Tag Archives: witch

The Witch’s Grave

Text: “As a kid, my parents and elders would tell us not to misbehave or they would take us to the cemetery in the town of Old Mesilla. The town was colonized by the Spanish in the late 1500s, and the indigenous peoples of the land faced heavy persecution from the settlers. There was a woman who was native to the land, and as a form of revenge, she sought to poison one of the men who was settling in her home. The man soon caught on to the woman’s plot, and he accused her of witchcraft and poisoned her himself. The woman died soon after, and the colonizers buried her in an unmarked grave that was covered with an extremely heavy rock. That rock began to crack, and it is believed the woman is trying to escape her grave and seek vengeance against the men who stole her home and killed her. To this day, locals have repaired the tomb with many layers of concrete, but the concrete continues to crack and become more brittle. There is a story from a couple years ago of a teenage girl being dared to lay on top of the large grave, and when she did, she began having a seizure. It is believed that the woman’s spirit possessed the girl, filling her with the same rage the woman had.”

Context: My informant – a 29-year-old man from Las Cruces, New Mexico – told me this story, drawing on the legend he and his siblings and cousins would hear from their parents and elders as children. He explained to me that if he was misbehaving among his family, someone would reprimand him by telling him to act right or else he would be taken to “the witch’s grave.” He had heard the legend as a child from his mother, and it was common knowledge that the area was the burial site of a bruja (witch), so it wasn’t to be neared. My informant explained to me that the last part of the story is the part that scared him and other children the most – the story of a young girl laying on top of the grave and being possessed. If anyone were to get too close to the grave, they would be filled with the spirit of the woman who seeks revenge on anyone who settles on her land, a spirit that is malicious and bound to cause harm to anyone in her path. Playing on the children’s fear of their bodies being inhabited by a witch’s spirit, parents would warn their children to behave or else they would be taken to the grave to be possessed. 

Analysis: When my informant was telling me of this legend, I began to draw parallels between this story and the wider-known legend of La Llorona due to the history of colonization. In “The Politics of Taking: La Llorona in the Cultural Mainstream” by Domino Renee Perez, the author examines the legend of La Llorona, honing in on a specific interpretation of the legend where La Llorona is an indigenous Mexican woman that ends up bearing the children of a Spanish colonizer. After her children are born, he abandons her and her children, and the ensuing grief and rage that comes over her motivates her to kill her children and wander for eternity. Perez stresses that the traditional legend views La Llorona as a figure of resistance to imperialism, and she serves as a reminder of the violence and pain that were inflicted on the indigenous peoples who fell victim to colonization. Yet, in the majority of Western media, La Llorona is portrayed as a mere woman who solely seeks to exact vengeance upon unfaithful men.

After my informant told me of the legend regarding the witch’s grave, I wanted to see if that history of imperialism provides some insight into understanding the witch’s motives in other tellings of the story. While there wasn’t much published on the legend, I came across a blog post that described the same witch’s grave in Mesilla, yet instead of describing her actions as resistance against colonization, it states that she was merely trying to poison a man who instead poisoned her, resulting in her death. I am unsure of who the author of that blog post is, but I found it very interesting to hear the legend from my informant as he provided historical context that doesn’t enshroud the woman with petty vengeance, but instead details her fighting back against the men who stole her home. My informant is an indigenous Mexican, and I believe that the version of the legend that he heard was told to him by members of his culture that share in feeling the collective pain caused by colonization. His version of the legend grants greater insight into the history of his people, and while it may differ from other interpretations, it showcases the unique forms legends can take in order to tell a story that others may not know.

References:

“A Witch’s Grave.” The Scarlet Order, 8 Feb. 2016, https://dlsummers.wordpress.com/2016/02/15/a-witchs-grave/. 

Perez, Domino Renee. “The Politics of Taking: La Llorona in the Cultural Mainstream.” The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 45, No. 1, 153-172. Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 2012. 

The Bellwitch

Nationality: American
Primary Language: English
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 03/31/2024

Text:

“There is a cave near [the informants home] where a witch-ghost supposedly haunted the Bell family, and would communicate with various members of the family. She would also send weird abnormal things like animals with the heads of other animals.” The witch-ghost would reside in a cave, that is now called the “Bell Cave.” Apparently someone ended up taking their life in the cave, but there is no clear record of that.”

Context:

The informant heard this story from her classmates in high school, as their town held proximity to the Bell Cave. The informant is relatively spiritual, and recalls feeling unsettled when she and her friends drove past the cave later that month. The story of the Bell cave has been spread widely and has made its way into popular media, but the informant recounts that the people who told her heard the story from their families who had it recorded in passed down journals/via word of mouth from elder family members, dating back to the time of the “hauntings.”

Analysis:

By nature of being a ghost story, the story of the Bell Cave and the related witch-ghost is hard to verify, especially as it was adapted into popular media and spread throughout the country. However, I think that it is extremely interesting that the informant held a different perspective coming from the region of the lore. Ultimately, I think that ghost stories most certainly hold some truth, although this is of course unverifiable and solely Is supported by the belief of the orator. I think that ghost stories are “popular” because they serve as both a cautionary tale, and hold entertainment value. Specific to the informant, though, is a historical and geographical significance, adding a layer of nuance to the spread within her home.

The CVS Witch (Local Legend from Orinda, CA)

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Residence: Orinda, CA
Performance Date: 4/2/23
Primary Language: English

Original Text: “So there was this weird old lady that would walk around like every single day in Downtown Orinda. She had a house near ours, and we would call her the witch cuz she looked like a witch. I’m not trying to be mean but like, she was hunched over with like a big nose and like she would go downtown every single day to CVS Pharmacy and she would get a big bag full of little cartons of milk, just like a bag of milk, and she would drink it in the local burger place, Nations. She would drink like two and the she would walk back home and we would follow her. Her house was like really run down and like scary. Whenever we saw her we would run away in the opposite direction. We thought she had like magical powers or something, and that she would brew potions with her milk. We would like go downtown after school to see if we could catch her doing magic and also just for the thrill of like following her home.” 

