John Luckton, a 50-year-old advertising executive, runs Ghost Tours of West Virginia in Lewisburg and Beckley during the height of the state’s tourist season, which peaks around early September and ends around Halloween.

“Everybody’s favorite is the Greenbrier Ghost,” Luckton said, invoking the name of one of West Virginia’s most famous, or infamous, spirits.

The way Luckton tells the story, a woman named Zona Shue came back from the grave to visit her mother and reveal that she had been murdered by her husband. Her mother told the tale to anyone in town who would listen, and she convinced authorities to exhume her daughter’s body. The corpse was found to have had a compound fracture in her neck, and Shue’s husband eventually was convicted of her murder.

A plaque in Lewisburg now proclaims the case as the only one in which a person was convicted of first-degree murder based on the testimony of a ghost.

Luckton’s tours have become so popular that the State Division of Tourism has posted them in their events section of their website, which also lists fairs and festivals that have supernatural themes.

Source: Charleston Daily Mail