86 haunted destinations cataloged across West Virginia, spanning 40 counties. The collection features museum, outdoor, and cemetery — every listing verified with family ratings, accessibility info, and practical visit logistics.
Point Pleasant, WV
The West Virginia Ordnance Works was a World War II TNT manufacturing plant near Point Pleasant, operating from 1942 to 1945. Its roughly 100 concrete igloo storage bunkers still stand in what is now the McClintic Wildlife Management Area, known locally as the 'TNT area.'
Williamson, WV
The Old Hospital on College Hill opened March 3, 1928, as Williamson Memorial Hospital, replacing a downtown hospital destroyed by fire in 1926. It served Williamson, West Virginia until a new hospital opened in 1988, after which the building held physician offices and later sat in storage use until a private investor bought it in late 2020 and reopened it for tours in 2021.
Harpers Ferry, WV
Thomas S. Lovett, a Black entrepreneur and Storer College graduate, opened the Hill Top House Hotel in 1890 overlooking the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers at Harpers Ferry. As one of the few large hotels in the United States owned by an African American, it served a predominantly white clientele and hosted Presidents Wilson and Clinton among its confirmed notable guests. The original building burned in 1912; its replacement was destroyed by fire in 1919. The rebuilt hotel eventually closed in 2007 and is now undergoing a $150 million restoration.
Moundsville, WV
West Virginia State Penitentiary — locally known as the Moundsville Penitentiary — opened in 1876 in Gothic Revival style modeled on Illinois's Joliet Prison. Over 119 years, it witnessed 94 executions, 36 inmate homicides, and a catastrophic 1986 New Year's Day riot. The West Virginia Supreme Court ruled its 5x7-foot cells unconstitutional in 1986; the prison closed in 1995 and reopened as a museum and paranormal attraction.
Gap Mills, WV
Sweet Springs began as a mineral-springs resort founded by Revolutionary War veteran William Lewis in 1792. The present brick hotel, built in the Federal style associated with Thomas Jefferson's circle, was completed by 1833. West Virginia purchased the property in 1945 and ran it as the Andrew S. Rowan Memorial Home for the aged until closing it in 1991.
Charleston, WV
The Capitol Plaza Theatre opened on Summers Street in 1912 as a vaudeville house designed by architect P. Norwood Higgins. After a 1922 fire and full rebuild for film, it operated as a movie theater until 1981. Restored in 1985, donated to West Virginia State College in 1991, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
Morgantown, WV
The brick commercial building at 123 Pleasant Street dates to 1891. In 1982 Marsha Ferber opened the Underground Railroad nightclub here, which became a hub for live music and political events in 1980s Morgantown. Ferber disappeared in late April 1988 and was never found; the building now operates as the music venue 123 Pleasant Street.
Morgantown, WV
The Berman Building, a turreted brick commercial building, was constructed in 1852 at the northwest corner of High and Walnut Streets in Morgantown. Its basement contains a barred cell that local historians believe held prisoners during the Civil War, possibly Confederate prisoners taken during the April 1863 Jones-Imboden Raid on the city.
Morgantown, WV
Cheat Lake is a 13-mile reservoir on the Cheat River in Monongalia County, east of Morgantown, formed by a dam completed in 1925. Originally called Lake Lynn, it was officially named Cheat Lake in 1976. The local legend attached to the area is rooted in the real 1970 murders of two West Virginia University students.
Morgantown, WV
Elizabeth Moore Hall at West Virginia University in Morgantown was built between 1926 and 1928 as a women's physical education and campus center facility. The three-story Georgian Revival brick building is dedicated to Elizabeth Moore, who co-founded the Woodburn Female Seminary in 1858 — a forerunner institution to WVU.
Morgantown, WV
Hotel Morgan opened in 1925 on High Street in downtown Morgantown and was named, at the local historical society's urging, for city founder Zackquill Morgan. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the building was fully renovated in 2020 and operates today as a Wyndham hotel with 81 rooms and two suites.
Morgantown, WV
The Metropolitan Theatre opened July 24, 1924, designed by architect Charles W. Bates in the Classical Revival style. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 and sits within the Downtown Morgantown Historic District. The theatre still operates as a live-entertainment venue with a capacity of about 1,670.
Morgantown, WV
The Morgantown Public Library opened in 1964 as a one-story building with a basement on Spruce Street in downtown Morgantown. Two private homes had to be razed before construction could begin, and the building has served as the city's public library since.
