Haunted Roads of Western Pennsylvania

By Thomas White and Tony Lavorgne

The twisty roads—and twisted tales—of the Appalachian Mountains make for distracted driving in western Pennsylvania.
 
Ghostly travelers are said to wander the lonely roads of western Pennsylvania. A creeping fog rises from Blue Mist Road, and stories of car crashes, lynchings and even strange beasts haunt this isolated stretch outside Pittsburgh. Is it the angry spirit of a jealous husband or a gypsy king who stalks Erie County’s Axe Murder Hollow? Shades of Death Road in Washington County may be host to phantom coal miners killed during a deadly labor dispute. With firsthand accounts and historical research, authors Thomas White and Tony Lavorgne travel the backcountry roads and byways of western Pennsylvania to discover their ghost tales and mysterious legends.
 
Includes photos!
 
“The authors include a history of each road along with the supernatural legends and other unexplained activity. Surprisingly, they are able to provide possible explanations for most of the alleged hauntings, but admit that they cannot account for every one, which allows the roads in question to keep their allure and spooky possibilities.” —PopCultureGuy

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781625855985

Thomas White

A native Northern Californian, Thomas White is a retired professional musician who has performed in both the U.S. and Europe. He resides in Carmichael, CA. THE RUNECASTER is his first published novel.

Book preview

Introduction

WHY GO TO A HAUNTED ROAD?

You probably heard the stories while you were growing up. Maybe it was a friend that told you or an older brother or sister. If you are of a younger generation, perhaps you stumbled across them on the Internet one fall day while you were looking for something exciting to do as Halloween approached. Regardless of how the tales came to you, they sparked something in your imagination—a sense of mystery, adventure and even a little fear. The stories that you heard surrounded a very real but ill-defined place on the periphery of your daily world—a place that, if located elsewhere, would not warrant a second thought. But out there, in the darkness beyond the streetlights and housing plans, that place could be home to both wonders and horrors. More importantly, it was a place where you could go and attempt to experience the supernatural.

That place is, of course, a haunted road.

Maybe the stories and legends that you heard told of the ghosts of children who lost their lives in a fire at their orphanage or a family killed in a tragic car accident. If you sought them out, they would leave tiny handprints on your car or push it back up the road. Or perhaps you heard that the Ku Klux Klan or satanic cults gathered along the dark road for rituals, sacrifices and murder. Their victims’ ghosts (and any dark spirits they summoned) lingered there in the darkness. Speaking of murder, you may have heard about a man who killed his wife or family in an old house along the road. Unable to move on, their spirits stay at the scene of the crime. Of course, the stories may have been a little vague, telling of an evil force that drives animals, and maybe even people, crazy if they stay too long. It’s possible you heard something else that was equally as creepy or sinister or a combination of all of these events.

The particular story itself may not have been as important as the possibility it presented. Out there was the opportunity to interact with something that was beyond the normal and rational. It was not a television show, documentary or a movie. Nor was it a distant ruin or some haunted mansion. It was an accessible place where you could go to test the reality of the supernatural. You needed to do nothing other than travel to the haunted road and perform any activity that the legend promised would provoke a supernatural response.

So, you might have gathered some friends and set out on a nighttime trip, recounting the stories along the way. The level of seriousness depended on the people involved. Jokes were probably intermixed with personal accounts or speculation about paranormal phenomena. After arriving at the dark and desolate road, you proceeded cautiously by car or on foot, looking for a particular location or landmark mentioned in the accounts as the dramatic tension built. Finally, you found what you were looking for and performed the action that the stories insisted would cause the ghosts to appear. Maybe you put your car in neutral, or called a name three times, or flashed your headlights, or something else that would normally be innocuous. Then it happened. You heard a noise in the woods, or you saw a strange light, or your car started to move. Your friends may have wanted to leave immediately—or maybe you tried to wait and see what it was. But something else happened—maybe another noise—and everyone fled the scene quickly.

When you were finally off of the road and driving away, the speculation began. What had actually occurred? Did you encounter a ghost? Was someone playing a prank? Did you misinterpret normal noises? The answers were not clear. The only thing that you were sure of was that something happened.

In the weeks that followed, you probably recounted the stories of the haunted road numerous times to friends and acquaintances. But now it was your own personal experience at the center of the narrative. Your trip had made you part of the legend, at least for a while.

Many of us have had experiences like the one that was just described. Making the trip to a haunted place is a rite of passage for many adolescents. Teenagers are not the only ones who take these kinds of trips, however. In today’s culture, saturated with the paranormal, adults are just as likely to make the trip to a haunted place. This book will explore the supernatural legends, hauntings and personal encounters of those who have made the dark journey down western Pennsylvania’s haunted roads. We will try to examine the evolving legends associated with these roads and the historical context in which they formed. Besides being entertaining, supernatural legends and ghost stories can tell us a lot about society and the communities in which they emerge. As with most things, they are more complicated than they initially appear.

