More of Dad's stories: Old Pennsylvania Legends
In time for Halloween, here's some more of the stories everyone seems to like so much: Stories of the Old Dutch Country!
When Dad was born in 1929, the old Pennsylvania Dutch legends were dying out even then. It would be another 16 years before many of the stories were finally written down by ‘Pumpernickel Bill’, local newspaperman and folklorist William Troxell, who together with a local preacher spent several years collecting them. It was years more before I found a weather-beaten copy of their book ‘Pennsylvania Dutch Folklore’ and got the pleasant surprise of learning that many of Dad’s ‘old-time’ stories that he’d heard from his mother’s older brother, Uncle John (who‘d heard them when he was a boy in the 1880‘s), were even older than any of us had believed.
But enough talk. Here are some shuddersome stories of schpuks and hexerei for Halloween, and I hope you enjoy them.
1) The Ghost and the Stone: Once upon a time, old Uncle John was walking along a road one night. He didn’t meet anyone on it for the longest time, as everyone else thought it was haunted. He paid no heed to that because, “If it’s not haunted then you’re afraid of nothing, and if it is I haven’t seen the ghost yet that scared me.“ But as he walked eventually he saw a glowing mist floating towards him. The closer he got, the more he could see, until he finally saw a dark shadow of a man floating through the air and holding a large boulder in its hands. And as the ghost floated along it cried out, “Where shall I put it? Where shall I put it?”
“Donnervetter!” Uncle John said. “Hey, thunder-storm! Put the stone where you first found it!” (It was once a Dutch custom to mark boundary lines with stones at the four corners; a greedy man would move his boundary stones a few inches every year. Given a decade or so of this, he could get a lot of his neighbors’ property this way.)
When Uncle John yelled this, the ghost sighed and dropped the boulder. It hit the ground with a heavy thud and sank into the earth. “I have been waiting fifty years for someone to tell me that,” the ghost said. “In life I was a greedy man who gave nothing but took everything from people, even when they helped me. And in death no one ever helped me.” His voice sounded mean to say that, but then: “But here, I should reward you. Put your hand in mine and I’ll give you something you won’t forget.” The ghost extended a vast black hand that looked as broad across as a tombstone.
Uncle John was about to take it, but hesitated. He quickly bent, picked up a stick, and touched the ghost’s hand with that. The stick burned into ashes, just like that. The ghost rumbled a curse.
“I’d hoped you’d touch it,” the ghost said, “because then I would have burned you to nothing. Now I have to go to a place where I won’t melt, and it’s all the worse because I couldn’t pay you as you deserve. Good riddance to you!” And with that the ghost vanished. Uncle John made shift to vanish, too, hurrying down the road and reminding himself to stay off of lonely and haunted roads in the future.
2) The Witch who Hexed Horses: Once in Dutch Country along a road where many farmers and travelers had to go, there was an old stone house with a high peaked roof. The man who lived there could do more than bake bread (euphemism for ‘he was a witch’). He did no work of any sort, but he never went hungry because of his working hexerei on the people who drove wagons past his house.
Many a drover or farmer would be driving his horse team down the road, the sun shining, the horses moving at a nice pace, no need for the whip or even any cursing, and as soon as the animals came abreast of the man’s home they stopped dead in the road. No amount of whipping or cursing or pushing could make either horses or wagon move. When you looked around, you would see the neighbor seated atop his peaked roof, one leg hanging down one side of the roof beam and the other leg over the other way. He would ask, ”What’s it worth to you if I let those horses go?” Then they would have to give him money or beer or food, and until they did he refused to let the horses go. Sometimes he took what they offered and kept them there anyway until they offered more. And sometimes if they didn’t do what he wanted he’d let them go, and when they arrived wherever they were going their horses went lame or blind or just went wild and died. Everyone was afraid of him.
One day Uncle John was driving some horses down the road to haul a wagon-load of produce to market. He’d never had trouble with the hexe before and didn’t expect any now. So when his horse came abreast of the house and refused to move, first he got down and tried to see if the wheels were caught. None of them were. Then he looked around and saw the hexe sitting on his roof, watching him.
