The Chesterfield Amish Witch
By Kevin Williams
Okay, it’s October, Halloween month, which means silly season on TV. Golly gee, you won’t want to miss this: Amish Witches: The True Story of Holmes County. If you want to catch this gem, tune in at 8 p.m. on October 29th on the Lifetime channel.
The title is a bit misleading. This is a Lifetime movie about a reality TV show. So the “True Story” is simply the fictional True Story.
From Lifetime’s press release about the movie:
When a reality TV crew moves into Holmes County. Ohio to document the lives of an isolated sect of Swartzentruber Amish, production is halted by the death of Brauchau, an Amish witch. Following her unconsecrated funeral, a small group of young Amish women solicit the TV crew’s help in an attempt to document the inexplicable events plaguing them.But as everyone soon discovers the powerful malevolent force haunting them has deadly intentions.
The movie is produced by Hot Snakes Media, the Hollywood production company that has brought us other cultural gems like “Amish Mafia”, Amish Haunting, and Breaking Amish. Sorry to be cynical, but I think the executives at Hot Snakes know very little about the Amish, but they have obviously found a profit-center for their storytelling.
There’s been an attempt by media to sort of imbue the Amish with some sort of mysticism or spiritual otherness, but this all Hollywood confection. I think this is rooted, perhaps, in some Amish traditions such as folk medicine and I have personally witnessed an Amish healer using some sort of “spell” (I use the word very, very, very loosely, I just can’t think of what else to call it, maybe someone else can) in an attempt to heal. But those traditions are not widespread and are dying out among younger Amish. There are also local “legends” and lore, but I think they are more perpetuated by outsiders than the Amish. But consider the case of the “Chesterville Witch.”
Mysteriousheartland.com gives the history of the Chesterville Witch:
Chesterville is a small Amish and Mennonite community that consists of no more than a few dozen houses located a couple of miles away from Rockome Gardens. Within the neatly trimmed grounds of Chesterville Cemetery an old oak tree stands at the edge of the woods that separates the graveyard from the river. The peculiar thing about this tree is the iron fence that surrounds it, and the old stone marker that no longer bears a name. According to Troy Taylor, this is the grave of a woman who turned up dead after being accused of witchcraft in the early 1900s after she challenged the conservative views of the local Amish church elders. The town planted a tree over her grave to trap her spirit inside and prevent her from taking revenge. Her ghost can still be seen from time to time hanging around the area . A bit more information about the Chesterfield Witch can be found here.
Amish youth are as apt to tell “ghost stories” as non-Amish youth and such stories like the Chesterfield Witch are passed along in that way. But as far as actual witchcraft being somehow part of the spiritual edge of the Amish? Not that I’ve seen, that is all Hollywood stuff.
10 Comments
Shirley Yancey
I’m 63 and my grandmother called the sofa a Davenport and said “I swan”. I have heard those expressions from others but but I have never heard anyone but my grandmother say “redd off the table”. She would also say that her kitchen wasn’t big enough to swing a cat. I always wondered why she wanted to swing a cat in the kitchen. lol
Kevin
LOL, I had not heard “big enough to swing a cat” before..”skin a cat”,yes,but “swing a cat?””
Emma RedRaven
Brauchau are real and PA area is rich in stories of them. And many still practice today.
Kevin
Yea, but I think that is more of a Pennsylvania Dutch thing than an Amish thing…
Kathy Howard
But it’s fine for the Amish to own puppy mills for BIG profit? Double standard much?
Kevin
Kathy, agreed, but the problem with that logic is the vast majority of Amish don’t run puppy mills. A small, small percentage do (and I wont’ defend them, puppy mills are awful)….so if a middle-aged white man molests a child, are all middle-aged white men child molesters? Of course not. So the same standard needs to be applied to the Amish.
Allgood
What a copy-cat version of Blair witch project…. Horribly untrue! And a horrible story line!
Lance
While watching the “documentary” that followed the horrible movie, I noticed the electric heater register on the wall & the covered plugs in the spiritually ransacked room. Good greif. It’s almost as bad as when the Amish were blamed for the measle outbreak that occurred during the Kentucy Derby a few years back. Of course it wasn’t caused by illegal immigrants.
Nana
Interesting article and so are the comments. I don’t think I saw the documentary , but is there not mention on former TLC productions of the burial clothes being either black or white according to the deceased’s standing in the church? As I read in the first comment my grandmas called a sofa a davenport and also used the term redd up and in her case she meant put rooms back in order. Incidentally she had the same davenport from the time she married throughout her marriage which would have been in excess of 50 years. It was brown leather and I believe horsehair stuffing. The arms were curved oak. I have no idea where is ended up after she passed.
Kevin
Glad someone else has heard the term “Davenport”…My aunt was the only person I ever heard use the term…