I’m currently living in Myrtle Beach, SC. I’m originally from Spencer, WV in Roane Co. I stumbled upon this web site and thought I would submit a story that hasn’t been told yet. I lived out side of town on a road called Steel Hollow Rd. I lived there for 19 years and heard a lot of tales from my grandmother, who past away recently back in 2002.

As a child I always heard of the Steel Hollow Cave Ghost. Back in the day when Roane County was just getting started, people really didn’t have the supplies to build a house with. Well Steel Hollow Rd. has many caves in the side of the hills so many of the people migrated in to these caves. One family, not sure of there names at the time, moved in this one particular cave (located off a little dirt road before you go up the steep hill on Steel Hollow Rd). It was a man and his wife and their three small children. After getting settled, the husband was going on a hunting trip and wouldn’t be back for three days to get food for them to last the whole winter, so the wife and children had to fend for them self. Unfortunately, the children developed a bad fever, so did the mother, so she was too weak to get water for them, so they continued to cry. This drove the mother crazy so she smothered the children till they suffocated and died. When the father came back from his trip he stepped in to find his wife rocking the dead children in her arms only saying “Be quiet the children are sleeping”. There have been many accounts of seeing her ghost there and also hearing the children cry.

One night I had to see if this was true, so me and some of my friends went walking and sure enough at 12 o’clock midnight we heard the baby’s cry, it was a sad sound, but we did get a little frightened but knowing there was nothing there to hurt us. This is a true story; it was even published in the Time Record on Halloween night of 1996. For further note the cave has been torn down, but a little of it still remains so be careful if you go Exploring.

This story is similar to the Fayette County – Lick Fork Rd. (Witchy Hollow) Story. I was driving South on Rt. 79 in 1991. I was between the Sutton exit and Rt. 19 exit. While driving I saw bright headlights coming at me in my rear view mirror, but as soon as the looked like it is going to crash into me, it suddenly disappeared. I thought maybe it turned off since it was dusk but it was a straightaway and we would have seen it. I had a friend with me in the passenger seat who witnessed the same thing. In 1992, it happened again. One week later, it happened again. I always had some one else in the car to witness the same account. I have heard that there was a terrible car accident on an over pass near there where a car hit a tractor-trailer in 1989/90 but that is all I know.

My brother and I are avid reenactors and we live in a town called Frederick, Maryland. Our hobby takes us to many places like Gettysburg, Yorktown, Fredericksburg, but in particular, Harpers Ferry.

I remember an event we were doing about 3 years ago when we portrayed Union soldiers from the civil war, as they were when the town was occupied in the early stages of the war. It was December, so we the event was staged to portray a Christmas atmosphere in 1861. The event was to last through Saturday and Sunday, so my brother and I drove up Friday night, met with the Park Ranger who was heading the event, turned in our muskets (as firearms aren’t allowed on National parks without a Rangers’ supervision), and we went to set up our camp for the night. Our campsite was directly behind the old firehouse, on the side that is closest to the railroad tracks and the Shenandoah River.

To those who are not familiar with Harpers Ferry history, the old firehouse is where John Brown and his accomplices were held up during their uprising a few years prior to the Civil War. Anyway, we got a fire going, our blankets rolled out, and we bedded down for the night, huddled up close to the heat (it was December in the Appalachian Mountains). I woke up at what I was guessing to be maybe 2 AM because the fire had died down and extreme cold had overtaken me. I set about to rebuilding it, gathering firewood, stirring the coals, etc. After about ten minutes of working the fire, I heard clinking sounds coming down the street that runs parallel to the firehouse. (Ok, let me say that the shoes worn by men in the mid-1800’s were leather soled and had a metal “horseshoe” looking plate on the heal, to increase the lifespan of the shoe. When the heal of one of these shoes is exposed to the concrete, or stone, it makes a loud clinking sound).

I looked up and saw a man walking down the stone sidewalks that have been in Harpers Ferry since it’s founding. It looked as if he was dressed in civilian clothing from the mid-1800’s…but I could not quite tell as it was 2 AM and the town does not have the best of street lighting. I thought nothing of this, as Harpers Ferry plays hosts to all types of historical events, and someone in costume is a common scene. I did not even think much about him being there so early in the morning. I figured he was sleepless, just as I was, and was taking an early morning stroll. Nothing really roused my attention, until I heard the clinking stop. I looked up and saw the man standing about 70 feet away, looking directly at me. I motioned for him to come over, as by now, the fire was going good and strong again, and it was a frightfully cold morning. The man simply stood there and stared.

I thought that maybe he did not understand what I meant, so I rose to a full stance and began walking toward him, with the intent to share a friendly conversation between two reenactors who could not sleep. As soon as I rose, he slowly turned around and began walking right back up the street where he originally had come. He was walking very slowly, so I shook my brother awake, and we both set off after the man (I do have enough sense to have someone with me while talking to a stranger in the middle of the night). However, by the time we got to where the man should have bee (judging by his pace), we could not find him (and the clicking of the shoes was no longer audible). I do not know what this was, but I have been back many a time to learn more about it, but to no avail. I was able to gain some interesting piece of news while talking to a park ranger about a year later. He told me a story almost identical to my own, except that he had been in his store shop closing up late. He described the man exactly as I had. Was this a spirit? Just a coincidence? You decide, because I do not honestly know.

One day in the summer of 1984, I was staying at my grandparents’ with a friend. We were looking for deer in the field with binoculars when we noticed an old graveyard with crooked, rusty, iron gates and grass over two foot tall. We were both about eleven or twelve years old and decided to go investigate. When we got to the graveyard, the tombstones were eroded and hard to read, but some dated back to 1700’s and 1800’s. After looking through the graveyard, we noticed an old dirt road leading back into the woods. We decided to see where it went. We walked down this road for what seemed like hours, and it was going nowhere. Then it started to get dark real fast and, since we didn’t have a flashlight, we decided to head back. Before we knew it, it was pitch dark.