“Knock this nonsense off,” Uncle John said to him. “I have to sell these cabbages before they spoil.”
“You give me whatever you’ve got in your pockets,” the hexe called back, “and I’ll let you go. Until then you can sit there until the cabbages and wagon both rot.”
Then Uncle John got mad. He knew his neighbors had put up with a lot from this man over the years, and he never liked a bully. So he yelled back, “You want what I have in my pocket? Here it is!” And with that he took out a clasp knife, unfolded the blade, and waved it in the air.
“The hell with you and your knife,” the hexe jeered. “No bullet or blade can hurt me.”
“We’ll see!” Uncle John yelled. With that he went alongside the horse and lifted the collar across its shoulders up with one hand. In the other he held the knife. He took it and drove the blade right into the underside of the collar. As soon as he did the hexe screamed where he sat and plunged off the roof to the ground. The horse snorted and reared and walked forward about ten feet before Uncle John could get them to stop. Uncle John then went to take a look at the hexe, but he was dead.
3) One that wasn’t: Another time, Uncle John heard from all his neighbors that a new man in town was a very fearsome hexe and had to be bought off unless you wanted your cows to stop giving milk, your horses to be hagridden at night, and your chickens to stop laying. Worst of all, he was told, the man would put the Devil in your barn and his howling and shrieking would keep you shivering with fear until the you paid the hexe to send him away.
Uncle John was wary. What little he’d heard of the man didn’t make him sound like any hexe or braucher (witch or healer; the difference usually depended on how well liked you were). So when the man showed up at Uncle John’s door, wearing fancier clothes than a lawyer, Uncle John wasn’t impressed.
“Just pay me what everyone else does,” the hexe told Uncle John, “and I swear to keep the devil off of your barn and away from your animals. Don’t pay and you’ll never have any peace again.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” Uncle John told him. “I can handle any devils that show up. I have a shotgun I keep loaded,” he pointed to where it rested above the fireplace, “and I have some big dogs that handled their share of thieves over the years.” and he pointed out the window at where two ferocious mastiffs lay in the sunlight. “So I’ll take my chances with your devil.”
“Other people had dogs and guns, and that didn’t help them,” the hexe warned. “But that’s your business. Say, maybe before I go, you could give me a glass of good cider? It’s been a long day, and I could use a drink.”
Uncle John, being a good host, went to fetch the cider from the cellar. When he came back up with it the i>hexe was gone and the door stood open. Uncle John looked outside and saw his dogs snaffling something down, and that worried him, for he knew that he hadn’t fed them and few others would have dared approach them. He went to look, but even as he did, the dogs flopped onto the ground, whimpering miserably and rolling their eyes. One good look showed him that the dogs were poisoned. He went inside to fetch something to make them sick up whatever it was that they’d eaten, and then he stopped and looked closer at his shotgun. It seemed to him that it’d been moved. And when he looked closer still, he saw that someone had messed with it. Use it now without hours of work and it’d blow up in his face. He wife came into the room after him and asked what was wrong.
“I begin to think that hexe has already worked some mischief here,” he told her. “I think we’ll have the devil in our barn tonight, but that’s just as well, for I’ll have something to show him.” And then he dosed the dogs. They sicked up what they’d been fed and seemed to get better, but they were still too weak to do any guarding. Uncle John went out to spend the night in the barn, taking along a length of hickory about the size and thickness of a baseball bat for company. Once in the barn he wrapped himself up in an old blanket that covered him from head to toe and waited.
He didn’t wait long. About midnight or so, when it was darkest, something slipped the barn door open and then ran right into the center of the barn where it began to yell and leap and swing a chain against the ground. Uncle John got up and went closer for a better look. Whatever it was, it was dressed all in a long robe; it seemed to have a long bull tail hanging behind it; and long horns stood up from its head. When it saw Uncle John it raced at him, yelling and waving the chain, “Ahh! Ahhh! Ahhhh!”