Morgantown, WV
Mountaineer Excursions is a Morgantown-based tour company running guided ghost, food, drink, and shopping walking tours, including a route from WVU's Woodburn Circle to downtown High Street.
Morgantown, WV
The Mountainlair, opened in 1968, is the student union at West Virginia University's downtown campus in Morgantown. Known to students as the Lair, it houses dining, meeting space, and the ballrooms that figure in the building's best-known piece of campus folklore.
Morgantown, WV
Woodburn Hall is the central, dominating building of Woodburn Circle on West Virginia University's downtown campus and one of the school's signature landmarks. First known as University Hall, it dates to the 1870s and is best known today for its clock-and-bell tower and a piece of campus folklore.
Morgantown, WV
The Wise Library, WVU's downtown campus library on University Avenue, has expanded through several renovations over the decades. It is the setting for two long-running pieces of campus folklore: a staff member said to have fallen to his death down an elevator shaft, and a former librarian's cat heard in the stacks.
Parkersburg, WV
The Blennerhasset Hotel opened in 1889, constructed by Colonel William Nelson Chancellor as a Queen Anne-style luxury hotel in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Built to cater to oil and gas barons and millionaire businessmen, the hotel represents Gilded Age architectural and commercial ambition.
Parkersburg, WV
Fort Boreman is a preserved Union earthwork fort built in 1863 by Company A of the 11th West Virginia Volunteer Infantry on a hilltop above Parkersburg. Its purpose was to keep the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad link between Wheeling and Parkersburg from being severed or seized by Confederate forces. The 12-acre site, named for West Virginia's first governor, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002 and is now a county historical park.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPParkersburg, WV
Marrtown is a small residential community approximately one mile south of downtown Parkersburg, West Virginia, named for Thomas Marr, a Scottish immigrant who arrived with his wife Mary in 1836. Thomas Marr worked as a night watchman on a toll bridge spanning the Little Kanawha River in Parkersburg. He died in February 1876, his body recovered from the river. The circumstances of his death — shooting, accident, or drowning — were never resolved.
Parkersburg, WV
The Parkersburg Art Center occupies the site of the Camden Theater, which opened as an opera house on September 10, 1902. The theater began showing films in the 1910s and burned down in 1929. The art center now stands on that former theater location in downtown Parkersburg.
Parkersburg, WV
Quincy Hill, now a Parkersburg city park, was the site of a Civil War tent hospital that treated wounded and sick Union soldiers, including African American and Irish immigrant troops. The encampment was struck by a smallpox epidemic. The hill, originally known as Prospect Hill, is a long-standing subject in local Civil War and haunted-history accounts.
Parkersburg, WV
Riverview Cemetery, one of Parkersburg's oldest, began as a burial ground on the Cook family farm. It holds West Virginia governors Jacob B. Jackson and William E. Stevenson and U.S. Senator Peter G. Van Winkle, along with early Parkersburg families. It became part of the Julia-Ann Historic District in 1977 and is known for a late-1800s statue at the Jackson family plot.
Parkersburg, WV
Built in 1905 with a $34,000 Andrew Carnegie grant, this Parkersburg building served as the city's public library until the mid-1970s. From December 1985 to 2010 it housed Trans-Allegheny Books, described as the largest used bookstore in West Virginia. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 and put up for auction in 2021.
Charleston, WV
The Sunrise Carriage Trail in Charleston, West Virginia, was built in 1905 by Governor William A. MacCorkle to haul building materials by oxen up the hillside for construction of his Sunrise Mansion. The trail begins behind the C&O Railroad Depot — itself listed on the National Register of Historic Places — and climbs 180 feet over 0.65 miles to the former mansion site.
Charleston, WV
The Frankenberger Mansion at 1111 Virginia Street East in Charleston was built around 1893 to 1900 by Philip Frankenberger, a German-born Charleston clothing merchant. After the family's era ended, the building housed WCHS-TV beginning in 1954 and later the West Virginia Radio Group.
Charleston, WV
The Kanawha County Public Library is the main library serving Charleston, West Virginia, housed in a Beaux-Arts building at 123 Capitol Street in the downtown core. It is the meeting point for the city's Charlie West ghost tour.
Charleston, WV
The Empty Glass is a music bar at 410 Elizabeth Street in Charleston's East End. It opened in 1985 and takes its name from Pete Townshend's 1980 album. The building that houses it was moved to the site during 1970s highway-related construction and set on a raised brick base.
