The Ghost of Greenbrier

In 1897, the death of Zona Heaster Shue in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, became the center of one of America’s strangest murder cases and the legend now known as the Greenbrier Ghost.

After Zona’s death was initially attributed to natural causes, her mother, Mary Jane Heaster, claimed her daughter’s ghost repeatedly appeared to her and revealed that she had been murdered by her husband, Erasmus Shue. Her persistence helped lead authorities to exhume Zona’s body, and an autopsy revealed that her neck had been broken. Erasmus Shue was eventually tried and convicted of murder.

In this episode of The House of Strange, we explore the death of Zona Heaster Shue, the murder investigation and trial, and the supernatural story that became inseparable from the case. Was the Greenbrier Ghost truly a voice from beyond the grave, or did a grieving mother already suspect a truth others had overlooked?