“And who’re you supposed to be?” Uncle John demanded, taking a good grip on the hickory stick under his blanket.
“Foolish mortal, I am the devil!” it said in a voice that sounded an awful lot like the hexe’s voice from before. “Flee before I put a curse on you! Abracadabra! Presto-chango! Tippecanoe and Tyler too! Flee! Flee my awesome wrath!”
“Flee this,” Uncle John said, and then he whipped out the hickory stick and swung right at the “devil’s” head. It connected, the “devil” howled, and one of his horns fell off. “Why, friend,” Uncle John said, “it may be I can help you! See, I’ll beat more of the evil out of you,” and with that he laid on with that stick so fast and so hard you would have thought he was Noah pounding in the last handful of nails on the ark when the rain started to fall.
The “devil” fled shrieking all around the barn with Uncle John hot on his heels. The horses reared and neighed, and one of them gave the "devil" a kick that sped him all the more. The “devil” fled out into the darkened yard and ran straight for where the sick dogs lay, and he stepped on one. The dogs weren’t so sick they would turn down such a chance as this, and they sank their fangs into him. The “devil” raced off down the road into the night, leaving his robe, the horns, and the chain behind. Uncle John saw to the animals and cleaned everything up. Then he hung the “devil’s” chain off of a hook in his barn and set the left-behind horns beside it and went to bed.
The next day he went into town and headed for the general store, taking last night‘s trophies along. Everyone was talking about how the hexe had left town suddenly last night. Several of them noticed how odd it was that his devils seemed to have left with him. One of them noticed Uncle John and asked him, “Ach, neighbor, didn’t the devils bother you last night? I thought I heard screaming from your barn about midnight, and then later I heard something yelling as it ran by my house in the dark. You have any idea what it was.”
“I don’t know what it was, but I can guess,” Uncle John said. “And if it really was the devil, well, then one day I suppose he might try coming back for his horns,” and he threw the bull horns on the ground at their feet, “and if the hexe ever comes back and asks, you tell him to tell his devil that next time he’ll get it twice as hard.”
There were more, but these are the ones I can best remember right now. I hope you enjoy them.
When Dad was born in 1929, the old Pennsylvania Dutch legends were dying out even then. It would be another 16 years before many of the stories were finally written down by ‘Pumpernickel Bill’, local newspaperman and folklorist William Troxell, who together with a local preacher spent several years collecting them. It was years more before I found a weather-beaten copy of their book ‘Pennsylvania Dutch Folklore’ and got the pleasant surprise of learning that many of Dad’s ‘old-time’ stories that he’d heard from his mother’s older brother, Uncle John (who‘d heard them when he was a boy in the 1880‘s), were even older than any of us had believed.
But enough talk. Here are some shuddersome stories of schpuks and hexerei for Halloween, and I hope you enjoy them.
1) The Ghost and the Stone: Once upon a time, old Uncle John was walking along a road one night. He didn’t meet anyone on it for the longest time, as everyone else thought it was haunted. He paid no heed to that because, “If it’s not haunted then you’re afraid of nothing, and if it is I haven’t seen the ghost yet that scared me.“ But as he walked eventually he saw a glowing mist floating towards him. The closer he got, the more he could see, until he finally saw a dark shadow of a man floating through the air and holding a large boulder in its hands. And as the ghost floated along it cried out, “Where shall I put it? Where shall I put it?”
“Donnervetter!” Uncle John said. “Hey, thunder-storm! Put the stone where you first found it!” (It was once a Dutch custom to mark boundary lines with stones at the four corners; a greedy man would move his boundary stones a few inches every year. Given a decade or so of this, he could get a lot of his neighbors’ property this way.)
When Uncle John yelled this, the ghost sighed and dropped the boulder. It hit the ground with a heavy thud and sank into the earth. “I have been waiting fifty years for someone to tell me that,” the ghost said. “In life I was a greedy man who gave nothing but took everything from people, even when they helped me. And in death no one ever helped me.” His voice sounded mean to say that, but then: “But here, I should reward you. Put your hand in mine and I’ll give you something you won’t forget.” The ghost extended a vast black hand that looked as broad across as a tombstone.
