I had just turned 16, and I had just started dating a cousin of my friend. We all decided to stay at his grandmother’s that night, and all of us were very excited and we were planning a night of fun. Mostly we stayed on the large porch on his grandmother’s second story, and we stayed up very late into the night. Even though I have always been very interested in the occult, (my religion being based on it, as with my boyfriend and his mother) I was always very doubtful of things I had felt or had seen. However, when my boyfriend, his three best friends, and I took a walk in the woods that night, we all felt a very oppressing and frightening presence.

My boyfriend and I noticed it long before his friend, and warned them that it would be wise to run. We all sprinted about a half mile to the barn, and the whole way we felt something follow us. It was something that put so much fear into our souls that we were trembling in fright. Even after we made it to the barn, we all still felt uneasy and cautious.

My boyfriend immediately consulted his mother, and told her “It’s back.” They then explained the story of a demon to all of us, and that it haunted certain people. This may seem strange to those reading this, he, but his mother, his friends, and I went back up to the forest. We tried a ritual to banish the demon…but when I saw my beloved dragged out of our hands, across the field, my concentration faltered. I could see the grass bending in front of him as he struggled to get away! His mother screamed incantations and suddenly he was let go. We all headed back to the old farmhouse, with a sense of false confidence.

After his mother went to bed, we all stayed up and talked. About two in the morning, we all acquired the eerie feeling again and my friend and his cousin woke up immediately and began to complain of chest pains, and that she felt like something was squeezing her heart. My boyfriend and I had no choice but to begin the ritual again without his mother’s help.

When he moved, I stayed away from the farmhouse for the most part…but that did not help me. One night, a few months later, I was about to fall asleep, when something caused me to sit bolt upright in bed. There, in the chair directly across from me, was a shadowy figure, and I felt the same fear I had felt the weekend we had confronted the demon. It quickly disappeared, but I sat up all night in fear and tension. To this day, I am especially careful about when and where I go alone.

About 12 years ago, my high school history club went to Harper’s Ferry for the ghost tour. My friend had to go to the bathroom, so we went to the public rest rooms. The way the town is set up, there are streets that run down the hill to a street that parallels a grassy lawn. There were lights everywhere, because of the tours I guess. We got to the bottom of the hill and went to make the turn to the potties.

Right then, we heard a male voice say “Hello ladies”. We looked over to our left. There in the grassy area, with all the lights on him, was a figure in a set of navy whites waving his hands and swaying. Problem was, he had no hands and no face. He sounded white and, if he had hands, we would have seen them. We ran away. When we looked back a moment later, he was gone, and he couldn’t have hidden that quickly. We weren’t the only ones who saw him.

I use to not believe in very many paranormal things that supposedly run around in this world. But that all changed one night about a year ago…

I was up late one night just lying down on the living room couch when I realized I needed to go use the bathroom. I was tired and no one else was awake so I just left the bathroom door open and the light off. Then all of the sudden I just felt like I needed to wake up. Next thing I knew, I looked up and there was this little red creature walking past the bathroom door. It was walking like a soldier, only swinging its arms. It looked like a little alien, only it was blood red, and its eyes glowed red too.

It went past the bathroom twice and then it pointed at me and turned towards me. I could not move I was so terrified. The closer it came the more I panicked. When it was coming towards me, I screamed louder than I ever had before in my life, I turned on the bathroom light, shut the door, said oh Jesus help me, and closed my eyes. Then my mom maw came in there and asked me what I was screaming about, when I told her what happened she thought I was either crazy or dreaming. I knew I was not though. Ever since that night, I still get scared when I go into the bathroom late at night.

This story is true. I am not exaggerating. I always hear things in my house, especially late at night, and I always get a terrified feeling like there is something unholy in my house. This experience has made me a true believer in the battle of good and evil. I definitely think that whatever haunts my house is evil.

“That is the curse of every evil deed, that, propagating still, it brings forth evil.” – Friedrich Von Schiller (1759 – 1805)

Why would the Blennerhassetts be cursed?

For one they really started their married life out on the wrong foot. When Harman Blennerhassett was thirty his brother asked him to pick up his daughter (Harman’s own niece) at boarding school. Not only did Mr. Blennerhassett pick her up, he ran off and married her! This upset everyone they knew. In fact they had to leave England because of their marriage. Then when they came to America, the Blennerhassetts joined forces with Aaron Burr. Many people including President Thomas Jefferson thought they and Burr were trying to take over the country. Finally the island at one time was a burial ground for the Hopewell Indians. Could there have been a curse from the Blennerhassetts building on ancient burial grounds?

