Seneca Caverns

A limestone cavern system in Pendleton County, one of the largest caves in West Virginia. The caverns were used by Seneca Native Americans for centuries as shelter and for ceremonial purposes. The Council Room deep within the caves was a meeting place for tribal gatherings.

Seneca Caverns in Riverton, West Virginia, is one of the most ancient and spiritually charged locations on the state's official Paranormal Trail. Located eight miles south of Seneca Rocks on Route 33, these vast underground chambers were formed over millions of years and first discovered in the 1700s. The caverns take their name from the Seneca tribe who inhabited the surrounding Germany Valley for centuries before European settlement, and it is their presence that is believed to linger in the darkness below.

The deepest and most significant chamber is known as the Council Room, a massive underground space where the Seneca tribe is believed to have held sacred rituals and tribal councils. The acoustics of the chamber are extraordinary -- voices carry and echo in ways that seem to defy the physical dimensions of the space. Tour guides and visitors have long reported that the Council Room holds a palpable spiritual energy unlike anything felt in the caverns' other passages. The Seneca used these underground spaces for ceremonies that connected the physical world to the spirit world, and many believe those connections were never severed.

The most commonly reported paranormal phenomenon at Seneca Caverns is the ghost tour -- not a scheduled event, but a phantom tour group that makes itself heard in the darkness. Tour guides working in one section of the cavern have repeatedly experienced the unmistakable sounds of another tour approaching from a different passage: footsteps, murmured voices, and the echoing acoustics of a group moving through stone corridors. When they investigate, they find no one there. Multiple guides over the years have independently reported the same experience, describing it as unmistakable and deeply unnerving.

In the Council Room, guides have witnessed ghost lights -- tiny will-o'-the-wisp-like luminosities about the size of baseballs that float near the ground and drift through the chamber before vanishing. These lights have been seen by multiple staff members on separate occasions. Some researchers have suggested they could be a form of piezoelectric discharge from the limestone under geological stress, but the lights' behavior -- appearing to move with purpose and responding to human presence -- defies simple geological explanation.

Visitors to the caverns report a persistent sense of otherworldly stillness, a feeling that the underground spaces are not empty but inhabited by something ancient and watchful. Some describe hearing whispered voices echoing through passages where no other visitors are present. Others report sudden drops in temperature that cannot be attributed to air currents or depth changes. The uneasy presence is strongest in and around the Council Room, where the spiritual practices of the Seneca people may have left an indelible imprint on the stone itself.

Seneca Caverns is one of the stops on West Virginia's official Paranormal Trail, which recognizes locations across the state with documented paranormal activity. The caverns are open seasonally from March through November, and their paranormal reputation draws visitors who come seeking not just geological wonders but a connection to the spirits that many believe still gather in council beneath the mountains of Pendleton County.