I have lived in Beards Fork all of my life. It is the type of community where you know everyone and can pretty much trust them. A close friend of mine lives just a little way down the road, so I would often just walk to her house, even in the middle of the night.

One night late in the spring when the evenings are still a little chilly, I was making my usual trek from her house to my own. It was around 9:30pm and I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. It was a bit chilly.

When I got in front of my neighbor’s house, a car drove passed. Behind the car, almost as though it came from the car, I saw a small puff of smoke. It looked like the type of smoke that comes off the end of a lit cigarette. It was in wavy lines. I did not really think much of it until I realized that it wasn’t moving as I walked closer to it. When I finally got to the puff of smoke, it felt like I had walked into a spider web, even though I know I didn’t because I quickly wiped the “spider web” away. I could still feel it. The strange thing though is that at the same time that I felt a spider web, I ran into a pocket of warm air, and the warmth stayed with me all the rest of the way home. I also had a peaceful feeling come over me that I am still scratching my head about. If it was an actual paranormal encounter, I don’t know. It was however weird.

This is just a creepy place, nothing really happened to me, but to my friend. First, I’ll tell you what happened to her, she was driving home from Clarksburg one night, and decided to take Stewarts Run Road, which leads into Barbour Co. She was traveling along when she seen a glowing white form in the road, she did not have time to stop, and ended up going through it. She stopped and got out of her car, but there was nothing there, no white form or anything. Anyways, she had told this to a group of our friends, and one of them has a grandmother who lives along Stewart’s Run Road.

Her grandmother, said there had been a Warlock, whom had lived along the road in the 1800’s, something had gone wrong, and the people of that community decided to kill him because they accused him of doing evil spells. After they murdered the man, they did not want to bury him in the ground, because it may “ruin the ground”, so they blocked him up in cement, in the cemetery. His cement tomb is there beside a little white church. It is a creepy little place, especially at night.

This story starts out when I was about 6 or 7 yrs old. It was in the summer time and a thunderstorm had just passed. It was very strange to me when the furnace kicked on; because, it was the middle of summer. Well, I looked up and I saw a figure of a woman standing by the furnace. (This is how I described to my father what she looked like).

She was in her mid 60’s, her hair was pulled up in a bun, she was wearing a fancy dress with a buttoned up collar, and she was also wearing a cameo necklace. She was trying to say something; but, I could only make out “find something”. She started to come closer to my bed and about that time I pulled the pillow over my face. When I came to she disappeared. Well, I never told anyone this story for a while until one day I told my father. I was describing what she looked like and he told me it was my great-grandmother. I then found out that he too had the same experience. To this day, I never have figured out what she wanted me to find.

Located just south of the present site of Petersburg is a hollow where the ghost of a headless man walks… a lingering spirit born of tragedy that occurred here long ago.

George Van Meter’s small farm was located in Dorcas Hollow, just five miles from where Petersburg is now located. Van Meter was a carpenter who had come to America from Germany and had settled in Dorcas Hollow when there were only fifteen other families in the entire county. The cabin that Van Meter constructed was isolated, far away from any neighbors, and it was too late when he learned that several other settlers had been killed in the valley by Huron Indians.

On July 4, Van Meter was working in the fields near his cabin with his son, David. The rest of the family was in the house preparing to travel to a nearby settlement to join in a celebration around this new day of independence. Van Meter and his son had just stopped to rest when a small band of Indians came running out of the forest. He told his son to run toward the cabin and take the family to the settlement. Van Meter planned to fight the Indians long enough for his family to make it to safety.

That was the last time that anyone ever saw him alive.

David made it to the settlement with his family and he warned the men of the Huron. A group formed to go back and rescue Van Meter but when they got to Dorcas Hollow, they were greeted with a terrible sight. The livestock had been butchered and the cabin had been burned to the ground. Only two stone chimneys remained when the house had once stood.

Van Meter’s body was found a few feet away from the cabin. His head was severed from his body and although David and the men searched the entire area, it was never found. Finally, they gave up and returned tot he settlement to prepare for an attack by the Huron raiding party.

The Indians never showed up at the settlement… but Van Meter’s head did. On the day after the raid, a cooking pot was found at the settlement. When it was opened, George Van Meter’s head was staring up at them. The Indians had boiled his head and then left it at the settlement to find.