Uncle John was about to take it, but hesitated. He quickly bent, picked up a stick, and touched the ghost’s hand with that. The stick burned into ashes, just like that. The ghost rumbled a curse.
“I’d hoped you’d touch it,” the ghost said, “because then I would have burned you to nothing. Now I have to go to a place where I won’t melt, and it’s all the worse because I couldn’t pay you as you deserve. Good riddance to you!” And with that the ghost vanished. Uncle John made shift to vanish, too, hurrying down the road and reminding himself to stay off of lonely and haunted roads in the future.
2) The Witch who Hexed Horses: Once in Dutch Country along a road where many farmers and travelers had to go, there was an old stone house with a high peaked roof. The man who lived there could do more than bake bread (euphemism for ‘he was a witch’). He did no work of any sort, but he never went hungry because of his working hexerei on the people who drove wagons past his house.
Many a drover or farmer would be driving his horse team down the road, the sun shining, the horses moving at a nice pace, no need for the whip or even any cursing, and as soon as the animals came abreast of the man’s home they stopped dead in the road. No amount of whipping or cursing or pushing could make either horses or wagon move. When you looked around, you would see the neighbor seated atop his peaked roof, one leg hanging down one side of the roof beam and the other leg over the other way. He would ask, ”What’s it worth to you if I let those horses go?” Then they would have to give him money or beer or food, and until they did he refused to let the horses go. Sometimes he took what they offered and kept them there anyway until they offered more. And sometimes if they didn’t do what he wanted he’d let them go, and when they arrived wherever they were going their horses went lame or blind or just went wild and died. Everyone was afraid of him.
One day Uncle John was driving some horses down the road to haul a wagon-load of produce to market. He’d never had trouble with the hexe before and didn’t expect any now. So when his horse came abreast of the house and refused to move, first he got down and tried to see if the wheels were caught. None of them were. Then he looked around and saw the hexe sitting on his roof, watching him.
“Knock this nonsense off,” Uncle John said to him. “I have to sell these cabbages before they spoil.”
“You give me whatever you’ve got in your pockets,” the hexe called back, “and I’ll let you go. Until then you can sit there until the cabbages and wagon both rot.”
Then Uncle John got mad. He knew his neighbors had put up with a lot from this man over the years, and he never liked a bully. So he yelled back, “You want what I have in my pocket? Here it is!” And with that he took out a clasp knife, unfolded the blade, and waved it in the air.
“The hell with you and your knife,” the hexe jeered. “No bullet or blade can hurt me.”
“We’ll see!” Uncle John yelled. With that he went alongside the horse and lifted the collar across its shoulders up with one hand. In the other he held the knife. He took it and drove the blade right into the underside of the collar. As soon as he did the hexe screamed where he sat and plunged off the roof to the ground. The horse snorted and reared and walked forward about ten feet before Uncle John could get them to stop. Uncle John then went to take a look at the hexe, but he was dead.
3) One that wasn’t: Another time, Uncle John heard from all his neighbors that a new man in town was a very fearsome hexe and had to be bought off unless you wanted your cows to stop giving milk, your horses to be hagridden at night, and your chickens to stop laying. Worst of all, he was told, the man would put the Devil in your barn and his howling and shrieking would keep you shivering with fear until the you paid the hexe to send him away.
Uncle John was wary. What little he’d heard of the man didn’t make him sound like any hexe or braucher (witch or healer; the difference usually depended on how well liked you were). So when the man showed up at Uncle John’s door, wearing fancier clothes than a lawyer, Uncle John wasn’t impressed.
“Just pay me what everyone else does,” the hexe told Uncle John, “and I swear to keep the devil off of your barn and away from your animals. Don’t pay and you’ll never have any peace again.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” Uncle John told him. “I can handle any devils that show up. I have a shotgun I keep loaded,” he pointed to where it rested above the fireplace, “and I have some big dogs that handled their share of thieves over the years.” and he pointed out the window at where two ferocious mastiffs lay in the sunlight. “So I’ll take my chances with your devil.”
