West Virginia

Gear up for a frightful jaunt into the darkest reaches of the ancient Appalachians.

Folk deep within Appalachian hollers lean close to share stories of the inexplicable with hushed awe. Monsters rumbling in the hills. Strange lights darting through the pitch-black night sky. Horrible occurrences, almost ineffable in their bizarre tragedy. "Tall tales," you might say. But tell that to the Flatwoods monster in Braxton County, West Virginia. Or the Goat Man of Louisville--look into his humanoid eyes and let him know you don't believe. And what of those apparitions in Mammoth Cave's Corpse Rock, or the Satan-spawn known as the Jersey Devil? How do you respond when those mysteries confront? From metaphysical energy that swirls near the Serpent Mound in Ohio to Point Pleasant's Mothman legacy, Mark Muncy and Kari Schultz explore the dark history lurking in the shadows of Appalachia..

“With previously unknown details, The West Virginia University Co-Ed Murders is a page-turning murder mystery.” --Hoppy Kercheval, Host, Talkline

Some said the killer couldn’t be a local. Others claimed he was the wealthy son of a prominent Morgantown family. Whispers spread that Mared and Karen were sacrificed by a Satanic cult or had been victims of a madman poised to strike again. Then the handwritten letters began to arrive: “You will locate the bodies of the girls covered over with brush--look carefully. The animals are now on the move.” Investigators didn’t find too few suspects, they had far too many. There was the campus janitor with a fur fetish, the “harmless” delivery man who beat a woman nearly to death, the nursing home orderly with the bloody broomstick and the bouncer with the “girlish” laugh who threatened to cut off people’s heads.

Local authors Geoff Fuller and S. James McLaughlin tell the complete story of the WVU co-ed murders for the first time.

Follow Archaeologist Darla Spencer as she discovers the history and habits of 16 Native American sites in West Virginia.

Once thought of as Indian hunting grounds with no permanent inhabitants, West Virginia is teeming with evidence of a thriving early native population. Today's farmers can hardly plow their fields without uncovering ancient artifacts, evidence of at least ten thousand years of occupation. Members of the Fort Ancient culture resided along the rich bottomlands of southern West Virginia during the Late Prehistoric and Protohistoric periods. Lost to time and rediscovered in the 1880s, Fort Ancient sites dot the West Virginia landscape. This volume explores sixteen of these sites, including Buffalo, Logan and Orchard. Archaeologist Darla Spencer excavates the fascinating lives of some of the Mountain State's earliest inhabitants in search of who these people were, what languages they spoke and who their descendants may be.

The only state born as a result of the Civil War, West Virginia was the most divided state in the nation. About forty thousand of its residents served in the combatant forces about twenty thousand on each side.

The Mountain State also saw its fair share of battles, skirmishes, raids and guerrilla warfare, with places like Harpers Ferry, Philippi and Rich Mountain becoming household names in 1861. When the Commonwealth of Virginia seceded from the Union on April 17, 1861, leaders primarily from the northwestern region of the state began the political process that eventually led to the creation of West Virginia on June 20, 1863. Renowned Civil War historian Mark A. Snell has written the first thorough history of these West Virginians and their civil war in more than fifty years.

Author Robert Thompson recounts the harrowing story of Phebe Tucker Cunningham, from her marriage at Prickett's Fort to her return to the shores of the Monongahela.

Life on the West Virginia frontier was a daily struggle for survival, and for Phebe Tucker Cunningham, that meant the loss of her four children at the hands of the Wyandot tribe and being held captive for three years until legendary renegades Simon Girty and Alexander McKee arranged her freedom. Thompson describes in vivid detail early colonial life in the Alleghenies and the ways of the Wyandot, providing historical context for this unforgettable saga.

The first Europeans to arrive in the Ohio Valley were intrigued and puzzled by the many conical earthen mounds they encountered there. They created wild theories about who the mysterious “mound builders” might be.

It was not until the 1880s that Smithsonian Institution investigations revealed that the mound builders were the ancestors of living Native Americans. More than four hundred mounds have been recorded in West Virginia, including the Grave Creek Mound in Marshall County, once the largest conical mound in North America. Join archaeologist Darla Spencer and learn about the Grave Creek Mound and sixteen additional Adena mounds and groups of mounds from the fascinating Woodland period in West Virginia.

In the early 1790s, a Lutheran family in Appalachia fell victim to a menacing spirit that Lutheran, Methodist and Episcopal clergy as well as Folk magic practitioners failed to remove. The entity, which came to be known as the Wizard Clip, was said to cut or slice anything made of cloth or leather. Was it a ghost or a demon? After years of torment, the deeply Protestant family finally found respite from a seemingly impossible ally, a Catholic exorcist. This legend has eerie parallels to lore of ghosts and witches from the Old World as well as the early American Republic. As American religious leaders sought to find a place for their congregations in a post-Revolutionary time of enlightened secularism, tales like these helped churches define themselves, and this particular story was used to distinguish Catholic supernaturalism from later spiritualism. /Author Michael Kishbucher tells a spooky and incredibly compelling story that shines a light on the region’s religious history.

It's not everyone who can look at the violent white caps of river rapids and think, "I want to master that.'? Whitewater rafters are not just anyone.

A certain confidence and devil-may-care attitude must be required to set off on West Virginia's New or Gauley Rivers, nothing to protect the riders from the rough waters aside from a helmet and life vest, but to successfully accomplish their mission would be to master some of the most popular and treacherous rapids in the country. Jay Young, a raft guide turned writer, leads readers through the local lore and history of the rivers, where the ordinary almost never occurs.

Uncover the true stories behind some of West Virginia’s most famous haunts.

West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle holds a rich legacy of folklore and ghostly legends firmly rooted in the region’s history. In Harpers Ferry, rumor has it that fiery abolitionist John Brown still haunts the scene of his notorious siege, and reports of otherworldly encounters in Harpers Cemetery abound. Shepherdstown, the oldest town in West Virginia, draws in those fascinated by the paranormal with tales of haunted crime scenes and even an infamous exorcism. The historic Apollo Theater in Martinsburg hosts the town’s famous cigar-smoking ghost, George, and the little village of Middleway overflows with bewitching tales of specters and odd happenings.

Author Justin Stevens explores the haunted side of historic landmarks in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia.