I Explore Ghosts

Cry Of The Banshee: History & Hauntings of West Virginia & the Ohio Valley by Susan Sheppard

Writing by Susan Hilliard on Wednesday, 18 of May , 2005 at 9:19 am

Information Supplied & Written by Susan Sheppard
www.hauntedparkersburg.com
Contact: Susan Sheppard

TALES OF WEST VIRGINIA BANSHEES

Not all fairy tales have happy endings. Not all fairies bring goodness and light. Among the Irish and Scottish people there is a supernatural creature called “the Banshee.”

The Banshee is an attendant death fairy, one who brings an omen of doom to those of Irish or Scottish blood. It is the Banshee that announces the death of a family member, usually over bodies of water with her keening, or caoine, a shrill crying for the dead.

But the Banshee doesn’t just stay near bodies of water washing out the grave clothes of the dead as it is told. She also travels to the homes of those about to die, sometimes mounted on a pale steed or riding a black funeral coach with two, pale headless horses leading the way.

There are various descriptions of the Banshee. The Irish Banshee is called Bean Sidhe in an older tongue. Depending upon what source you use, ‘Bean’ means woman and ‘Sidhe’ means fairy. But other sources say that ‘Bean Sidhe’ is translated as “woman of the hills.” Some ancient lore says the Banshee can even be the ghost of a young woman who has died in childbirth, especially if she was not given the last rites of confession.

The Irish Banshee is often described as a beautiful young woman with streaming auburn hair. She is said to wear a green woolen dress with gray cloak clasped about her shoulders. The Irish Banshee hangs out at rivers and waterfalls. The only hint that this beautiful Banshee is a messenger of doom comes from the fact that her eyes are blood red from crying for her dead.

The Scottish Banshee, the ‘Bean Nighe’, gives a more menacing appearance. The Scottish Banshee is dressed in grave clothes, with face covered by a veil while riding a dancing steed. Her age and features are difficult to make out but she appears to be an old crone. And yet, the Banshee’s movements are lithe and she rides her pale horse sometimes with a black hearse following her. Rarely, the shroud of the Scottish Banshee is crimson, reddened by the gore of blood.

The Mid-Ohio Valley, which includes most of the western part of West Virginia and southern Ohio, was settled mainly by people of Irish and Scottish blood. Along with the Welsh and French, they share ancient Celtic ties and are descended from clans. The Celts believed in unique forms of mysticism, such as wizards, witches, leprechauns and fairies, and not the least of them - the Banshee.

Stories of the Banshee spirit may have gone underground as Irish and Scottish immigrants moved into the green hills of the Ohio Valley and West Virginia. But the legend of the Banshee is not entirely forgotten, as you will see by reading the following pages.

First let us travel back to the shores of Scotland on a blustery winter day in the year 1590. A group of women, known later as the Berwick Witches, summoned their powers at the ocean’s edge. Over the icy waters of the North Sea, King James VI and his new bride Anne of Denmark made their way back to Scotland when their boat nearly capsized. It was only later that the rumors began that King James was in great danger from a plot or a curse put upon him by the witches of North Berwick.

This quickly caught King James’s attention, since he had always been fascinated by witchcraft. It wasn’t long until the supposed witches were captured and put on trial.

One young woman called Gilly Duncan confessed under torture that she and other witches cursed the King, and were intent upon murdering him by chanting magic spells and evil curses. She also claimed that she and the witches were in cahoots with the Earl of Boswell, first in line to the throne after King James’s death, and they all wished him dead.

King James’s morbid fascination with witchcraft only fed his paranoid delusions about the mysterious powers of woman. It was during James’s translation of the King James Bible that he changed the Hebrew word for “poisoner” into the English word for “witch,” two terms that are hardly interchangeable. The word stuck however, and the rest is history.

