The Haunting In Star Junction

Founded in 1893, Star Junction today is a quiet village with a population of roughly six hundred people. The neighborhood consists of duplex-style houses that were built for coal mining families. The village is located just off of highway 51 in Fayette County, between Perryopolis and Smock, Pennsylvania is an unincorporated community that sits in the heart of Perry Township and was once home to a bustling coal-mining center. 

The beehive ovens came into place when the Washington No. 2 mines opened. The coke ovens can be seen nestled along the hillside just past the crossroads of Route 51 and Main Street during the cooler months when the thick Pennsylvania foliage isn't blocking them from view.

Star Junction was at one time a popular site where a railroad depot, company store, and over 4,000 miners worked from dawn to dusk. The "village" is filled with coal patch-style company houses where families of those who once labored remain today. By day, Star Junction is quiet and unassuming, but nightfall brings a host of tales, legends, and unexplained circumstances that only those who have experienced can tell in detail.

The darkness of the night never fails to emanate at precisely the right time during certain nights, and it is at these times that the mist envelopes the Star Junction, making visibility nearly null and void. At times during the blackness, evil would rear its ugly head in the form of unrecognizable entities that are shadowed from full view. The dark, black diabolical entities and apparitions come across to the living as lifeless and void of all emotion. They appear to be in constant search of something that is no longer there.

Living in a small community on most days was uneventful. The town was sleepy, lacking in crime, and everyone was acquainted with their neighbors. During the day, people went about their business in a lively manner, planting flowers in the summer, shoveling snow in the winter, and catching crayfish down by the creek when the weather permitted.

We moved to Star Junction in early 2002 into a duplex that had once been inhabited by a family who had lived in the residence for more than a hundred years. Unaware to us, the house carried a history that we would eventually find hard to wrap our mind's around. More than just a little haunted, our house never tired of paranormal episodes, yet we somehow still managed to live in the house located on Main Street for just over a decade.

Our two younger daughters enrolled in Frazier and quickly made friends in the community. Our new home was soon bustling with activity. Sleepovers, birthday parties, family gatherings, and summer barbecues were regular occurrences at our home. Unfortunately, so were the ghost sightings, paranormal encounters, and unexplained events that would shape our lives in a place that we never could have possibly envisioned. Our personal circumstances involving the paranormal soon escalated into the double digits as far as counting our episodes with ghosts go. 

We hadn't been in the house a week when our first paranormal encounter occurred. The girls had just stepped off of the bus and were walking through the kitchen door when our youngest daughter, Joni abruptly stopped and stared at the table. Later she asked me, "who the lady was that was sitting at the kitchen table with me drinking coffee." I responded to her in an inquisitive manner because I had had no visitor on that particular day. Curious, I then asked her to describe the woman. She told me that she had brown hair, a plaid shirt, and large glasses. At the time we assumed that she had a severely overactive imagination and I summed up the episode as merely nothing more than my youngest attempting to mess with my mind.

A week later, we began to notice strange sounds and smells. The aroma of cherry pipe tobacco was prevalent. The feeling that we were not alone was strong, but at the same time, we felt safe despite the strange ambiances that the house was sending out. I unpacked our boxes and made the house as homey as I could. My modern decor clashed with the gold, green, and brown of the home's antiquated furnishings, but I made the best of what I had to work with. I enrolled our two younger daughters in school and John found work, so it was just me and our oldest daughter in the house all day. 

A few months later, we were informed by our landlord that his father, Ivan had passed away. He asked us if we would like to move over to the larger side of the duplex as it offered quite a bit more space and was modernized. We quickly agreed due to there being an extra bedroom, and the other side was completely furnished, including the contents of the cupboards, drawers, and the refrigerator. 

Our landlord, Carl informed us that we were welcome to whatever we needed, but that if we found any papers, certificates, a long-ago buried time capsule, or something of importance to let him know. We soon discovered that the house was a treasure trove stuffed to the rafters with relics and antiques. After exploring, we found that the kitchen cupboards were a haven filled with several Tupperware bowls filled with silver quarters, two dollar bills, silver certificates, and letters of importance that included insurance beneficiaries. The attic held games and trinkets from the 1920s through the 1970s.

