Widen

I would like to start by letting everyone know that I grew up in Widen. I have lived in seven different homes in this small town. Over the years, I have seen many strange things down here, including ghost trains, horse and buggy apparitions, people, orbs, shadows, and even phantom cars.

For anyone who does not know Widen, it is an old coal mining town. There were small wars over coal and land, along with deaths from everything from accidents to murder, and even earlier conflicts from when West Virginia was still part of Virginia.

Above the house I lived in the longest, there are still train tracks. On gloomy, dark, stormy nights, I have seen a black train go by, complete with the sounds and vibrations that come with a long train passing. Every now and then, I have also heard horses galloping by, pulling a buggy. I have heard screams and crying women as well. The homes I lived in were also very active, with voices, shadows, orbs, things being tossed around, unexplained touches, and worst of all, the sound of everything in the kitchen falling and shattering.

But the story I am going to tell starts like many others. It seems like just about everywhere has a story that begins like mine.

The Lady in White.

As a child, I was always made to be home before dark because people said she had a habit of taking young girls. She was described as a young woman in a large white dress, like a big poofy ballgown. It was said that you would be fine if you saw her, as long as you did not stop to help her.

An old woman, who has long since passed away, once told me that she personally stopped to help a young lady in a wedding dress not far from a church. She got out of her car and asked if the woman was okay, if she needed a ride, or if she needed help. The Lady in White turned around.

The front of her long gown was ripped open, revealing the legs of a wolf. Blood dripped from the dress. Her face looked more animal than human, or so I was told.

The old woman said she jumped back into her car, which of course, as in any scary story, took a few tries to start. Once it did, she sped all the way home. She ran inside, slammed and locked the door, and hid in a closet, where she stayed all night listening. When morning came, she remained there until around 2 p.m., finally deciding she did not have to worry anymore. When she came out, she packed a bag and got ready to go stay a few weeks with her child. That was when she saw the deep scratches in the door she had locked the night before.

Every story I have ever heard about the Lady in White has been almost the same. The main difference is the dress. Most of the time, people say she wore a large white ballgown ripped open in the front and stained with blood. Other times, I have been told she wore a fitted, flowing white dress, but still with the same bloody rip in the front, the animal legs, and the inhuman face.

I myself have seen figures in white, but fear was never the emotion that hit me when I saw them. It was sadness and betrayal. I have gone out in the middle of the night trying to find out for myself if she was real, but I never saw the woman exactly as people described her. I never saw the bloody ripped dress, the animal-like face, or the wolf legs on a young woman. What I did see was the sadness burning in the piercing eyes of a young woman wearing a white high-low dress, the kind that is shorter in the front and longer in the back. She looked human enough in both face and legs.

I have also seen men wearing long monk-style robes, walking in a line along the road toward the graveyard. They were chanting in a language I did not understand. Then the robes simply dropped to the ground, as if the people inside had turned to dust, and after that, even the robes vanished.

My most recent experience, and my favorite, was seeing a man who died last year in 2018 walking inside the building where he passed away. He spent his life working on four-wheelers and died while working on one. Even in death, his ghost still seems to be working on a four-wheeler.