Greenbrier Ghost

Armed with the story allegedly told to her by the ghost, Mary Jane Heaster visited the local prosecutor, John Alfred Preston, and spent several hours in his office convincing him to reopen the matter of her daughter's death.

Whether he believed her story of the ghost is unknown, but he did have enough doubt to dispatch deputies to reinterview several people of interest in the case, including Dr. Knapp.

Zona was his third wife, and Shue began to talk of wishing to wed seven women; he freely spoke of this ambition while in jail, and told reporters that he was sure he would be let free because there was so little evidence against him.

Perhaps hoping to prove her unreliable, Shue's lawyer questioned Mrs. Heaster extensively about her daughter's visits on cross-examination.

As the defense had introduced the issue, the judge found it difficult to instruct the jury to disregard the story of the ghost, and many people in the community seemed to believe it.

Erasmus Shue died on March 13, 1900, in West Virginia State Penitentiary in Moundsville, the victim of an unknown epidemic.

Her death in 1897 was presumed natural until her spirit appeared to her mother to describe how she was killed by her husband Edward.

Lyle explained her conclusion in a 1999 issue of Wonderful West Virginia magazine in which she said that Mary had probably made up the story of the ghost in order to make a compelling argument to open up her daughter's case.

So pretending to receive the news directly from Zona, she could appeal to the superstitions of her mountaineer neighbors and get a lot of public attention.

Karen Benelli's “The Ghost of Greenbrier County” was produced in 2004 at the New York Fringe Festival by the Rising Sun Theatre Co.

[5] Another full-length musical adaptation of this story is Greenbrier, 1897, written and performed by the Lovewell Institute for the Creative Arts.

[6] An opera based on the Greenbrier case, Everlasting Faint, made its world premier in Madison, WI on December 9, 2023.