Since I moved to Pocahontas County I've heard quite a few ghost stories. The storytellers have a variety of attitudes about their narratives. Some of them think they're amusing anecdotes about rural superstition, others take them as proof of life after death, but most of them are like me. They aren't sure what to make of it. It could be hallucinations, it could be spirits of the dead, it could be some sort of cosmic trick. I have formed no hypothesis, scientific, philosophical, or religious, to explain these phenomena, but I have experienced a couple of ghostly apparitions myself. I remain puzzled, and therefore, I remain interested, hoping to find an answer.

That's how it happens that I keep a collection of local ghost stories. I started posting them on my weblog Pocahontas County Fare in honor of Halloween, 2005, and was surprised by how large the collection had become. Many of these stories are tied to Droop Mountain. I don't know whether this reflects the fact that I live there, and so have focused on these stories, or whether the Civil War battle has made the place some sort of "psychic epicenter." In any case, I thought that making a Web page for the hant stories might help me make sense of them. I hope you find it interesting.