King James had earlier written a treatise against witchcraft. Wild claims were made and rumors flew. It was reported back to King James that a group of Scottish witches had gathered at night near a castle in Edinburgh where they fashioned a waxen image, or witch’s poppet (a European version of a voodoo doll) of the King. In front of a raging bonfire, the witches passed the wax doll amongst themselves, chanting in unison: “This is King James the VI, ordained to be consumed at the instance of a nobleman, Francis Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell.” The witches’ poppet was tossed into the flames and it melted away instantly.

Did this ever happen? Probably not.

But the story fit in perfectly with what the King already believed. This made him even more determined to hunt down the witches who were “persecuting” him. More “witches” were brought forth and the King himself interrogated them. It was told that 200 witches met at a Church in North Berwick on All Hallows Eve to curse King James again. It was said the Devil himself presided over the meeting wearing a black mask, preaching obedience to him and bringing great evil against the King. Unable to stay quiet a moment longer, King James interjected and called all of the witches present liars. Even so, one woman repeated the exact words that James had spoken to his bride on their wedding night. Why she did this, no one one knew. It sealed their doom.

The witches were later executed at Edinburgh’s Castle Hill. But it did not end there. In later years, Scottish witches were “brought to justice” at MacBeth’s Hill near the town of Nairn. Witchcraft had a strong hold in Scotland. Scottish rule executed 4,400 alleged witches. Only a handful of witches were executed in England and Ireland. Next to Germany, Scotland murdered more people during their witch trials than any other country.

In light of our tale, if the names of “Duncan” and “MacBeth” sound familiar, there is a reason for it. It has long been thought that King James held great influence over William Shakespeare and was even responsible for Shakespeare’s unflattering portrayal of Scottish witches in his play “Macbeth.” James supported the works of Shakespeare, whose famous plays came about later.

Macbeth was written only seventeen years after initial royal paranoia about the Berwick witches, a long enough time for the imagination to fodder and take certain liberties with the actual story.

Most of the scenes for MacBeth took place at Glamis Castle, allegedly the most haunted castle in Scotland. This was even acknowledged in the day of Shakespeare. But Scotland’s influence on public thought having to do with witches and witchcraft did not end there. Many trials and executions were to follow later.

And yet the powers of witchcraft still lurked in ScotlandՉ۪s remote forests, in those rolling, mystic mountains of gloom.

North of Aberdeen, there is a haunted place called the “Forest of Marr.” It is alleged this is the area where some of the Scottish witches escaped. As they went underground, the witches’ occult powers only grew. It is told that the ghosts of the executed witches eventually became Banshee spirits and continued to roam the countryside bringing death to the Scottish Clans who backed King James or were responsible for their persecution.

From that area of Scotland, came a family named “Marr” to Wood County. One might say they’re lives were marred by tragedy. And now we begin our first tale - moving from the dark reaches of Scotland into the even darker reaches of West Virginia.

The Banshee of Marrtown
Double, Double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon’s blood.
Then the charm is firm and good.
O, well done, I commend your pains.
And now about the cauldron sing
Like elves and fairies in a ring.
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes

On certain dark and moonless nights in the Mid-Ohio Valley, riding over the rolling hills of Marrtown, there appears a shrouded figure on a white horse-one that is known as “the Banshee of Marrtown.” Marrtown was once a small farming community southeast of the city of Parkersburg. Scottish immigrant Thomas Marr settled Marrtown in 1836 after marrying a local woman named Mary Disosche. Thomas brought many of the ancient beliefs and superstitions from his native area of Scotland, the mysterious regions of Marr, where a belief in Banshees and witches remained strong.

Daughter of a widow, Mary Marr was an autumn bride, considered to be an ill omen by the Scottish people. In years to come, Mary would lose six of the eight children that she bore. Only two would carry on the Marr name.

Times were hard for Thomas and Mary Marr but they did not lose their dream of a better life, pouring their energies into a simple tract of land that is now Marrtown.

