Though Thomas White specializes in Pennsylvania history, legends and folklore, he was amazed by how deeply the belief in witches permeated society throughout the state.
White studied the strange but true story of witchcraft in Pennsylvania from the Colonial days to the present for his latest book, “Witches in Pennsylvania: Occult History and Lore.”
“I was surprised, having studied Pennsylvania history for 20 years, at the depth that this permeated society,” White, an archivist and curator of special collections at Duquesne University and adjunct professor at the university and at La Roche College, said in a recent phone interview. “A lot of people generally think it was confined to Pennsylvania Dutch country, but really, it followed Germans throughout the state.”
“Witches of Pennsylvania: Occult History and Lore” by Thomas White is available through retailers including Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com. It is also available as an ebook through B&N’s Nook and Amazon’s Kindle.
White focuses on traditional European witchcraft in Pennsylvania and said the practices are highly documented in Pennsylvania, which may be due largely in part to the excellent preservation of the state’s history.
He explains in the book that witchcraft in the state exists as part of a larger system of magical/religious folk healing and supernatural beliefs brought by the colonizers and immigrants to the state.
There were folk healers and pow-wowers, who were believed to invoke the name of God and used their presumed powers for good.
They performed physical and mental healing services for their community, and were often called upon for protection and removing curses brought on by witches.
Witches existed on the far end of the supernatural belief system and were thought to have used their presumed power for evil.
“A witch was someone who used occult power to commit crimes and do something to the community and harm their neighbors,” White said.
White wanted to focus the theme of his book on how witches were perceived early on as a real threat to society, he said.
William Penn presided over the first witch trail in Pennsylvania in 1684 and set the tone for the future. Margaret Mattson was accused and charged with performing witchcraft.
The jury found Mattson guilty of “having the common fame of being a witch, but not guilty in the manner and form she stands indicted.”
Penn presumably did this, in part, to appease those who brought charges against her, and the minor fine and probation that was levied would serve as a possible deterrent against future bad behavior without triggering more witchcraft accusations, according to the book.
Though the Quakers had little use for magic and, hence, the persecution of presumed witches, it wasn’t long before they were outnumbered by immigrants who brought their own beliefs about witchcraft. White dedicated 36 pages to accounts of witchcraft throughout the state from Allegheny County to Philadelphia.
Though Lebanon County does not get a mention, some well-known stories and urban legends in neighboring Berks, Lancaster, Schuylkill and Dauphin counties from the 1800s do.
The closest tale to Lebanon County takes place in the Stony Valley area in Middle Paxton Township, Dauphin County.
It was here were a young woman named Emma Gilday was approached by a young man who wanted to walk her home from church. The young man liked her, but the feeling was not reciprocated. The man declared that he would seek the help of a supposed witch named Mrs. Boyer to cast a fatal spell on her, according to the account.
When Gilday did fall ill, her parents suspected the man followed through on his threat. The family turned to a hex doctor named Wolf who confirmed their worst fear. The family then sought another hex doctor named Armstrong McLain for a cure. He performed a ritual that involved burning hair on a shovel.
He told Emma’s father that if he did not “see a brindle cow as he traveled home, his daughter’s condition would improve by nightfall.”
He did not, and Emma’s condition improved. However, in 1881, she became ill again. McLain lightly touched a hammer to Emma’s temple and announced that Mrs. Boyer would soon die.
She did not. This only infuriated Boyer’s family, leading her son, John, to file an anti-defamation suit against McLain. Before the case went to court, the Boyers decided to move away.
The father died three years later, and Emma’s first husband died when he was just 28 years old.
Meanwhile, Berks County was home to one of the largest German populations in the state, so it’s not surprising that there are many stories of witchcraft and folk magic. In the 1800s, dozens of specific stories were recorded in Berks County, according to the book.Reading Eagle’s Charles J. Adams III recently documented a hex murder Berks County that took place in the 1940s.
In Windsor Township, Witches’ Hill was rumored to be a meeting place of covens that “assembled to perform their ceremonies with the devil and his minions,” according to the book.
It wasn’t until the 1890s when the Progressive Era medical professionals, who showed little respect for folk-magic practices, pushed to educate Pennsylvanians about modern medicine.
The public’s perception of folk magic, witchcraft and pow-wowing practices reached a turning point in Pennsylvania after a pair of killings known as the “Hex Murders” in York and Schuylkill counties occurred in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Finally, World War II dramatically changed society and tales of witchcraft soon became urban legend.
“Although traditional folk healers continue through this day, the witch enters the realm of urban legend,” White said.
This happened especially after the poisoned-candy scare stories that surfaced each Halloween in the 1970s and the “satanic panic” that began in the 1980s and continued through the early 1990s.
In recent years, however, the powwow practices have been gaining popularity, and the belief in witchcraft and magic still exists because it is how people, albeit unknowingly, push back against a technological and bureaucratic world, White said in the book.
“By extension, witchcraft confirms the belief that there are forces more powerful than the material world in which we all live. For that reason, the belief in witchcraft will never be entirely extinguished,” he says in the book.
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