Folk Ritual Magic Gone Wrong

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
​It was the dark of night on Thanksgiving Day 1928, when three farmers stole into the house of another man located in York County's Rehmeyer's Hollow. They tortured and murdered Nelson Rehmeyer, spurred by the belief that he was a witch doctor steeped in the old Dutch mysticism known as Pow-Wows. 

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Nelson Rehmeyer

In 1820, John George Hohman, a German author penned a book titled The Long Lost Friend, which was composed of a "collection of mysterious arts and remedies for man as well as animals." There were spells, recipes and talismans to be used as cures including domestic troubles. It served as the blueprint for folk magic practiced by the Pennsylvania Dutch known as pow-wowing.

In the little corner of Pennsylvania where Nelson Rehmeyer lived, 1928 turned out to be a bad year for several people. Rehmeyer, 59, lived alone on his 40-acre farm with a dilapidated house and stable on it. His wife Alice separated from him eight years before, and moved in with her daughters at the family's old homestead about a mile away. He was considered reclusive, and was known to practice pow-wow.

For John Blymyer (Blymire), 1928 was the last in a string of bad luck years. His wife left him, two of his three children died and steady employment eluded him. His figure was regularly seen walking the streets of York, and the country lanes beyond it. He blamed witches for bringing down this blight upon him.

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Alice Rehmeyer with her daughters, Beatrice and Alice during the trial

In 1923, he’d been an "inmate of the county almshouse and was later taken to the state hospital for the insane at Harrisburg". He escaped during a baseball game on the hospital grounds. He was hunted for a year, but a new ruling from the hospital stated that escaped patients were legally free after a lapse of one year.

Blymyer, 32, desperate to escape the black cloud he'd existed under, asked John Curry, 14, and Wilbert Hess, 18, to act as his accomplices to confront Rehmeyer.

John Curry met John Blymyer at a cigar factory where they once worked. Curry was left an orphan at the age of 5 when his father died, and he ran away from home to escape the beatings inflicted by his drunken stepfather. 

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Rehmeyer House c.1928 site of the murder. Located in Rehmeyer's Hollow, Pa. It stands in North Hopewell Township in southern York County.

Hess' reason for joining in was his own family's streak of "bad luck". Blymyer hired himself out as a pow-wow doctor to Hess' father. He told Hess that to break the curse, Rehmeyer's copy of the Long Lost Friend was to be burned, and a lock of his hair should be buried eight feet deep behind the chicken coop.

On Thanksgiving Day, Rehmeyer's neighbor heard his mules braying. He came to the stables and found the animal had not been fed. Once he came to the house he found the body. The neighbor named Glatfelter, during the trial described what he found thus:

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​Lying on the floor, face down, with the head resting on a block of kindling wood, was the body of Rehmeyer. There was a heavy piece of rope around the neck. The arms were pinioned behind the back, and held there with a strong piece of rope from a brand new halter, only purchased last week, tied around the arms, close to the shoulders. The legs were crossed, and the feet tied together with lighter rope. The legs were bent so that they were forced toward the back of the man's body

John George Hohman's "Long Lost Friend," was the bible for folk magic and and healing rituals in the Pennsylvania Dutch communities in York County and beyond.

​Rehmeyer had three holes in his head, and parts of a broken chair littered the floor. Blood and ashes surrounded the body. Most of his clothing had been burned off, and the body was charred with third degree burns. A coal oil lamp was found with only a bit of kerosene left in it, and the wick was pulled out. It was suspected this what they used to set him on fire, and they hoped the rest of the home would incinerate in order to cover their crime.

Mrs. Rehmeyer told police that Blymyer came to her home the day before asking about her husband, and she told him that he was at his farm. She recognized him as a "bad sort". He'd been known to stay with her husband on occasion.

Curry was the first to be arrested. He immediately confessed and implicated Blymyer and Hess. When questioned by the district attorney, the three men said that Rehmeyer had been killed because he had "cast a spell over young Hess and his father, Milton G. Hess".

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The notoriety of the Pow Wow murders made headlines across the country c.1928

According to them, Blymyer had been employed by Mr. Hess to put a "spell" over relatives of a family who forbade them the use of a road near their farm. The cost of the spellwork was $50 and so far Mr. Hess had given him $10. Then it became known that the Hess relatives had hired Rehmeyer to issue a counter-spell against the Hess family.

​It turned out both Blymyer and Rehmeyer were practitioners of pow-wow, a form of folk magic that flourished among the Pennsylvania Dutch starting in the 17th century.

The case would be dubbed the Hex Hollow Murder by the newspapers, and it posed questions about other crimes in York County.

The district attorney questioned John Blymyer closely, about the murder the previous December of Gertrude Rudy, 16. She was found mutilated lying on the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks, on the outskirts of York County.

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The three men accused of the Rehmeyer murder. 1. John Curry, 3. Wilbert G. Hess, 5. John Blymyer c.1928

Several men were questioned, but the crime remained unsolved. Blymyer worked in the same neighborhood as Gertrude, and admitted he knew who she was. He worked at the same factory as the girl, and even attended her funeral. The state police sent an officer and another "mystery man" to investigate further, if Blymyer was connected to the Rudy murder. The only witness they found was William Goodling, son of a man who Blymyer was living with at the time of the girl's death. The young man told them he saw Gertrude Rudy in Blymyer's room, however Blymyer denied this. The police found the majority of his answers to be evasive, but there was not enough evidence to implicate him in the murder of the young woman.

​On December 2, 1928, Nelson Rehmeyer was buried at Sadler's Church Cemetery. His estranged wife and two children attended the funeral. Detectives were also there, and they learned the deceased had kept $800 in a jar. The money was nowhere to be found.

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Murder scene in Rehmeyer house c.1928

Despite the claims of the accused that the motive had been witchcraft or "voodooism", there was suspicion that robbery was the true reason for the crime. They said they were forced to kill Rehmeyer when he resisted his hair being cut. Once he'd been incapacitated his hair had been too bloody, and the only way to break the hex was to kill him.

Testimony given during the trial exposed the role witchcraft and fear of curses played in the  murder of Nelson Rehmeyer. Eventually despite pleas of insanity or the fear of being hexed, all three were convicted and sentenced to serve life sentences. The story gained international attention.

​During the investigation, Dr. Zech, York county coroner informed the state and federal authorities that a score of infants died in the last five years, because they were denied regular medical treatment and turned over instead to the care of pow-wow doctors.

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John Curry making a sketch of his friend in their prison cell. (Source - Daily News Archive)

Helen Agnes Eiker, 21, who was serving a prison sentence for the second degree murder conviction for the killing of her husband Percy Elker, told the D.A. that a powwow doctor treated her before she shot her husband to death.

October 23, 1953, John Blymyer was paroled after five attempts at freedom. He served 23 years of his sentence.

Wilbert Hess was released in 1939.

John Curry was released in 1939, and granted a complete pardon in 1943. Ironically he was paroled in the custody of his stepfather, John Matthews of Spry in whose riding academy he would be working at. He later went on to earn a spot as a cartographer on Eisenhower's staff during WWII for his artistic skills. His paintings are still found in many homes in York county.

The old Rehmeyer's house is presently owned by his great grandson, who runs it as a museum. Rehmeyer Hollow was since been renamed to Spring Valley County Park.

The following is an example of a cure for hysteria and colds from the bible of powwowers, the early 19th-century book Lost Lost Friend: 

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​This must be attended to every evening, that is, whenever you pull off your shoes and stockings, run your finger in between all the toes and smell it. This will certainly effect a cure.