Soon a picturesque white farmhouse stood against shadowy woods thick with sumac, milkweed and blackberry brambles, framed by a sweeping green valley. To the west of the Marr homestead was a steep hill that ran directly into the Ohio River. To the north was Fort Boreman Hill, where Union troops camped during the Civil War, and where a Pest House housed locals and soldiers who had contracted Typhoid Fever and Small Pox.

The years of the Civil War, as for most, were not happy ones for the Marr Family. They lost two of their children to Typhoid Fever. From their front window Thomas and Mary witnessed small clashes that turned into bloody battles between Yankee and Confederate soldiers. There were public lynchings on nearby Fort Boreman Hill. As the Civil War drew to a close, marauding soldiers from both sides stole freely from the Marrs, making off with what little food and stock the family had put away for themselves.

Shortly after the Civil War, the Marr family’s Scottish brew of bad luck appeared to come to an end. Thomas landed a job as night watchman at the toll bridge that crossed over the Little Kanawha River from lower Parkersburg to the road leading into Marrtown. Mary would stay home to tend the farm and children. Still, there were ominous hints of what was about to unfold…

On several occasions Thomas mentioned to Mary about seeing a robed figure riding a white horse as he traveled to and from his work. It was as if their paths were fated to meet. Thomas said that he came upon this rider nearly every night in the identical spot not far from his farmhouse. He was not able to determine the sex of the rider. The face remained covered by a tattered hood. Whenever Thomas tried to approach the rider, the white mare reared. It and the rider then disappeared into the mists of morning. Some sense told Thomas that the rider was a woman but he couldn’t be sure.

On a cold February night in the year 1874, Mary sat by the front window awaiting Thomas to come home from his job. Earlier, Mary had awakened suddenly and was eager to see her husband. The middle-aged woman heard footsteps coming up the road. She stood up to peer out the window. But instead of Thomas, a white horse walked up to the front gate of the house and then stopped. Sitting atop the horse was a rider whose face was covered by a ragged veil. It looked to be a woman. Alarmed, Mary moved from her chair and walked outside into the frigid night air. The rider, dressed in the clothes of a beggar, remained silent.

As bitter winds gusted, Mary pulled her woolen shawl close. Mary asked the rider what she wanted. There was no answer. Plumes of icy air billowed from the nostrils’ of the white horse. As Mary repeated her question, rider and horse inched closer. The decrepit woman sat stiffly in her saddle. Underneath the gauzy veil, Mary saw that the woman’s eyes radiated an eerie red glow.

After a few moments, the woman on the horse spoke. “I am here to tell you, Mary Marr, that Thomas Marr has just died. Say your prayers, Lady. I bid you well. ” Rider and horse turned abruptly and galloped away.

Mary collapsed onto the front stoop. Through tears, she watched the shrouded woman and her horse vanish entirely just as they reached the bend in the road. Within the hour, a man who worked with Thomas came to deliver the dreaded news.

No one knows for sure what happened to Thomas Marr that fated winter evening. Some say that while working at the toll bridge Thomas was shot by an assailant’s bullet then fell and drowned in the Little Kanawha River. Others claim that it was the cry of the Banshee that startled Thomas into meeting his end in the river below. After all, it is known that the keening of the Banshee is most often heard over bodies of water. The truth is, Thomas Marr did die on February 5th, 1874 when the Marrtown Banshee was to have made her visit and she had to cross water to do so.

In years to come, the Banshee did not abandon her Marr clan just yet. The ghostly rider continued to make other visits to the family.

Mary Marr lived to be a woman of advanced age for the time. She was 90 years old upon her death. As Mary lay as a corpse in the parlor of her home many years after her husband’s death, family members heard the rattling of chains in the attic. Others claimed to hear the shrieks of a woman outside the house.

A few years after Mary died, one of the Marr children had his hand cut off in a tragic accident. As family members sat up with the boy, they heard snarling and growling sounds on the porch. When the women went outside to see what it was, the stoop where Mary had met her Banshee was covered with blood as if a terrible struggle had taken place.

