Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-01-13
By stan Correspondent Of The s

| a
YORK, Pa, January IFS this the
18th Of January in the year of Our
Lord 1929?
Is this music which floats through
the air from a dance orchestra in the
dining room of modern hotel in the
center of the busy city of York, Pa?
Can this queer black instrument on the
desk before me be telephone? Can
those lights which are chasing each
other up and down the street below be
the headlights and tail lights OF auto
mobiles?
Or is this January the 18th, 1929
with a half century to go before
the battle of Lexington and century
before the whistle of the first iocomo-
tive will break into the silence of this
foreSted New World? Are not the
dance orchestra, the telephone and the
automobile Authorizations Of an imagi-
nation under the spell of black magic?
Time has played a strange prank in
this southern Pennsylvania countryside.
Here and there, in farmhouse and city
! tenement, it has deposited amid the
material surroundings of the Winter OF
1929 strange, demon haunted islands OF
!
| the souls of men and women in return
for dominion over their enemies. All
| around there are schooihouses. churche@
and public libraries. But witchcraft
and black magic still remain, to. GER
tain clement of the population, real and
terrible forces. Horrible. bodyless
phantoms walk In the darkness. Men
| and women pine away and die because
of the curses of unknown enemies.
Queer Things in Evidence.
Witchcraft in 1929. Yes, a man was
sentenced to imprisonment for life at
the county courthouse here last week
for killing a witch" Barely Is miles
outside of York, just off the automo-
bile highway between York and Balti-
more, there is lonely, wooded valley
with two ancient farmhouses about two
miles apart. In one a powerful, gray
bearded old man lived alone. In the
| other lived his wife and her daughters
Husband and wife visited each other
once week. Each cultivated a sep
arate farm. Rehmeyer's Valley has a
bad reputation. Country people steer
clear Of it in the night time and queer
things have been seen there. For old
Nelson Rehmeyer long has had the
reputation Of possessing uncanny pow
erS. He could lay spells on men and
women which would make them waste
away and die. Or he could say a.
cabaliStic humble of words over sick
babies and the evil spirits which had
taken possession OF their infant bodies
would be forced back into hell. :.
! Old Nelson Rehmeyer was murdered
on Thanksgiving eve. Three boys club
bed him into Inconsistencies with the
leg OF chair, then poured coaloil over
him and set him on fire. They killed
him. they said, to save their own lives
because he had bewitched them and
they were dying by inches under the
magic spells he had cast upon them
They wouldn't have killed the recluse
II he had submitted to them and al
lowed them to cut of lock Of his gray
hair. the same to be buried 3 feet
underground with suitable incantations.
The murder brought York County's
witchcraft into the unpleasant light of
national publicity. York naturally re-
sents this and its responsible citizens
insist that the witchcraft superstition
survives only among the ignorant and
simple minded.
There is. of course, a good deal of
justice in the contention. The ma jority
of the people of York City and York
County are just as free from super
stition as the citizens OF similar COM
munitieS anywhere else in the United
States. and the survivalS of black magic
extend into Maryland. West Virginia
and Virginia. Certainly the business
| and professional men of York and their
! wives and families do not believe IN
| witchcraft
Evidence Of Something Queer.
Yet the mere fact that one simple
minded boy was able to find six prac-
ticing witch doctors, charging from SIS
to $40 a consultation, in few weeks
time in the city of York itself, as he
! testified in court, is evidence that there
Is something queer under the surface.
The other day two Washington news
paper correspondents took ride into
the country. Within half hour OF
their arrival in a prosperous little mill
village with three church steeples ris-
ing conspicuously out of its slate roofs
they were seated at flreSide OF
man who "was damn sick and tired OF
all this talk about hexing being non
sense" and who was willing to fight
with his fists for the faith that was IN
him. He was a rather prominent citl-
zen-a factory foreman.
The believers in witchcraft are mostly
ignorant and cirild-minded folks. Tnat
much must be admitted. 1t Is absurd
to say, as was stated in a recent issue
of one national magazine, that go per
cent of the homes in York County keep
a COPY of the "Himmelsbrief or Letter
From Heaven" with the Bible, on their
parlor tables. Probably it would be an
exaggeration to say that the witchcrait
cult includes more than per cent
which still would leave very re-
snecfahle number of individuals.