Charleston, WV
US Ghost Adventures operates its Charleston, WV program under the local brand Charlie West Ghost Tours, running a nightly downtown walking tour from the Kanawha County Public Library past the Capitol Plaza Theater, the Frankenberger Mansion, and the Kanawha River.
Charleston, WV
The West Virginia State Capitol in Charleston was designed by architect Cass Gilbert and built between 1924 and 1932 after fire destroyed the previous capitol in 1921. Its gold-leafed dome rises 293 feet above the Kanawha River. The building was dedicated on June 20, 1932, the 69th anniversary of statehood.
Harpers Ferry, WV
Ghost Tours of Harpers Ferry is a lantern-lit walking tour of the town's historic Lower Town, started by Shirley Dougherty around 1970 and drawn from her 1977 book "A Ghostly Tour of Harpers Ferry." It is regularly described as one of the oldest continuously operating ghost tours in the United States, in a town often called West Virginia's most haunted.
Harpers Ferry, WV
The Harper House is the oldest surviving structure in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, built for town founder Robert Harper between roughly 1775 and 1782. It sits on a slope above the Lower Town and is preserved by the National Park Service, restored to its 1850s appearance.
Harpers Ferry, WV
Harpers Ferry National Historical Park preserves the riverside industrial town at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers where, on October 16-18, 1859, abolitionist John Brown and 21 men seized the U.S. armory and arsenal in an attempt to spark a slave rebellion. The raid was suppressed by U.S. Marines under Colonel Robert E. Lee; Brown was tried and hanged in nearby Charles Town on December 2, 1859. The site was central to the outbreak of the Civil War and to the federal armaments industry.
Harpers Ferry, WV
Screaming Jenny is one of the oldest told ghost legends of Harpers Ferry, set on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad tracks that reached the town in 1837. The story has no confirmed historical record behind it, but it has been retold in regional folklore and West Virginia newspaper coverage for generations.
Harpers Ferry, WV
St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church was completed in 1833, built largely by Irish laborers who came to Harpers Ferry to work on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. During the Civil War the church served at times as a hospital, and under pastor Father Michael Costello it was the only church in town to survive the bombardments largely intact.
Harpers Ferry, WV
US Ghost Adventures operates its Harpers Ferry program under the local brand Harpers Ferry Headless Haunts, running a nightly Lower Town walking tour covering St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church, the Harper Museum, and John Brown's Fort.
Wheeling, WV
The Capitol Theatre opened in downtown Wheeling on Thanksgiving Day 1928 as a large movie palace. It remains an operating performing-arts venue at 1015 Main Street and has hosted decades of films, broadcasts, and live shows.
Wheeling, WV
Construction of the Main Street stone arch bridge over Wheeling Creek began in late 1891 and opened in early 1892. With a 159-foot single span built from 771 cut-stone blocks, it was the longest single-span stone bridge in the country when it opened. Engineer D.M. Carey died in an accident during the work.
Wheeling, WV
Mount Wood Cemetery sits on a hill above Jonathan's Ravine off the National Road, designed during the rural-romantic movement and established in 1848. It became a popular place of burial in the mid- to late 1800s and in 2013 was the first Wheeling cemetery added to the National Register of Historic Places. Beside it stands the ruin of a stone overlook begun in 1925.
Wheeling, WV
Peninsula Cemetery opened on Wheeling Island in 1842, more than two decades before West Virginia statehood. It spanned about 22 acres with more than 1,700 graves and included a potter's field and a nearby pest house that held smallpox victims during an 1890s epidemic. Interstate 70 was built through the cemetery in the 1960s, dividing it and prompting grave relocations.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPWheeling, WV
Tunnel Green, originally the Hempfield Tunnel, was built in 1857 by the Hempfield Railroad to connect Wheeling toward Greensburg, Pennsylvania, and was later absorbed into the Baltimore & Ohio system. It is now part of the Wheeling Heritage Trail. Local history records that the hill it pierces overlapped an early Wheeling burial ground, and that a notorious 1867 murder occurred inside the tunnel.
Wheeling, WV
Built in 1859 as a federal custom house, the building hosted the Wheeling Conventions that formed the Reorganized Government of Virginia and led to the 1863 creation of West Virginia. It is now a state-operated museum and Civil War historic site.
Point Pleasant, WV
The Mothman Museum on Main Street in Point Pleasant documents the 1966-67 reports of a winged, red-eyed figure seen around the town. Opened by Point Pleasant native Jeff Wamsley to house the archival material he had collected, it anchors the town's annual Mothman Festival and its dark-tourism economy.
