Magic and Murder in Hometown Memory

The summer after my high school graduation, back before we scattered ourselves across the country, when my friends and I were soaking in every last drop of teenaged audacity, we drove to an old murder house in the woods. 

It had already been a great evening, despite the fact I was fifth-wheeling with my two best friends, Rose and Monica, and their boyfriends, Hank and Adam, for about the hundredth time. At that point, the boys and I were quite used to each other and had struck up some awkward comradery. Hank was even hosting the impromptu gathering at his place in Stewartstown, a much more rural area of the county than the suburbia of East York that I called home. We played with the goats around his neighbor’s barn, then fled inside from a sudden onset of rain, screaming with laughter as the drizzle turned to a downpour. We dried off around the kitchen table as evening turned to night, eating snacks and gossiping about anything we could think of. That gossip eventually landed on the topic of a supposedly haunted house not far from Hank’s home. He’d brought Rose there before, only on her insistence, and she claimed that Monica and I simply had to see it for ourselves. I was hesitant at first, unsure of the legality of the situation and not usually one for traipsing into a dark and stormy night, but an irresistible curiosity and some light peer pressure quickly had me jumping into Adam’s car. During the five-minute drive, I asked for some history behind the haunting, but the only info anyone had was “early 1900s murder.” It would be years before I learned the rest of the story.

It’s called Hex Hollow, or more formally Rehmeyer’s Hollow, named after Nelson Rehmeyer, the owner of the house and unfortunate victim of the crime. He was known in the community as a knowledgeable practitioner of powwow, a form of mystical faith healing founded in Pennsylvania Dutch traditions (with a name that was, for whatever reason, taken from a local indigenous language). Contrary to popular belief, this practice by itself was not considered witchcraft, but powwowers could easily become witches if they used their abilities for evil and drew their power from the devil instead of God. Nelson was a good Christian practitioner though, and it was through his healing that he met his murderer, John Blymire, who at that time in 1900 was a young child needing to be cured of a deathly illness. The seemingly miraculous experience infused him forever with an intense, fanatical belief in magic.

As an adult, John felt that he was struck with endless misfortune. He suffered from insomnia, couldn’t keep a job, was frequently sick, and lost both his children in infancy. Convinced it was all the fault of a hex, but unable to do anything without knowing who placed it, John became increasingly paranoid and erratic. His wife, Lily, feared for her life until his obsessive behavior got him committed to an asylum, allowing her to successfully file for divorce. Ironically enough, it probably was mental illness that John was really struggling with, but 1920s doctors were of no help to him. His time institutionalized was short-lived anyway, and he was soon back on the hunt for the source of his hex. He sought assistance from a notorious powwower called Nellie Noll, better known as the River-Witch of Marietta. After a whopping six sessions, he finally had his answer: Nelson Rehmeyer.

I couldn’t tell you why John saw the image of Nelson on his palm, or why it was so easy for him to believe that the man who once saved his life now wanted to ruin it. I can only tell you what happened next. Nellie told John that in order to break the curse, he had to bury a lock of Nelson’s hair six feet underground and burn his copy of The Long Lost Friend, a book of folk magic beloved by powwowers. On an evening in November of 1928, he visited Nelson’s home, accompanied by local fourteen-year-old John Curry who he’d recruited to the mission. They chatted and drank, apparently unsure of how to proceed, until Nelson suggested they stay overnight since it’d become rather late. While the older man slept soundly upstairs, they searched fruitlessly for the book, ultimately deciding that this visit was a bust. Plus, they still needed the lock of hair, and they realized that they’d need more help to subdue the surprisingly strong-looking sixty-year-old. In the morning, the two Johns simply said their goodbyes, and then promptly enlisted eighteen-year-old Wilbert Hess. He also suspected someone had hexed him, so it wasn’t a huge leap to assign the blame to Nelson, and that very same evening, November 27th, the trio returned to Rehmeyer’s Hollow.

They claimed it was an accident, that they didn’t mean to kill Nelson, but true intentions don’t really mean much in the end. When the older man refused to give into demands, there was a struggle, and something or someone gave his head too hard of a hit. He died on his own kitchen floor. Despite the horror of what they’d done, John Blymire said he felt instant relief as the hex was lifted alongside the death. The trio tried to cover their tracks by making it seem like a robbery gone wrong, stealing any money they could find and then setting Nelson’s body aflame. Unfortunately for them, the fire went out before it could destroy the evidence, a fact which would later add to superstitious whispers about how, by all accounts, the wooden house should’ve been engulfed. Whether or not there was magic involved, John and his teenaged accomplices were soon embroiled in what newspapers dubbed the “York Witch Trials,” despite no mention of magic or witchcraft in the official court proceedings. John Blymire and John Curry both received life sentences, Wilbert Hess 10-20 years, yet all three were let out long before their original release dates and lived to be older than Nelson Rehmeyer.

I didn’t know any of this in 2015 when I stepped out onto that woodsy back road and stood before the house in all its spooky glory. I learned it later from internet articles, podcast episodes (both true crime and paranormal), and a book I received as a Christmas gift called Haunted Pennsylvania. No, that night, all I knew was that I was scared, and not of ghosts, which I believed in mostly just a fun, curious way (as I still do). I was scared of getting into trouble, so it didn’t matter how much I wanted to get a closer look. The porch light was on, cutting through the darkness and telling me that the house was not abandoned. Someone was taking care of it, maybe even inside at that moment, and they were probably aware that teens liked to snoop around. While our friends crept towards the property, Adam and I hung back under a shared umbrella, the two closest things to a voice of reason that our group had. I was convinced that at any moment, a cartoonish version of a crotchety old man would come out to yell at us, maybe even wielding a shotgun in classic American style. I said this to the others, shouting as loudly as I dared through the rain, until they agreed to at least just stay on the road. Rose insisted that it would’ve been fine, since apparently last time they’d literally sat on the porch with a ouija board, a story which scandalized me greatly because of both the trespassing and the one-in-a-million chance of getting possessed. We lingered a few more minutes, taking in the sight, before climbing back into Adam’s car. Maybe we’d come back another day, Monica suggested, when it wasn’t so late and rainy. We never did.

The first time I read the actual story of Rehmeyer’s Hollow, I didn’t even make the connection. It wasn’t until I really looked at the accompanying photograph that I realized the house looked familiar, that it was the same one I saw on that crisp summer night. The same house that countless teenagers visit to make some reckless memories, was also where two teenagers were led to a fatal mistake. If it really is haunted, I still think I was right not to be scared of any ghosts, despite any lingering folk magic in the air. Nelson spent his life as a healer, and if do end up returning to his house someday, it’ll be with that in mind.