PICKLE STREET, W.Va. — Of all the odd community names in West Virginia, “Pickle Street” must rank among the oddest. Why this hamlet in Lewis County bears the name “pickle” is as much a mystery as why it is termed “street.” There is little street-like about rural US-119, which wanders the valley of Leading Creek … Read more
Of more than 400 artifacts collected in this museum of the paranormal in West Virginia’s “city of the dead,” one is attracting more attention than all others, though curators are at a loss to explain why. “You can see why the lost execution-cap from the penitentiary’s electric chair is popular,” says Steve Hummel, referring to … Read more
A new film aims to tell the true story behind what happened in a rural West Virginia town when a group of locals encountered a monstrous being moments after seeing strange objects in the sky. “The Flatwoods Monster: A Legacy of Fear” is a new documentary from director Seth Breedlove, which will unlock a decades-old … Read more
Scientists working with the remote National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, have detected repeating radio signals being emitted from a dwarf galaxy three billion light-years away. Astronomers dedicated to finding signs of intelligent alien life recorded 15 repeating fast radio bursts on August 26, according to an August 30 Newsweek article. The … Read more
Even after half a century, new information is coming to light regarding the gruesome murders of two hitch-hiking students who disappeared from the campus of West Virginia University in 1970. Morgantown-based Kromatic Media today announced the release of the first three podcasts in the series “Mared and Karen: The WVU Coed Murders,” which explores the kidnapping, murder, … Read more
Photojournalist Anne Johnson on May 1 stopped on the flank of Powell Mountain in central West Virginia to visit its regionally famous inhabitant — a solitary, free-range goat that for 17 years has called the high-ground home. Johnson, whose 2015 video of an encounter with the white, wary herbivore has picked-up steam on social media, reports … Read more
PAX, W.Va. — Interest in West Virginia’s haunted places is growing, says a Web developer whose guide to West Virginia ghosts is now ranked No. 1 for hauntings in the United States. The increasing interest in spooky locales is likely a result of a hunger for the paranormal nationally as well as in-state efforts to … Read more
MOUNDSVILLE, W.Va. — The Travel Channel ranks two West Virginia landmarks among the most haunted in the United States, but ghost hunters know there are many more. The following five, ranked in 2014, are favorites of Jason Burns and Jonathan Moore, among the state’s best-known purveyors of the paranormal. No. 1: Trans-Allegheny Asylum When Virginians … Read more
The 2014 relaunch of West Virginia Explorer has been deputied not by a jet-setting newcomer to the industry, but by our publication’s first webmaster. Answering the clarion call for assistance in the relaunch of more than 2,000 pages, Jonathan Moore has returned after 14 years, and I couldn’t be happier. Though a skillful webmaster, he … Read more