Point Pleasant, WV
The Mothman Statue is a polished stainless-steel sculpture by artist Bob Roach, unveiled in downtown Point Pleasant in 2003. It depicts the winged figure reported around the town in 1966-67 and has become the most-photographed landmark in Point Pleasant.
Point Pleasant, WV
The Point Pleasant River Museum & Learning Center documents the history of the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers at Point Pleasant, with displays on steamboats, floods, the river industry, and the 1967 Silver Bridge collapse. A 2018 fire damaged the building; the museum reopened in 2024.
Point Pleasant, WV
On December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge across the Ohio River between Point Pleasant, WV, and Kanauga, OH, collapsed during rush hour and 46 people died. The cause was a single failed eyebar in the bridge's suspension chain. A downtown memorial near the bridge's former site remembers the victims.
Beckley, WV
Ghost Tours of Beckley is a seasonal guided walking tour of downtown Beckley, West Virginia, linking the city's coal-era mansions, the Raleigh County Courthouse, and the 1931 Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Theatre into a single after-dark route. It is listed as an attraction by the West Virginia tourism office and has been covered by regional television.
Beckley, WV
The Raleigh County Courthouse in Beckley, West Virginia, was built in the mid-1930s to replace an earlier courthouse destroyed in a 1932 fire. It remains the seat of county government and a downtown landmark in the southern West Virginia coalfields.
Beckley, WV
The Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Building in Beckley, West Virginia, opened in 1931-32 as a memorial to area veterans of World War I. Its theatre auditorium has long served as a performance hall and is now the home venue of Theatre West Virginia, the state's professional outdoor and indoor theatre company.
Huntington, WV
The Frederick Hotel opened in 1906 in downtown Huntington and was long considered the most elegant hotel between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. It closed as a hotel in 1973 and was later converted to offices, apartments, and retail. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Downtown Huntington Historic District in 1986.
Huntington, WV
The Keith-Albee Theatre in Huntington, West Virginia, opened May 8, 1928 as a vaudeville and motion picture palace designed by Scottish-born architect Thomas W. Lamb. Brothers Abe and Sol Hyman commissioned the project, which ballooned from a $250,000 budget to $2 million over 14 months of construction. At 2,720 seats the venue was the largest in West Virginia and second in the United States only to New York's Roxy Theatre.
Huntington, WV
On November 14, 1970, Southern Airways Flight 932 crashed on approach to Tri-State Airport, killing all 75 aboard, including 37 Marshall University football players, the coaching staff, university personnel, and supporters. The Memorial Fountain, designed by sculptor Harry Bertoia and dedicated in 1972, commemorates the dead and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2024.
Moundsville, WV
The Strand Theatre in Moundsville opened in 1920 as an 1,100-seat vaudeville house that later showed movies. It closed in 1996 and was restored and reopened in 2014 by the Strand Theatre Preservation Society. Today it hosts plays, music, and films.
Moundsville, WV
West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville opened in 1876, modeled on Joliet Prison's Gothic Revival design at half scale. Over 119 years of operation it housed more than 36 homicides within its walls, 94 executions, and was ranked among the top ten most violent correctional facilities in the United States. A 1986 West Virginia Supreme Court ruling that its 5-by-7-foot cells constituted cruel and unusual punishment contributed to its closure in 1995.
Moundsville, WV
Whitegate Cemetery, on the outskirts of Moundsville along Tom's Run, is the burial ground for prisoners of the former West Virginia Penitentiary who died in custody and were never claimed. Regional coverage dates its creation to an 1897 act of the West Virginia Legislature and counts roughly 240 graves. Some of those buried died by electrocution or hanging; most died of natural causes.
Buckhannon, WV
Agnes Howard Hall was built in 1895 as the first dormitory at West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon. Originally known as the Ladies' Hall, it was renamed in 1920 for Agnes Howard, a student who fell ill in 1917 and died that December. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPBuckhannon, WV
Macedonia Road outside Buckhannon, West Virginia passes under a railroad bridge at a sharp, blind curve. Multiple traffic fatalities have occurred at this location due to the road's geometry — the curve is not visible to approaching drivers until they are already in it. The road's dark reputation stems from these real accidents rather than any documented historical event.
