The Un-everlasting Faint of the Greenbrier Ghost
Edward Shue had already left one wife (ugly talk, talk of him being cruel) and buried another (so young, and died so mysteriously) when he came to Greenbrier County, West Virginia, and met dark-eyed Zona Heaster. It was 1896, almost a new century, a time of renewing. She was only twenty, and she wasn't no fancy city girl, and she dreamed of love. And he was handsome with his suit and bowtie, and his hands strong and firm from smithing, and though Zona's mother Mary-Jane warned her of a shadow within the stranger, Zona married him.
The love didn't last long, and the marriage only a little longer. Poor Zona was found dead at the bottom of the staircase. A horrible thing to happen, to be sure, but an accident. Only it was strange that she was found with her arms folded, ready for her coffin. Stranger still was Edward's grief. A man should grieve his wife, but Edward let no one near her body, clutching it close and howling, and he pushed away the village women and said he'd dress her for death and put her in the coffin. The doctor saw it, and the loose way Zona's head rocked on her neck, and he said nothing. The lawmen heard tell of Edward's two other wives, such tragic girls, and they did nothing, they didn't stir at step. The guests saw how beautiful she looked in her coffin, and how Edward had put her in a veil, heaped snug round her neck. She loved the veil, Edward told them. She was buried fast. The doctor said her death was by everlasting faint – a sleep from which none could rise.
But Zona did rise.
In her home, Mary-Jane prayed with all the heart of a mother's grief. The town had settled Zona's death to its satisfaction, so she turned to the highest judge and she begged the good Lord for justice. And he heard her mother's grief, and he stirred himself, and he sent his answer. For four nights, Mary-Jane was beset by the same dream. Each night, Zona, all shining and sobbing, came to her. Edward killed me, Mama. Edward strangled me dead. Edward broke my neck for sheer cruelty. The doctor and the lawmen slept sound each night. Zona was rotting in the grave, any proof of any crime rotting away with her. Edward had escaped punishment before, and could one woman punish him now? And who would listen to a mother, wild-eyed with grief, dreaming of her daughter who should be resting with the angels?
Mary-Jane put on her hat, Mary-Jane stepped out the door, and Mary-Jane went to the law. Dig up my Zona, she told the lawmen. Look at my Zona, she told the doctor. Her spirit's spoken the truth and her body will too. They heard her, and some were concerned for her mind, some were laughing at women's foolishness, but they dug up Zona and set her back in the light of day – and they found the broken neck and they found the marks of a man's brutal fingers. From the words of a ghost was Edward Shue sent to trial, and from the words of her mother on the stand was he sent to prison. Edward wasn't long for this world. Inside three years, he was laid low by an unknown illness, and then he went before that highest judge.
They still call Zona Heaster the Greenbrier Ghost, even to putting it on her headstone. They say a wife shouldn't testify against her husband, but then they say the dead don't speak either.
