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Huntington Prep and Head Coach Rob Fulford tip-off 5th season

High school basketball powerhouse Huntington Prep tipped-off its fifth season last night in Huntington.Rob Fulford grew up in Mullens, West Virginia. A…

High school basketball powerhouse Huntington Prep tipped-off its fifth season last night in Huntington.

Rob Fulford grew up in Mullens, West Virginia. A town known for its basketball prowess to those involved with the sport around the state. Its home to the D’Antoni family and former Marshall great and current Los Angeles Lakers Head Coach Mike D’Antoni and others like Jerome Anderson who had a short stint in the NBA.

“Just coming from Mullens, it’s just different, we’re extremely competitive in everything we do, we can go on and on about just how competitive that town is and the county really, but Mullens more so than the county,” Fulford said.

Fulford is the Head Coach for Huntington St. Joseph’s Prep. It’s a prep basketball team that Fulford established at the private catholic school located in downtown Huntington. In just the 5^th season the team is recognized on a national scale and spent much of last season ranked first in the nation. The team only plays a national schedule and doesn’t compete with in-state schools. Fulford said the success is something he never expected when he decided pharmaceutical sales wasn’t for him and coaching basketball was.

"It's the competitive nature of it all, I always wanted to coach," Fulford said.

“It’s the competitive nature of it all, I always wanted to coach, I was in pharmaceutical sales and made a ton of money and I just hated the job. So got out of that and started coaching and I don’t make any money, but I love it and I think it’s just my up-bringing,” Fulford said.

Fulford started at Mountain State Academy in Beckley where he established a prep school. There he was able to recruit basketball talent from around the country and world to southern West Virginia. After 4 years there and dwindling opportunities, he decided things had to change. The next step was to move things to Huntington. In a new city, things have blossomed for Fulford and Huntington Prep where stars like last years number 1 overall recruit Andrew Wiggins have shined.

Fulford said the biggest challenge in establishing the program hasn’t been the national recognition, getting recruits or getting his kids into reputable college programs, but it’s the community’s lack of interest or confusion about what the program is about.

“I think it’s gradually going away because they understand the type of kids that we’re getting, they’re good kids, high character kids, they’re great academic kids and I think it’s taken some time for people to grasp what the program is. I think our involvement with St. Joe has helped the community support,” Fulford said.

Fulford thinks things may begin to change this season as they’ll play more home games in the Huntington area. Over the first four seasons they’ve played homes games at a variety of gyms in the area that allowed for bigger crowds than St. Joseph’s gym would allow. This year he says they’ll play some games in the small St. Joe gym and others at the Civic Arena downtown after establishing an agreement with Huntington Mayor Steve Williams. Fulford is excited to see if his team can live up to expectations they’ve set for themselves over the past four seasons.

“The expectations are obviously high, but I think people in the community and really ourselves are anxious to see what this team will do and how they respond because they’ve heard it. That’s all they’ve heard since they’ve arrived in Huntington, is how do you compare to last year’s team,” Fulford said.

He said the ultimate goal is to be the best team in the country.

“We had a really good team last year and we were preseason number one in a few polls and I think we’ll be preseason 1-5 this year in some polls and that’s our ultimate goal is to win a national championship and to continue to bring in high character kids that make the state proud,” Fulford said.

Wednesday night Huntington Prep took care of Bluefield College’s Junior Varsity team, 99 to 52.

Trailer: Two Dollar Radio's 'The Greenbrier Ghost'

The company that published Crapalachia by West Virginia writer Scott McClanahan is venturing into film and one of their first projects will be based on the legend of a Greenbrier County woman murdered in 1897.

Zona Heaster Shue was declared as murdered after the court heard testimony from the victim’s mother, who argued that her daughter’s spirit appeared to tell the truth behind her death. Shue’s Husband, Erasmus Stribbling Trout Shue (also known as Edward) was convicted of murder and sentenced to the West Virginia State Penitentary in Moundsville. Edward died March 13, 1900 of an unknown epidemic at the prison.

The state erected a state historical marker near the cemetery in which Zona Shue is buried. It reads:

Interred in nearby cemetery is Zona Heaster Shue. Her death in 1897 was presumed natural until her spirit appeared to her mother to describe how she was killed by her husband Edward. Autopsy on the exhumed body verified the apparition’s account. Edward, found guilty of murder, was sentenced to the state prison. Only known case in which testimony from a ghost helped convict a murderer.

Co-produced by West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s very own Chris Oxley, The Greenbrier Ghost was heavily mentioned by McClanahan in his memoir based on growing up in southern West Virginia, Crapalachia.

Here’s the trailer from McClanahan and Oxley:

Book of ghost stories from Berkeley Springs writer lands in time for Halloween

Today is All Hallows Eve, or Halloween, which traces its roots to Gaelic culture when it was believed on this day the boundaries between the living and dead overlap.

