What if you were five or six years old and suddenly found yourself lost in the woods? As it grows darker you become increasingly afraid. Then a mysterious light appears. Would you follow the light, hoping that it would lead you home? Here is a story from West Virginia about a little boy and girl who found themselves in just such a situation. They, too, followed the light, and then found a surprise at the end of the trail.

A young boy and his little sister were hopelessly lost in the woods. It was getting dark and the boy knew that when night fell it would be impossible to find their way out of the thick pine forest. When his little sister began to cry the boy tried to comfort her as best he could. “Come on,” he said softly. “We’ll get home somehow.”

“But we’re lost,” the little girl wailed. “And there are horrible monsters in these woods. Daddy told me so.”

“He was just telling ghost stories,” the boy reassured her. But the boy wasn’t entirely convinced, himself, that monsters and ghosts didn’t roam the woods.

It seemed to the boy that he and his sister had wandered around for hours. Then, suddenly, he saw a light ahead. In the middle of the glow was a blue flame that shimmered with an unearthly light. The boy turned to his sister and said, “See? I told you we’d find our way home. There are the lights of the house.”

The kids began walking toward the light but no matter how far they traveled, the light came no closer. The light, itself, was moving — keeping pace with them. Finally, when they were so tired that they could hardly take another step, they came upon a road. The boy recognized it right away.

“This is the road that leads to our house,” he told his sister. “Come on.”

Then the boy looked around for the light, but it had disappeared. At the same time the clip-clop of a horse’s hooves and the rattle of carriage wheels were heard in the distance — coming closer. It was the children’s father. He was so glad to see them that he jumped from the carriage and hugged them both with joy. Then all three climbed into the carriage for the trip home.

“How did you find your way out of that woods, son?” the father asked. “That woods is so thick that people have been lost in there for days, wandering around in circles.”

“We followed a light,” the boy said.

The father’s eyebrows shot up. “A light?”

“Yes, sir. At first we thought we had accidentally found our house but when we walked toward it, the light seemed to move away. So we just followed the light, hoping that it was another person in the woods carrying a lantern and we would catch up with him.”

The father suddenly fell silent. Then he asked, “What did this light look like?”

The boy told him that it looked like a lantern light. “But it was strange,” he added. “In the middle was a blue flame. I never saw anything like it before.”

“I have,” the father said nervously. “It was the very same light that I just followed almost five miles to find you.”

My sister’s ex-boyfriend Eric invited me to stay with him and his college friend, who is paralyzed from the waist down. He warned me of the strange things that happen there. One day as I was reading comic books on the computer chair Eric turned on the stereo.

As we listened to the music, the stereo suddenly turned off all by itself. We were shocked. Later that night Eric and me was watching TV and then the stereo turned back on very loud. Now remember that his friend is paralyzed. We were now spooked. The next night we were all asleep except Eric. Suddenly he woke me up and pointed to the door and there stood a big man standing at the doorway and then vanished. That was the last time I spent a week in that college.

When I was four years old, my family and I went to visit a cemetery near Fairmont, West Virginia. Since I was only four, I didn’t know the name of the cemetery. We stopped and took a walk through the cemetery. It was only my dad, my older sister (she was five) and me. My mom and my little sister (she was two) stayed in the car. So we didn’t go that far out into the cemetery. We were busy looking at head stones when my dad called us over to look at this little girl’s grave. We did not know who she was but for some reason this grave caught my dad’s attention. The cemetery was so dead and there was nothing but cold dirt on the ground (no grass at all).

Later that day when we got home, everything seemed normal, until we got to the front door. Me and my older sister (Jeni was her name) walked through the door at the same time and we fell flat on our faces. I know this sounds funny, but it hurt. After that, more and more strange things started happening. Nothing disappeared and came back someplace odd, like most ghost stories. Instead, Jeni started hearing a voice of a little girl calling her name. JENIFER…. JENIFER .at first my mom thought it was a nightmare. But my sister never had nightmares. I was only four and didn’t know what to believe. Nothing really happened until later that evening. My parents were out on the porch talking. It was dark and us kids were in our bedroom (we all three shared a room) playing tag. Then we started playing dolls when the lights flickered off and back on again. We ran out to my parents and they said it was probably just the electricity. So we went back to our bedroom. Not even five minutes after we started playing again, the lights flickered again. This time they flickered at least seven times. Then it would stop, and then flicker another three or four times. We ran back out to my parents and they told us to stay outside with them. So we played tag outside, only my little sister Ashley cheated because she was riding her tricycle. That night when we went to sleep, Jeni woke me up and asked me if she heard that noise. I said no, I was asleep. She told me that someone was calling her name over and over.

