Description

West Virginia Ghost Stories

By Jannette Quackenbush

Local legends passed down for generations in the hills and hollers...
Discover the ghostly side of the Mountain State!

Trains once slowed near a dark railway tunnel outside Cairo, West Virginia, where witnesses claimed a ghostly girl in a pale dress, with raven-black hair and golden slippers, appeared beside the tracks. One engineer swore he'd never stop for her-and one night, he didn't. That decision would haunt him forever... at the Silver Run Tunnel.

In West Virginia Ghost Stories, folklorist Jannette Quackenbush gathers over eighty true tales of hauntings, eerie folklore, and mysterious happenings from across the state. These stories have been whispered through Appalachia for generations, now preserved and retold with the accuracy and respect of a lifelong researcher.

Explore real haunted sites, complete with photographs, GPS coordinates, and hiking directions, so you can find the places where history and mystery meet:

- The White Woman of Silver Run Tunnel
- Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum
- The Ghosts of Harpers Ferry
- Ghost Dog of Laurel Creek Ford
- The Greenbrier Ghost
- Droop Mountain Battlefield Haunts
- 22 Mine Road
- Hatfield and McCoy Haunts
- Legend of John Henry
- Devil Baby
- Flinderation Tunnel

Wander through haunted rail trails, Civil War battlegrounds, and forgotten cemeteries where West Virginia's history lingers in ghostly echoes.

As founder of the 21 Crows American Folklore Archives, Quackenbush has spent more than four decades documenting Appalachian hauntings and preserving oral traditions. She is also the creator of Dark Journeys with Jannette, a project that blends folklore, fieldwork, and history through public hikes and lectures-including her Moonville Night Hikes, Silver Run Tunnel Treks, and Haunted Hiking Expeditions (Where the Natural World and the Supernatural World Collide(c)).

These are authentic West Virginia ghost stories-headless specters, phantom trains, haunted hotels, and spirits that still walk the rail trails of the Mountain State.