Witch In The Woods

The Witch in the Woods is a local Cryptid. I first heard about it around 2012 during my second attempt at college. It was a small satellite campus for a larger university. As such, most of the students were adults taking night classes but every year we got a few fresh graduates taking their first year closer to home before heading off on their own.

I was sitting under the pavilion with quite a few other students, chatting about what brought us to the school. As is typical in such a rural area, we started talking about where we lived and how far we had to commute to get there. I was one of the furthest away, driving almost an hour from the old family farm each night.

One girl, a fresh high school graduate, had me beat for distance. I knew exactly where she was from and was trying to describe my so-small-it-doesn't-rate-a-post-office town, because I knew she'd recognize having driven past it on her way in.

"Oh my god!" she exclaims. "I know that spot You must live right next door to the Crazy Old Witch! What's that like? Have you seen her?"

It's a small rural community. I know every single person within a five mile radius. A crazy old witch is new to me and I admit I haven't heard of this person. The girl happily tells me about the legend of the Crazy Witch who stalks her land with a shotgun at night, searching for teenagers and she shoots them and cooks them into a stew if they set foot on her land.

I'm bemused by this and tell her she must be thinking of somewhere else, because I've lived there all my life and have no knowledge of any such person ever living there. It's mostly old men and families, my own mother being the only old woman on the whole road.

"No! I saw her myself!" the girl insists. Apparently, she and some friends had loaded into a truck one night just that past summer and gone looking for the witch. They'd parked at the crossroads and walked up and down the treeline until this bright light appeared and a woman in a long cloak shouted at them. At which point they'd jumped into the truck and sped away.

So, here's the story that few left alive know. In 1982, this land had never been occupied. My parents carved a farm out of dense forest. Not only was the area packed with feral cats and dogs dumped on the lonely stretch of gravel road, but there was a rabies outbreak about the same time. So my folks had to euthanize a lot of stray animals and varmints to protect their livestock. This was usually done with a shotgun. And, as mom had babies in the house, the gun was never set down. It was either in her hands, or in the gun rack, locked safely away. So between using the gun and cleaning/maintaining it, Mom had it out a lot and since she wouldn't just set it down somewhere, she developed a reputation for meeting people at the driveway with a gun in hand. It was coincidence only and folks knew it at the time. But the reputation spread in a good-natured way and several people, to this day, still call her "Shotgun" as a friendly nickname.

The land is no longer a farm. We don't have any livestock anymore and it's all become a bit overgrown. Because of that, folks sometimes think it's abandoned and we'd been having trouble with people trying to use our driveway as a place to hang out. Between that and folks from the lake down the road getting lost, when I hear a vehicle running down at the end of the driveway, I have a habit of walking down there and either giving directions or advising them that it's private property and they need to move on.

The "Shotgun-Wielding Witch" of legend is my mother. The "Crazy Witch" that this girl saw appear in a flash of light was me, walking down the driveway with my spotlight and my fuzzy pink bathrobe to make sure the people shouting near the running vehicle parked on the road weren't in distress.

I am a second generation cryptid.

These days, I'm a substitute teacher. I have occasionally heard snippets of my students talking about the Witch in the Woods. I have told no one local of the truth about this particular legend. But I get immense entertainment value from it.