Although Jeni was the main target in this haunting, strange things happened to everyone. Nothing new happened in the next couple days except the voices my sister heard. Until the day that my sister Jeni was put in the corner. She looked behind her and saw three figures coming towards her. She said that there was one little figure, then right beside it almost touching, was a bigger figure like a man. Right beside him was another tiny figure. My sister got scared and ran to my mom. My mom thought that was weird because she said that when she was pregnant with me, she was lying in bed reading when she looked up and there were three similar figures walking towards the bed. My uncle told her to say “The Lord Is My Shepard” five times and they would go away. It worked for my mom, but not for my sister. She would continue to see these figures off and on.

Then at about 9:00 p.m. my parents were playing Boggle and I fell asleep on the couch. I remember waking up hours later. It was real dark and I was alone… or so I thought. Everyone was asleep and I got up and called my sister’s name. She didn’t answer. So I began walking down the hallway and it felt like something ran right past me. I made it to my bedroom and went to sleep. When morning came, my mom asked me if I saw anything strange last night, I said no. She told me that I fell asleep during the game. After the game, they went to wake me but they said they saw me run down the hallway. But when they looked over, I was still on the couch sound asleep. My mom then knew that there was really something in this house. She said that the ghost looked just like me in every way. She had long blond hair just like me. She was as tall as me too. It kind of freaked me out considering the fact that it was almost like my clone haunting our house. That was the last time anyone saw that ghost except me. I actually got a glimpse of her when I was heading to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I saw her in the living room wandering around as if she was looking for something. Then she looked up at me and vanished. I didn’t care about the bathroom, I ran back to bed. And needless to say, I wet the bed that night.

The next evening, my mom was handing out crackers to us kids. She put some in a cup. We each got our own. My mom asked if she had missed anyone and she heard a voice say, “Mary Ann…You skipped me” but when she turned around, everyone had a cup, including her self.

One night, my sister started hearing two voices call out to her. She said it was a little boy and a little girl. So we did not just have one ghost, but two, possibly three considering the figure of a man. But even if we did have three, the little girl played the most part. Maybe, because we disturbed her peace, at the graveyard. But I think that maybe in a way we helped her find peace. I don’t know how crazy these disturbances must sound. But I know they were pretty scary to me. Cause one day all of the disturbances just suddenly stopped. And we never heard from the ghost again. I don’t think that if we had a haunting now, I would be as scared. I am now fourteen and will be fifteen in July. I know this has happened to me ten years ago, you probably think that I couldn’t remember that year. But I can still see the graveyard and I can remember it, like it was yesterday. We move out of that house when I was five. And I have lived in Klamath Falls ever since.

About two years ago my friend Stacey died of cancer. She used to stay at my house all the time. Well a few months ago I kept hearing someone sing me and Stacey’s favorite song off of the movie Little Rascals, called “Love”. I don’t remember who sings it. I was home alone that evening. I went in my room and I saw a figure, but it disappeared. I had pictures of Stacey in my room, she would always put them face down. When I go in my room those pictures are always turned around. I know it’s her. I still feel like she is here with me. I never had a friend like her, and I never will.

Other Comments: Her and I would always ride the four-wheeler. This year we bought a new one. And for no reason it goes off all the time or speeds up without me pushing the gas. She used to do that all the time.

I was recently a resident of Miller Hall at Shepherd College. Here, other residents and I experienced bizarre findings. For one, we have all heard of the girl in the attic who hung herself. We decided to check it out, take some pictures, and the pictures we got back were astounding. Then weird things occurred just randomly during the day.

A girl down the hall had a toothbrush. She would specifically place it in one position before we all left the building. Knowing that there is no way anyone could have entered her locked room to misplace her toothbrush, we would return to find it on the floor or near the shower. Water would randomly come on during the odd hours of the night. One night, a friend came out into the living room portion of her suite to see a blue figure sitting in one of the chairs. And finally, pictures of Miller Hall were taken from the outside, and the pictures that came back all had a large white cloudy figure that hovered over the roof of Miller. I must say, we love the ghost of Miller Hall.

