In the winter of 1879, a group of men with December birthdays walked west from Lititz. They had been summoned to a log cabin four miles outside the Moravian-founded community. The hut stood tight against a rocky hill stitched with cedar and pine. A white picket fence marked the boundary between road and yard. Two large black dogs prowled inside the enclosure.
This was the home of Hannah Hetherley, dubbed the Sorceress of Lititz by newspapers from Reading to Boston to St. Louis.
To some, she was a healer. To others, a seer. To still others, something older and harder to name.
Local farmers came to her when cattle would not rise from the stall. Mothers brought children seized by trembling fits. If money vanished, if crops failed, if a young woman longed to know the faithfulness of her suitor, the path to the rocky hill saw fresh footprints. She practiced what the Pennsylvania Dutch called Braucherei, known in English as powwowing. It was a system of Christian folk practice carried across the Atlantic in memory and in books. It relied on prayer, breath, charm, and symbol. A wound might be cured by blowing upon it while murmuring a sacred phrase. Ill fortune could be turned aside with the right words spoken at the right hour. What was lost might be drawn back to light.
Inside her cabin, the air was dark and heavy with the scent of dried herbs. Bunches hung near the window. Small cloth bags rested on shelves. The table was round and covered in black cloth. The furniture was old and heavy. There was no carpet. Several black cats lay near the hearth while a dove cooed above the mantel.
When visitors entered, she spoke little at first. She let silence do its work. Then she would say, “Now I will tell you something you think I do not know.”
It was said that her power came from a book.
She kept it wrapped in old snakeskin when not in use. To restore its potency, she would bury it in the ash heap or hide it beneath the eaves when the moon was full. The pages, faded with age, were printed in alternating lines of red and black. She claimed the black was the blood of the evil one and the red the blood of the good spirit. The ominous tome was said to contain The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, an old German grimoire filled with spells and invocations. Within its covers were remedies for sickness, protections against harm, and instructions for uncovering what lay hidden beneath earth and stone.
Her grandfather, she said, had brought it from the Harz Mountains before entrusting it to her at his death. In German folklore, the Harz range was long associated with witches’ gatherings and pagan rites. The Brocken peak was said to host spirits on Walpurgis Night. In the imagination of rural Pennsylvanians, the mountains carried a reputation for old magic and older shadows. To say the book came from the Harz was to give it ancient authority in the minds of those who visited Hetherley.
She was known to walk as much as twenty miles in a night, accompanied by her two black dogs. She carried a long hickory staff, and from her left arm hung a snakeskin bag that held the powerful book. She frequented graveyards and country cemeteries. She read signs in the wind and in the soil. She interpreted dreams. She warned of misfortune. Those who interfered with her work were told that bad luck would follow.
Was she a witch in the medieval sense, or a powwower in the Pennsylvania Dutch tradition? In Lancaster County, the distinction often blurred. Braucherei had always walked a narrow ridge between blessing and accusation. The braucher, the folk healer, removed hexes placed by others, yet could be called a hexer in turn. Prayer and charm mingled easily. Scripture and symbol intertwined.
The men Hetherley summoned were the sons of prosperous tobacco growers, raised in plain dress and steady work. But she had not chosen them at random. Each had been born within the Twelve Days of Christmas. In European and American folklore alike, those born during that sacred span were believed to carry unusual sight. Christmas-born children were thought capable of perceiving spirits, breaking charms, and resisting enchantment. If treasure lay hidden under spell, it required such men to free it.
Then came her account.
Hetherley told the young men that she had been taken in the night by an unseen force. A cold, dripping hand she could not see led her from her bed. She was wrapped in cloud and carried over snow-covered fields toward a place known locally as Raber’s Mill. She passed through fences as though they were air. Her slippers did not grow cold. She heard no sound but the voice that finally cried, “Dig here. You will find money that was stolen and buried.”
Her dogs howled. Her cats hissed. “The signs,” she said, “all pointed to gold.”
Traveling by horse and wagon, the men set off at midnight with shovels and picks in tow. Hetherley brought with her an erdspiegel, or “earth mirror,” a device of inscribed glass used in folk practice to divine buried treasure and lost things. Such mirrors were said to gain power only after being buried in the soil for a year, absorbing the secrets of the ground itself.
Once on site, the sorceress prepared her signs. Circular magic papers, stamped on heavy brown stock, were placed in the holes. Rays radiated from their centers like stars. Three inner circles bore inscriptions in Hebrew, Latin, and German. Another paper held a Latin prayer printed in red, which she declared to be blood. The placement of these papers was meant to draw hidden treasure upward, no matter how deep it lay.
The treasure hunters began to dig in the icy ground, carving holes four to six feet across in complete silence. The quiet was its own ritual, for hidden riches could only be found when not talking. The earth was frozen three feet deep, and the effort of breaking through it without utterance tested the resolve of every man present.
Near the edge of the pit, she swayed her arms and sprinkled the diggers with the juice of herbs carried in a strange ladle. She built a fire of hazel wood and cooked cat’s blood. All the signs and tokens, she insisted, pointed to gold.
On the twenty-fourth hole, the men uncovered the top of an iron chest in the cold dirt. One of them, overcome with excitement, cried out in amazement.
At once, the chest sank from sight and was lost forever.
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