Lewisburg, WV
The Greenbrier County Courthouse in Lewisburg was built in 1837 and is the oldest courthouse in continuous use in West Virginia. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, it is best known as the venue of the 1897 trial of Edward Stribbling Trout Shue for the murder of his wife, Elva Zona Heaster Shue — the case popularly remembered as the Greenbrier Ghost.
Lewisburg, WV
Lewisburg's downtown is a National Register Historic District whose buildings date largely to the 18th and 19th centuries. The ghost walk uses that streetscape, including the General Lewis Inn and the 1800s-era Lewisburg Cemetery, as the backdrop for local legends.
Weston, WV
Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia is the largest hand-cut stone masonry building in North America. Construction began in 1858 on the Kirkbride plan — a 19th-century therapeutic design philosophy emphasizing fresh air, natural light, and spatial dignity for psychiatric patients. The facility opened in 1864 with intended capacity for 250 patients. At its mid-20th-century peak, it held approximately 2,600.
Weston, WV
The burial ground for the former Weston State Hospital holds the graves of more than 2,000 patients who died at the institution. Many were unclaimed by families, and most graves are now unidentified, with markers lost, illegible, or removed over the years.
Bluefield, WV
Bluefield State College, founded in 1895, is a historically black college in Bluefield, West Virginia. Mahood Hall, named after Senator William Mahood, was one of the first three buildings constructed on campus and remains one of the oldest structures on the grounds.
Bramwell, WV
The Bramwell Ghost Walk is an annual October walking tour through Bramwell, West Virginia, a small Mercer County town once known for its concentration of coal-mining wealth. Costumed actors at the town's historic mansions portray former residents, telling Bramwell's history through its coal-era families. The event has run for more than a decade.
Cairo, WV
The Silver Run Tunnel (Tunnel No. 19) is a 337-foot railroad bore west of Ellenboro in Ritchie County, West Virginia. It was driven through solid rock for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the 1850s and now carries the North Bend Rail Trail.
Caldwell, WV
Kate's Mountain, the highest peak in Greenbrier State Forest at 3,280 feet, takes its name from Catherine 'Kate' Carpenter, who took refuge on the mountain with her child during a 1756 frontier raid near Fort Dinwiddie. The attack killed her husband Nicholas near present-day White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, during the period of intense frontier conflict in the French and Indian War era.
Cameron, WV
The Archive of the Afterlife is a privately operated museum in Cameron, Marshall County, West Virginia, opened in 2011 by Stephen Hummel. It occupies the former Sanford School building at 86 Railroad Street and presents itself as the National Museum of the Paranormal.
Clarksburg, WV
Waldomore is a two-story brick mansion in Greek Revival and Neoclassical style built in 1839 for state senator Waldo P. Goff in Clarksburg, West Virginia. It is now part of the Clarksburg-Harrison Public Library, housing its special collections, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPHarts, WV
The Spry-Lambert Family Cemetery, sometimes recorded simply as Spry Cemetery or Lambert-Spry Cemetery, is a small family burial ground in Dry Branch Hollow near the unincorporated community of Harts in Lincoln County, West Virginia. The cemetery serves descendant Spry and Lambert families with roots in the Harts Creek area.
Hillsboro, WV
On November 6, 1863, Union General William Averell led roughly 5,000 troops in an assault on Confederate forces under General John Echols entrenched atop Droop Mountain. After a flanking maneuver broke the Confederate line, Echols retreated south with significant losses — the last time Confederate forces mounted organized resistance in West Virginia. The state dedicated the 287-acre park on the site in 1928, making it West Virginia's first state park.
Hinton, WV
The Campbell-Flannagan-Murrell House is the oldest standing home in Hinton's historic district, built around 1875 by Edgar Campbell and his wife Elizabeth at the start of the town's railroad boom. The Campbells ran one of Hinton's first general stores from the basement. The house passed through three connected families and is now a Summers County house museum.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPIaeger, WV
Sandy Huff Hollow is a remote residential hollow along Sandy Huff Branch near the village of Iaeger in McDowell County, in West Virginia's far southern coalfields. The hollow has become a reference point in regional 'dogman' cryptid folklore documented in author George Dudding's book and in southern West Virginia travel and folklore writing.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPMannington, WV
Highland Cemetery sits on a rural road outside Mannington in Marion County, West Virginia. It contains a grave recorded to Serilda Jane Whetzel, who died May 29, 1909, whose marker is the subject of a widely circulated 'witch's grave' legend documented by regional folklore writers and geocaching and travel sources.
