The Greenbrier Ghost: A Haunting Tale of Murder and the Supernatural

Written By Kaelyn Moore

Can a ghost point to the person who murdered them? In 1897, Zona Heaster Shue's mother thought Zona's ghost visited her in the night with vital information, an event that infamously became the only time a ghost's testimony was used in court. Known as the Greenbrier ghost, did Mrs. Shue really see her daughters ghost, or was there something else at play?

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It was a chilly October night when John Farley stumbled home from the pub. That night, he had many reasons to drink. The cold, the fact that in the 1820’s beer was sometimes cleaner than water, and also, he had lost touch with his dear friend Fred. Not out of spite or disagreement, but Fred had actually disappeared without a trace a few months prior. He hadn’t left a note, hadn’t said goodbye, and he hadn’t taken anything from his house with him. There was something odd about the way Fred left town. John always had a weird feeling about his friend's rapid departure, but he could never put his finger on exactly what he thought may have happened.

But that night, as John is tripping down the cobblestone roads, juuuuust as his passes his old friend freds property, he catches something out of the corner of his eye. At first, he ignores it, but something in his brain registers it as familiar. He looks up, then away, then double takes back. Fred?! Is that you?!

Standing across the street, on the corner of his old friend's property is Fred, the friend that vanished. John cant believe it, but his excitement sours when he realizes Fred isn’t saying anything. Actually, his expression doesn’t change at all. He’s looking directly at John with cold, expressionless eyes and a gaping mouth. 

Upon approaching fred, John gets the sense that it’s not actually him. No. this is isn’t even human. John starts wondering if what he’s seeing is a ghost.

But before he can process it, this apparition slowly raises a bony, pale hand. He points past John towards the creek in the distance.  John followed his friend’s gaze in that direction, but when he turned back around. Fred was gone.

The next day, in a panic, John races down to the creek to search for signs. He wants to see if there was a reason his friend’s ghost came to him in the middle of the night. Maybe he was just drunk, maybe it was late and he was seeing things. But a feeling in the pit of his stomach tells him otherwise. 

And that feeling was confirmed when John got to a bend in the creek. There, laying over the rocks, was the partially decomposed body of his friend Fred. But this didn’t look like an accident. From the scene John couldn’t tell who was responsible, but he could tell that his friend had been murdered.

Welcome to heart starts pounding, a podcast of terrifying tales. I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore

If you're new here, you’re in good company. This is a community for people who follow their dark curiosity, wherever it leads them. We release new episodes every Thursday.

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The most frustrating element of unsolved homicides, is that the key witness isn’t there to just tell you what happened.  I mean, that’s obvious, but sometimes I think about how some cases go unsolved when the person who was killed might have looked their killers in the eye, even had a conversation or personal relationship with them, but that knowledge is lost with their lives.

But what about the times where that person can give us the information. There  are a few times in history where it’s been recorded that someone's ghost has come back to tell loved ones something important about their murder. Like the story I shared at the beginning of this episode. Fred’s ghost lead to not only the discovery of his body, but to the arrest of his neighbor for his murder.

And while Fred’s story has been well documented, it’s not as famous as the one I’m about to share with you. This tale features tales of murder, and domestic violence, listener discretion is advised.

But to start this story, I’m going to share one of my own.

When I was nineteen years old, I came back to my small new england town from freshman year of college feeling like an adult. my friend who was a few years older than me bought me a handle of grape flavored vodka to take to a party one night. Yea, I had bad taste, I’m well aware. 

I know some of our listeners are not in the US, but you cannot drink or buy alcohol under 21 in the states, so not only was my intention to drink this fine beverage illegal, but even possession of it would get me grounded until my wedding. 

So i had to hide it. The objective was simple, make sure no one in my busy house saw the vodka until i left for the party that night. But there was not a lot of personal space in my house. I remember standing in my room looking at every possible hiding spot. I hid it in a drawer, under some clothes. No that wouldnt work. I hid it under my bed, behind my guitar case. Nothing felt right. 

Finally I took the handle and put it in a backpack. Then I put that in the very back of my closet, and put a sweatshirt over it. Ok perfect, that should be fine.