You may ask why we chose to focus on roads as opposed to graveyards, homes or some other type of location. Ghost stories and supernatural legends can appear almost anywhere after all, so what makes roads special? A main reason (aside from purely personal interest) that we chose to focus on roads was their accessibility. Most roads are public areas, unlike buildings, institutions or even cemeteries (which usually close at dusk.) You do not need to make an appointment to go to a haunted road, and generally, if you do not venture onto private property, you are allowed to be there. These conditions make roads the most democratic of haunted locations because they are potentially available to the largest number of people. Of course, along with accessibility comes a greater number of reports of supernatural encounters that create a greater depth to the legend.

But why do people make the journey to haunted roads year after year? Why do the legends about them continue to spread and evolve? In this era of high technology and science, interest in the paranormal and the supernatural is more widespread than ever. From a purely rational point of view, this would seem to not make sense. But as we all know, human beings are not cold, calculating machines, devoid of emotions. We are both rational and irrational at the same time. Science can explain why much of our world is the way it is, but it still cannot explain all of it. Scientific explanations also do not impart any deeper meaning to life and its purpose. Humans experience things that are unquantifiable and unmeasurable all the time and are innately drawn to the mysterious. The supernatural holds the promise that there is something more than the material world that we see every day.

Going to a haunted road is one way that people can test the reality of the unseen supernatural world. It is also a way to confront fears, both personal and societal. As we survey western Pennsylvania’s haunted roads, we will see that the legends associated with them are often localized manifestations of larger cultural scares and moral panics about perceived threats to society. Haunted roads can allow visitors to indirectly address these fears and issues or at least provide a context in which to broach the topics. And of course, haunted roads allow visitors to address the most common and widespread fear of all—that of death and dying. A supernatural encounter on a haunted road can be frightening, but if believed, it confirms for the participant that there is indeed life beyond the grave.

To tell the stories of these haunted roads, we have drawn on a variety of traditional and nontraditional historical sources. While much of our material and background research comes from books (both academic and popular), newspaper articles, magazines and other print sources, the majority of the legends come from direct interviews, web pages and Internet discussion groups. Legends are perhaps the only area of study where it is acceptable to cite Internet rumors as a source. Not for their truthfulness, of course, but because they are often a way to communicate the legend. Actual facts and historical details about the roads and events have been verified to the best of our ability using traditional sources. In some cases, we are only able to draw tentative conclusions due to the sparse evidence.

We could not tell the story of every haunted road in western Pennsylvania in this volume, so if we missed your favorite, we apologize. We chose to focus on some well-known roads along with some that are representative of different types of common haunted road legends. Some, like Blue Mist Road, can be surprisingly well documented, whereas some others leave us very little to examine. In any case, we have tried to uncover and analyze the core story and meaning of these popular tales in addition to recounting the supernatural element.

Before we begin our exploration of these dark and interesting legends, we would like to remind our readers to be respectful when visiting any of these roads. Though the roads themselves may be public property, most of the time the land around them is private. Please do not trespass or cause any disturbances. The people who live near these roads did not create the legends and may not have any interest in them.

HAUNTED ROADS IN CONTEXT

The legends that have developed around western Pennsylvania’s allegedly haunted roads are usually more complex than they appear at a first glance or superficial reading. Before examining each individual road, we must first look at the larger context in which the legends and ghost stories develop. None of the roads exists in a vacuum, and the supernatural legends associated with them have changed over time as people have experienced the roads in different ways. These legends exist as a dark mirror to American culture, reflecting fears, concerns and some of our hidden history. At the same time, they are difficult to define, classify and explain in traditional academic terms. To learn anything about haunted roads, we must first examine how the legends about them are transmitted and how people experience them directly. Then we must also consider the subject of ghosts and supernatural beliefs and set all of this against the backdrop of history and society.

HEARING THE LEGEND

Sometimes the way that legends are communicated is almost as important as the legends themselves. Changing methods of transmission have affected the development and our understanding of haunted road legends and supernatural folklore in general. Decades ago, stories about haunted roads were transmitted primarily by word of mouth, causing them to be more malleable but also limiting their lifespan. The legends could change relatively rapidly in response to outside factors. Many of the legends are still transmitted this way.

One of the preeminent experts on modern legends, Bill Ellis, identified five general stages in the life of such a legend (also referred to as the legend narrative