For years after, no one would go near the Van Meter farm. It was said that the headless ghost of George Van Meter had been seen there, walking about the remains of the farm as though searching for something. Perhaps his missing head?

Today, the two stone chimneys of the house can still be seen in Dorcas Hollow if you travel along Route 220 from Petersburg. Few still remember how they came to be there… but Dorcas Hollow is still a place that is best to be avoided.

My grandmother had died in 2001, and since then my family has had problems getting along. My grandmother held a deep hatred of my father for what reason I do not know, but she kept his brother as well as his sister against him. Well when she was in the hospital dying, my uncle had started to see that she kept them fighting for years, and he vowed to change what had been happening to them for the past 15 years. Therefore, he started coming around being a family.

In the months after her death, my aunt decided to withdraw from family activity. My grand mother had always made us promise to take care of my aunt if she died, and numerous times many of us agreed to. Well since then we have not.

I have waked up many nights feeling a presence in my home and bedroom. Well my father and his brother who is my uncle had decided o visit the grave together while my uncle was in town for the weekend.

My grandmother had always tried to keep them feuding, so to her this would have made her roll in her grave. Well after my uncle had left and made it back home that day he had called us, and stated that at the exact time he left a shelf at his home that was bolted to the wall had somehow worked itself out of the wall and fell to the ground. The shelf had a bunch of little trinkets on it, and contained a candle that my uncle had stolen from my grandmother’s home after she died as a remembrance. Well everything on the shelf broke besides the candle, and it was sitting up right. His wife actually place pillows around it to protect it from the dogs so my uncle could see, so he would believe her. We all take it as a sign that our grandmother or mother is very unhappy with us.

For years at my home my brother and sister and me would always hear the basement door that connected to the garage open and close. We always assumed it was dad coming home from work and we would run to see him but there was never anyone there. It always happened around 4:00pm in the afternoon.

To further my haunted story I for some reason until I was around 20 years old would have dreams of someone kissing me on the cheek late at night. I assumed it was my mom checking on me, but to this day she swears she never did this. Then one night when I was 20, I had a dream of this beautiful dark red haired girl. I knew that this girl was a ghost. When I asked her she told me she was. But I was not afraid and she assured me that everything was as it should be. We talked and I eventually asked the question…H ow did you die. She told me she drowned.. I told her that she was probably supposed to be in another place and not here. She agreed with me and told me she had been gone for many years before me. Then with a slight kiss from her I woke up.

I wasn’t scared but felt sad for her. I will never forget her. Now the scary part of this story. It wasn’t until about 7 months from this posting that my brother told me that he was haunted several times by a young girl when he lived at home. He would wake up in the middle of the night to see what appeared to be a young red headed girl crying at the other end of the room. Then she would disappear.

My brother to this day will not stay in the house by himself at night. Then as my brother and me talked he revealed to me that our grandfather had remarried years ago and was involved in an accident that involved him running off the road and into the Tygart river. His new wife and her daughter both drowned in the accident. He escaped. There was a lot of speculation of the accident from family and police at the time. It was deemed an accident and a tragic one at that.

To this day as I drive past the accident site I have a feeling that someone is there and that I also helped someone find peace. I hope that when someday I move on myself I can meet with her again. By the way, my brother also told me that he saw a picture years ago of the new wife and daughter, they both had red hair…

After attending UC for 3 years now, I can tell you a LOT about this place, but Dickinson is a whole story in itself. I lived there for only a little over a month before all the students there were moved to the new dorm and Dickinson’s third and half of the second floor were condemned.

The very first thing I encountered was uneasiness and the feeling I was being watched at night. My roommate’s and my beds were parallel on opposite sides of the room, only about 4 feet apart. Every night before I went to sleep I felt a male presence between the foot of our beds.

Walking around the dorm alone at night was a big no-no for everyone. The building was way too spooky. The floors are separated into four sections. Mine was the third section. I didn’t like being the feeling of it or the room diagonally right of mine. They just felt wrong.

No one liked the basement either. Even three years later I have a hard time talking about what happened to me down there. My first time down there was part of a hall meeting in the big lounge.

