Stars Over Her Door

Marietta Daily Leader, June 2, 1904

To Drive the Witches Away

Amusing Testimony in the McCormick Divorce Case

The suit for divorce and alimony which Mrs. Harry McCormick of this city brought against her husband in the court of common pleas of this county was up for hearing Wednesday and brought forth much testimony not suitable to print. The case will be finished today.

One bit of information brought out in the hearing Wednesday shows that superstition and belief in witchcraft are not yet a thing of the past even in the enlightened city of Marietta.

A succession of questions and answers regarding certain acts of Mrs. McCormick resulted in bringing out the following.

Mrs. McCormick was sick and some of the neighbors told her that an old lady living near her home was a witch and that she was probably bewitching her. Mrs. McCormick took their advice and placed three stars over the door of her house to drive off the witches. She denied, however, that she ever told her husband that she was bewitched.

 

Supernatural Knocking

The Marietta Intelligencer, February 14, 1850:

Some time since we were requested to publish a detailed account of a mysterious "Knocking at the Door," at nights which alarmed the people of Rochester, N.Y., who attributed it to spiritual agency. Not having much faith, we declined inserting the report of a Committee appointed to investigate the matter, or to notice particularly the statements of the press. The mystery was explained by a learned professor in the American Journal of Science as the effect of the vibration of a dam over which water falls. It turns out, however, to have been a trick played upon the wise ones by some mischievous girls. It was a piece with the mysterious ghost-talkings of some Pugh family in Wood County, Virginia, a few years ago - which most of our readers here-abouts well remember.

Brother Jonathan, Vol. 4, No. 5, Feb. 4, 1843:

The Last Ghost Story - A Mr. Pugh, formerly of Wood county, Va., who died some years ago, is said to have revisited this wicked world within the last two weeks, and every night holds a conversation with his children. We are prepared for any exhibition of credulity and superstition which may be offered us. The success of Mormonism and Millerism makes every thing in that way possible.

Marietta Intelligencer, January 19, 1843:

Ghosts. We have a strange account of the appearance of ghosts to the people across the Ohio in Wood County, Virginia. A Mr. Pugh, who deceased some years since, has come back to this sinful world and every night holds conversation with his children. So goes the story. Our correspondent "Nimshy" thinks it strange that"Pugh should rise first," as indeed do all the old gentleman's acquaintances.