03/31/2026
The Halloween Call That Never Ended
A Small Town Mysteries Feature
Romney, West Virginia is the kind of town where darkness settles early against the mountains and stays awhile. Streets empty fast after sundown. Porch lights glow against quiet roads. On most nights, the loudest sound comes from wind moving through the trees that crowd the hillsides. People know each other here. They know who belongs and who does not. Which is why, when someone disappears, the silence feels wrong almost immediately.
On Halloween night in 1997, nineteen year old Lisa Ann Crouse was supposed to go home.
She never made it.
October thirty first should have been ordinary. Costumes, late autumn air, families settling in before winter crept down from the Appalachians. Lisa had plans to spend the night with her family, something simple and familiar. At some point that evening, she found herself at the home of her boyfriend, David Wayne Holsomback, in Romney. What happened inside that house would become the last confirmed chapter of her story.
Before she vanished, Lisa made a phone call.
She contacted her family and asked them to come get her. Those who spoke with her later said she sounded upset, uneasy, ready to leave. It was not a casual check in. It was the kind of call people make when something feels wrong, but they cannot yet explain why.
Her family prepared to go.
They never reached her.
According to Holsomback, Lisa disappeared shortly afterward. He told investigators she was simply gone. No clear explanation. No witnesses seeing her leave. No confirmed direction of travel into the cold Appalachian night. Just a young woman who stepped out of certainty and into mystery within a matter of minutes.
In small towns, timelines matter. Someone usually notices movement. A passing car. Footsteps along gravel roads. A figure walking beneath streetlights. Yet no one reported seeing Lisa leave. No verified sightings followed. It was as if the mountains themselves closed around her and erased the moment entirely.
She was officially reported missing on November fourth, four days after she was last seen. By then, precious time had already slipped away. Investigators searched extensively, including wooded areas behind Holsomback’s residence where dense terrain and thick undergrowth make secrets easy to hide. Nothing conclusive was found. No evidence strong enough to bring charges. No discovery that could explain where Lisa went after that final phone call.
But absence leaves questions behind.
Why did she want to leave so urgently
What happened between the call and her disappearance
How does someone vanish without crossing paths with another soul in a town where strangers rarely go unnoticed
Over the years, suspicion lingered in conversation more than in courtrooms. Lisa’s family has long believed someone close to her knows what happened that night. Investigators have revisited the case, followed leads, and listened to tips that surface from time to time, but answers remain just out of reach.
Romney moves forward the way small towns always do. New families arrive. Old businesses close. Seasons turn across the mountains without asking permission. Yet cases like Lisa Crouse’s never fully fade. Her name still surfaces in quiet conversations, spoken carefully, as though saying it too loudly might disturb something unfinished.
Because somewhere between a phone call for help and a ride that never arrived, Lisa Ann Crouse disappeared into the dark hills of West Virginia.
No confirmed sightings.
No recovery.
No resolution.
Only a ringing question that has echoed since Halloween night nineteen ninety seven.
Who was the last person to know where Lisa Ann Crouse really went, and why has the answer stayed buried for so long.
Until someone decides to speak, the mountains keep their silence, and the night she asked to come home remains unfinished.