First I should explain the building a bit. It was an “L” shape and the lounge was in the middle of the two hallways. One hall was short, only about 15 feet and there was a stairwell at the end that led back up to my section of the “L”. The other hallway had a stairwell that led up to the other section and the main entry. Further down that hall was the laundry room and an attached waiting/folding room. At the end was another lounge/game room. There was also a door directly across the room from where the hallway ended. I don’t know what was behind it, but I think it was another stairwell to go to the end of that section. The door was locked though and through the small window I could tell there was no light. Also between the halls where the main lounge was a small kitchen that had been locked up and hadn’t been used for years. I actually didn’t find out it was even a kitchen until after I had moved.

Ok, back to the main lounge. It wasn’t used as a lounge anymore, just for storage. Truth be told the laundry room was the only room used by residents. The main lounge was only used for hall meetings because it was the only room large enough to hold all the hall residents. As I stood with my back to the long hallway I felt like someone was behind me. But there never was anyone every time I looked.

I tried not to think much of it and went to the basement weekly to do my laundry. Though I continuously had creepy feelings, nothing really happened… Until the night I decided to use the stairwell on the short hall. Before, I would go over to the other section and use the stairwell over there. I should mention that once out of the stairwell (in the basement) there’s a door on the right and a few steps to get down to the floor. As I walked by I got the uncontrollable urge to open the partially closed solid wooden door. I wish I hadn’t, but I opened it. Inside was long pieces of wood perfectly cut on shelves, but they were all covered in dust. I got terrified and quickly shut the door and went to do my laundry. I used the normal stairwell to get back up. I tried to forget the incident but days later I felt that there was a little blond-haired girl down there. I could see her perfectly. I’ve always been spiritually sensitive and felt that my opening that door let her out of the room, but that she wasn’t able to get out of the basement. That was just my feeling about it. Now that can be called a vivid imagination or delusions if you want. I know what I felt. And what happened next was the most terrifying thing that’s ever happened to me in my life.

As usual I was doing my weekly laundry. I had just finished up and was bringing up the last load. It was sometime between 7 and 9 o’clock at night. I was walking up the hallway to the stairwell when I got the worst sense of dread like something so very angry was right behind me, chasing me out of the basement. I walked faster but felt it speed up too. Then I started to run. I ran to the stairwell and up the first flight of steps and out into the entrance area. I lived in Dickinson two more weeks and never went back into that basement. I wouldn’t even walk by the building anymore after I moved out.

Dickinson remained empty until the next summer when the un-condemned part of the second floor and the first floor were used to house camps. I have no idea how they fared. I lived in the dorm directly across the parking lot from Dickinson and whenever I looked out the kitchen window I felt like the little blond-haired girl was calling for me. Not too long afterward, the building was torn down.

Also, after moving out I heard stories from other students. Most are reluctant to talk about it and some refuse. I’ve asked lots of people on campus including faculty, staff, administration, other students, and security. All except students pass it off as a joke or deny it totally. It’s also interesting to note that when I went to the library to look at the Dickinson history books, lots of pages were blank throughout the books. This is mainly interesting because there are no blank pages in the other dorm books, one of which is only two years younger than Dickinson.

Somewhere in the West Virginia wilderness…

Once I was walking home from my girlfriend’s house, when something caught my eye. It was a white flash, that only showed itself for a second, but still long enough for me to decide that I wanted to go and investigate.

As I started to head deeper into the woods, I felt a certain chill come over my body. I felt as if I wanted to go back, but made no such tries to do so. After about five minutes of walking, in what seemed to be and endless stretch of wilderness, I turned around to head back.

I turned and there she was. She stood tall and said nothing. I stood wide eyed and alert, any chance I saw to leave I was ready to take it. She remained in a frozen state for only a few seconds and then walked away. I turned to run, but some thing compelled me to follow, but when I looked back for her, she was nowhere to be seen. Many say she is a ghost, some say I was seeing things, but I still do not know what to believe. In any case it is not a night that I am soon to forget.

In my last submission to this site I told the history of hauntings that have occurred around my families homestead. Since that story was written, there have been some interesting things happen surrounding those houses. After living there for nearly 50 years, my grandmother decided that she was going to sell our home and move to a smaller apartment that would be more easily manageable and require less maintenance for a woman in her mid seventies.

