The Hartville Ghost

By Melissa Pinol

Most of the other scholarly types who have come to hear the story of the Hartville Ghost have been sent packing with no more than a handful of bible tracts for their efforts. Their mistake was in not following the bible tracts to their source, the Church of the Holy Retribution. The Church is really big around here, and it seems that the Church members were major players in the Hartville Ghost's story. After all, their beloved Pastor McCurdy (that's his picture there on the wall, rest his soul...) was martyred in his effort to rid the town of the evil that had come upon them in the form of Cynthia Carmichael, later known as the Hartville Witch. Recognizing a good lead when I saw it, I made an effort to follow the trail back to the Church itself, and finally heard the story first hand. In addition to learning a really good tale, I heard a lot more than I really wanted to about local politics and the dark workings of the human soul.

The legend is not very old, as legends go. It actually started in the 1970s, in an era of social upheaval that barely touched this isolated little town in the hills. Into "this little corner of God's Kingdom" as the locals like to call Hartville, came a very strange woman. From what I have managed to gather, Cynthia Carmichael was tall, thin, and myopic. There was "something odd about her eyes", says Thomas Watson, the current Pastor. She wore thick glasses, long, Indian-print skirts, and peasant blouses. Her hair was long, unruly, and carrot red (it's a well known fact, pastor Watson told me, that witches have red hair). Behind the thick glasses, Cynthia Carmichael's eyes blinked, drifted, and generally refused to meet the eyes of other people. Shaking his head, Pastor Watson quoted me a bible verse which seemed to state that if a person's eyes were unsound, this meant their spirit must be full of darkness. The Church members knew something was "terribly wrong" the first time they set eyes on Cynthia Carmichael, and they take every event that happened after her arrival to prove that they were right. The fact that her evil, restless spirit is supposedly still haunting the Hutchinson property is seen as the ultimate proof.

Yes, many local people claim to have seen the ghost. Good, respectable people. From what they have told me, it's more than just an ordinary ghost, it's the very spirit of malevolence and heartless cruelty. The ghost appears in the center of kind of a dark, swirling cloud (though no one admits to having stayed long enough to see the spirit's features closely) and radiates an aura of absolute evil. The presence is so terrible that no one who has experienced it is ever the same again. I suspect that it might have been one of these frightened witnesses who sent me the anonymous tip that led me to this trail in the first place. There was a lot of other information in that note, which did not start to make sense until I had actually begun to meet the folk of Hartville and hear their stories.

Though he doesn't want to admit it, it seems attempts by Pastor Watson to perform an exorcism have been largely unsuccessful, and the locals just stay as far away from the property as they can. As far as they are concerned, the burned-out remains of the Hutchinson place can remain the sole property of its deceased and diabolical tenant, and no Hartville resident would even think of trying to live there. They could not figure out why on Earth I would ever want to go there willingly. I told them that it was an occupational hazard for a Folklorist.

From what I have discovered through research and interviews with Church members, it seems that Cynthia Carmichael was an Herbalist (or, as Mrs. Reilly said with a knowing look, that's what she says she was) who had come to Hartville to escape the big city. She had purchased the long-vacant old Hutchinson property through an ad, sight unseen, and just showed up one day at the general store with the announcement that she was moving in. From that moment, things just went downhill.

One of the first things Cynthia Carmichael did was to refuse an invitation to attend church. Church members are supposed to be persistent for the Lord, but it seems that she refused every subsequent invitation as well. When pressed, she admitted to being "another religion", but wouldn't elaborate. Hartville, the Church members pointed out to me, is a Christian community, and that did not go over very well.

In order to get "in" with the townspeople, I agreed to attend the Church, and all I can say is that it was the most hateful interpretation of Christianity I have ever been exposed to, all judgment and vengeance and talk of retribution. It bore no resemblance to the loving church I was raised in. Even the hymns, which have always been my favorite part of a church service, were filled with images of violence and talk of the Wrath of God. Witch or no witch, I can easily see how an outsider like Cynthia might have been put off by the angry message that was preached. In Hartville, you understand, the Church was the community, and attendance was not considered optional.

