I know that this is too late for Halloween, but I have it on good authority that today is the Day of the Dead. To celebrate, I offer this gift to you. This story (the meat of which is historically accurate) has always been one of my favorite local tales. My house sits about fifteen miles outside of Yazoo City, so the story hits very close to home.The Story of the Witch
Many years ago, there was a mean and ugly woman who lived alone in carefully guarded seclusion near the banks of the Yazoo River. Nobody knew anything about her, but they loathed her nonetheless. They hated her so much they didn't even give her a name. It was rumored that on stormy nights she would lure fisherman into her house, poison them with arsenic, and bury them on a densely wooded hill nearby...this was her hobby, but although many people suspected her of these evil diversions, no one was able to prove anything. Then one late afternoon in the autumn of 1884, a boy named Joe Bob Duggett was passing by her house on a raft when he heard a terrible, ungodly moan from one of the rooms. He tied his raft to a cypress branch, ran to the house, and looked through a window. What he saw chilled his blood and bones. Two dead men were stretched out on the floor of the parlor, and the old woman, wearing a black dress caked with filth and cockleburs, had turned her face up to the ceiling and was singing some dreadful incantations, waving her arms in demented circles all the while.
Joe Bob Duggett raced to his raft, floated into town, and told the sheriff and his men what he had seen. They got a horse and buggy and sped to the old woman's house...They smashed down the front door, but were unable to find either the dead men (who have never been found to this day) or the demented old woman. They climbed the stairs to the attic, opened the door an inch or two, and caught sight of several dozen half-starved cats, all bunched together and gyrating in their wild insanity. Two skeletons, which were never identified by the sheriff's office, dangled from a dusty rafter. Fish bones littered the floor, and the smell was unusually pungent. The sheriff, his deputies, and Joe Bob stood there transfixed, finally banging the door shut when eight or ten of the cats tried to get out.
Then from the backyard they heard the sound of footsteps in the fallen pecan leaves, and from an upstairs window they saw the old woman sneaking away into the swamps which abounded along the River. "Stop in the name of the law!" the sheriff shouted, but the old woman, who as Joe Bob Duggett would later tell his grandchildren, looked "half ghost and half scarecrow, but all witch," took off into the swamps at a maniacal gallop. They followed in hot pursuit, and a few minutes later they came upon a sight that Joe Bob remembered so well he would describe it again, for the thousandth time, on his deathbed in the King's Daughter Hospital in 1942. The old woman had been trapped in a patch of quicksand, and they caught up with her just seconds before her ghastly, pockmarked head was about to go under. But she had time to shout these words at her pursuers: I shall return. Everybody always hated me here. I will break out of my grave and burn down the whole town on the morning of May 25, 1904! Then, as Joe Bob also described it later, with a gurgle and a retch the woman sank from sight to her just desserts.
With the aid of pitchforks and long cypress limbs the authorities were able to retrieve her body. The next day, with the wind and rain sweeping down from the hills, they buried her in the center of the town cemetery, in a cluster of trees and bushes, and around her grave they put the heaviest chain they could find---some thirty strong and solid links. "If she can break through that and burn down Yazoo," the sheriff said, more in fun than seriously, "she deserves to burn it down".
The years went by, the long Mississippi seasons came and went, and the town forgot the old woman.
On the morning of May 25, 1904, some twenty years later, Miss Pauline Wise was planning her wedding. As she entered her parlor to show her visitor some gifts, she discovered a small blaze. Suddenly a strong wind, unusual for that time of year, spread the fire to adjoining house. From Main Street the fire spread to all intersecting streets and soon reached the residential section. The roar of the ever-increasing flames, the confusion of terrorized thousands, the hoarse shouts of the firefighters, and the sound of crashing walls made a scene of awesome horror that remained a fixed picture in the memory of eyewitnesses as long as their lives lasted. Many fine homes were destroyed, and every bank, every physician's, lawyer's and dentist's office, every hotel and boardinghouse, every meat market and bakery, the newspaper and printing office, every church, clubroom, and lodge room, every telephone, telegraph and express office, the depot, the post office, every furniture store, every hardware store, all but one livery stable, all but one drugstore, every barbershop, every tailor shop, every undertaking establishment, and, in fact, nearly every business necessity.
The next day, after the murderous flames had consumed themselves, several elder citizens of the town made a journey to the grave in the middle of the cemetery. What they discovered would be passed along to my friends and to me many years later, and as boys we would go see it for ourselves, for no repairs were made, as a reminder to future generations. As if by some supernatural strength, the chain around the grave had been broken in two.
