October 27, 2025

Episode 177 Witch Legends of the South

31 minutes

Across the South, the word witch has been used to explain what people fear and cannot control. For generations, healers, midwives, conjurers and root workers carried knowledge their communities needed, yet often faced suspicion when tragedy struck. In this episode of Southern Mysteries, we explore the real lives and southern legends behind those branded as witches. From colonial courts to mountain cabins and coastal swamps, these stories reveal how the line between healing and haunting has always been thin and how fear can turn ordinary people into figures of folklore.

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Episode Sources

Anderson, Jeffery E. Conjure in African American Society. Louisiana State University Press, 2005.

American Folklife Center, Library of Congress — regional oral history collections on conjure, hoodoo, and midwifery.

Anniston Hot Blast and Birmingham Age-Herald (Alabama newspapers), 1880s witchcraft coverage.

Deep South Magazine. “Julia ‘Aunt Julie’ Brown: Debunking Her Voodoo Priestess Mythos.”

Encyclopedia of Louisiana. “Marie Laveau.” Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.

Encyclopedia Virginia. “Sherwood, Grace (ca. 1660–1740).”

Federal Writers’ Project. South Carolina Slave Narratives. Library of Congress, 1938.

Ferry Plantation House Museum archives, Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Fett, Sharla M. Working Cures: Healing, Health, and Power on Southern Slave Plantations. University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

Foxfire 2: Houses and Appalachian Traditions. Edited by Eliot Wigginton. Anchor Books, 1973.

Historic New Orleans Collection. “Julia Brown: Hoodoo, Hurricanes, and a Storm-Swamped Ruddock.”

L’Observateur (St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana). “Voodoo Queen and Forces Unseen.”

Library of Virginia. “The Case of Grace Sherwood, 1706.” Princess Anne County Court Records.

Louisiana State Museum archives, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Long, Carolyn Morrow. A New Orleans Voudou Priestess: The Legend and Reality of Marie Laveau. University Press of Florida, 2006.

Martha Ward. Voodoo Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau. University Press of Mississippi, 2004.

McTeer, J.E. Fifty Years as a Low Country Witch Doctor. University of South Carolina Press, 1971.

Mental Floss. “The Legend and Truth of the Voodoo Priestess Who Haunts a Louisiana Swamp.”

Milnes, Gerald. Signs, Cures, and Witchery: German Appalachian Folklore. University of Tennessee Press, 2007.

National Park Service. “Marie Laveau’s Tomb – St. Louis Cemetery No. 1.”

Norton, Mary Beth. In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. Vintage Books, 2003.

Princess Anne County Order Book, 1695–1709. Virginia State Library microfilm collection.

Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. “Granny Women: Healers of the Southern Appalachians.”

South Carolina Encyclopedia. “Dr. Buzzard.”

South Magazine. “Lowcountry Root Doctors.”

The State (Columbia, South Carolina). “In the mid-20th century, even the county sheriff was a witch doctor.”

Swannanoa Valley Museum. “Mary Stepp Burnette Hayden: Midwife and Healer of Western North Carolina.”

The St. John the Baptist Pioneer, October 1915, hurricane coverage.

The Times-Picayune (New Orleans), October 1–3, 1915, storm and casualty reports; obituary, June 17, 1881.

Virginia Memory, Library of Virginia. “Good Witch or Bad Witch? The Grace Sherwood Trial and Pardon.”

Ward, Martha. Voodoo Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau. University Press of Mississippi, 2004.

Western Carolina University Digital Humanities Project. “Midwives and the Medicalization of Birth in Appalachia.”

Wikipedia (used for verification of geography and storm data): “Frenier, Louisiana” and “1915 New Orleans Hurricane.”

Wigginton, Eliot, ed. Foxfire 2: Houses and Appalachian Traditions. Anchor Books, 1973.

Episode Music

Out of the Mines, courtesy of Ross Gentry, Asheville, North Carolina.

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By Shannon Ballard

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