As we were walking back, we heard laughter and the crackling of a camp fire. We also heard what sounded like tin cups and whistling. We looked around for the light of a fire, but there was none. These noises sounded like they were within twenty feet of us, but we could see nothing. We started to pick up our pace when we realized that there must be something paranormal was going on here. As we walked on, we heard footsteps following us, gaining speed to keep up. We looked back and saw what looked like faces of apparitions appearing from behind trees. Now it was every man for himself and we started running. I think we would have made a new Olympic record. What seemed like hours of walking earlier, only took about five minutes on the way back home. We ran for our lives.

This took place west of Capon Bridge on Rt. 50 west. It was supposed to be an old stagecoach stop. When you leave Capon Bridge heading to Romney, the old place is on the right of Rt. 50 going down the first mountain out of Capon Bridge. You can barely see the old graveyard at the top of the hill on the Old Ralph Haines property. I will never return.

It happened on a dark, crisp, Fall Friday night in Morgantown, West Virginia. It was raining outside, it had been for most of the day. My girlfriend and I had settled in to watch a movie and enjoy some time to ourselves. All my roommates had gone for the weekend. We had all the lights off with only the glow of the television to illuminate the room, and it was probably about 10:00 PM when it happened.

At first we didn’t suspect anything out of the ordinary, but creepy things had been happening at the apartment…footsteps with no apparent source, blurry figures walking by the window only to be caught out of the corner of your eye. We heard the sliding glass door open in the apartment below, then shut back. If you are familiar with these doors, they make a distinctive sound, and they aren’t quiet.

Like I said, at first we didn’t suspect anything, but then the nothingness, the quiet started to bother us. We knew the man who lived downstairs, and for the most part we knew his schedule at work. He wasn’t supposed to be home for another hour at least; he got off work at 11:00 PM!

Now I’m starting to feel scared and pumped up at the same time. I’ve got a feeling like the hair standing up on the back of my neck! I was confused. I usually felt this way when a ghost is near, but this was an intruder…so I thought. I looked around for a weapon to confront the intruder with and found an old broom handle used to secure our own sliding glass door. With this in hand I slowly opened the inner stairs which lead down to the apartment below and peered into the darkness.

That is what struck me the hardest, the darkness… and the quiet. There should have been a light, a noise, something. But there wasn’t, only pitch black, impenetrable darkness. Now I’m thinking that this intruder is simply waiting for me to come walking down these steep and narrow stairs into this terrible black darkness. No Way! I shut the door back and fastened it, but before I did, I heard a horrible half-grunt, half-snarl which sent an new wave of shivers up and down my spine. Now I knew there was no intruder, at least not a human one. Only some terrible beast or demon. By this time my girlfriend is now very scared and freaking out, so we called the police and had them come to check the apartment out. Of course both the windows and the door were secure, and the police found nothing.

At 11:30 PM when the man returned from his job we told him all the happenings and then we sat up throughout the night, afraid of the dark and telling ghost stories!

We went up to the cemetery to look around to see if we saw any ghosts. There were six of us for a while there it was all calm we were walking around checking out the place. A few people touched one tombstone it was very hot to the touch and a couple of girls with us were very sick after touching it and got worse they described as someone stabbing them in the side. A few of us walked back to the car from the top of the cemetery we saw white things coming towards the car they were moaning. All of a sudden, one of them was right by the car, we ran to the car it locked by itself. Good thing we had the windows down to unlock the cars we got in after we did and got out of there.

I lived on the second floor of Gardiner Hall, my friends and I have had some weird experiences there. Yes the homecoming Queen did die when she slipped in the shower but she died in 1986 (there is a plaque of her over the picture of Mrs. Gardiner in the lobby, and in the RA office). The hall though was built in the 60’s or 70’s it looks like a remnant from communist Russia and it sucks to live there but it was named for Mrs. Gardiner who was a history teacher, as it says so on another plaque.

Well the picture in the lobby of Mrs. Gardiner is upside down in a locked case that no one has ever seen a key for including the head lady at RLO or Geraldine the best house keeper ever, also my friend Jeremy’s room 311 the room number was upside down (we flipped it over after some strange events).

It all started when we heard a story about how if you flip the picture upright then strange stuff happens, well we couldn’t find a key so we all tried our room keys and nothing worked so we gave up. Jeremy slept on the floor of our room that night, because he kept hearing strange noises in his room. That night my roommate Cowboy Bob told me to shut my mouth, because I kept talking in my sleep, but I wasn’t talking or asleep because none of us could sleep.

The next day we had our friend Shannon bring her Ouija board over and they did a reading in the lobby. Patricia the girl who died preferred to be called Patty, she died in the bathroom that we used and she admitted to messing with the automatic toilets while we where in there. She lived in the room Jeremy lived in, hence the upside down room number. She really likes Jeremy, but she disliked me and cowboy, because she said we were immature and treated Jeremy bad, but other then that we where ok guys. She wouldn’t tell us why the picture was upside down, but she warned us and everyone else do not mess with the picture.

That night Jeremy borrowed a screw driver and flipped his room # back over, it took away from the character of the hall, but it made him more comfortable. I will not mess with that picture. Patty overall is a friendly ghost who will not hurt you. She is just having a fun time at Shepherd where she had the best years of her life and wants to be remembered. I want the real story to get out and let everyone know, don’t mess with that picture, she won’t hurt you but she did scare the three of us.

We received an email stating that, “Patty Loy died from a car accident during the summer of 1988, not from falling in the shower at Gardiner Hall.”