Hey all, happy holidays β if you are someone who celebrates at this time of the year. As an aside, both traditions really took off at about the same time β the mid 19th century. In the UK, the writer Charles Dickens, leant into the tale of a rich, greedy man named Scrooge, and his ghostly visitors. If a ghost were ever to visit us, it surely had to be at Christmas β when the world was darker, and colder than normal?
No doubt, as they did so β they remembered those they had loved, and lost. Now psychologists have examined the way people in a state of grief can see or hear someone recently passed. And I, for one am not going to make fun of the guy for that. But psychologists refer to such phenomena as common, non-pathological and a healthy part of the grieving process. A month earlier, Zona had passed away unexpectedly.
She was buried the following day β the cause of death uncertain. But Zona Heaster Shue had a very different message for her mother. Her husband Edward had murdered her. She was the third of nine siblings, at least seven of whom made it to adulthood. While researching this I came across next to nothing on her childhood.
In , Zona entered into a relationship with a slightly older man named George Wooldwich. Both families forbid the couple from marrying, but Zona got pregnant to George. The couple had a child out of wedlock, only for the child to be stillborn.
By Zona and George had split, and Zona had fallen into a depression over the loss of her child. But then one day she met, and fell in love with a drifter named Erasmus Stribbling Trout Shoe, known to friends as Edward. A drifter with a questionable past, Shoe had recently arrived in Greenbrier County, and taken work as a blacksmith for a local man named James Crookshank. By all accounts, he was well liked by the townspeople β who commented on his charisma and good looks.