Before they gave up and stopped visiting her, Church members said they saw "odd things" at Cynthia Carmichael's house, even, it was whispered, occult things. Since the house and its entire contents were destroyed in the fire, this can never be officially proved or disproved. And she grew odd plants on her property, plants which were neither vegetables to eat nor common ornamentals. These herbs were not planted in an orderly fashion but grew wildly all over the property, creating an eyesore and (my informant paused meaningfully) effectively preventing passersby from getting a good look at the house and property. Then there were the cats.

Within a few weeks, it seemed every unwanted cat in town had drifted to Cynthia Carmichael's place. Bob Walters the Postman said that during the time he carried Cynthia's mail, he saw at least ten different cats around the property. Cynthia claimed to be an animal lover, but who wants ten cats? What was the purpose of all those useless weeds? What was Cynthia Carmichael trying to hide? Something strange was going on for sure.

Cynthia and the townspeople lived in an uncomfortable truce of mutual avoidance for about a year, and then something happened to alter the course of events in Hartville forever. It was the yearly Revival meeting, hosted by the late Pastor McCurdy. Though they sent Cynthia Carmichael an invitation out of Christian charity, as expected she didn't come. She was the only person in Hartville (excluding those who were too old or sick to get out of bed) who didn't attend the meeting. About halfway through the meeting, when the Power of God was at its peak and many people had come forward to confess their sins and be redeemed, Bob the Postman burst into tears. Crying hysterically, he came forward and admitted to the entire congregation that he had been concealing dangerous knowledge, knowledge that might be putting the whole town in jeopardy. In his conscience, he had been wrestling between his oath to the US Government as a Postal Worker and his commitment to the Lord, and in the end the Lord won.

Between hiccups and sobs, Bob admitted that he knew Cynthia Carmichael was a witch. She was in league with the devil and other devilish organizations. He had proof. Before the horrified congregation, Bob admitted that for almost a year, Cynthia Carmichael has been receiving publications and other correspondence from other witch organizations, and had even received packages from shops dealing in the occult. One package in particular seemed to contain something hard and oddly shaped, and Bob had risked his job to satisfy his curiosity andd it. It had contained a strange, curved knife, with occult symbols carved into the hilt. Bob still had it in his possession. Not wanting to lose his job, Bob hadn't known what to do, and he had taken the knife home and secreted in in his closet (next to the Holy Bible, of course, to undo any evil influences).

After a while, Cynthia Carmichael had begin to ask him about a package she hadn't gotten, something she had supposedly ordered to help her harvest her herbs. From the way she looked at him with her weird, drifting eyes Bob knew she suspected something, and had maybe gone a little overboard in protesting his innocence. He was scared. After the incident with the package, Bob begin to have problems in his life. His car wouldn't start. There were arguments at home. One of his kids had started failing in school. He was sure Cynthia Carmichael had put some sort of curse on him. He had wanted to throw the evil knife away, but something (maybe the Lord) had told him to hold onto it. After all, it was evidence.

Trembling, white-faced with fury, Pastor McCurdy assured Bob that he had done the right thing. Within moments, the focus of the entire meeting had turned to Cynthia Carmichael and her evil influence. Everyone, it seemed, had a Cynthia Carmichael story to tell, from the adults down to the little children. This was odd, considering that Cynthia had always been a recluse who actively avoided interacting with people. No story, no matter how silly or improbable, was discounted that day. By the end of the meeting, everyone was in agreement. This was a Christian community, and God would hold them accountable for harboring Cynthia Carmichael in their midst once they knew the truth. One way or other, the Witch of Hartville had to go.

