The Dead Do Speak

Pictured Above the only known images of Elva and Erasmus 

There are murder cases that twist the law into impossible knots, and then there is the legend of the Greenbrier Ghost, a tale where the chilling testimony came not from a witness on the stand, but from the spirit of the victim herself.

In January 1897, in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, Elva Zona Heaster Shue was found dead in her home. She was a young, newly married woman to her now mourning husband, Erasmus "Trout" Shue. He was seen cradling her head and sobbing maniacally as the local doctor attended to the devastating scene. 

The cause of death was an "everlasting faint," or heart failure. 

Case closed. 

Except for the mounting dread that gripped Elva’s mother, Mary Jane Heaster.

Everything about Trout Shue's behavior screamed guilt. In an act highly unusual for the time, he took it upon himself to prepare Elva’s body. He dressed her in her best clothes, a high-collared, stiff-necked dress, and placed a large scarf tied in a bow around her throat.

At the wake, Shue never left the coffin. He wept, he fussed, and he violently prevented anyone from getting too close to her body. 

Neighbors whispered about how he had placed a pillow on one side of her head and a rolled-up sheet on the other inside the coffin, claiming it would help her "rest easier." 

Weeks after the burial, Mary Jane Heaster’s prayers were answered or perhaps her nightmares were confirmed. 

Elva’'s ghost appeared at her bedside, not once, but four nights in a row.

The apparition was initially a bright light, but soon formed into the clear, physical image of her daughter. 

Chillingly,Elva revealed the truth: 

Trout Shue was an abusive man, and he had murdered her in a fit of rage because she hadn't cooked any meat for supper. She had been strangled, her neck savagely broken.

To prove the horrific truth to her mother, the ghostly Elva performed a grotesque demonstration: she slowly turned her head completely around until it faced backwards. Every detail, from the argument to the snapped vertebrae, the sounds even were as clear as day. All was relayed across the chasm of death.

Armed with the impossible testimony of her spectral daughter, Mary Jane Heaster marched to the local prosecutor. Though the story of a ghost solving her own murder was ridiculed by some, the prosecutor could not ignore the circumstantial evidence, especially Shue's bizarre behavior.

An exhumation was ordered. When the doctors removed the scarf and examined the body, the phantom’s words proved chillingly accurate: 

Elva's neck had been broken, and her windpipe was crushed. The dislocated vertebrae and the distinct marks of fingers on her throat confirmed strangulation.

Trout Shue was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to life. Though his lawyer foolishly brought up the ghost testimony to discredit Mary Jane, the jury, moved by the mother's steadfast belief and the irrefutable evidence from the grave….chose to believe the word of the spirit.