Witch Hunt in Mississippi

Printed Friday the 15th of June 1900 in the Evening Post out of Charleston, South Carolina

A MODERN WITCH.

Curious Case of Superstition in Mississippi

It is not easy to believe sometimes that “the world does move.” When one reads of a “witch hunt,” which took place recently in one of the United States., it seems quite like the story of Salem witchcraft days. The actors in the medieval drama were white men and women in the State of Mississippi, and the witch hunt was within thirty miles of a large school for white people carried out by the Women’s Home Missionary Society.

A woman who became suddenly ill announced her belief that she was bewitched, and her friends consulted an old negro “witch doctor” in the place. He investigated that place with all solemnity, and declared that a dead tree in the yard was the home of the evil spirit, and that if it were burned the spirit would be obligated to take refuge in the body of the witch, who then might be discovered. By an unfortunate chance an old woman in the neighborhood was found to be ill and it was ascertained that she was the witch. So a party of men with dogs and guns went to her house and drove her before them to the home of the woman who was “bewitched.”

They kept the poor old creature there without food or drink from Monday until Thursday, trying to make her confess. Finally she was taken to the county poor house, after the question of killing her had been seriously discussed, as the “witch doctor” decided that the evil spirit would go with her to the poor house. The one ray of brightness in the story is the fact that the persons engaged in the affair were indicted by the grand jury and heavily fined for assault and battery. –New York Tribune.

Sunday's Cemetery - Turkish Cemetery

Published in January during 1888 in the Biloxi Herald out of Biloxi, Mississippi

Turkish Cemeteries.

     According to the Koran, the deceased is the owner of his grave in perpetuity, and the objectionable system of sepulture in rotation his unknown to the Mussulmans; and in Constantinople, in Eyoub, and in Scutari, the room occupied by cemeteries is almost as extensive as that covered by dwellings. Within recent years it has been found necessary, in order to open roads that have been much needed, to the curtail and even suppress some of the cemeteries; but it required and express order form the Sultan, which made the “ulemas” utter the wail of bigots. The cypress is pre-eminedly the funeral tree. Each tomb has to have its own. And Turkish cemeteries become gloomy forests in time, which in part to certain Oriental landscapes an aspect singularly stiff and somber. It is upon the sea shore that these funeral forests are found in the greatest abundance. The trees, being nourished by the soil fertilized by human remains, reach a prodigious size and height. The largest and most celebrated of these cemeteries is that of Scutari, upon the Asiatic coast of the Bosphorus; it extends over an area more than six miles square. The tombstones are in the shape of an oval, wider at the top than at the bottom, and surmounted with a turban or fez, the form of which, varying greatly indicates the rank of the deceased. A gilt inscription in Turkish characters cut in relief on a blue background, gives the name and enxcrates the virtues of the deceased and implores divine mercy in his behalf. These stones are perpendicular, sometimes leaning very much. In the latter case a hole is dug at the base of the tomb, intended to catch rain for the little birds that come to quench their thirst. The dead are not buried very deep, and it is strange that the custom does not cause more sickness than it does. A large proportion of the epidemics of dysentery and typhoid fever that invade the low quarters of Constantinople can be traced to the custom. The proximity of the cadavers to the top of the ground produces, during the summer nights, particularly in swamy and damp cemeteries, a myriad of phosphorescent lights, which dance and flit around the tombs; and these myriad sparks of fire, while inspiring the poets, also frighten the children.