Not even thirty seconds later my mom comes in and starts talking to me, and as shes talking to me, she starts messing with my room, like she’d sometimes do. Sometimes she’d put stuff away sometimes she’d reorganize some stuff. We’re both anxious women, we have to be moving all the time, I get it. 

But one by one, I watch her go to each of my initial hiding places. She opens the drawer and moves some clothes, she moves my guitar case, she grabs a blanket from under the bed. And I’m thinking to myself, oh wow I’m a genius, I knew exactly where she’d look. But at the same time, how is she gravitating exactly to where I would hide something. 

I’m thinking I’m in the clear when Finally, mid sentence, she opens my closet. I’m sure the jig is about to be up, so I have to get her out of there, but I watch her reach over grab my sweatshirt, and start reaching for the backpack.

And just as shes about to grab it, I shout that it’s getting late and I really have to get ready for my friends, and she just kind of turns to look at me, and she gives me this look like….. Like she knew I was up to something. Like she knew all along that i was hiding something. But she turned around and walked out. And I was safe to take my candy flavored vodka to my friends house. 

I tell you all this to say, there’s something about a mother’s intuition. Sometimes they just know. 

This story i’m going to tell you is a tragedy. It’s about a young woman whos life was cut short under mysterious circumstances. It’s about a sighting of her ghost that lead to the conviction of her murderer but it’s also about the intuition of a mother. Let’s dive in.

In January of 1897 Andy Jones was rummaging around a chicken coop looking for eggs in the appalachian county of Greenbrier, West Virginia. He had been instructed to gather whatever eggs he could find, take them to his neighbor Zona Hester Shue, and then ask if she wanted him to grab her anything from the store. It was freezing in West Virginia this time of year, but Andy was just a child. And a black one at that. the Shues were a white married couple. In WV in the 1800s If they asked him to hunt for eggs in the freezing cold, it was expected that he would.

Andy approaches Zona’s house, and he knocks on her door. No answer. He knocks again, still nothing. Andy peers in through the window to see if he can see anything, and there, at the foot of the stairs, he sees Zona lying lifeless on the ground. In total shock, Andy runs and tells his mom that Zona needs help something happened. So they run and get Zonas husband, Trout.

Trout, Andy, and andy's mom run back to the house where Trout sees his wife splayed out on the floor, “get the doctor” he shouts. The last thing Andy sees as he runs to grab Dr. Knapp is Mr. Shue kneeling down by his wife, trying to gather her in his arms. 

Just a bit later, Andy comes back to the house with Dr. Knapp. He’s debriefed him on the situation- Zona is lying splayed out by the stairs, and it didn’t look like she was breathing. So Dr. Knapp prepares himself for what he might find, but when they open the door, Zonas not there. Andy can kind of hear a soft, sobbing noise coming from upstairs, so he and Dr. Knapp shake off the peculiar scene and make their way up towards Zona and trouts bedroom where the sobbing is coming from. 

When they open the door, they see Mr. Shue, in bed, holding Zona’s lifeless body. He had moved her from the bottom of the stairs, up into his bedroom. And beyond that, he had changed her clothes. Andy saw that she was now in a formal, neck high gown, and wrapped multiple times around her neck was a large bow. And while Andy and dr. Knapp are trying to make sense of what is happening, Trout is hysterical, he’s sobbing so hard he’s dry heaving and sapphire crocodile tears are streaming down his cheeks. Whenever Dr. Knapp tries to get close, Trout tells him to back off, he just wants to be with his wife. He knows she’s dead so he took her out of her earthly clothes and dressed her for her coffin. 

