Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 96, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 April 1914 — STILL FIND WITCHES [ARTICLE]

STILL FIND WITCHES

Woman Freed for Sorcery Recently in Pennsylvania. “Hex” Doctor Shoots Wax Image to Relieve Pains Caused by Powers of the Evil Eye—Salt in a Lawyer’s Bed. New York. —A woman tried for witchcraft! We hold up our hands and wonder at the of those narrow-minded Puritans in Salem, Mass. Such a situation seems so remote from anything that would bis possible today! So we are in the habit of saying, but it is not an impossibility. Only a short time ago a woman was tried for witchcraft in a court of law in south Pennsylvania. That was not the name used in the charge that was brought against her, but that was the accusation that was lodged in the minds of every one who was interested in the case, which was tried in a region so thoroughly saturated with traditional superstition that not even the present prosperity and general education can destroy them. Technically the woman was convicted of obtaining money under false pretenses, but actually she was convicted of being a witch —a “hex” doctor who “powwowed." In the home of a prominent lawyer in Camden county there is a hole in the post of a mahogany bedstead filled with salt which witnesses to his belief In witchcraft. At one time he prosecuted a case against an old woman who, when convicted and fined, left the court muttering incantations and vowing vengeance. That night the lawyer was suddenly attacked with violent pains in the head. The curse had come upon him and he feared the wretched old woman, whom he believed to be responsible for it. Only witchcraft can drive out witchcraft. No doctor of medicine would do in such a case. A day laborer who was born with a caul over his face was brought in through the back door and taken to the bedroom of the Buffering lawyer. The electric lights had been extinguished and a candle flickered at each side of the bed. Looking at the patient through the veil, which he avers *s the identical one that J4e was borti with, the “hex” doctor muttered his peculiar ritual, tied a rattlesnake around the sufferer’s neck and bored the hole in the northeast leg of the bed, filling it with salt, over which he had chanted incantations. This done, he announced that the evil powers had notified the witch, who lived in a hut at some distance, that she could no longer hold dominion over the body of her enemy, the lawyer. The patient believed that his pains ceased from that hour. A prosperous merchant in Carlisle permitted the body of his infant child to be covered with a coating of green paint in obedience to the orders of a “hex" doctor who had been called in to ward off the evil spirits. v--- * . A stranger in Carlisle pretended that he had suffered from pain in the stomach which he believed to be due to the evil eye of an old woman of the town ,who was generally believed

to have the ability to exercise this baleful power. A “hex” doctor vißited him, and when he thought he had discovered a faith in their mysteries the stranger withdrew and later summoned him to his house, where he was informed that he had discovered that an old witch had made a wax Image of the stranger and stuck pins in certain parts of it. Hence the pains. Could he be cured? asked the patient. The “hex” doctor assured him that his powers were superior to those of the witch and he undertook to prove it Getting a wax image, he placed it in front of the fireplace, shoved a brass bullet into an old muzzle-loading pistol and extinguished all the lights but that made by the fire. The doctor knelt on the floor and the patient was told to hold his hands upon the seat of his pains. The bullet was then fired into the abdomen of the wax figure, while incantations were said, and the man was assured that he was cured. With all truthfulness he could say that he had no more pain and for himself had proved the existence of witchcraft in Pennsylvania in the twentieth century.