West Virginia Independence Hall

The 1859 building where West Virginia became a state during the Civil War hosts a woman searching for her hanged husband, a judge's courtroom that produces strange sounds, and a force strong enough to shove employees in the hallway.

Employee Bruce Cooey was walking down the second-floor hallway when something shoved him hard in the back. He spun around. Nobody there. On a separate occasion, a fire extinguisher flew off the wall in front of him, bracket and all, and rolled across the floor. The bracket had been screwed into the wall.

West Virginia Independence Hall in Wheeling is the building where West Virginia became a state, and something in it doesn't seem to know the Civil War ended.

The building was constructed in 1859 as a federal Customs house, with a courtroom, post office, and government offices. When Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, delegates from the western counties gathered here for the Wheeling Conventions, the political meetings that created the Reorganized Government of Virginia and eventually produced West Virginia statehood in 1863. Federal judge John Jay Jackson Jr. presided over his courtroom inside this building during the war, sentencing Confederate sympathizers from the bench. A prison stood directly across the street, where some of those he condemned were hanged.

The footsteps are the most commonly reported phenomenon. Tour guide Sue Beth Warren has heard them multiple times while alone in the building, preparing for the day's tours. "I've known for an absolute certainty that no one was here and I still heard the footsteps," she told a local newspaper. The elevator adds its own element: it descends from upper floors on its own, the doors slide open, and nobody steps out.

Former museum worker Lois Nickerson had a more direct encounter. She reportedly struck up a conversation with an older woman in the basement, stepped away briefly, and returned to find the woman gone with no way she could have left. Nickerson also refused to enter a corner room on the second floor, saying she felt something wrong in it every time she approached.

Site Director Debbie Jones takes a practical approach. She greets Judge Jackson's courtroom every morning and every evening, "just in case." Strange noises come from the area adjacent to his courtroom regularly enough that the greeting has become routine rather than superstition.

The strongest reaction came from a group of psychic investigators whose equipment, as staff described it, "went crazy" when they approached the restoration room door. A separate team of professional ghost hunters got readings on their instruments in several areas, including the Civil War exhibits on the second floor. A visitor once reported that a man's hand passed straight through his body in the restoration room, which caused him to leave the building immediately.

The woman spotted on the upper floors is the building's most persistent figure. Staff believe she's searching for her husband, a man condemned to death in Judge Jackson's courtroom and hanged at the prison that once stood across the street. She walks the hallways with what witnesses describe as purpose, not wandering but looking.

The building is now a museum operated by the state, open for tours. The paranormal reputation has grown enough that costumed guides incorporate the ghost stories into their historical presentations during October. The history alone would justify a visit. This is where a new state was carved out of an existing one during the most divisive period in American history, in a room you can stand in today. The ghosts are a bonus, though Bruce Cooey might use a different word for whatever shoved him.