“Other people had dogs and guns, and that didn’t help them,” the hexe warned. “But that’s your business. Say, maybe before I go, you could give me a glass of good cider? It’s been a long day, and I could use a drink.”
Uncle John, being a good host, went to fetch the cider from the cellar. When he came back up with it the i>hexe was gone and the door stood open. Uncle John looked outside and saw his dogs snaffling something down, and that worried him, for he knew that he hadn’t fed them and few others would have dared approach them. He went to look, but even as he did, the dogs flopped onto the ground, whimpering miserably and rolling their eyes. One good look showed him that the dogs were poisoned. He went inside to fetch something to make them sick up whatever it was that they’d eaten, and then he stopped and looked closer at his shotgun. It seemed to him that it’d been moved. And when he looked closer still, he saw that someone had messed with it. Use it now without hours of work and it’d blow up in his face. He wife came into the room after him and asked what was wrong.
“I begin to think that hexe has already worked some mischief here,” he told her. “I think we’ll have the devil in our barn tonight, but that’s just as well, for I’ll have something to show him.” And then he dosed the dogs. They sicked up what they’d been fed and seemed to get better, but they were still too weak to do any guarding. Uncle John went out to spend the night in the barn, taking along a length of hickory about the size and thickness of a baseball bat for company. Once in the barn he wrapped himself up in an old blanket that covered him from head to toe and waited.
He didn’t wait long. About midnight or so, when it was darkest, something slipped the barn door open and then ran right into the center of the barn where it began to yell and leap and swing a chain against the ground. Uncle John got up and went closer for a better look. Whatever it was, it was dressed all in a long robe; it seemed to have a long bull tail hanging behind it; and long horns stood up from its head. When it saw Uncle John it raced at him, yelling and waving the chain, “Ahh! Ahhh! Ahhhh!”
“And who’re you supposed to be?” Uncle John demanded, taking a good grip on the hickory stick under his blanket.
“Foolish mortal, I am the devil!” it said in a voice that sounded an awful lot like the hexe’s voice from before. “Flee before I put a curse on you! Abracadabra! Presto-chango! Tippecanoe and Tyler too! Flee! Flee my awesome wrath!”
“Flee this,” Uncle John said, and then he whipped out the hickory stick and swung right at the “devil’s” head. It connected, the “devil” howled, and one of his horns fell off. “Why, friend,” Uncle John said, “it may be I can help you! See, I’ll beat more of the evil out of you,” and with that he laid on with that stick so fast and so hard you would have thought he was Noah pounding in the last handful of nails on the ark when the rain started to fall.
The “devil” fled shrieking all around the barn with Uncle John hot on his heels. The horses reared and neighed, and one of them gave the "devil" a kick that sped him all the more. The “devil” fled out into the darkened yard and ran straight for where the sick dogs lay, and he stepped on one. The dogs weren’t so sick they would turn down such a chance as this, and they sank their fangs into him. The “devil” raced off down the road into the night, leaving his robe, the horns, and the chain behind. Uncle John saw to the animals and cleaned everything up. Then he hung the “devil’s” chain off of a hook in his barn and set the left-behind horns beside it and went to bed.
The next day he went into town and headed for the general store, taking last night‘s trophies along. Everyone was talking about how the hexe had left town suddenly last night. Several of them noticed how odd it was that his devils seemed to have left with him. One of them noticed Uncle John and asked him, “Ach, neighbor, didn’t the devils bother you last night? I thought I heard screaming from your barn about midnight, and then later I heard something yelling as it ran by my house in the dark. You have any idea what it was.”
“I don’t know what it was, but I can guess,” Uncle John said. “And if it really was the devil, well, then one day I suppose he might try coming back for his horns,” and he threw the bull horns on the ground at their feet, “and if the hexe ever comes back and asks, you tell him to tell his devil that next time he’ll get it twice as hard.”
There were more, but these are the ones I can best remember right now. I hope you enjoy them.