Due to the hunting nature of these hunted places,
lizard discretion is advised.
I'm your host Mark, and tonight I have a ghost story for you.
So gather around the campfire and try to knock it scared.
The Bishop family traveled to West Virginia from Ohio during the summer of 1999.
They were visiting different state parks and decided to rent a cabin at Babcock State Park.
When they walked into the visitor's center, they noticed that no one was at the front desk.
They walked around the gift shop for a little bit. Amanda, who was 10 at the time,
noticed dust on a snow globe. She dusted it off and saw that it was a grist meal with autumn leaves in it.
She placed it back on the shelf when her mother Rhonda made her jump by hitting the bell at the front desk.
A worker named Lisa came out from the back office apologizing for the white.
Rhonda told her that they were there to get the key to their cabin.
Lisa said they had the best cabin in the park. She gave them the key to cabin 13.
She also gave them a map so they could find the cabin and she told them that she hoped they had a great time.
Because cabin 13 would be a place they would never forget.
Amanda and Rhonda walked back out to the car. They noticed that John was out of the car looking over at the grist meal.
When they walked over to him, they heard his camera. He told them to stand in from the meal so he could get a picture of them.
After that, they walked back to the car and drove over the bridge down a single lane paved road.
It seemed like they were driving forever, but when they got to the end of the road, they saw cabin 13.
The three got out of the car, got their bags, and walked down the path and the steps to the cabin.
Rhonda tried the key in the door, but she couldn't unlock it.
No matter how many times she tried, the key wouldn't budge.
So John tried it a few times. Still, no lock.
They thought that Lisa might have gave them the wrong key.
They started to walk back to the car when they heard the door unlock.
They all thought that someone might have been in there.
So John went in first, but he saw no one.
When Amanda and Rhonda entered the cabin, they were overwhelmed with the smell of roses.
They both thought that there was an awful air freshener.
But when they looked around the cabin, they couldn't find one.
They put their bags in the cabin and decided to hike a trail.
They decided to hike the island in the Sky Trail.
After a few hours on the trail and a roll of film later, they made it back to the cabin
and saw that John's luggage had been opened and thrown around the cabin.
John looked around the cabin and called the park gate quarters.
Lisa answered the phone and John asked if she knew of anyone else staying near them,
or if anyone else had a key to the cabin.
She said that they were the only ones staying in a cabin on that end of the road.
And that the only other person to have a key was a maintenance man.
But he was at the lake working on a few paddle boats.
After a long pause, she told John this wasn't the first time something like this happened.
Before he got a chance to ask her what she was talking about, the phone disconnected.
John looked confused and Rhonda asked him what was wrong.
He said nothing and that they should get the cooler out of the back of the car
to fix the sandwich for the evening.
After eating, John and Rhonda went outside to sit on the porch and drink some wine.
They could tell they were the only ones around, but could hear a woman in the distance.
They couldn't make out what she was saying, but John said she must have been screaming
because Lisa told them they were the only ones on the end of the road.
Amanda decided to take a bath while she was washing her hair.
She heard the door creak open.
She thought it was her mom checking on her, but she turned around and saw that no one was there.
Before she could turn back around, her towel fell on the floor.
She thought it might have been Augusta Wynn.
She was getting out the tub when she heard footsteps upstairs.
She ran outside to get her mom and dad.
They said that it was just her imagination playing tricks on her.
They decided to call it a night.
Amanda and Rhonda took the bed upstairs, and John took the couch downstairs.
All was well until 2 a.m.
Rhonda woke up to what she thought was drops of rain leaking through the roof on her face.
She looked outside and noticed that it wasn't raining.
She turned on the light and wiped her face off and noticed that the liquid was red.
She noticed that the mattress was covered in the red liquid and that Amanda wasn't in the bed with her.
She looked over the railing to see if she was downstairs with John,
but all she saw was a figure standing downstairs with something in its hand.
When it noticed her, it ran upstairs.
She could hear the footsteps, but no longer see the figure.
Then she felt sharp pains all over her body and legs.
She screamed for John, but he didn't come.
Rhonda woke up to John shaking her, trying to wake her up.
He said that she was screaming in her sleep.
She told John and Amanda about her dream, and Amanda said she had the same dream,
but that in her dream there was a woman in the bed.
She said that the figure attacked the woman and that she was murdered in the bed.
She told her mom that she was sleeping in the spot the woman was in.
They decided that the best thing to do was to brush it off as just being spooked by sleeping in an older cabin.
They all went back to sleep, but around 4am, John woke up to a woman crying.
He jumped up, looked around, thinking Amanda or Rhonda came downstairs to use a bathroom,
but couldn't see them.
He went upstairs to check on them, but saw they were both sound asleep.
He turned around and noticed a woman looking back at him, and was crying in the mirror.
He saw that her head was split open and that she had been beaten.
She kept asking why James would do something like this to her.
John thought that he was just singing and hearing things when he walked out of the room and smelled roses.
Then he felt two hands on his back, pushing him down the steps.
He fell down the steps, waking up both Amanda and Rhonda.
They ran downstairs to check on him.
They all started to hear the crying.
A rocking chair was flipped over, then a loud scream was heard.
They decided to leave the cabin right then and there.
They threw the luggage in the back of the car and started to back up.
Amanda looked down at the cabin and saw a woman standing in the window looking back at her.
John turned around and drove back to the headquarters where they threw the key at the door and drove out the park.
Never coming back.
When they got back to Ohio, they developed the film from the trip.
When they looked back at the pictures from cabin 13, they all saw the same thing.
A woman looking back at them from the window.
On April 29, 1996, James Phillipo rented a cabin in the park.
On April 29, 1996, James Phillipo rented cabin 13 for him and his wife, Cheryl, for a romantic getaway.
Around 2 am and 3 am, he called 911 saying the two of them had been attacked.
When police arrived, they found Cheryl dead at the scene in James and his underwear.
Police saw no sign of a struggle, but they saw what looked like a staged crime scene.
They looked at a briefcase laying locked on a table.
They saw pictures and negatives of a man in wet clothing changing.
That night, James became the only suspect of the murder.
During the trial, James said that the man in the pictures was a close friend and a member of his congregation.
That he baptized the day he booked cabin 13.
Cheryl disapproved of this friendship in the land venture.
She said that it strained their relationship.
During the trial, both men denied being in a romantic relationship.
And that the photos were just innocent post-baptism shots.
James Phillipo was sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole.
Cheryl's ghost has been reported to haunt cabin 13 and the grounds around it.
She has been seen wearing a nightgown staring out of the window and making sobbing sounds at night.
In 2002, West Virginia tourism removed towards the cabin 13 from their website,
labeling it as being haunted by a murder victim.
The site posed the question, would you dare stay in cabin 13?
Thank you so much for listening to the second episode during our State Haunts Month.
Stay tuned for next Friday for another State Haunt.
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