Trouts behavior is bizarre, but Dr. Knapp chalks it up to a husband in grief. Eventually, Trout agrees to let dr. Knapp give her a brief look over to see if he can ascertain how she died. It’s pretty difficult to see around her thick, modest clothing, but he wants to see if he can tell if she fell down the stairs. he sees she has no bruising on her head, so a fall didn’t seem super likely. She does, however, have a sligh rouge tint to the right side of her neck and face. He follows the discoloration down her neck, and is about to undue her bow when Shue starts with the crocodile tears again. He protests, he doesn’t want anyone tampering with his dear wife. So Dr. Knapp decides to use his best guess, and tells trout he thinks his wife died of “everlasting faint”

I’m sorry, did a disney princess come up with that phrase? Everlasting faint tells us nothing, and looking into it more, it seems like this may have been one of the only times that phrase was used to describe the cause of someones death. Even Dr. Knapp went on to admit it was kind of a BS reason.

still, there’s no reason to think Zonas death was anything other than natural until word spreads to Zona’s mother. Upon hearing the news, she’s shocked and devastated. Zona was only 23 years old and she was in great shape. She had been complaining of not feeling well for about a month, but it wasn’t anything that her mother thought would kill her. 

When she sees her daughters body, it sounds silly but one of the first comments she makes is about how atrocious Zona’s outfit is. She would never wear anything like that. A huge bright bow on top of a high necked dress? If there’s one way I would describe Zona after reading about her for so long, it’s cool. She loved to go out, she loved to dance. She’d give her friends a hard time if they didn’t want to keep the party going, and she dressed well. It was suspicious to her mother that Zona’s husband had hastily dressed her in an ugly outfit. 

This is the first clue she has that maybe Trout had something to do with this. back then when someone died, you sent the body to be taken care of by a group of, typically women, who would dress the body and place it nicely in a coffin. This is also typically when a more in depth autopsy would occur. To Zona’s mother, it felt like Trout Shue didn’t want anyone else handling his wife, but why?

And what was with this sheet? Bunched up next to Zonas head inside her coffin was a bed sheet. That was not common at all.  Her mother had also noticed when she saw her daughters body that Zonas head was really floppy, much more so than most corpses. The sheet in the coffin looked like it was keeping her head in place.

on top of all this, Zonas mom ALWAYS got a weird feeling about Trout. He came out of nowhere, swept her daughter up in a three week whirlwind romance, and then asked her to marry him. Zona’s mother begged Zona to pump the breaks, but Zona was headstrong and she knew what she wanted.

Really, the second Trout came to town, Zona was completely enchanted by him. Word quickly spread in town that a new handsome blacksmith had started working, and one day Zona and her mother walked in to get one of their axes sharpened. Zona realized all the rumors were true, in front of her stood a handsome, freckly blacksmith with a deep velvety voice. It wasn’t like zona to be flustered, but she struggled to speak without blushing.

Zonas mother had a different impression of the man, however. He claimed he was 29 years old, but he seemed noticeably older. 

Trout told them that the axe would be ready later that night if they wanted to come back to grab it. Zona insisted she go back by herself to pick it up, and her mother reported that she came home very late that night. 

They’re relationship took off after that. They were engaged within a few weeks, and married shortly after. And now, just a few months after their wedding, they were at her funeral. 

As Zona’s mother stood over her daughters body, she thought back to her initial hesitations over Trout. It was hard to have a moment to herself to think, however, because trout was acting kind of insane. He was hovering over Zona’s body, shifting around, as if he was worried someone would try to touch her. One guest reported that he didn’t see trout leave the wake for a single second, not even to use the restroom. And wakes back then were really long events. It’s sad, but they were one of the only times friends and family all gathered together, so people indulged in the opportunity to socialize. Zona’s body was on display for almost 24 hours. 

Though Trout was adamant about monitoring people getting too close to his deceased wife, people still got a good look at Zona and almost everyone had the same thoughts. Why was there this random bed sheet next to Zonas head, and why is her head so floppy? Any time the coffin moved, whether nudged by accident, or in transport to the burial site, Zonas head rolled around. 

Also, it’s interesting to note here that Zonas cause of death was changed from “everlasting faint” to “childbirth”. Now, there had actually been no proof that Zona was pregnant, but remember how I mentioned that Zona hadn’t been feeling well the last month of her life? The doctor decided it must have been because she was pregnant, so he changed the death certificate to Childbirth, and then reclosed the case. 

So now, Zona’s mom is thinking,  what the hell is going on. What she didn’t know, was that their tight little community was starting to talk. Their whispering about the strangeness of Zonas death started morphing into whipsers about Trout. Rumors of wives before Zona. Of domestic violence. Of the mysterious death of another woman. 

