![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Hey, y’all, it’s Weird Wednesday! Where on some Wednesdays, I blog about weird stuff and give writing prompts.
Today: The Greenbrier Ghost: Testimony from Beyond the Grave
In October 1896, Elva Zona Heaster (called Zona) married Erasmus (or Edward) Stribbling Trout Shue after a brief courtship. Zona was found dead in their home the following January. The family doctor recorded “childbirth” (presumably meaning miscarriage) as the cause of death. However, Zona’s mother, Mary Jane Heaster, was sure her daughter had been murdered by her new husband. Her proof? Zona told her so. After she died.
To be fair, the whole thing was a bit suspicious. A whirlwind romance and marriage to a near stranger, then a death within months. It turned out Shue had an ex-wife who accused him of abuse and a second wife who also died suddenly after marriage in an accident. Oh, and Shue was quite protective of Zona’s body, and would let no one examine her, especially the neck.
After Zona’s burial, Mrs. Heaster claimed she was visited four times by her daughter’s ghost, who said her husband had broken her neck in a rage over dinner being delayed.
It is, of course, possible that Mrs. Heaster made up the story to put pressure on the law to act. But even without the ghost’s account, prosecutor John Alfred Preston agreed there was enough reason to exhume the body and perform an autopsy.
Check out the blog post for the whole story and some ghostly writing prompts, such as:
Liar, liar. So let’s say your ghost character appears and names their murderer, but the person they talk to purposefully misreports it for their own reasons. What recourse would a ghost have in this case? They might try appearing to someone else. Or they might try forcing the witness to tell the truth—maybe scaring them into it, or enlisting the help of Something Awful from beyond the grave.
DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers
