The real secrets of the Petrified Girl Case

Raised in the hills of eastern Kentucky, I grew up with the legend of the “petrified girl.” Set in the little farming village of Ezel, near my hometown in Morgan County, the story evokes religious accounts of “incorruptible” corpses as well as ghoulish tales of the “undead.” Late in the last century—one account says “in 1880,” another “the 1880s,” still another “around 1900”—workmen were moving graves from the old Ezel burying ground to a new cemetery site. In some accounts, the reason for the relocation is not recalled, but most state it was due to a typhoid epidemic that stemmed from the graveyard’s pollution of local wells. In the course of the disinterment's, the men uncovered the grave of a young girl. Some vague accounts have neither name nor age for her, while others reach near agreement that she was “a 17-year-old daughter of a Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler” or more specifically “Minnie Wheeler, a seventeen-year-old girl.”

When her casket was reached, it was reportedly too heavy to be lifted.  But more men and ropes were obtained, and a hole was drilled in the coffin to let water out. 

We unveil most secret paranormal phenomena daily in this blog

Paranormal phenomena are events, circumstances, or things whose existence has not been proved by science. Such phenomena include psychic abilities like telepathy and precognition; experiences that suggest the spirit survives the body’s death, such as reincarnation and ghost sightings; encounters with unknown beasts such as bigfoot or the Loch Ness monsters; and sightings of extraterrestrials and their spacecraft. Some of these phenomena have been reported on multiple occasions, perhaps in several locations, whereas others are apparently one-time events. For example, whereas ghost sightings have been reported throughout history and throughout the world, sightings of creatures like the Flatwoods Monster—a large-headed creature that supposedly emerged from a crashed alien spaceship near Flatwoods, Virginia, in September 1952—appear to be one-time events.

When reported, such sightings are typically met with skepticism regarding whether the person claiming to have encountered the phenomenon really did see or experience something unusual, to the point of the most ardent skeptics accusing the person making the claim of being mentally unstable. In other cases, the witnesses are simply said to have been mistaken in identifying what they observed.

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Strange mysteries—UFO and haunted-house reports, claims of spontaneous human combustion and weeping icons, and even more bizarre enigmas—continue to fascinate. We call them paranormal because they are beyond the normal range of nature and human experience. It is a broad term that includes not only the “supernatural” but also such reported anomalies as the Loch Ness monster and extraterrestrials, which—if they exist—could be quite natural creatures.

I have investigated such alleged phenomena for thirty years. I joke that I’ve been in more haunted houses than Casper and have even caught a few “ghosts.” I have gone undercover to attend table-tipping séances, obtained police warrants against a mediumistic purveyor of fake spirit pictures, exposed bogus “x-ray clairvoyants,” tested dowsers, interviewed UFO eyewitnesses and alien “abductees,” examined “weeping” icons, and much, much more.

Whenever possible, I have taken a hands-on approach in my investigations.