American Witches and History of Witchcraft

Author Karen Dybis follows the twists and turns of a shocking story, revealing the truth of Detroit's own Hex Woman.

Detroit was full of stark contrasts in 1931. Political scandals, rumrunners and mobs lurked in the shadows of the city's soaring architecture and industrious population. As the Great Depression began to take hold, tensions grew, spilling over into the investigation of a mysterious murder at the boardinghouse of Hungarian immigrant Rose Veres. Amid accusations of witchcraft, Rose and her son Bill were convicted of the brutal killing and suspected in a dozen more. Their cries of innocence went unheeded - until one lawyer, determined to seek justice, took on the case.

Since William Penn presided over the state's only official witch trial in 1684, witchcraft and folk magic have been a part of the history of the Keystone State.

English and German settlers brought their beliefs in magic with them from the Old World--sometimes with dangerous consequences. In 1802, an Allegheny County judge helped an accused witch escape an angry mob. Susan Mummey was not so fortunate. In 1934, she was shot and killed in her home by a young Schuylkill County man who was convinced that she had cursed him. In other regions of the state, views on folk magic were more complex. While hex doctors were feared in the Pennsylvania German tradition, powwowers were and are revered for their abilities to heal, lift curses and find lost objects. Folklorist Thomas White traces the history and lore of witchcraft and the occult that quietly live on in Pennsylvania even today.

Experience the history of Rhode Island and learn about the Ocean State's most fascinating and wild women.

Read of Mercy Brown, a nineteen-year-old consumption victim who was thought to be a vampire and whose body was exhumed and discovered with blood in the heart. There was Goody Seager, accused of infesting her neighbor's cheese with maggots by using witchcraft, and Tall ""Dutch"" Kattern of Block Island, an opium-eating fortune teller whose curse, legend says, set a ship aflame after its crew cast her ashore. Hear of the revolutionaries, like Julia Ward Howe, who invented Mother's Day and wrote the words to ""The Battle Hymn of the Republic,"" and religious reformer Anne Hutchinson, said to be the inspiration for Hawthorne's heroine in The Scarlet Letter, in these thrilling tales from author M.E. Reilly-McGreen.

Connecticut's witch hunt was the first and most ferocious in New England, occurring almost fifty years before the infamous Salem witch trials.

Between 1647 and 1697, at least thirty-four men and women from across the state were formally charged with witchcraft. Eleven were hanged. In New Haven, William Meeker was accused of cutting off and burning his pig's ears and tail as he cast a bewitching spell. After the hanging of Fairfield's Goody Knapp, magistrates cut down and searched her body for the marks of the devil. Through newspaper clippings, court records, letters and diaries, author Cynthia Wolfe Boynton uncovers the dark history of the Connecticut witch trials.

For the first time in print, Michael Kleen presents the full story of the Prairie State's dalliance with the dark arts.

Although Illinois saw no dramatic witch trials, witchcraft has been a part of Illinois history and culture from French exploration to the present day. On the Illinois frontier, pioneers pressed silver dimes into musket balls to ward off witches, while farmers dutifully erected fence posts according to phases of the moon. In 1904, the quiet town of Quincy was shocked to learn of Bessie Bement's suicide, after the young woman sought help from a witch doctor to break a hex. In turn-of-the-century Chicago, Lauron William de Laurence's occult publishing house churned out manuals for performing bizarre rituals intended to attract love and exact revenge.

While the Salem witch trials get the most notoriety, Virginia's witchcraft history dates back many years before that.

Colonial Virginians shared a common belief in the supernatural with their northern neighbors. While the witchcraft mania that swept through Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 was significant, fascination with it has tended to overshadow the historical records of other persecutions throughout early America. The 1626 case of Joan Wright, the first woman to be accused of witchcraft in British North America, began Virginia's own witch craze. Utilizing surviving records, author, local historian and Emmy Award-winning screenwriter Carson Hudson narrates these fascinating stories.

"Straightforward handling of.. . voodooism in all its manifestations."
--Kirkus Reviews

Originally published in 1946, this intriguing book examines the rites and beliefs associated with voodoo through the legends of the art--its charms, trances, rituals, and difficult-to-explain occurrences.

Discover the true story of Moll Dyer and the witches of Southern Maryland... if you dare...

Despite the attention that Salem receives, they were far from the only town to organize a witch hunt in colonial America. Rebecca Fowler was tried as a witch in St. Mary's in 1685, and in 1674, John Cowman became the only man ever charged with witchcraft in Maryland. In Moll Dyer's case, locals took the law into their own hands. According to legend, Moll Dyer was chased from her burning home by a mob in St. Mary's County in the year 1697, left to die in the dark and cold. Was she just an ordinary woman blamed for problems beyond her control? Or was she a witch whose curse lingers on? Author Lynn Buonviri uses period records and local lore to discover the truth behind the legend of Moll Dyer and her curse.

Author Tony Kail traces Memphis's colorful Hoodoo heritage from the arrival of Africans in Shelby County to the growth of conjure culture in juke joints and Spiritual Churches.

Widely known for its musical influence, Beale Street was also once a hub for Hoodoo culture. Many blues icons, such as Big Memphis Ma Rainey and Sonny Boy Williamson, dabbled in the mysterious tradition. Its popularity in some African American communities throughout the past two centuries fueled racial tension - practitioners faced social stigma and blame for anything from natural disasters to violent crimes. However, necessity sometimes outweighed prejudice, and even those with the highest social status turned to Hoodoo for prosperity, love or retribution.