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I'm your host Marc.
And I'm Courtney.
And this is Mountain State Mysteries.
Today we want to tell you the story of a woman whose death is still a local legend to this day.
This is the story of Elva Zona Hester Shoe, better known as the Greenboro Ghost.
Little was known about the early life of Zona Hester Shoe.
Her birth year is given as 1876, however, records differ and she may have been born in 1873.
Zona lived near Livesay's Meals in Greenboro County.
While doing research, I couldn't find her father's name.
However, her mother's name is Mary Jane Hester and she plays a big role in the story of her daughter.
Zona was a very attractive girl and the men were chasing her.
Her mom was basically what I call a helicopter mom.
If a guy wanted to speak to her daughter, they had to go through her first and if she didn't like the guy, she would let them know.
Zona would go against her mom nine times out of ten, which led to her giving birth to a child in 1895.
Zona and the father, who was only together for a short amount of time, he ended up leaving her one month into her pregnancy.
Records do not say who the father was or what became of their child.
In 1896, Zona met Erasmus, stripling, trout, shoot.
What a name.
Damn straight.
He was a handsome stranger who had moved from Drew Mountain in Pocahontas County to Greenboro to work as a blacksmith for James Crickshanks and started a new life for himself.
The two were instantly attracted to each other and they married shortly after meeting.
On October 26, 1896, this might be weeks, maybe months from meeting one another.
Mary, however, headed the idea of the two getting married.
She wanted to be the one to give her daughter the okay to marry and shockingly enough, she disliked trout, shoot.
What Zona didn't know is that her mother's gut feeling about trout, shoot would be correct.
Zona didn't know about the checkered past he left behind him at Drew Mountain.
It's said that trout, shoot had an excellent singing voice and great physical strength.
It's said that he liked to brag about his strength and that he often bullied others.
He was married while living at Drew Mountain and the locals knew that he would often beat his wife.
In the winter of 1886, word got around that trout, shoot had beat his wife.
A mob got together to teach him a lesson.
On the night the mob grabbed him, it was said to be 10 degrees below zero.
The mob went to the home of shoot at Rock Camp Run and grabbed him.
After a little struggle, shoot broke down and begged for mercy.
However, the mob dragged him to a nearby watering hole and dunked him into the water, informing him why they were doing it.
On the day shoot tried to take out warrants against the members of the mob.
The warrants were set aside due to the lack of evidence.
During this time, shoot was arrested for stealing a horse and his wife fled their home and went back to her father's home.
While he was serving his time, his wife divorced him and remarried.
You're listening to Mountain State Mysteries and we have a little announcement.
Courtney and I have always believed in helping others.
With Mountain State Mysteries, we know that we have a platform to get people's stories out there and there is a very good possibility that one of the cases we tell you about could get solved.
We also know that we have this platform to help someone in the community.
So help us help a Beckley local on April 1st 2023 from 10am to 5pm.
We will be at the Kroger on Harper Road co-hosting a hot dog and bake sale for Ashley Burge.
All proceeds will go to Ashley's birth cancer treatment.
If you're unable to make it from now until April 20th, you can go into Kroger on Harper Road and go to customer service and enter to win a C4 cooler and a cornhole board set.
It's only $5 to enter.
We hope to see you there.
After Shoe was released, he went back to Drute Mountain and married again.
Reverend R. R. Little, a Methodist minister, was asked to come to Shoe's property atop the mountain to perform the ceremony.
When he arrived, he found that Shoe's bride to be, whose name was Lucy, to be young.
He actually wondered if she was the legal age to marry.
Reverend Little waited and waited.
Lucy said that she was out getting the marriage license.
Shoe did not return until after midnight.
The license he had obtained was issued in Greenberg County.
Little said he couldn't perform the ceremony because Drute Mountain was in Pocahontas County.
Shoe, being the man that he is, pointed out that the county line was less than a mile away.
And it was a moonlit night, so the wedding would be moved to Greenberg County.
Little agreed and they moved the wedding to Greenberg County, getting married in the middle of the road.
That's romantic.
When Little got to the part of the ceremony where others could object, he paused for a second, then said, I object.
Shoe demanded to know why.
Little replied that the bride was a mere child.
As recounted in the Greenberg Ghost and other strange stories by Dennis Deets, Little said,
None of her people are present. It is now one o'clock in the morning and we're all here in the county road.
A marriage ceremony is a sacred rite and should at least be performed under ordinary circumstances.
I cannot help but think that there is something not right in this case and I will go no further, so there will be no wedding as far as I'm concerned.
Little later found out that Lucy was indeed underage. She was only 15.
She had met her and persuaded her to visit her uncle, Andrew Mountain.
When he got her away from her parents, he talked her into marrying him.
