A New Paranormal Trail Highlights West Virginia’s Creepiest and Most Haunted Places
It features 14 of the state’s most morbidly fascinating settings.
Between the abandoned asylums, winged cryptids, and omnipresent mist billowing over its dark hills, West Virginia may very well be the ultimate state for ghost-hunters and horror enthusiasts. Nestled in innately eerie Appalachia, it’s a state that typifies the mythical and the murky; the spooky and the unexplained. And just in time for Halloween, West Virginia has rolled out a Paranormal Trail to highlight the creepiest and most haunted places across the state.
Having just spent a week exploring West Virginia for the first time, driving between Harpers Ferry and Point Pleasant, aka Mothman’s hometown, I can confirm that the state is indeed the perfect place for a spooky road trip. While undeniably beautiful, all those forested mountains provide plenty of room for monsters and myths to run rampant, and for hospitals, ill-advised amusement parks, and penitentiaries to fall into bone-chilling disrepair.
Launched as a self-guided digital passport, highlighting 14 of the state’s most morbidly fascinating settings, the Paranormal Trail allows travelers to map out their own gnarly road trip, and get rewarded with prizes—like stickers and beanies—for their bravery. After signing up online for the passport, fearless explorers are on their way to a spooky romp across one of America’s most underrated states.
Some of the places on the trail sound downright terrifying, so anyone who is actually uncomfortable with haunted places might tread carefully and stick to the hokier stuff. Like the world’s one and only Mothman Museum in Point Pleasant, the riverside hamlet once visited by a giant bird-man with red eyes. Or, you know, an owl. And the museum is quite a hoot, filled with scribbled testimonies and ephemera from the Richard Gere film it inspired, The Mothman Prophecies. Right outside, there’s a thicc Mothman Statue, with weirdly chiseled abs and a needlessly detailed butt.
Similarly, the Flatwoods Monster Museum, in the tiny town of Sutton, leans into the feeble folklore around a hovering beast with sharp fingers and a spade-shaped head (points for detailed originality!) that spooked some teens in the ‘50s. Next to those two stone-cold originals, Bigfoot feels a little familiar, but West Virginia does still look like prime Bigfoot territory, so America’s most well-traveled cryptid gets its flowers with a 10.5-foot sculpture on the Elk River Trail.
Things only get creepier from there. Including the Trans-Allegheny Asylum, which is exactly the type of dark, labyrinthine nightmare fuel you’re envisioning in your head. This one-time psychiatric hospital operated during a time when psychiatric treatment was, shall we say, heinous. At its height/worst, the hospital far exceeded its 250-person capacity, often housing thousands of patients at a time. Unsurprisingly, many died. Today, the asylum offers tours and ghost hunts, including the horrifying opportunity to lock yourself in the building overnight.
There’s also the West Virginia Penitentiary, a Gothic-style compound that looks like a villain’s stone-clad castle. Naturally, horrid things happened here, which makes it a great place for Princess Tea. In the town of Rock, the Lake Shawnee Abandoned Amusement Park is another stop on the trail. Because of course an amusement park on Native American burial ground, notorious for freak accidents and grisly deaths, would be. Both are available for paranormal tours.
For something a little less traumatizing, Harpers Ferry offers a reprieve. Another stop on the Paranormal Trail, the hilly and historic town—criss-crossed by the Appalachian Trail and the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers—lays claim to one of the oldest ghost tours in the country, led by guides in 19th-century garb carrying flickering lanterns. A family-friendly affair, it’s a leisurely stroll through Lower Town, where numerous Civil War-era sites are meticulously preserved, and perhaps, haunted.
Other locations on the Paranormal Trail include The Blennerhassett Hotel in Parkersburg, reported to be one of the state’s oldest and most haunted; The Historic Glen Ferris Inn, whose resident ghost is a bearded Civil War officer known as The Colonel; and the long, dark, and ominous Flinderation Tunnel, frequented by ghosts of the B&O Railroad era.
At each stop, visitors need only open the passport on their phone and check in at their location to start notching points. The more places you brave, the more likely it is you’ll earn swag—or even a limited-edition print designed by West Virginia artist Liz Pavlovic. Move over, Appalachian, there’s another trail in town.