Trouts dark past, after the break

So we know that around the time of Zona’s death, rumors were starting to circulate that Trout maybe had been married before he met Zona. 

The short answer is yes, he had. But that wasn’t the only thing he was lying about.

Erasmus Stribbling Trout Shue was born in Augusta County, Virginia, probably in the year 1861. This puts him at about 35 years old when he first became the blacksmith in Greenbrier, not 29. 

Trouts first marriage was to 17 year old Estie Cutlip in 1885. Estie was a few months pregnant at her wedding. Shue had swept her up in another whirlwind romance, and before Estie could even process his new presence in her life, she was pregnant with his child. The couple divorced not long after she gave birth to their daughter, Girtie. There had been rumors that Trout had beat Estie, and there were also rumors that Trout had fathered another child with a woman named Annie not long before Gertie was born

At one point in their marriage, a group of  men burst into Trout and Esties home in the middle of the night and ripped Trout from his bed. One was identified as Annie’s brother. Reasons given as to why the group was there vary. Some say it was Annie’s brothers getting revenge on Trout, others argue the group knew he was abusing Estie. Maybe it was a blend of the two. Regardless, the group grabbed trout, marched him down to the frozen river, cut a hole in the ice and shoved his head inside. 

But the lesson was lost on trout. In 1894, he married his second wife, Lucy Anne Trit, who died within 8 months of the marriage. Accounts of what happened to Lucy also vary. Some say Trout killed her with a brick. Others say she Fell while pregnant on ice. He yanked her off of hay and broke her neck, poisoned her with laurel tea, and so on. The true cause is never revealed, and Trout makes his way into Greenbrier less than two years later when he meets Zona.

Once Zona is buried Trout just kind of hangs around, and some people think thats evidence that he had nothing to do with her death. What kind of madman would linger around town if he really were responsible for someones murder? But Zona’s mom is not convinced.

After the funeral, Trout gives her the sheet that was propping Zona’s head up. He says that he wants her to have it. And Zona’s mom is grateful for that, but 1. It’s trouts sheet so she doesn’t feel that sentimental towards it, and two, her daughters corpse had been laying on it so it smells. It doesn’t smell like Zona, it smells like death, so when she goes home, she washes the sheet. It’s just a normal, white sheet, but when she washes it, the water rinses out bright crimson, as if it had been soaked with blood. There was definitely not blood on the sheet when she received it, so Zonas mother takes this as a sign from some sort of higher power that she’s right. Something is fishy about Zonas death.

Her mother doesn’t have a lot of options though, so she prays. Every night before she goes to sleep, she prays to god, to Zona, to whoever will listen- for a sign. Something that she can use against Trout. And one night she gets it.

In the dead of night. Zonas mother awakes to a sound. Creaking on her floorboard. There’s someone in the house. But who? Hello! She calls out, but there’s no one there. She tries to go back to sleep but CREEEEEEEEK sound effect, there it is again. There’s pressure on the floorboards, someone is getting nearer. She shoots up to search the dark hall for the intruder, but before she can get out of bed, a figure crosses the threshold into her room.

It’s Zona. Flesh and blood, full bodied apparition. Zona! Her mother shouts, the tears welling in her eyes. She runs over to touch her but she’s ice cold. Zona’s mother would go on to testify that she was fully awake while this was happening, nothing about it felt like a dream.

Zona appeared in her mothers room four nights, and she spoke to her mother each of those times. the first night she was hesitant to say anything, but the more she appeared, the more information she told her mother.

According to the apparition, this is what happened the night of zonas death  

Zona was in the kitchen baking bread and making fruit preserves when Trout stormed in, back from a long day at the shop. He asked her what was for dinner and she explained Bread, Butter, and fruit preserves. What about any meat? Asked trout. Zona explained that hadn’t planned on cooking any meat that night. This enraged Trout and he grabbed her by the neck and snapped it at the first vertebrae. 

This is it, this was the information her mother needed. The next day she runs to the authorities and Dr. Knapp with this information and begs them to dig up Zona’s body and do a proper autopsy. At the time, there was a lot of stigma around digging up a body after a christian burial, but Dr. Knapp admitted that he, too, had his doubts about Zonas death. Where this concern was when he came up with everlasting faint, I dont know.

