27 haunted destinations cataloged across West Virginia, spanning 21 counties. The collection features outdoor, haunted hotel, and cemetery — every listing verified with family ratings, accessibility info, and practical visit logistics.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Mark Twain, Alexander Graham Bell, and Presidents Wilson and Clinton. 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
The West Virginia Penitentiary opened in Moundsville in 1866 as the state's first penal institution, operating for 129 years until its 1995 closure. The stone Gothic Revival design — castellated walls, turrets, battlements — was modeled at half-scale on the 1858 Illinois state prison at Joliet. The site is now operated as a tourist attraction, museum, and training facility by the Moundsville Economic Development Council.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Buckhannon, 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.
Parkersburg, 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.
Spencer, 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.
Harts, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Shepherdstown, 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.
Iaeger, 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.
Wheeling, 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.
Mannington, 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.
Pax, 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.
Philippi, 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.