I hear tell this is a true story, or at least as true as something in the newspapers can be.
Up in West Virginia, about 30 miles from Charleston, back in 1902 there lived an old man by the name of Cottrell and his kin, who lived by hunting, fishing and digging up ginseng to sell. In October of that year the old man made the papers, accused of a terrible crime.
A year earlier an old homeless woman of about 70 and her 18-year-old granddaughter had moved into a deserted schoolhouse, with permission from the local authorities. There this woman, known as Mother Boggs, set up a garden and grew herself some corn and beans and tobacco.
All was well.
Until rumors started going around about this old woman being a witch.
Some of Mr. Cottrell’s kin had passed on the message that she was homeless because she had been run out of Roane County for practicing the dark arts. And those rumors had to be true because the woman looked exactly like a witch, according to those relatives.
Soon the younger Cottrell boys began to come around that old schoolhouse, to the point that some of them even began talking to the granddaughter, in hopes of courting her. One night some unknown visitors came to the schoolhouse itself. They drew back the old blanket the woman used as a curtain on the window; shots were fired and Mother Boggs was hit with at least a dozen lead slugs.
She died in her granddaughter’s arms.
A United States marshall, Dan Cunningham, probably the best lawman in all of West Virginia at the time, was sent for to do an investigation of this crime. He examined the lead slugs that killed the old woman and determined that they had been fired from a unique rifle, specially bored for those bullets.
After asking around he found that old man Cottrell had borrowed such a rifle a few days before the murder from a neighbor. The old man was arrested, along with one of his nephews, who had been one of those who had been talking to the granddaughter. They were taken to the Clay County Courthouse for a preliminary hearing before a magistrate.
They strenuously denied knowing anything about the old woman’s death and just as strenuously argued that she was an evil witch who deserved to die. Also in the courtroom for this hearing were other members of the Cottrell clan, who had been disarmed by the law as they entered. Here is the old man’s testimony, as it was recorded:
“You say that you had no part in the killing of this old woman?”
“I warn’t nowhere about when it was done.”
“You knew her well?” “I knowed her as well as I wanted to. She wasn’t no company to me.”
From the audience in the courtroom came a voice:
“She were a witch, she were. Right pert job somebody done, a’shootin’ of her!”
The old man replied “Anybody knows she were a witch!”
The magistrate then guided the questions back to the matter at hand.
“How do you know she was a witch?” “Lordy! Didn’t she do witchery on me?”
“What witchery?” asked the magistrate.
It was then that the old man and his nephew began to tell their tale of being bewitched.
Mr. Cottrell told that the woman had ridden him many a night, just like a horse, and his nephew told that she had done that to him, too. They said they had proof of it, too, for their hands would be full of briars and brambles whenever they came back.
At this point the two accused held up their hands, which were covered with old scratches; Old man Cottrell then said “There’s the witch marks, squire!”
The magistrate then asked for details on how the woman rode the two men. Cottrell explained:
“The night the thunder cloud broke and the high water came down Big Otter she were out a’ridin’. She came callin’ for me and the boy. It were a harsh night and she wanted a team. I reckon she were in a hurry.”
“And you went?”
In great surprise the witness responded “She called me, I told you squire. She called me with a witch-call.” The nephew spoke up “No matter how hard you try to hold yourself back you got to go to a witch-call.”
“Then you got up out of bed and went out into the night?”
After a pause Cottrell answered. “No, it ain’t just that way. You don’t go. You just lies abed shiverin’ and sweatin’ and asleep all at the same time. It wasn’t exactly me that went out that night or any other night. It were my seconds, another one of me. So I flew out through the window. That nephew of mine over there, he was standin’ shiverin’ outside, all hitched up with a rope of poison oak. The old witch hitched me to him and we went up in the air to the moon. When we went too slose a buzz of snake doctors stung us up.”
Snake doctors was an old word for dragonflies.
From the audience someone cried “Them warn’t no real snake doctors. Them was witch flies. Snake doctors that’s real don’t fly nights!”
The accused continued with his testimony.
“Whatever they was they stung right hard. She drove us to Blue Knob and hitched us to a pawpaw bush and left us there. When she’s ridin’ she always screeches, like a big owl between the thunder claps.
“What did she go to Blue Knob for?” asked the magistrate.
“Maybe for a ride, just. Maybe to meet some other witch. Then I expect she did a little pilferin’ thereabouts, eggs and milk or maybe a strip of meat.”
“Then what happened?”
“We was hitched to that pawpaw bush, moanin’ and cryin’ and hopin’ not to be struck by lightnin’. I tell you what, though. She’ll never witch narry another one no more. I ain’t afraid of her now, she done her worst on me. When the storm settled down she come back and rode us both home again. Next mornin’ our hands and feet were full of burrs and briers. They always are after she’s ridden us.”
“How many times have you been ridden?”
“Twenty, maybe thirty, times. We been to Yankee Dam and Strange Creek and Birch and Buffalo and once to a place I never saw before.”
“So you believe firmly in such things as witches?” asked the magistrate.
“Why, squire, it’s in the Bible. Preacher read it out in meetin’ not a month back. We all are believers.”
Cottrell then flatly denied killed the woman, claiming he had no idea how to do it and feared what she’d do to him if he tried. The nephew took the stand next and confirmed all his uncle had told the court. He added that he had also once been ridden to the moon but that the light had been so strong that the witch had blindfolded his eyes to save them, so he saw nothing of the place. He also stated that he was sure he had also been to a “witch convention.”
It was evident to the court and to the non-witch believing spectators in the courtroom that the Cottrell clan firmly believed Mother Boggs was a witch and that her death was heartily welcomed.
Whether that belief was justified or not, we can’t say, nor can we tell you how the trial ended because the information stops there, as often happens, when the newspaper gets its lurid story of backwards hillbillies, then it moves on to the next sensational story, the last one completely forgotten.
I can say, though, that every bit of that testimony contains a pretty thorough collection of Appalachian witch beliefs.