What has become of the Banshee of Marrtown? It is said she still rides, giving dreaded omens to those of pure Scottish Blood…

Not Scottish or Irish, you say? You would still be wise to avoid Marrtown on certain dark and moonless nights…

The Banshee of Center Point

Banshees aside, if you have ever had the opportunity to fly over West Virginia and the Mid-Ohio Valley in a small plane, you may have noticed the foliage below appears as dense and electric-green as that of a rainforest, an excellent place for harboring fugitives but terrible for your sinuses!

In a time where most of the wilderness in the U.S. is vanishing, West Virginia is still “wild and wonderful,” as the slogan says. But what kind of wildness may mean something other than what the travel ads claim. Native American tribes were afraid of these lands. Generally, the Indians did not settle what is now West Virginia thinking it cursed by ghosts and strange beasts. The Shawnee Indians were especially spooked by the lands east of the Ohio River and avoided it as much as possible.

There is a community in a remote part of Doddridge County called Center Point. Like Silver Run, Center Point is now a ghost town. Center Point is typical of small mountain communities reclaimed by the woods. The village used to have a post office and the Ross Allen General Store, however, that is all but gone. A craggy, brown creek courses through lush foliage with leaves as big as mud flaps. Modest white houses cling to the sides of hills, with sloping yards made muddy by children at play.

In Center Point, there isn’t much for children to do other than chase each other with sticks or head for the creek in search of the little brown clots with pinchers known so familiar to West Virginians as “crawdads.”

Unless you’re crazy about pleasant, green scenery, country areas, like Center Point, can be pretty dull. That is, until the summer of 1918 when the Black Flu hit. That was the year when the people of Center Point thought the entire world was coming to an end. The rest of the world did, too. Millions had already died.

Unless you were a seven-year-old girl named Pearl White who loved to play in the woods who dreamed of flapping her arms and flying away like a bird, Center Point might be considered “the pits.” But there was plenty for Pearl to do. She had drive and imagination. She wasn’t worried about the Black Flu. Sickness happened to older people and Pearl was invincible. Why, she almost knew how to fly already.

It was near dusk in early October. Pearl was staying with her Grandmother at Center Point on the farm while relatives traveled to Pennsboro to help those already stricken with the Black Flu. Like so many of the flu victims, Pearl’s young, unmarried uncle had taken sick but appeared to be doing fine. His flu wasn’t much worse than a chest cold.

It did seem odd how the Black Flu preyed upon those in the full bloom of life. Most of the victims who died were in their twenties and thirties. But Pearls’ uncle was in good spirits, sitting up and talking as the day wore on.

Evening drew in. The indigo of twilight was soon upon them. The night was clear. There was not one cloud among the stars. Flickering lights studded the evening sky. Pearl counted them as the Big Dipper, the belt of Orion, the North Star and dreamed of flying to all of them. Center Point was small, but the world was still hers’.

Pearl’s grandmother was in the process of taking her granddaughter to the outhouse one more time before bed when they heard the sound of horses’ hooves coming up the road.

The trot was slow and measured. Whoever it was didn’t seem to be in a hurry. They looked around to see a rider on a horse. The Grandmother thought, perhaps it was the mailman paying a late visit. After all, the Black Flu had taken its toll on Center Point. Many people had died. Mail could arrive just about anytime of day or evening.

Pearl and her grandmother paused to watch the rider and horse make their way toward the farmhouse. Crickets sang in the shadows.

It seemed strange how the figure sat erect on the horse and was enshrouded in pale, fluttering rags, almost like a mummy. The horse itself was also pale like a ghost. The gender of the rider could not be made out either although something told them it was a woman.

Pearl felt an urge to draw near the figure. She was curious and ran toward the front porch, where the horse and rider seemed to be intent upon stopping. Her grandmother followed Pearl. Now they could see that the rider looked more like an old woman and still, the little girl was not sure. The rider’s face was covered by what looked to be a torn, ragged veil. The hands looked old and waxen, too, like those that had been sealed tight within a coffin.