Monongah, WV
On December 6, 1907, an explosion ripped through Fairmont Coal Company's Nos. 6 and 8 mines in Monongah, West Virginia, killing 362 men — the single deadliest mining accident in American history. The victims included large numbers of Italian immigrants from Molise and Calabria, as well as workers from Poland, Russia, Hungary, and local West Virginia communities.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPPax, WV
Pax is a small community in Fayette County, West Virginia, in the southern coalfields. Weirwood is a nearby locality, and the area's railroad corridor is the setting of a regional 'headless ghost' legend. The community and its rail history are real, but the paranormal narrative is single-source folklore.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPPhilippi, WV
Stewart's Run Road Cemetery, also recorded as Stewart Cemetery, is a small burial ground at the end of Stewarts Run Road near Philippi in Barbour County, West Virginia. It contains roughly ten grave markers and about forty unmarked graves, and is one of the more frequently reported haunted cemeteries in the county.
Roanoke, WV
When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flood-control dam on the West Fork River went into service in 1988, most of the community of Roanoke in southern Lewis County was submerged. The original town now lies under roughly 60 feet of Stonewall Jackson Lake.
Salem, WV
Brandy Gap Tunnel #2, locally called the Flinderation Tunnel, is a B&O Railroad bore near Salem in Harrison County, built in the 1850s and now part of the public North Bend Rail Trail. A cemetery dating to the 1700s sits on the ridge above it.
Sam Black Church, WV
Elva Zona Heaster Shue died on January 23, 1897, near Lewisburg, her death initially attributed to natural causes. Her mother, Mary Jane Heaster, said her daughter's spirit appeared to her and named her husband as the killer. An exhumation on February 22, 1897 found a broken neck, and Erasmus 'Edward' Shue was convicted of first-degree murder on July 11, 1897.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPShepherdstown, WV
Miller Hall is a residence hall on the west side of the Shepherd University campus in Shepherdstown, Jefferson County, West Virginia. Built in 1915, it has always served as a dormitory. The widely circulated claim that it was a Civil War hospital is false — that role belonged to the nearby Entler Hotel — and Shepherd University's own materials document the building's true history.
Sistersville, WV
The Wells Inn opened on January 15, 1895, built by Ephraim Wells, grandson of Sistersville's founder, to accommodate the flood of oil prospectors arriving after crude was struck in Tyler County in 1894. The two-story brick hotel with its wraparound verandah retains its original 1890s mosaic tile, oak furnishings, and tiled fireplace.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPSpencer, WV
Spencer is the seat of Roane County, West Virginia, established in 1856 in the rural central part of the state. The county is heavily forested and lightly populated, with a long oral tradition of unidentified animal encounters that fits within the broader Appalachian cryptid-folklore record.
Sutton, WV
The Flatwoods Monster Museum grew out of the Braxton County Visitors Center in downtown Sutton, West Virginia, after director Andrew Smith's small shelf of Flatwoods Monster clippings and souvenirs expanded into a full museum housed in a former downtown pharmacy building.
Talcott, WV
The Great Bend Tunnel near Talcott, West Virginia, was constructed between 1870 and 1873 by the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway as part of its major expansion through southern West Virginia. Upon completion, it was the longest tunnel on the C&O line. The tunnel became the setting for one of America's most enduring folk legends.
Thurmond, WV
Thurmond is a preserved coal-and-railroad town in the New River Gorge of southern West Virginia. Founded in 1900 on land deeded to Captain W. D. Thurmond in the 1870s, the town reached a peak population of several hundred in the 1920s as the largest revenue-generating stop on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway. Approximately 80 percent of the townsite is now owned by the National Park Service.
Triadelphia, WV
Roney's Point Tuberculosis Hospital was built in 1936 with Public Works Administration funding as a deliberately isolated 40-bed facility in Ohio County, West Virginia. When tuberculosis came under control in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the institution transitioned to house criminal, indigent, and mentally ill patients. It closed in 1972, after which Ohio County sold the property to West Virginia. The crumbling structure sits on land that includes a patient cemetery.
White Sulphur Springs, WV
The Greenbrier traces to the sulphur springs at White Sulphur Springs, where visitors came to 'take the waters' from 1778 onward. The Chesapeake & Ohio Railway bought the property in 1910 and opened the current hotel in 1913. From 1959 to 1962 the federal government built a secret congressional bunker beneath the resort; it was revealed in 1992 and is now a public tour.