Need help finding a ghost? Ghost hunters who are exploring West Virginia will have an easier time sharing and investigating experiences thanks to a new interactive map of hauntings being published by WVGhosts.com.
Available at haunts.WVGhosts.com, the map locates the sites of more than 200 reported encounters with ghosts and other supernatural phenomena across the Mountain State.
In publication since 1999, the West Virginia Ghosts website pioneered the dark tourism in West Virginia and brought to light many ghostly encounters that had never been in publication before.
The expansion of the application-based map had recently become more viable, thanks to the dramatic increase in statewide tourism and the increased availability of Internet access in some of its more remote regions, says publisher Jonathan Moore, a senior software engineer and full-stack developer.
"It all started back in the early 2000s in the old West Virginia Ghosts message board," Moore said or the mapping.
"People kept listing haunted places around the state, and the map was created to help organize the reports into an easily viewable resource."
Many of the reported sightings are concentrated in four areas of the state—in its northern and eastern panhandles and in its Greenbrier and Kanawha valleys. However, Moore said, increasing reports are coming from the state's southern coalfields and the Monongahela Valley.
Moore is encouraging anyone with ghostly experiences in West Virginia to submit stories to the site.
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