It’s also a great day to read a ghost story, which is why Berkeley Springs writer John Douglas made sure his new book, A Fog of Ghosts: Haunted Tales and Odd Pieces, was published this month.

Douglas is the former editor of the Morgan Messenger newspaper and he started writing ghost stories in the mid 1970’s. Every year he’d pen one for the paper’s Halloween edition.

“And people loved them, the years I didn’t do it they asked where it was,” Douglas said.

Douglas made some of the stories up and some were based on local legends and stories he heard about haunted houses. The book contains about a dozen previously published ghost stories and several new ones.

Two chapters focus on a 1950 cold case in which a red headed woman was found dead. One chapter talks about police efforts to identify the woman and solve her murder. The next chapter is Douglas’s fictionalized version with a possible answer to who killed the woman and why.

Some of the stories have a Civil War theme, including one Douglas created for the newspaper about a young woman who was fascinated with Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson. The woman hid in a creek along the side of a country road hoping to get a glimpse of her hero. Instead she was accidentally shot and killed by a soldier who mistook her for a rabbit and, the story goes, she still haunts that stretch of road today.

“It’s funny, there was a Michigan college professor who was doing a Stonewall Jackson tour and he was doing some legwork to figure out where he was going to take his people,” Douglas said. “He called me up a couple years after the story was in the paper and said ‘all the old people out there on Winchester Grade Rd. tell me about this old story about the girl being shot who wanted a glimpse of Stonewall Jackson.’”

Douglas had to tell the professor that he made the story up for the newspaper.

JohnDouglasReading.mp3

Hear John Douglas read a ghost story from his book that's based on a tale from Morgan County, W.Va.

But, does Douglas believe in ghosts himself? Not really.

“I think there are things we can’t explain, but I don’t know that I believe in ghosts,” Douglas said. “We carry things around in our mind and we superimpose our own minds on the places we are.”

What was the Esau scrip?

Now we return to the second of a three-part story about the haunted history of the Whipple Company Store in Fayette County. The store was built at the turn of the 20th century as West Virginia coal miners began agitating to bring the union to the southern coal fields, and is now operated as a museum of coal camp life.

Producer Catherine Moore visited the store with several locals for a story on the paranormal activity reported there, but got a lot more than she bargained for. In addition to the usual ghost tales, we heard yesterday the story of Esau scrip – issued to women specifically, with their very bodies as collateral on the loan. But as we’ll hear, not everyone is so sure that these stories add up to HISTORY. Here’s part two of “The Soul of a Company Store.”

“We’ve had multitudes of women and tell us as little girls they remember their mothers coming to the company store and one of the things that a lot of more the lovely ladies had to do was come upstairs. Some of the young girls had the stories shared by their mothers stating that they would be escorted in the shoe room. There would be a selected guard that would be waiting for them and they would receive a brand new pair of shoes with no accountability other than to perform whatever the service the guard wished to have in lieu of pay. We had one woman in particular share with us that her mother was a young girl about 25 years old and bought her first pair of shoes here and the women’s entire life those shoes remained in the shoe box on her closet shelf never to be worn and she refused to wear another pair of shoes her entire life. She made her shoes out of cardboard, newspapers and twine.” Joy Lynn, owner and tour guide, Whipple Company Store

“It is disturbing to myself and those who came before me from that area to think that the females of our family could have been forced into that situation without us reacting. Those men I know from years of research, family unit and unit of friends, would have done one of two things. They would have either left the camp as soon as they knew this kind of behavior was required or a potential danger or they would react to it violently.” Dr. Paul Rakes, former coal miner now history professor at West Virginia University Tech

“Don’t look now but it did come out in a violent way. Blair Mountain was about the union card but it was also about settling the scores and solving the Esau problem and the way the scrip was administered, the entire social system and the cultural system that was imposed on the miners.” Wes Harris, sociologist, labor organizer, editor “When Miners March” and “Dead Ringers: Why Miners March.”

UBB victims' families furious over amusement park attraction

Kings Dominion does not plan to host a Halloween themed attraction called, Miner’s Revenge next year.

The Virginia-based amusement park does not plan to host a Halloween themed attraction called, Miner’s Revenge next year. The park charged more than $32 for admission during the weekends in October. The haunted attraction’s similarities to the Upper Big Branch disaster similarities infuriated the families of the victims. Some have said it’s eerily similar to their real life nightmare.

Halloween Haunt 2013 at Kings Dominion featured attractions included Edge of Darkness, a show described to “bring a decaying circus back to life.” Zombie High is listed as “an outbreak that would cover the world in days.” Miner’s Revenge doesn’t have a description on the website anymore.