After the Revival meeting, the town of Hartville turned vigilante. Wanting first to give her another chance to convert, they begin leaving bible tracts at Cynthia Carmichael's front gate, especially ones that dealt with the dangers of the occult. Afterwards, Ted Pierce, the garbage collector, said that he had seen them in Cynthia's trash, of all places. What an insult to God and the Church! Several brave souls, led by Church Elder Eugene Yardley, even gathered their courage and ventured through the weeds into the witch's domain, armed only with the bible, some more religious tracts, and their faith. They caught her unaware, working in her garden, and she again spurned their invitations to church and refused to look at the new bible tracts they had brought with them.

Billy Wilson, the teenaged son of the man who was to be Pastor McCurdy's successor, had been staring at the outlandish print of the blouse Cynthia was wearing when he saw the glint of silver. Cynthia Carmichael was wearing a PENTAGRAM, right here in the town of Hartville! Everything that had been said about her was absolutely true! From what I understand, the visitors completely lost any sense of demeanor, and all hell broke loose. Billy begin yelling in fear. There in front of God and four other Church members, Eugene Yardley finally spoke up and accused Cynthia Carmichael of being a witch. What did she do? She didn't even have the decency to try to conceal her crime. She admitted it! She babbled some nonsense about worshiping a Mother Goddess and being a Herbalist, and about there being a Constitution in this country that granted her the "right of religious freedom". Elder Yardley said the Constitution also granted them the right of religious freedom, and their religion told them not to tolerate witchcraft. It said so right in the Bible. I don't know everything that was said during that meeting, but in the end Cynthia Carmichael chased them off her property with a garden hose, threatening to call the Sheriff and report them for trespassing and harassment. Wanting to be out of that "place of evil", as they called it, the Church members left, soaked and angry.

Cynthia did call the Sheriff, but it did no good. It seems that the Sheriff and his Deputies were all members of the Church of the Retribution. Seeing that the law was not going to intervene on her behalf, the good townspeople and Church members increased their efforts to drive Cynthia Carmichael out of town.

They threw a rock through her front window, wrapped in yet another tract on the evils of witchcraft. They set her herbs on fire (it seems she was able to put the fire out the first time), and smashed an "idol" they found in the garden. Some teenage members of the church ventured onto her property, caught one of the cats (a familiar, no doubt), and left it dead on Cynthia's doorstep as a warning. The Elders told me that while they didn't condone this kind of behavior, they were the actions of "desperate people" who didn't know what else to do to save their community. Cynthia Carmichael didn't budge one inch from her iniquity. In fact, she sent a letter to the editor of the local paper saying again that she was no harm to the community, and practiced a benevolent nature-worshiping religion. She even touched on the subject of her eyes-she knew that some people might be disturbed by her eyes, but she actually had a condition called mystagmus, which she had been born with and couldn't help. That Sunday in Church, Pastor McCurdy preached a sermon in which he revealed that it was a well-know fact that witches were marked with some type of deformity that sealed the pact they had made with Satan. Cynthia Carmichael's statement about her eyes was as good as an admission of guilt. After all, if the eye was unsound, the spirit was filled with darkness.

The truth about what happened next, the "martyrdom" of Pastor McCurdy and the death of Cynthia Carmichael, is only know to a few people, most of whom are not talking. If someone had not unburdened his conscience to me, for some reason, in that anonymous note I had received at the University, I would have been completely lost in a morass of half-truths and conspiratorial silence. On the official record, there was an unexplained fire at the Hutchinson place, and Pastor McCurdy and Cynthia Carmichael both perished in the flames. In true Folkloric style, the townspeople generally believe (off the record), that Cynthia lured the Pastor there on some pretense, and then started a fire by magical means which killed poor McCurdy. One person suggested that she had probably tried to call forth the fires of hell itself, thinking she could control them, but things got out of hand and in the end she was consumed too. I was able to piece together a third account based on my research and the information given to me by my anonymous informant. This is what I believe actually happened:

Sunday night, after the sermon I recounted earlier, Pastor McCurdy got together what was basically a vigilante mob and decided to take care of Cynthia Carmichael, the unrepentant witch, once and for all. I think the group went out to the Hutchinson property with the clear intent of doing her harm. I believe that they first set fire to the herbs again, to get her out of the house, but Cynthia Carmichael would not come out. She was probably hiding in terror.