After informing our landlord that we had discovered the mother lode, he came and collected money and several family treasures that he had no clue had even existed. He had little interest in the vintage games or other things that had been left behind under layers of dust from another era. With his permission, we kept the vintage furniture, kitchen utensils, and other embellishments that the prior occupant had used. 

We later determined that this may have been our first mistake. Ghosts have a way of attaching themselves to beloved objects. After living in the Star Junction duplex for just a few months, we quickly learned just how powerful ghosts can be. True, they were harmless, and they appeared to welcome us into it, but they also made their point that this was their home.

We learned that power outages were a common thing, but we also learned that this was not a problem for us as far as the morning was concerned. Someone would tap John on the shoulder when the alarm clock failed, waking him just in time for work. We would see ethereal images of a man dressed in a plaid shirt, sitting on the couch, reflected in the television screen when it was off. We would hear disembodied footsteps running from the upstairs, down into the kitchen all hours of the day and night.

Our names would be called, but never would someone answer when we replied. The strange odor of cherry pipe tobacco was stronger on this side of the duplex. The house was a three-story that had a cellar with a few dark rooms. One of those rooms had two deep freezers. One was packed with cherries and several frozen turkeys. There was also a personal stash of homemade wine that was endless. We opened one of the bottles but were greeted with the foul stench of bitter grapes that had met their expiration.

The doors to the home had a way of opening by themselves, and the cellar was never at rest. The sound of bricks being chipped away by vintage tools and a restless ghost who had unfinished business resounded throughout the night. Orbs and a strange mist enveloped the cellar, and you always had the feeling that you were being watched. The dark, wet atmosphere led to coldness and an atmosphere of secrets hidden behind the cement walls that appeared to reach out in hushed whispers by the restless skeletons that inhabited the portals from days gone by where the past is attempting to inform the present.

Curious about our new and unexplained situation, we went to the next-door neighbors to ask a variety of questions about the prior occupants of the house that we were now living in. They informed us that the lady who had lived there had died on Thanksgiving morning several years before. This gave us a reason as to why there were a half dozen turkeys in the deep freeze. Her husband bought one turkey each year but just could not bring himself to roast it in light of his wife's passing on such a beloved holiday.

Through time, and after thoroughly searching the entire house, we had located a bundle of photos and a drawer full of silver certificates. Our youngest daughter could not help but notice a photo of a dark-haired lady dressed in a plaid shirt, who was wearing glasses. We called the landlord and informed him of the things that we had discovered. 

Carl came to pick the family heirlooms up one afternoon. We asked him who the woman was in the photo. He told us that it was his mother, Bernice, who had passed on Thanksgiving morning. We learned that this was the female ghost who had sat with me when we lived on the other side of the duplex just six months prior.

The man of the house had fallen and broken his hip while changing the oil in his truck He had temporarily been placed in a care home, but had passed away due to complications from pneumonia. The couple, Bernice and Ivan had lived in the house for over fifty years. Prior to that, the house had belonged to her parents. The family had a deep history and they had no intentions of interrupting their lives, so they carried on as if they were still inhabiting the only home that they knew.

Once we learned of the couple's demise things really went out of bounds. We began to physically see what strong spirits are capable of performing in the afterlife. On Christmas day, my husband and oldest daughter, Jennifer were sitting on the couch when suddenly the living room door opened and slammed shut. The image of Ivan's reflection on the television was becoming a regular thing. We had no clue that this was just the beginning of things to come.

Star Junction was no stranger to unexplained deaths during our time living in the borough. While we only lived in the community for a decade, it did not go unnoticed that many of our neighbors passed away. Accidental deaths and suicides were at a fairly high range for one sleepy town, but then again, the patch had a reputation for never sleeping, and for such a small area, past and present, the death toll was a bit staggering. 

The creek located behind our house, just past the ball field we soon learned was a hotbed for paranormal activity. We would see dark shadows and vivid images of a small white misty apparition that appeared to be that of a small child. After asking about the history of the area, we were informed that a young girl had drowned in the creek during the hiatus of the junctions booming coke ovens. Many families had moved to the area in search of work, making the town a prime location for new residents moving into the small community.