Let me tell you some of the strange things that have happened over the years.

Horses certainly don’t like the island. The story is told of Micajah Phillips, a slave who belonged to the Blennerhassetts. It was his job to bring the Blennerhassetts and their guests over to the island on a boat. As they neared the island his horse became more and more agitated. Micajah couldn’t understand it, the horse had always been so gentle. Finally as they reached the shore the horse became so upset it ran from Micajah and hurled itself head long into a tree trunk with such force it broke it’s own neck. To this day they have trouble with horses on the island. For no known reason horses will break loose from the wagons and throw themselves at trees.

If the Blennerhassetts had trouble with the horses it was nothing to the problems they had with their children. Their first daughter Margaret died as an infant and was buried on the island. A terrible rain and flood came covering a good deal of the island. When the waters went back down all traces of the baby’s grave were gone. Years later their oldest son Dominick walked into the woods one day and was never seen again. In the early seventies an archeologist came to spend the night on the island. He camped near the old summer kitchen during the night a lady all dressed in white came towards him. He was so surprised because there were no boats running at that time. She never said a word, but acted as if she were looking for something. Frightened the man ran to his tent and didn’t come out until the morning. People say it was Mrs. Blennerhassett looking for her lost children.

Not every minute of the Blennerhassetts life was sad. There were times when they would have parties and dances. In fact it’s been said that they may not be sure the party is over. Several winters ago the island was closed for the season but the Valley Gem riverboat was still taking dinner cruises on the river around the island. Several people saw a light coming from the attic and the sound of strange dancing music filled the air.

Legal troubles forced the Blennerhassetts to leave their beautiful home just a few years after it was built. It had been especially made so as to resist a house fire. But the curse of the Blennerhassetts clung to the house even after they left. Late one night a mysterious fire started in the Library. It followed the roof until the entire house was destroyed.

Strange things happened to the Blennerhassetts until their deaths and even after. Mr. Blennerhassett had insisted that when he died he was to be buried at night in the dark. He got his wish and then some. For some unknown reason his grave has been paved over and can no longer be seen.

Since the seventies a great deal of work has been done to restore Blennerhassett Island to it’s original state. Even the coffins of Mrs. Blennerhassett and her other son have been brought to the island. Some say they may have brought back the curse with the bodies. There are strange sounds and sighting at the island and things often break or go wrong for no reason at all. Be sure and visit Blennerhassett Island and see for yourself. Just don’t go alone!

I live on an old country road called Grassy Creek and right about 100 yards, further up the main road is Leatherwood Hollow. It has had a bad name because it is full of panthers and there has supposed to been many violent things happen up there. My great grandma when she was younger and able to work in the corn patch, was out late at night getting some corn to pick for the next morning for breakfast, she was picking corn and she thought she saw something white-like floating down the road and she looked closer and saw that it was riding a horse. It was like a human body, and it was headless and there was blood stains where the head used to be and it was riding back up the road toward her and it came within 35 yards of her, and she almost passed out. She started moving briskly toward the house and it followed her all the way out to the house then as she went inside it galloped away.

There’s a house right above our house on a hill. I have been told stories since I was 27 I’m now 47, but I know what really happened, because my mom and this lady were best friends. There was this lady Ms. Kaptis and her husband died over some kind of illness. She would not leave the house after that. Eventually she got depressed and a little while later, one of her kids came to visit her and found that she had hung herself on the living room wall.

My daughter knows the people that live there today. She spent the night with them one night. The next day she came home terrified and I asked her what was the matter. She told me that the rope, nail and blood stains are still on that living room wall today. She also told me that late at night you can hear a woman crying. She said you can hear footsteps and you can hear somebody beating a nail into the wall. She said that after that, you can hear a rope tighten and a lady gasp for her very last breath of air.

This is an old story told to me by my mother. I believe it to be true, because my mother is a Christian and never lies about anything.

It all happened a long time ago, before I was even born. My mother and dad were getting ready for bed. My uncle lived with them at the time and he slept up stairs.

My dad fell asleep, and my mother was having a hard time going to sleep. They had an old suitcase in the corner of the house.