After making a lot of noise and setting more fires to attract her attention, my informant says that Pastor McCurdy became impatient and broke into the house intending to find the witch and make her "answer for her sins". The local story says that Pastor McCurdy went to meet the witch "armed only with his bible", but in reality my informant thinks that McCurdy was also carrying a gasoline can when he entered, which may account for the fierceness of the blaze that engulfed the house. We do know that he entered the house alone, and was gone for some minutes when several members of the mob realized that the fire in the yard had gotten out of control and had started to burn the dry old wooden boards of the front porch. They were standing in the front yard yelling for McCurdy when the house just went up in flames. The witnesses later said they heard the sound of a woman's screams and saw flames shooting from the second-floor window. What actually happened inside the house will probably never be known, but Cynthia Carmichael and Pastor McCurdy never emerged again, and no one in the mob had the courage to go in after them.

In fact, when the fire got really bad, the group got back into their cars and fled, leaving the two to their fate. I think the staff at the Sheriff's Department, good Church members all, managed to pull a few string to exonerate McCurdy and somehow turn him into a hero. The rest is local history.

The ghost sightings begin shortly after the fire, and continue to this day. Altogether, at least nine local people claim to have gone to the property and seen (and felt) the black swirling cloud with a human figure at its center that radiated the essence of pure evil. This, I am told, is the spirit of Cynthia Carmichael, the Hartville Witch, trapped forever with one foot in hell, and one foot in the place where she died.

In response to this "evidence of the reality of evil", the townspeople of Hartville have permanently banned the celebration of Halloween within city limits, and forbid their children to go anywhere near the old Hutchinson place. As can be expected, Church attendance is stronger than ever.

Oh, yes, I've seen the ghost myself, and believe me, it was no hoax. It was the most frightening thing I have ever experienced. No folklore collecting trip would be complete without a visit to the supposedly haunted locality with the hope of seeing the phenomena firsthand. I went on the night of the full moon, when it was said that the spirit was most likely to appear. Expecting a long, cold, and uneventful evening, I came armed only with a blanket and a thermos full of coffee. Unfortunately, I hadn't thought to bring my camera, because I did not truly expect to see anything. I didn't really believe in ghosts at that time, but what I saw that night has caused me to change my mind permanently on that subject. I now believe, absolutely, that there are ghosts, and that evil is real.

The old Hutchinson place was a wreck, as it had been for more than twenty-five years. No one really wanted to spend enough time around the place to clean it up properly. There was a pile of charred boards in the middle of the property where the house had once stood, and the whole area was overgrown with weeds, real weeds, not Cynthia Carmichael's misunderstood herbs. I sat down on the ground next to the blackened foundation, and prepared myself for a long and unfruitful wait in the name of through research. I spent the first part of that night being really bored. I was just starting to fall asleep when I felt an icy chill in the air and suddenly all the hair on my body begin to stand on end. I was overcome with a feeling of absolute horror, and only my training as a researcher kept me where I was. If I had remembered to bring a camera, I think I would have been too scared to remember to use it. Gasping, I sat there wrapped in my blanket while I watched a terrible, unnatural black cloud forming right in front of me. The cloud begin to swirl, like a miniature, black tornado, and in the center of it stood a human figure.

Literally shaking with fear, wanting more than anything else to just drop my things and flee, I forced myself to stay still while the figure formed and became more distinct in appearance (I don't think anyone else had managed to stay in the presence of the ghost for so long). In the center of the cloud stood the form of a person, wreathed in black shadow and flame. It seemed to be clutching a book with a dark cover in its white and lifeless hands (a grimoire?). Suddenly, the figure seemed to notice it was not alone, and turned and fixed its baleful, soulless eyes on me. It radiated a palatable sense of absolute evil that I will remember as long as I live. Frozen, whimpering in terror, I found myself looking into the hateful, twisted face of the late Pastor McCurdy.

About the Author.

Back to the top of this page.