The creek held many secrets that included several supernatural events that our friends and family experienced while visiting. One night after cleaning up, a neighbor and I witnessed a dark black shadow, seen through the kitchen window, totally engulfing the backyard in a way that was bone-chilling, eerie, and diabolical. The crickets were quickly silenced, replaced by a flapping noise that was not from this world, and the perimeter surrounding the rear of our home suddenly became cold and uninviting. A group of us witnessed a huge black mass that moved slowly through the yard and simply dissipated into thin air. 

On another occasion, while sitting around the kitchen table, our middle daughter noticed the sound of a slight musical backdrop reminiscent of "lullaby music." Appearing slightly freaked out, Jessica asked her dad, siblings, and myself if we could hear it. In unison, we said, "no." Then, within seconds, all hell broke loose. We also began to hear the resounding harmony, slight as it was, of the lyrics, "Lullaby, and good night." Then, without hesitation, the twelve windows that lined our mudroom slammed shut in unison. This sudden anomaly gave us all a reason to jump out of our skin. Next, the apparition of a small man formed near the windows. Needless to say, we all came unglued at the hinges.

A few months later, we had a birthday party for our middle daughter, Jessica. They had invited several friends who continued to run up and down the stairs for most of the party. One particular guest who appeared to sense the turmoil revolving around our house noted that the ghosts were attempting to reach out to us in an effort to keep our family safe. After ascending the stairway, he quickly stopped at our bedroom door, turned, and stared at the bed. Being sensitive to the deceased, Eric appeared to be in somewhat of a trance as he peered at our bed. 

He then asked us how we could sleep in that room. We informed him that it was our bedroom. He then described a lady with dark hair who had passed away while in the bed, in that room, and that she was trying to warn me that I needed to stay out of that room or else I would get sick. Not long after this declaration was made I found myself in the hospital with adult-onset asthma and pneumonia. 

Driving into town on foggy nights, we often witnessed the sight of a shadow man, dressed in period clothing. His antiquated coat and boots appeared to be attire straight out of the 1800s. The horrifying image walked slowly along the edge of the ballfield, near the creek. As I slowed down the car to get a better look, we all would notice that the ghost man was void of a face, replaced by a blackened void of nothingness. Regardless of his having a lack of facial extremities, you could feel that he was peering back at you, delving straight through your soul and leaving a permanent mark that would not allow you to forget his presence.

Needless to say, we soon discovered that our time in this lovely, but very haunted abode had met its deadline. The paranormal encounters were becoming too much for any of us to handle. Friends and family were getting freaked out by the regular paranormal encounters. Our daughters who had once loved sleepovers were afraid to ask their friends to spend the night due to never knowing what would happen from one day to the next. Our time had come to move on.

I would love to say that the paranormal encounters ended in Star Junction, but they have only gotten worse. Instead of fearing them, we have learned to embrace them. Our friends and family have witnessed many of these supernatural events with us and although it scares several of them, they understand that some things are beyond our control and totally inescapable. It has become apparent to us that the ghosts have a story to tell. 

Star Junction is located in Fayette County, home to hundreds of historic buildings and sites, and the center of many haunted venues, homes, and nearby towns. The haunted borough of Newell is just 9 miles down the scenic Central School country road, and the notably haunted and historic, Quaker Church and Cemetery is located along Quaker Church Road just a few miles away in Perryopolis Pennsylvania. 

According to the most popular urban legend, this small cemetery dates back to the early 1700s and was founded by the Quaker pioneers. The paranormal hotspot was once used as the location for the practice of black magic. It is believed that the cemetery is haunted by dark spirits, as a result of this. 

Sitting in the middle of the cemetery is the historic Quaker church. The small one-room building is made of rough-cut stone. Both the stone church and surrounding graveyard are known for being both cursed and haunted. There is writing on the walls inside of the building which describes how a person, who is buried outside died, and if you read the description of their death, you will die the same death as they did. Another misfortune has to do with one of the headstones being cursed, meaning that if you stand at the grave, walk over it, or read the poem inscribed on the stone, which begins by stating " Remember youth as you go by" you could have bad luck or worse.