Mother rolled over, when all at once a woman’s head came through the wall and was looking up stairs toward where my uncle was sleeping.

Mother told me she could not move at all. Almost like, she was hypnotized. Mother said the woman’s head was beautiful, light red hair, pretty face, and had a white vial on, just like a bride.

Then the head set down on the suitcase and looked right at her, then looked up stairs, and slowly back up and went back through the wall, the same way it came. Mother said she could move then, and started screaming, and ran out. Finally, dad calmed her down and they went back to bed, even though they never got much sleep that night.

Moreover, to this day mother stands to it, and said she will never forget it.

The house our grandmother was born in was the site of a grisly murder that resulted in the last public hanging in West Virginia history.

The murderer was John F. Morgan who took an axe and violently massacred the widow Green and her three children. The purpose of our story is not those horrible murders, but what happened after……….

After John Morgan’s execution on December 16th, 1897 the old Green house stood vacant for several years as the stories and legends about the Green house spread from town to town across Jackson County. My great grandmother Minnie and great grandfather Leander were well aware of the history of that old house before they moved in during the autumn of 1900.

They had two children Dorothy and Leonard and Minnie was pregnant with my grandma Belle. Despite the stories of the grisly murders Leander and Minnie were in a tough situation as a fire had all but destroyed their home in nearby Ravenswood, besides they felt the children were to young to understand what had happened in that house and they were both people of strong religious beliefs, and were not concerned with a few “haints” or other manifestations, however they could not have expected what they would go through in their new home.

The house had been left vacant now for nearly three years and needed a good deal of work to be made livable. The wood floor in the kitchen still had the blood stains that covered about a 10 ft area where Mrs. Green had crawled to the back door after John Morgan had attacked her. She died there on the kitchen floor. Morgan chased the three children out the back door and killed them in the back yard. A neighbor had seen Morgan leave the house and when questioned by authorities he confessed to the murders. After Morgan’s subsequent hanging the case was deemed closed and the house was left virtually the way it was the morning of the murders.

Leander and Minnie were able to make the house livable in a couple of weeks, but they could not get the blood off the kitchen floor. they scrubbed and scrubbed but the stains would fade then come back, they tried lye to no avail. They tried sanding down the floor and the stains came back….they tried painting the floor and the stains came back through the brown paint. Even the local Ripley newspaper came out and did a story on the “Bleeding Floor” … eventually Leander decided to replace the wood in the kitchen floor, but to his astonishment just a few of weeks after putting in the new floor………… the blood stains again appeared on the floor.

The strange occurrences were beginning to take their toll on Leander and Minnie as they began to hear the apparent moans of Mrs. Green and the low cries of the murdered children they decided it would be too difficult on their own children to remain in that house, so they decided that as soon as grandma Belle was born they would leave the house.

Giving up on ever being able to remove the blood stains from the kitchen floor, and figuring they would only be there another few months at the most Leander placed a thick tweed rug over the biggest part of the blood stains. In April of 1901 grandma Belle was born and that May the family had found another house and were packing up for the move when Leander made a horrifying discovery.

As he began to roll up the huge tweed rug he discovered the bottom of the rug as saturated with BLOOD. Needless to say Leander and Minnie left the rug and left the house that night. The County owned the old house and decided to destroy it rather than to continually answer questions about the Green House and the “Bleeding Floor”.

Still to this day you can hear noises and even drive by and see the old forgotten grave yard.

In the southeast corner of Harrison County, WV there is a small little community called Johnstown. It has had a long history of travelers and merchant activity. This particular story takes place not long after the Civil War.

It was a time of traveling peddlers who went from place to place, town to town, peddling/selling different items. It seems that this particular peddler came to Johnstown and did quite well selling whatever he had. He probably made quite a bit of money. He left town early in the evening and was seen traveling past the local church and into some woods just beyond. He never came out.

Later his relatives came looking for him since he had not reported home. A search was made of the woods which turned up his blood stained hat and coat. No trace of the man, his horse, his wares or any of his belonging were ever found. Eventually he had been waylaid in those woods, murdered and robbed. Not long after that people who would be traveling to Johnstown down that road would encounter a very strange site. Seemingly this would only happen at dusk.

They would see coming towards them in the half light a figure. A figure that did not reply to their greetings, a figure that when it came close enough to be seen had no facial features at all. It was charcoal grey and looked like a three dimensional shadow. Truly this was not a living being. The folks who met the creature would try to run from it only to be chased. It was not until they crossed a creek would the creature stop.

