There’s a witch story that’s been told for years by folks in the area around Bluefield, West Virginia.
Back around the turn of the 20th century, it’s said, there was a small boy who stopped eating all of a sudden. He wasn’t sick, though, he just didn’t want to eat. His parents were rightly concerned for him as he lost weight, but the boy wouldn’t eat anything at all, no matter what his mother fixed.
Every few days, though, a neighbor of the family would stop by to visit the boy and would bring him food, which he “ate like a pig.” This man was the only person the child would take any food from.
The boy’s father grew suspicious about this man so he devised a way to get to the bottom of what was going on.
He drew a picture of the man and tacked it to the wall. He then took a ten penny nail and drove it into the wall through the head drawn in that picture.
The man didn’t show up the next day. It turns out that he had been stricken quite suddenly with a splitting headache the day before. Figuring out what he was dealing with, the father then pulled that nail out of the picture’s head and miraculously the man’s headache disappeared!
Not only that, but the boy instantly regained his appetite and never again went without food.
This man, you see, wasn’t a man but a witch who had cast a spell on the boy, just for fun. The driving of the nail through his likeness let the witch know that the boy’s father knew who and what he was. It also made the witch aware that the boy’s father could cause him harm if he didn’t leave the man’s son alone.
