The Greenbrier Ghost
Zona Heaster Shue died in Greenbrier County in January 1897. Her mother said Zona's ghost told her she had been murdered, and the husband was convicted at Lewisburg that summer.
1897 CE · 37.80, -80.45 · status: account
The account
The death was first put down to natural causes. Mary Jane Heaster pressed the prosecutor, the body was exhumed and showed a broken neck, and Erasmus Stribbling Trout Shue was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life. A state roadside marker calls it the only known case in which testimony from a ghost helped convict a murderer.
The sceptical view
The ghost story came up mainly when the defence questioned the mother; the conviction rested on the autopsy evidence. The mother may have used the story to force an inquiry into a death she already suspected.