About This Location
The oldest church building in continuous use west of the Alleghenies, built in 1796. During the Civil War, the church served as a hospital for wounded soldiers from the Battle of Lewisburg, fought on May 23, 1862. Ninety-five unknown Confederate soldiers were buried in a cross-shaped mass grave nearby.
The Ghost Story
The Old Stone Presbyterian Church in Lewisburg is the oldest church in continuous use west of the Allegheny Mountains, and its walls have absorbed more human suffering than any house of worship should have to bear. Built in 1796 from native limestone, with walls twenty-two inches thick, the church was constructed to endure -- and it has endured through frontier violence, civil war, and the quiet accumulation of two centuries of death and grief that has left the building permanently inhabited by presences that refuse to depart.
The church's most traumatic chapter began on May 23, 1862, when the Battle of Lewisburg erupted across the valley. Union and Confederate forces fought from opposite hills, with the church standing in the valley between them. When the shooting stopped, the church was pressed into service as a field hospital. The pews were torn out to make room for cots, and wounded soldiers from both sides were carried into the limestone sanctuary to be treated, amputated, or left to die. The groans of the injured and the screams of men under the surgeon's saw filled a building designed for hymns and prayer.
Outside, the aftermath was even more brutal. Ninety-five Confederate soldiers killed in the battle were buried in a cross-shaped common grave along the south wall of the church. The Union commander refused to allow funeral services for the enemy dead, reportedly in retaliation for sniper fire that had killed one of his wounded soldiers. The Confederates were unceremoniously dumped into a trench and covered with earth, denied the dignity of individual burial, religious rites, or even the recording of their names. That mass grave remains beside the church today, marked by a monument but still holding its anonymous dead.
The paranormal activity at Old Stone Church is focused and visceral. Visitors have reported hearing the cries and moans of injured soldiers emanating from inside the church at night -- sounds of suffering that carry through the thick limestone walls and into the cemetery where the dead are buried just yards away. When the sounds prompt investigation, the building is found to be empty, locked, and dark. The moaning continues regardless.
Inside the church during daylight hours, the apparition of a soldier has been seen sitting in a pew. He appears solid and real, dressed in a Civil War-era uniform, sitting quietly as though waiting for a service to begin. When visitors approach him, he dissolves into nothing, leaving the pew empty and undisturbed. The experience is reported frequently enough that regular churchgoers have learned to note the soldier's presence without alarm.
The cemetery surrounding Old Stone Church contains its own legend. A statue known as the Angel of Death marks the grave of a young girl named Maud, who died of influenza at the age of eleven. According to local tradition, if anyone dares to kiss the statue, they will die within a year. The curse has been part of Lewisburg folklore for generations, and while no deaths have been conclusively attributed to the Angel, the statue remains a dare that few locals are willing to take.
Old Stone Presbyterian Church continues to hold services every Sunday, as it has without interruption since 1796. The congregation worships in the same limestone sanctuary where soldiers bled and died, beside the mass grave of ninety-five men who were denied the prayers that now fill the building each week. The church has outlasted every conflict, every tragedy, and every generation that has passed through its doors. The spirits who remain seem to understand this permanence. They are not leaving. They never were.
