They say she stays in the room just setting on the bed, crying.

I never believed it until I spent the night there. The young girls that I was staying with had gotten the key to the room (they kept the room locked, I never figured out why).

We were playing truth or dare when I took a dare. I had to go into the room and stay in there for five minuets. I took it and went in.

The room had been dressed all in red. I went over to the bed and set down, then I heard it. The crying, it grew louder and louder. Until I knew someone was behind me. I turned around and saw her. She was staring at me.

The ghostly female then screamed at me, “LOOK WHAT HE DID TO MY FACE, I JUST WANT TO GO HOME!”

Then she was gone. Scared to death I ran to the door trying to get out. The girls then let me out and laughed at me, except for one whom saw it one time before. I explained what I had seen and she backed my stories. I have never been back in that room and plan to never go back.

Melanie worked for a mental health agency. Many times she had to work the eleven to seven shift. This was the first Thursday in November 2001. We took Austin to the baby sitters and came back home. I made her some beef stew to take with her. I also came over to her place about 9pm and helped her vacuum. Then she left at 10pm.

The next morning she came over to my place with some donuts and juice. She, Austin, Alley, Destiny, their father, and I had breakfast about 9am. There was a knock at the door of my apartment. It was our apartment manager. She called Melanie over to the office and proceeded to write her up for the party she had at her apartment the night before. Melanie stupidly signed it and did not plead her case. I assume she was mad and tired. I read the charges against her and went to Melanie’s neighbor who complained to her. I told BJ (the neighbor) that Melanie was at work when all this took place. BJ walked over to the manager’s office with me. We spoke to the manager and she dropped the charges. This was not the first time this had happened to this apartment, but it was the first time in about 10yrs.

Later that evening we let BJ in on all the weird happenings of the apartment. She thought we were crazy. For some reason we got on the subject of clothes. Melanie had some outfits that she thought BJ would like. The three of us went up to Melanie’s bedroom. Right in front of her closet something scared us. We aren’t sure we saw something we just know that 3 women all weighing close to 200lbs came down those apartment unit steps about 90MPH. We went outside and looked up and it looked like something was moving her blinds. We had proof at that time we were not crazy. Melanie and Austin started sleeping on the couch that night.