Pearl’s grandmother recoiled but still the little girl ran to meet the figure on the horse anyway. They sauntered up the front walk. The sun was entirely gone, the world left in shadows. The rider yanked on the bridle and the horse stopped. In later years, Pearl would say that she was so close to that Banshee’s horse that she could feel it’s hot breath on her face.

Yes, that’s right. Banshee. Pearl and her relatives were of Scottish descent and this is a classic way that the Scottish Banshee appears, always as a shrouded figure.

And yet, on that fated night in Center Point the Banshee spirit issued a warning. She pointed a bony finger at Pearl’s Grandmother and proclaimed in a rasping voice, “One of yours is to die this very night!” A keening cry split the evening’s stillness. The Banshee and her horse instantly vanished.

Shaken and left in shadows, Pearl and her grandmother hugged each other. But there was no time to think about the terrible thing that had just happened. Already sounds were coming from the house, sounds of someone struggling for air.

It was Pearl’s uncle. The two ran inside just in time to realize that the young man’s lungs were filling with fluid. Blood foamed from his nose and mouth. This was the usual way people died when they had the Black Flu. Grandmother knew it. There was no saving him. Within moments, Pearl’s uncle had drowned in his own blood. After the death rattle, all became still, except for the sound of horses’ hooves galloping away and the shrill scream of what sounded like a cat.

Despite the evening when she witnessed her uncle’s terrible death from the Black Flu, Pearl White grew up and she did learn to fly. She became a pioneer in the field of aviation and was the first woman to parachute out of a plane. Pearl was a member of the “Barnstormers,” a name given to pilots who performed dangerous stunts.

Pearl White performed her stunts all the way from the Pennsboro County Fair in 1935 to the movies in Hollywood, California. If you have ever watched the movie “Sunset Boulevard,” her name is mentioned in that movie. When the character Norma Desmond, played by Gloria Swanson, is reminding the William Holden of all she had accomplished in her early days of the movies, Norma Desmond blurts out, “I want you to know I’ve done it all! I even did my own stunts alongside of Pearl White!”

Pearl White feared very little. In fact, as a young woman she loved danger. At the age of sixteen men would strap Pearl’s body to the belly of a plane, go up and then swoop down so she could pick up small objects off the ground. She only broke her back one time, and that was at Ravenswood in 1935.

But in later years, Pearl was often afraid to sit outside on her front porch at her modest home on upper Juliana Street. There was something that disturbed her… the coming on of night.

Pearl was not afraid to be strapped to a plane and fly through the air. She was not afraid to jump out of one as a teenager.

After meeting up with the Center Point Banshee as a small child the only thing Pearl White was ever afraid of - was the dark

The Haunted Parkersburg Ghost Tours, located in Parkersburg, WV, USA, hosts regular ghost tours in season, from Mid-September throughout October 31st, private ghost tours go on throughout the year. Tour meets in the haunted and historic Blennerhassett Hotel at 7:30 p.m. in the lobby. The ghost tour features many unusual paranormal and ghost tales such as the Banshee of Marrtown, Civil War Ghosts, the local appearance of the alien Indrid Cold, the West Virginia Mothman, haunted railroads, haunted graveyards, the East End Ghoul, Ghostly hands,Women-in-White spirit appearances and haunted islands.

The ghost tour is led by paranormal experts, published authors and noted psychic mediums. Reservation are NOT required.

Prices $8.00 Adults $7.00 Students $5.00 children thirteen and under.
Children under 6 are FREE.
Call (304) 428-7978
Email: sheppard@wirefire.com
Visit the Website: www.hauntedparkersburg.com

Susan Sheppard, Haunted Parkersburg Ghost Tours.

Category: Ghostly Stories, Ghostly Tours

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