Context: The informant is 18 years old and is from Orinda, California. He was in 6th grade when he observed this woman with his brother’s 7th-grade friends. He says that it was fun to make jokes and fantasize about what kind of potions she could make and if she could kill little boys with her potions. She also lived nearby his house, so it was easy to follow her without being suspicious. Downtown Orinda is a very small, popular hangout area of a small town where most people know each other.

Analysis: Considering the age of the informant and his friends (about 11-12), it is easy to see that because they were so young and didn’t have a large concept of old age, how they could be horrified by an older woman that was very hunched over and wrinkly — thus thinking of her as a witch. Disney movies have been very popular kids media since the 1930s, and they often depict witches with hunched backs and large noses (ex: the witch in Snow White). This influence was placed upon the old lady the informant saw. Potions are also a common motif for witches, and seeing as this old lady would hoard massive amounts of liquid (milk), it makes sense how a child would draw this connection.

What Comes Around Goes Around

Nationality: American
Age: 63
Occupation: Entrepreneur
Residence: Aubrey, TX
Performance Date: March 26, 2023
Primary Language: English

Text: “So to start, there was a medium-sized town–a long time ago–and there were a few wealthy patrons and some poor people on the outskirts. Some of the wealthier people thought of themselves as above all the poor people who they thought were lazy and didn’t deserve anything. So, there was this guy and his wife riding a horse drawn carriage back home after church, and there was this old lady standing in the road that had her hand out begging for food. The guy who was driving the carriage wasn’t watching and almost hit her, causing her to fall into a ditch. Instead of getting out and helping her up, he just tossed a six-pence at her and then just drove off, thinking “She deserved her lot in life.” However, the old lady was a type of witch, and she put a curse on him. As time went by, the guy noticed that all of his business dealings started crashing, and eventually his business went so bad that he went bankrupt and lost his house, and his wife divorced him. He lost everything, and as he got older and more and more feeble, he had to turn to begging. One day, he was begging on the same road that he first encountered the witch, and this motor vehicle came by and almost hit him and knocked him into the mud. And as he’s laying there in the mud, starving and half drowning, he’s thrown a six-pence by the passing car–the same one he gave the old lady.”  

Context: The informant is a 63 year-old man who was told this story by his grandmother as a child to learn about how treating others poorly might come back to bite you. His maternal grandmother had an ancestral connection to the Salem Witch Trials, which was when this story took place. 

Analysis: This is another example of how a legend can perform an intended social function or reinforce important messages. This story was told to the informant as a child and was meant to instill in him the importance of treating others with dignity and respect. It encapsulates a number of universal messages that every child learns, such as “treat others the way you want to be treated” and, more importantly, “what comes around goes around” (which the informant not surprisingly used as a title). The story is particularly effective at communicating these messages to children especially through its use of polarities and narrative symmetry. The use of polarities and clearly-defined extremes can resonate more effectively with a child who tends to process and understand the world in terms of binaries and in less of a nuanced way. The wealthy man who rapidly descends the socioeconomic ladder to the status of a beggar represents a very clear contrast in order to communicate to a younger audience the consequences of acting insensitively and allows no confusion in terms of portraying his actions as having a starkly negative outcome (the man is “starving and half-drowning” at the end). The story’s moral is likewise reinforced through its narrative symmetry. The legend has an organic ending that perfectly mirrors the way it began, coming full circle as the positions of the old lady and the man are reversed. The old lady, now, is the one throwing change in an identical act to the man in the beginning. The message “What comes around goes around” is thus inherent on an intuitive structural level in the story, where, quite literally, a coin being thrown inevitably gets tossed back. On this level, the message “What comes around goes around” can potentially be translated as “What gets thrown gets tossed back.” This legend is definitely useful for children as it anchors the message in a clear, concrete action that serves as the tangible thematic framework for the entire story. The tactile element of the coin and use of simple binaries throughout the story would naturally appeal to children, so it is no surprise that the informant’s grandmother chose a story like this in order to convey an important life lesson to her young grandchildren. If this story was indeed passed down from the Salem Witch Trials, it may have also been very effective at frightening children (and even adults) who were indoctrinated by the Church into believing in malevolent witches and compelling them to abide by Christian teachings, such as philanthropy and loving your neighbor as yourself. 

Witch’s House

Text: 

“There’s this little girl, she’s in the woods. And then she’s like exploring the woods and she finds this house and she wants to go into the house, but it’s not her house. And she smells something really nice coming from it. She goes in and she finds a wū pó (巫婆), like a witch,  and the witch is like, ‘Do you want some of these candies and cookies and deserts?’ And the little girl is like, ‘Of course I do.’ And she eats all of the food but while she’s munching on it the witch starts to eat her because she really likes to eat childrens bones.”

Background: 

The informant first heard this from her mom in Chinese when she was around seven years old. She describes it as “a mix of Snow White and Hansel and Gretel in the most messed up way.” She doesn’t remember the context of why she was told the story.

Analysis: 

The above tale greatly resembles the tale of Hansel and Gretel, two siblings getting lost in the woods and meeting a witch who likes to eat children. Though this tale doesn’t have a happy ending compared to Hansel and Gretel. While the story may be a little different, it still carries the same message. Don’t trust strangers. A message that has been important in many cultures and likely has multiple tales to express its importance. The ending is used to press the idea that interacting with people you don’t know can have extreme consequences and won’t always end happily.