During Zona’s autopsy, her mother kept insisting they look at her neck, but Dr. Knapp wanted to start with Zona’s stomach. He couldn’t shake the feeling that perhaps she was poisoned and thats why she hadn’t been feeling well leading up to her death. This also could be because he was hesitant to believe the grieving mother who ran to him saying a ghost told her where to look. 

Dr. Knapp ultimately didn’t find any signs of poisoning. He was able to see the contents of Zonas stomach, however. The night of her death she had eaten bread, butter, and fruit preserves. No meat, just like the ghost of Zona had mentioned. 

And after untying the ludicrously capricious bow and examining Zona's neck, he saw that her mother was correct in that regard as well. Zona’s neck WAS broken. On her first Vertebra.

Trout was approached with the news, but he maintained that he would be found innocent. Apparently trout thought that if there were no witnesses to a death, no one could be found guilty, which we all know is simply untrue. He didn’t even hire a lawyer, he represented himself during the trial. And shocking no one, he did a pretty poor job. 

He insisted they  arrest the black boy that found Zona, Andy. Trout seemed to rely heavily on the atmosphere of the time and assumed the jury would find andy guilty simply just of the fact that he was black. Despite his prejudices, Greenbrier county was more progressive than he thought, even for the time. Andy testified but was never a real suspect. 

One fact that I think recontextualized Andy getting the eggs is that Trout asked him to. If Trout knew Zona was dead, did he think sending Andy to the house  would put andy at the scene of the crime, and then make him a suspect? perhaps people would think that Andy killed Zona and than ran to his mother.

The real show stopper during the trial was Zona’s mothers testimony. The judge was hesitant to include it because never before, and never since, was a ghost’s testimony relayed to a jury in court. But the Jury was so moved by her mothers story of Zona reaching out to her in the afterlife that they issued a resounding GUILTY.

Shue was sentenced to life in prison, but he died of pneumonia in 1900. He almost didn’t even make it that long, as a mob of vigilantes tried to hang him one night. A group of local men in Greenbrier were so appalled that Shue would kill his wife that they decided to take care of him themselves. They took up pitchforks and lanterns one evening, intending to drag Shue from his cell and hang him in the public square. But on their way to the jailhouse, a neighbor stopped them and convinced them to go home. So they were just casual vigilantes, apparently. 

Zona’s ghost never visited her mother again, and many have speculated over the years about what really happened. Did Zona’s mother really see her ghost? Or was she just hallucinating in her grief? Or was it something else entirely?

I found this little tidbit of information highly interesting, and this actually comes from author Katie Letcher Lyle who wrote a book about the Greenbrier Ghost. Like all of us, Katie likes to dig deeper to get to the bottom of things. Remember that story I told you in the beginning, about John Farley seeing his friend Fred’s ghost?

Well, years later, that story was debunked. It turns out that John knew Fred’s neighbor was to blame for Fred’s death, because he witnessed the whole thing take place. He was too afraid to speak out publicly because he thought the man that killed john would come for him. Later, He admitted to using the ghost of Fred as an excuse to be able to turn the neighbor in to the police. 

And even MORE interesting, is that story was wildly publicized, showing up in newspapers all over the world. Including in Greenbrier. In January of 1897, when Zonas obituary appeared on page 3 of the local newspaper, what would you guess was on page one? An article about John Farleys ghost sighting. Maybe this is total coincidence, but maybe, just maybe, Zona’s mother read the paper that day and got an idea. Just like John, who was afraid to speak out, Zona’s mother worried she didn’t have enough of a case to build against Trout, but she KNEW in her heart that he was responsible. And so, she spun a tale. And it worked.

I’ll leave you with this, however. If Zona’s mother invented the whole thing, then how did she know that her daughter had no meat that night? Or which vertebrae was broken? 

That, I cannot answer. 

This has been heart starts pounding, written and produced by me, Kaelyn Moore. Music by artlist. Follow the podcast on TIk tok and Instagram for a daily dose of horror @heartstartspounding. Have a case request or heart pounding story you’d like to share? Check out heartstartspounding.com. Until next time…..

Kaelyn Moore
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