Whipple Company Store Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

The Soul of a Company Store

This Halloween morning we conclude a three-part story about the haunted history of Whipple Company Store in Fayette County, W.Va. The spooky stories told there go beyond typical ghost tales and towards a horror that bleeds into reality. So far, we’ve heard two stories that point to forced sexual servitude on the part of women who lived in the coal camps around Whipple. Esau scrip was allegedly issued to women whose husbands were out of work – a kind of loan in which the women’s very bodies were the collateral. We also heard about a room in the store where women were supposedly forced to trade sexual favors for new pairs of shoes. Some historians are skeptical, citing, among other concerns, a lack of written documentation. Others say these stories have been buried, but are far from dead. Producer Catherine Moore visited the store one night with paranormal investigators and several other locals with ties to its history. The story picks up in an upstairs room known as Ellie’s Room, after a spirit that’s said to live there. Two ghost hunters speak of what they found there one night.

“This is a really tall figure that literally comes out of the wall. Jane Skeldon, ghost hunter

“I don’t know what it is. We think it’s an apparition of a woman. The way she comes out from the wall and turns to look at us it’s like she letting us know she’s here and then she’s gone.” Bonnie Hughes, ghost hunter

Wess Harris is the editor of “When Miners March” and “Dead Ringers: Why Miners March.”

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.”

Ghostly stories from the Whipple Company Store

Built during a time of labor strife in the southern coalfields, the Whipple Company Store in Fayette County is one of those buildings that just LOOKS haunted. Every Halloween, the owners offer tours full of history, folklore, and ghost stories. Producer Catherine Moore set out to do a fun piece about the reported paranormal activity at the store with a couple of local ghost hunters. Well, she got more than she bargained for and found out that there’s a lot more to the so-called hauntings, and to the history of the store, than meets the eye. Now here’s part one of “The Soul of a Company Store,” a three-part series that concludes on Halloween morning.

“I don’t know. I don’t know why. I could smell like a man comes out of the mines and he has the coal dust on his clothes. It just rose up.” Cora Sue Barrett, visitor at the Whipple Company Store who suddenly smells coal dust in a tiny metal safe room.

Wess Harris is the editor of “When Miners March” and “Dead Ringers: Why Miners March.”