It is common knowledge in the community of Glenville that there is a ghost on the campus of the local state college. As far as known, it has never been seen but has been heard on numerous occasions by certain students, faculty members, and building caretakers as it passes through Verona Maple Hall and Clark Hall presumably on the way to the cemetery adjoining the campus.

It seems to linger longest in Clark Hall where late-working journalism students and members of the MERCURY staff have reported hearing it. So far, it appears to be a kind of pleasant ghost, and the only criticism heard about it is that is seems to be unusually awkward and clumsy as it moves about.

That the ghost is there has been the subject of some speculation. Some believe there may be some connection between the ghost’s appearance and the unresolved murder of a local resident some years ago.

In the fall of 1918, a lady by the name of Sarah Louisa “Sis” Linn, who lived in a house where Verona Maple Hall is now situated, was bludgeoned to death and her assailant was never apprehended. Therefore, some believe this is Miss Linn’s ghost searching for the murder in the corridors of the buildings on the upper campus.

Some close observers of the situation have reported that early morning commuters across that area of the campus have noticed that the cemetery gate, for some unknown reason, is often found open at that time of the day.

One night I was sitting in my living room watching TV with all the lights off by myself. Then all of a sudden I heard something. I looked around and thought maybe it was one of my dogs, but then I heard it again and my dogs were right beside of me. So I knew it wasn’t either of them.

I looked up and it came from my attic. It sounded like someone was walking around really fast and then running. I was so scared! Then it seemed like I wasn’t alone in the room. It seemed like someone was in the room with me. Then I felt a cold breeze go across my legs, that’s when I really got scared. After I felt that, I closed my eyes and fell asleep and when I woke up in the morning it was like no one was around except for me. It was really creepy and freaky!

My boyfriend is, to say the least, a very levelheaded individual, not at all one to make up stories. Therefore, whenever he told me these two stories, I believed him instantly, because he just does not have it in him to create such wild stories.

Anyway, one night he was staying with his aunt who lives in an old remodeled house. All of the bedrooms are in the new part. Well, my boyfriend was sleeping in the living room one night when he awoke to a well dressed man standing over him that said “Hello, young man.” and stuck out his hand for my boyfriend to shake, and he shook his hand and went back to sleep.

Now my boyfriend’s family is big Marshall University football fans. She actually has four or five large statues of buffalo on her mantel in the living room (buffalo is the mascot), not just large statues, but heavy too, about 50 pounds.

Anyway, the next morning he woke up and all the statues were in the floor. At breakfast, he asked his aunt if she had been cleaning and how she got the statues off the mantel and who was the man that came over last night. She smiled and looked at him and said, “I see you’ve met our ghost.”

My boyfriend is now not such a skeptic.

My brothers and some of their friends live in a big, old house in Fairmont, WV for college. Soon after they moved in, they began hearing weird noises and doors slamming. They checked with the most recent owners of the house and they had a picture of the house.

Nothing was unusual about the picture, other than the fact that there was an odd human shaped figure standing in the window, when the house was completely empty. About a year later, they still kept hearing weird noises. I went down to visit for about a week. Around the third day, while everyone was in class, I heard something moving around downstairs.

I went down to examine the noises. I saw nothing, but heard same noises I heard earlier. I ran upstairs and turned on the TV. About a half-hour later, I heard a door slam shut downstairs. I thought it was my brothers or one of their friends getting home from class. I waited upstairs for someone to come up, no one did. I turned on the stereo and turned both the TV and the stereo up as loud as they would go so I wouldn’t hear the rest of the noises.

Soon after, being strong Christians, they preyed that if it was an evil spirit in the house, it would go away. My brother was home alone one day. He was getting ready to go out with his girlfriend to the movies. He locked all the doors and windows and went to take a shower. While he was taking a shower, he heard someone moving around in the living room. He got out of the shower as quick as he could. When he got out, every door and window was wide open, but no one was to be found in the house.

Soon after that, being strong Christians, they all prayed that if it were an evil spirit in the house, the good Lord would take it away. It has been two years since then, they haven’t heard nor seen anything strange in the house.