Not faced by Little, Shoe and Lucy were married the next month in Frankfurt, West Virginia.
Eight months later, Lucy was dead. The circumstances were mysterious.
It said that she had died either in a fall or being struck in the head by a rock.
Soon after that, Shoe moved to Greenberg County, mesmerized by Zona.
The marriage between Zona and Shoe only lasted three months.
In early January 1897, Zona fell ill with female issues and went under the care of Dr. George W. Knapp.
Shoe seemed to be attentive to her.
On January 23rd, Shoe went to the home of Anderson Jones, a black boy who was said to be 11.
He asked the boy if he could do some chores for Zona.
His mother said yes, just that he had other things to do first.
Shoe became impatient and went back four times before the boy was available to help out.
When Jones was finally able to head over to Shoe's house, he nodded and couldn't hear anything.
He ended up letting himself in, and that's when he discovered Zona's body lying on the floor.
She was stretched out straight with her feet together.
One hand by her side and the other one on her stomach.
Her head was slightly inclined to one side, James ran home to tell his mother.
She told him to rent at the blacksmith's shop to tell Shoe.
Once Shoe made at home, he sent for Dr. Knapp.
He arrived to the house an hour later.
By then, Shoe had already taken care of Zona.
He dressed her strangely in her Sunday's best, a dress with a high collar secured by a big bow,
and a veil covering her face.
While Dr. Knapp was attempting to determine the cause of Zona's death, Shoe remained planted to his wife,
cradling her head and her upper body while sobbing in great distress.
Due to Shoe's extreme display of grief, Dr. Knapp was only able to label her death as everlasting fame.
The next day, Zona's body and its coffin was transported by carriage to her parents' home across Swell Mellon,
14 miles away, for her wake the following day.
You might be surprised by this, but during her wake, Shoe made sure to stay close to the body at all times.
Members of the community who came to pay their respects noted that Shoe was behaving oddly,
and that his mood would change from overwhelming grief to manic energy.
He wouldn't let anyone near Zona's body.
He placed a pillow on one side of Zona's head and a wadded-up cloth on the other, claiming he wanted Zona to rest easier.
He said the big scarf that is around her neck was her favorite and that she wanted to be buried in it.
However, when it came time for Zona's body to be moved,
people noticed a looseness to her head.
You're listening to Mountain State Mysteries, and we have a little announcement.
Courtney and I have always believed in helping others.
With Mountain State Mysteries, we know that we have a platform to get people's stories out there,
and there is a very good possibility that one of the cases we tell you about could get solved.
We also know that we have this platform to help someone in the community.
So help us help a Beckley local on April 1st, 2023, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
We will be at the Kroger on Harper Road co-hosting a hot dog and bake sale for Ashley Burge.
All proceeds will go to Ashley's first cancer treatment.
If you're unable to make it from now until April 20th, you can go into Kroger on Harper Road
and go to customer service and enter to win a C4 cooler and a Cornhole board set.
It's only $5 to enter.
We hope to see you there.
The Kroger
Mary was certain that her daughter's death was not an accident.
She took a sheet from the coffin and noticed a weird smell coming from it, so she washed it.
When Mary washed the sheet, the water turned red, but when she got the sheet out of the basin, it was clear.
The sheet was stained pink. After this, she tried to boil the sheet and hang it outside for days.
The sheet remained pink.
To her, it was a definite sign that her daughter's death was met with foul play.
Mary prayed and prayed that her daughter would come back from the dead and tell her the truth about how she died.
She said that she wanted her daughter to tell on shoot because she had a feeling he had something to do with her daughter's death.
Her prayers were answered within a few days.
For four nights, Zona's ghost would appear and wake her mother from sleep.
Zona was wearing the dress she died in and it appears solid like flesh and blood.
When Mary would try to reach out her hand, Zona's spirit would disappear.
Zona appeared once again and talked to her mother on the third night.
Zona made another appearance and on the fourth night, she finally described to her mom her murder in detail.
She told her that her husband had been abusive and cruel.
He beat her one night because she didn't have any meat cooked for dinner.
He grabbed her head and broke her neck.
Zona's spirit even proved it to her mother by turning her head around.
I would be out of that house in a second.
Same, I wouldn't be able to sleep for like a week.
No, peace out.
Mary went to the prosecutor, John Halford Preston, and demanded an investigation.
It was unlikely that he would take the case. However, the local rumor meal was buzzing with the talk of Zona's mysterious death,
as well as the odd appearance of her corpse and her husband's strange behavior.
Dr. Knapp admitted to the prosecution that his determination of Zona's death might have been an error.
Preston ordered Zona's body to be exhumed. You might be shocked, but Shu was opposed to the thought of this.