There was nothing much different about this time at the house and any other time until things started being moved out. One day, after a long and busy morning, grandma was taking a nap on the sofa when she was awakened to see my grandfather standing before her in a mist at the foot of the stairs. He had a look of complete anger and disgust on his face, “whats wrong” she asked saying his name, only to have him vanish.

It was only a short time thereafter, maybe a day or two, I was sitting outside across the street at my friends house. Grandma had backed into the back driveway, and had the back door to the house open. She had loaded a few small items into the car and was washing and hanging some throw rugs out to dry. Suddenly, and inexplicably, the car backed out of the driveway and swung to the right uphill, then proceeded to drive downhill, make another right into the yard backing right up to the house and not hitting it, and then take off straight across the street before it hit a fence and stopped.

Say what you will, you cannot take the key out of a 92 Oldsmobile unless its in park, and you cannot take it out of park without the key in it. The car had set there maybe a half hour before the episode, and grandma had the key in her purse. When the car took off without a driver, grandma ran after it and nearly got pulled under it trying to catch it. My friend and I thought for sure we were about to witness a disaster, but she wasn’t hurt. After having talked it over with people who know about the ghost stories, and the facts about the gear shift on that car, we are sure this was the act of a ghost who was angry because we were moving away.

As the story got out, it was made known that more than 30 years earlier the exact same thing happened to an old car my grandpa had parked back there, in the same pattern. You might be able to think of an explanation on a car from that period, but not a 1992 model.

After the incident with the car, all was quiet until the end at the old house, even as the last piece of what was being taken was moved out, and as the doors were locked by us for the last time. A couple in there late 30’s or early 40’s with a preteen daughter moved in the house within a couple weeks of us leaving as they had already bought it. They have lived at the house for about a year now, and they have made a lot of desperately needed repairs and improvements. The old house is in grand fashion.

I still visit my friends in the old neighborhood quite often. I always watch the new family as they mess around out in the yard, and I think to myself, they have had to seen or heard something there by now.I almost want to ask them, “have you ever seen anything strange here?” Meanwhile, I am almost positive that I have been visited on an occasion or two by something familiar. A girl was visiting me one day and told me she saw a little girl in my kitchen. Imagine that. Lastly, I’ll mention that the old abandoned house up on the hill, which was passed down since my great grandparents, the former church building with its forgotten graves in back, and it’s many ghost stories, after having set empty and wearing away for years is in the process of being repaired for new occupants. My first thought was, oh my god, those people have no idea what they are getting into.

Our family has been located in this area for five or six generations now, and it all started in an old house that stands today, though abandoned, on a certain hill right in the middle of south Parkersburg. This old house was originally a church, and there are at least 3 graves somewhere on the property which are unmarked, the actual location of which varies depending on whom you ask, but are certainly there. The known graves are said to be a mother and infants. There have been many tales spun about that old house. Many years ago, there were no houses at the foot of the hill. The area was a swampy field. One night when my grandfather was walking up the hill coming home from the store, he saw a woman in white whose feet did not touch the ground coming toward him from the field. He threw his pack at the apparition and ran. Later, he fell asleep in a dormer room in the house which was never used and he awoke to a ghostly face staring right into his face! Years later, the patriarch of the family, my great grandfather, had been building a garage at the foot of the hill below the house (near where grandpa saw the woman in white).

He decided to give the unfinished structure and property to my grandfather and his new bride. The house was built from the structure, and it stands today, occupied by my best friends family. One night grandpa got up to go to the bathroom, and suddenly yelled for his wife in fright, pointing to the corner of the room he asked her “don’t you see it?”, she did not, but he saw a small coffin in the corner of the room. A short time later, his father died.

Today, my friends family have complained of various noises and happenings there. They hear the faint sounds of old time radio shows coming from the living room. They hear pacing footsteps in the hall. They feel large and small entities setting on their beds. They have heard other unexplained knocks and bangs, and the chair in the living room has been seen rocking by itself. Something is still present. They have even seen a man walk through the hall.