After a while they began comparing stories about their encounters with the “Black Thing”. Time passed and the state highway department came in and decided to move the old road out of the woods to a cleared area below. When construction first began in the old woods a body or human skeleton was unearthed. No doubt, the local folks said, that was the Black Thing, and it was trying to tell the living it had been murdered. The old folks said that if the bones would be buried in the local graveyard, consecrated ground, that would “lay” the ghost.

However, the bones were put back where they were found and the site unmarked. You can still see that old road as it goes through the woods. It’s grown over but still one can walk it. I have the distinct feeling the Black Thing is still there, still waiting to tell someone it was killed. I’ve been out that road many, many times in daylight, but not at night. Nor do any of the other local folks go there at night. But I do believe it’s still there, waiting.

Last Halloween, four of us decided to do something different for the haunted holiday. We all piled into my boyfriend Brian’s Blazer, and decided to go to Stoco Junior High. We had heard about some of the ghostly rumors, but nothing with any substance.

We ended up getting lost, so we stopped at the local Dairy Queen to get directions. What we got was not only directions, but the true story of what happened at the junior high. The Janitor of the abandoned junior high now worked at Dairy Queen. He told us of a boy that had played basketball there.

One night during a game, someone pushed him into the bleachers and he cracked his head open and died on the way to the hospital. The rumor had it, you could still hear sounds of screeching tennis shoes on the gym floor, and you could hear him dribbling his ball down the court.

Well, when we pulled up to the junior high, it looked so scary sitting on top of the hill, with all the windows you could see broken. We all went up to the gym door and slowly opened it. As we stepped in, we nearly stumbled over a pentagram made with candles. We could see graffiti all over the walls.

Well, Lisa and I got scared, so we decided to let the guys go and find this ghost. When they got back in the car, they were scared to death. We went straight home to watch the video they had made from their adventure. On it was a room that they had claimed to be very cold, and no windows were knocked out of. On the video they say how cold it is in this one room, and you can also see a ghostly form breeze out of the doorway and into the stairwell where they were!!

My mother-in-law used to live in a house at the junction of Rt. 7 and Rt. 20. Her youngest son was only a few months old and she would push his crib against the wall by the fireplace, so he wouldn’t get cold in the wintertime.

She would walk into another room and hear a loud noise. When she went back to see what it was, the crib would be pushed away from the wall. She even tried rearranging her furniture, but nothing she would put against that wall would stay there.

A few months later, it was a hot summer day and she had her doors and windows open. She was washing dishes in the kitchen when, all at once, the doors and windows slammed shut. She went outside to check on her kids because she thought they were playing a joke on her, but they were all playing like nothing had happened and there was no breeze. They moved shortly after that. A few years later, the house was torn down and they found the bones of a baby in the fireplace. I am told that the house was a funeral home in the late 1800’s.

This is entirely true. It was the summer of 1994, and I was 13 years old. I do not remember the city because it was a short visit, and I am from a large town in Florida. Telling this still gives me chills.

My father is half Cherokee and was born in West Virginia. I do not know him, but he used to tell my mom a lot of folklore about it.

That is why when I came home and told her this story she believed me one hundred percent, even though she does not believe in ghosts.

I went to New Jersey for one month to get to know my younger cousins I do not see that often. During my stay, there was a family reunion for my Aunt (not blood relative) in West Virginia. She asked me if I wanted to go with her and the kids, and I said yes.

When we arrived, my Aunt, cousins, and her relatives all went to sleep. I had trouble falling asleep on a love seat in the living room. I was awaken by a noise, as soon as I fell asleep. It started low, so I sat up to hear it better. Then it gradually got louder.

It sounded like a dog collar rattling, you know, when a dog scratches it neck. Relieved I laid back down. It got even louder, and I realized they did not have a dog. It was clearly coming from the kitchen so I got up to look around.

I followed the noise to an old china hutch with dusty glass doors. I looked inside and one single teacup sat on a saucer shaking back and forth. As quickly as it stared, it stopped.

Nothing else in the hutch was moving. The hutch doors were closed, so it could not have been the wind, and if the ground had been shaking, more than one teacup would move.

I remember it like it was yesterday. Moreover, no I did not tell my aunt, or cousins. I just stayed up all night, wondering whom or what wanted a cup of tea.