Shu publicly said that he knew he would be arrested, but said,
they will not be able to prove I did it. Thus indicating that he knew his wife had been murdered.
On February 22, 1897, Zona's body was exhumed and the autopsy revealed a broken neck and a crushed windpipe from strangulation.
Preston informed Shu, we have your wife's neck. We have found your wife's neck. Two have been broken.
Shu looked distressed and said in a low voice, they cannot prove I did it.
Shu was arrested and charged with first degree murder.
While Shu was waiting for his trial in jail in Louisburg, more information came to light about his background and criminal record.
Shu also stayed in good spirits, no longer appearing to grief.
He bragged that he wanted to have seven wives since Zona was his third and he was only 35.
He stood at the chains of realizing his ambition. He continued to repeat that his guilt could not be proved.
He also wondered why no one suspected the Black boy Jones.
All of the evidence against Shu was circumstantial.
The trial started in late June of 1897 in District Court in Louisburg and lasted for eight days.
Mary Jane Hester's ghost story was hearsay evidence and Preston did not go into the account in detail.
However, the defense raised the story when she was on the stand, maybe in an effort to make her appear crazy to the jury.
Hester recounted the ghost assertion that Zona's neck had been squeezed off at the first vertebrae by Shu.
According to Hester, Zona's visits were not dreams, but visions she had while awake.
The defense attempted to get her to say that there were dreams based on her distressed condition of mind.
Hester stuck to her story and its details.
She also stated that Zona described the house where she was and Shu had lived.
A place Hester had never seen or visited. The details were accurate.
Because the defense had entered the story into the trial, the judge could not instruct the jury to disregard it.
However, most of the people in town already knew the story and believed it every single bit.
When Shu took the stand in his own defense on day six, his testimony was not cohesive.
He rattled on about unimportant events.
But he passionately denied everything said about his alleged guilt.
After deliberating for one hour and ten minutes, the jury returned with the guilty verdict.
Two of the jurors would not agree to the death sentence, so Shu was sentenced to life in prison.
The verdict did not satisfy many in Greenbrier County and the lynching party formed on July 11th,
but was ended due to a tip to the sheriff who dissuaded the mob from acting.
Shu was moved to the Moundsville State Penitentiary.
He died on March 13th, 1900 due to an epidemic of infectious diseases.
Once Shu was convicted, Zona's ghost was never reported again.
A state historical marker was placed on Route 60, west of Lewisburg.
It reads, interred in the nearby cemetery is Zona Hester Shu.
Her death in 1897 was presumed natural until her spirit appeared to her mother to describe how she was killed by her husband, Edward.
Autopsy on the exhumed body verified the apparitions account.
Edward found guilty on the murder was sentenced to the state prison.
Only known case in which a testimony from ghost helped convict a murder.
In the nearby small cemetery of the Soul Chapel Methodist Church, it's just a few miles away in the opposite direction.
There are no road signs or markers pointing you in the way, but locals can provide directions.
Zona was originally buried in an unmarked grave.
She was reinterred here after the exemption of her corpse for the autopsy.
Her parents were buried alongside her.
Her modern tombstone was erected in 1979 financed by the church in her honor.
Visitors come to pay their respects to the women behind the Greenbar ghost and others place flowers and other tokens on her grave.
Some say you can feel Zona's spirit at her grave site.
Courtney, do you have any final thoughts on this case?
I'm glad that he got everything that he deserved in the end.
I'm really glad that the prosecutor decided to listen to Zona's mother.
And I'm glad that they actually decided to exhume her body because even now it is so difficult to get a body exhumed.
And for somebody to actually listen to her mother and actually to go in there and exhume a body and then after that find all the findings on it is remarkable.
It's 100% remarkable.
I hate that this has happened.
I mean, as far as we know right now, there's really only like three people that we know of.
Maybe there's more out there that he could have hurt.
There could be more.
So I'm glad that he had finally had an end to it and Mark, do you have any final thoughts?
To be honest, I really didn't know much about this case growing up.
That isn't ill.
Me and some family members went to the flea market they have at the state fair.
And there was this couch.
My grandmother fell in love with it.
And the woman told us that it was the couch from the house that Zona was murdered in.
So like the couch is still in the family to this day, whether or not it's actually the couch.
I don't know.
But it did pink my interest into this case.
And like you said, I'm so happy she got the revenge that she needed.
I'm so happy that people listened to her mother.
And I'm kind of happy he didn't get to have seven wives at the end.
So that's really, you know, everything there.
I definitely think that we do need to go see her grave and go to the marker because I've always wanted to see it.
Join us next time on Mountain State Mysteries as we do something a little different for our season finale.
I'm going to tell you the story of a mysterious unsolved murder from Parkersburg.
Courtney, are you ready to blind react to it?
I am.
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