Lets now return to my grandparents. They moved around several times before settling with their children at the foot of the hill across the street from the house grandpa built. This is where my grandma still lives today, and where I grew up. There are ghost stories about this house, too, but I’ll come back to that. Now I’ll tell a story that may explain volumes in this case. There is a story that indicates grandpa’s brother-in-law might have accidentally dug up one of the old caskets on the old homestead property… and burned it. The tale says that when he was leveling a space for a utility building behind the house, he dug up a crate and burned it and a putrid odor filled the air on the hill, I have heard this from someone who says he was there and saw it! He died not long after the time when this was suppose to have happened.

After his funeral, my aunt was baby sitting his kids up there, his oldest son had been killed in a car wreck just before he died as well. The youngest daughter pointed to the staircase and said she saw the two of them coming down the stairs together! My aunt bolted for the door, sight unseen. Now then, my grandparents house, Growing up, I’d never sleep with all the lights out there. I saw things there on at least three occasions myself, and heard plenty of noises. I even got pretty use to them. One night grandpa was going upstairs in the dark, and when he got to the top he saw a little girl standing there.

Many years later, a friend of mine, who had never heard that story, also was shocked when he saw a little girl standing in the upstairs hall. My uncle saw a glowing figure against the wall when he lived here. My aunt claimed she saw the eyes of a statue light up in the dark here once. However, for all this there are long periods of time without occurrence as well… here and at my friends house. I think all of this ties together. A woman in white, a little girl ghost… just like those graves behind the old homestead. Toward the end of her life my great aunt called here several times wanting someone to come up because she was afraid to stay in the old homestead alone. All that generation is dead now, none claimed the old homestead. Haunting at the foot of the hill still occur from time to time. One would wonder if it was the ghosts of the father and son coming down the stairs at the old homestead like the youngest daughter said. Maybe great grandpa is the man listening to the old time radio programs, and pacing the floor, in what was to be his garage. Maybe the little girl that’s been seen here is the ghost of a child lost from its mother. If all that is true, you have to wonder how many of the elders of the family still walk in the old homestead.. in the border room.. at the foot of the hill.

Between my grandmother who is from Harpers Ferry WV, and my mother in-law (who passed away a few years ago, we sure do miss her) and my wife’s stepfather, I have heard many strange stories.

This one is from my wife’s stepfather Fred.

When he was a kid in Berkeley Springs, his mother became very ill and he had been sitting with her on the sofa, no one else was home not long after dark. I believe he was around twelve. His mother had awoke and in a whisper told him to go to the door and let his Aunt Neddy in.

He told his mother he did not hear anything but she insisted that he check. They lived in a wooded area not far from the sand mine. When he went to the door and looked down through the woods sure enough, he could see a woman with a black shawl and carrying a lantern just as Aunt Neddy always did.

When he returned to his mother to tell her, his aunt was just coming up the path he had found that his mother had passed. He returned to the door to let his aunt in but there was no one to be found.

When he relayed what had happened to his family and Aunt Neddy the next day, his aunt told him that she never left the house that evening. Everyone said that maybe he was not suppose to be with his mother when she passed.

When I was 12 years old, my mom and dad had bought a new house and it was the first night we stayed him it.

Now, the women who lived in it before us had lived in it all her life and said nothing had happened in there and assured us that we would sleep well in the house but that wasn’t true. That night, we hadn’t gotten my bed set up yet so I slept on the couch in the living room. We hadn’t gotten the TV or cable set up yet so I slept with my radio on. And as soon as I was about to fall asleep, the radio went off and I got up a tried to turn it back on but the button wouldn’t come on so I went back to sleep. And that night, I had a dream about my dad going crazy and killing everybody, but when he went after me, a little girl was laughing at us and I looked at it and the girl’s skin looked like it had been burnt off and she told my dad to kill me and he shot me in the heart and I woke up with my mouth wide open and tears coming out of my eyes.

I ran into my mom and dad’s room and my dad was sitting there with our 9mm pointing towards the door where I was standing and he said he thought somebody was in there with me because he heard me screaming get away from me and then he asked what happened and he pointed to my chest and I told him that’s where he shot me and he knew exactly what I was talking about because he had the same dream.

He asked if the little girl was one of my friends or somebody I knew and I said no that I had never seen her before and he said if we have another nightmare like this, I don’t care, were moving out. And we never had dreams like that again. I guess the ghost just wanted to let us know he or she was there.