Ellen Smith, Owner and Managing Editor of Mine Safety and Health News quoted the description in an article before it was taken down stating in part:

“It was reported to be the worst coal mine accident in history. The families of missing miners begged for help but it was decided that a rescue was too dangerous. The miners were left entombed deep underground. Lamps at their sides and pick-axes in their hands they are searching for the men who left them to die…“

After reading this Smith started a petition to have the attraction stopped.

“I questioned whether or not I was overstepping a line in journalism where I was becoming part of the story,” Smith said. “I didn’t want to be but I wanted Kings Dominion to understand just how serious this was.”

"You would not make an attraction from what happened on 9-11. You would not have an attraction of someone being stuck in a 110 story high-rise and not being able to get out because the middle part of the structure was blown apart and that people was jumping out of windows you would never do that. I did not understand why they chose to take this theme when it hits this close to home. And they’re in Virginia they’re next door neighbors," said Smith.

Smith also said, even despite her status as a journalist, she “cannot be silent.”

Smith’s petition collected more than 300 signatures while a petition started by a Beckley resident collect more than 100.

The Halloween Haunt event ended this past weekend concluding the amusement park’s season as well. Still, Smith says she plans to present the signatures to Kings Dominion and hopes to send a message along with the names.

“What might seem so innocent can really really hurt people and bring back memories and traumatic events that they don’t need,” she said. “They’ve already been traumatized.”

Gary Quarles, who has actively spoken out to honor the memory of his son Gary Wayne Quarles, in the past, rounded the courage to share his fury about the attraction.

Twenty-nine helmets hanging on red crosses close to the UBB entrance is just one memorial the community setup after the explosion.

“We’re all trying to heal and go on with our everyday life,” he said. “We would like to be just left alone.”

In an email, Kings Dominion spokesperson Gene Petriello said, “Miners Revenge is not designed, nor intended, to depict a specific situation. Rather it is simply a themed Halloween attraction for the 2013 Haunt season at Kings Dominion.”

But Quarles says the description hits way too close to home.

“The public don’t really need to know,” he said. “They don’t need to know about all that stuff about our loved ones whoever could have been blown plum to pieces or who wasn’t.”

The UMWA joined the families to say “We are very disappointed by this outrageous “attraction” at Kings Dominion. It’s extremely insensitive to all families who’ve lost loved ones in mining tragedies over the years.”

Petriello said, upon completion of each season, all Halloween attractions are reviewed to allow for new themes. As part of its regular rotation, Kings Dominion does not intend to operate the Miner’s Revenge Halloween attraction next year.

It’s unclear if the attraction will remain on the “regular rotation” schedule past 2014.

State Film Office offers new functionality to locations database

The West Virginia Film Office is always looking for the next great location for a film or television shoot. If you own a home, business, or property that you would like the film and television industry to consider featuring in a potential production, you can now post your information to the film office’s online locations library.

“In addition to tax incentives, one of the most effective tools utilized by the film office to recruit the film industry to the state is its online locations database,” said Pam Haynes, director of the West Virginia Film Office.

The database features the state’s communities, landmarks, diverse architectural structures, topography, and much more.

“This is a very competitive business, and the availability of online information about various locations is an essential resource for film industry personnel to quickly search for the next perfect location for filming,” said Haynes.

Jamie Cope, location services coordinator for the film office, stated that the current database has nearly 46,000 images comprising more than 4,300 locations. With this new functionality, property owners will be able to submit their own photos for inclusion in the library at no cost.

“We hope that this new feature will increase the number of private homes and businesses represented in the library,” said Cope. “It is our focus to offer the industry the widest array of locations available from which to choose, and this new submission engine will help us reach that goal,” he added.

“Film office staff frequently receives requests for certain physical looks in homes for shooting, but it is challenging to reach out to hundreds of homeowners statewide when turnaround time is critical,” Cope said.

He explained that some requests are very specific, such as the search for a white, split-entry home with blue shutters in a cul-de-sac.

“The more locations represented in the database, the better the state’s chances are of attracting more production business,” said Cope.

“To assist in this new effort, the film office has prepared and posted photography tips to review before submitting images for consideration,” Cope added. “And the person submitting the photos must be the owner of the property.”

Cope said that the owner’s contact information will remain hidden from the public search engine.

“If a producer is interested in a property, they will contact the film office, which will subsequently contact the owner to gauge interest. It is always up to the owners to decide on a case-by-case basis whether they wish to approve filming on their properties.”

To submit a property for consideration, visit www.wvfilm.com/locations, click on the button to “Submit Locations,” and follow the simple directions.

The film office has prepared “Tips for Photographing Your Property,” which can be viewed under the same link. All questions may be directed to Jamie Cope at 304-957-9324 or by email at james.b.cope@wv.gov.

The West Virginia Film Office is a section of the West Virginia Division of Tourism, under the West Virginia Department of Commerce. Visit the film office at www.wvfilm.com