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Standing alone in the quiet woods surrounding what is now nearly a ghost town, the gracious abandoned church in this 8x10 black and white art photo had a tale to tell. Sadly, few visited the sweetly pretty old church in its final years, save a few photographers and those wishing to document the church's existence--and the building's passing, thanks to decades of neglect after its abandonment.

Many places have a sense, almost a personality. St. John's stood in welcome and in faith that someday people will return despite the decay and her increasingly weatherbeaten walls.

Hope dies, but faith endures.

Unfortunately for St. John's, human help did not arrive in time. Just a few months after my visit, St. John's succumbed at last to the elements it had so stoically withstood for so many years. Abandoned by its flock and left to nature and nature's God, St. John's collapsed into itself.

Only the steeple remains, and even that leans.

Built in 1918 by a coal company, St. John's Baptist Church served the black residents of Stotesbury, West Virginia. At some point during the 1980s, St. John's congregation moved to a nearby town, leaving the quaint, pretty church alone. The building and its cemetery were considered among the state's most endangered historic places, and individuals were making efforts to rescue it.

I traveled south to find it and photograph it, and was not disappointed by the quietly grand old place. The grounds were appropriately serene, the church and its centuries-old cemetery surrounded, shrouded by the creation of the One once worshipped in the building.

The town of Stotesbury itself isn't in much better shape than the church; there is absolutely no reason to visit other than to see what remained of St. John's. No motels, no B&Bs, no diners-not even bad ones. So it was odd, but fitting, to see such a pretty building decaying at the end of the dying town.

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