Haunted by History: Why Black Appalachians Should Follow West Virginia’s Paranormal Trail

By Black By God – The West Virginian

Black Appalachians know that these mountains hold memories. Stories passed through whispers, songs, and prayer. Stories that don’t always make it into the textbooks but live in the land, the rivers, and the walls that have stood for centuries.

That’s why the new West Virginia Paranormal Trail isn’t just for ghost hunters — it’s for us. It’s a chance to travel across the state, uncovering not only haunted legends but the real histories of the people who built, worked, worshiped, and survived here.

Because sometimes, the stories that haunt us are the ones that haven’t been told yet.

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Following the Spirits

The Paranormal Trail, launched by the West Virginia Department of Tourism, includes more than 20 haunted or mysterious sites, from the towering stone walls of the West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville to the vast, echoing halls of the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, and the eerie grounds of Lake Shawnee Abandoned Amusement Park near Princeton.

Each site carries both documented history and enduring folklore.

• The Trans-Allegheny Asylum operated from 1864 to 1994, a place once overcrowded with thousands of patients during the height of America’s mental health reform movement.
• The West Virginia Penitentiary, built in the 1870s and closed in 1995, witnessed nearly 100 documented executions and decades of harsh conditions.
• Lake Shawnee, long known for strange accidents and unsettling energy, sits atop older stories — Indigenous land, early settlement, and Black farming families who once worked nearby.

These are not just haunted sites. They’re spaces where Appalachian life — Black, white, and everything in between — collided with the nation’s deepest struggles around labor, race, justice, and belonging.

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 Ghosts of Labor and Legacy

Through a Black By God lens, the Paranormal Trail becomes something more than folklore. It’s a reflection on how we remember.

The same institutions now marketed as “haunted” once represented real suffering and social control. Black workers helped build and sustain them, even when their stories went unrecorded. Black inmates, patients, and laborers lived within their walls, often under unequal systems that treated them as invisible.

When we walk through these sites today, we’re not just chasing ghosts. We’re walking alongside our ancestors.