Oct 30, 2014 4 min read

Imagine this land 5,000 years ago, dense, thick forests filled with large oaks and cedars.

Imagine the Monongahela River before it was given that name, before Greene County was founded, before the large coal operations, before houses and highways were built.

Throughout the centuries, one thing in Greene County remained constant – the Warrior Trail.

At 67 miles long, stretching from the Pennsylvania/West Virginia border to Greensboro, the trail was used for more than 5,000 years by Native Americans for flint and fur trading and warfare, according to Greene County Department of Recreation.

It is not surprising over the course of time, the tales of the trail were passed on from generation to generation.

“When I was growing up, I had heard of the Warrior Trail, but did not know much about it,” said Greene County native Raleen Nichols, whose family has been in Greene County since the 1600s. “My grandfather knew a lot about the county and its legends, as well as secrets.”

He passed down these legends and secrets to his daughter. He knew about the Warrior Trail.

He knew all the stories of hauntings, suspicious occurrences and dark history of the area. But whenever the trail was mentioned, her grandfather never found the courage to say anything about it other than, “It is evil.”

Nichols asked her grandfather many times why he objected to her going to the trail. She knew the stories of hauntings, but she always believed the tellers were intoxicated, and accepted them as nothing more than just stories.

But to her grandfather, they were real – so real he persistently dissuaded his granddaughter from going near the trail.

“I never believed any of (the stories),” she said, until the day her husband-to-be had an encounter that still gives her goose bumps.

It all began with a bachelor party/camping trip. Ken Nichols, the future groom and some of his friends, left Morgantown, W.Va., to spend the night in an open field on top of a hill.

What they didn’t know was that the Warrior Trail was less than 100 yards away. Their “mistake” was quickly realized.

As they settled into their sleeping bags, the wind went from blowing to silent within seconds, the sky changed from blackish grey to blood red and the field began to glow.

Then, a bush started glowing water blue. That was just the beginning.

In the large, open field, glowing white forms began appearing.

“There were dozens of them, some were Indians, some were Civil War soldiers in full uniform,” said Ken Nichols.

It didn’t take long for the men to flee.

They piled into the car and took off. “When we got to the entrance of the field a soldier was sitting on one side and an Indian on the other,” Nichols said.

With the gas pedal floored, the men took off onto the main road.

The car made a sharp left turn, allowing Nichols a perfect view to see a ghostly Indian running toward them and throwing a spear.

“We hightailed it back to Morgantown,” Nichols said. “But that is not the end of the story.”

Five days later, the men returned to the field to show friends where the event occurred.

“I was more than a little nervous, but I agreed. I figured daylight, no problem,” said Nichols.

They saw the tire tracks through the field, the only evidence of their camping trip a couple of nights before. There was no red sky, no glowing bushes and no ghostly figures appearing. But none of that compared to what happened next.

“As we drove toward Kirby on the Warrior Trail, we suddenly had a flat tire,” Nichols said. “I looked down and there was an arrowhead stuck in the tire.”

Was this the end of the spear that the ghostly Indian figure threw at them as they left five nights ago? Was it a warning from another haunting figure never to come back to the area again? Nichols and his wife have not been able to come up with a reasonable answer to what occurred that week.

They accepted the superstition. They accepted that maybe Raleen Nichols’ grandfather was right – the place is evil and trespassers are not welcome.

Chelsea Dicks is a senior at Waynesburg University and is managing editor of the university’s newspaper, the Yellow Jacket.