Happy New Year, probably cursed listeners!

Today’s episode we discuss the Hex Hollow Murder, but before that we discuss the hidden gospel of evil baby Jesus, the human right to vegemite, and Japan’s war on bears.

LISTEN HERE:

The News:

-Hidden Gospel of Evil Baby Jesus

-Human Right To Vegemite

-Japan’s War on Bears

TRANSCRIPT:

Sheryl: Happy New Years, Probably cursed listeners. Welcome to episode 27. For today’s episode, we discuss the Hex Hollow murder, but before that, we discuss the hidden gospel of evil baby Jesus, the human right to Vegemite, and Japan’s war on bears. I’m your probably cursed host, Sheryl.

Chris: And I’m your probably cursed host, Chris. Evil baby Jesus. He is kind of a dick, according to this article.

Sheryl: I mean, I feel like children are in general.

Chris: As we do at the start of every episode, we will calibrate our Lord Carnarvan Curse-O-Meter, our magical AI-powered device that lets us know the cursedness of all things. To calibrate it, we feed it news stories from recent articles within the past few months. Sheryl will give it the first article now.

Sheryl: This article is titled, Forbidden Book, omitted from the Bible, reveals a vengeful child Jesus and exposes why it was kept hidden. This is by Stacy Liberator for the Daily Mail on November 21st. A 1900 year old book left out of the Bible reveals secret stories of Jesus’ childhood that the church kept under wraps for centuries because it portrayed Jesus as a violent, petulant child.

Chris: Release the baby Jesus files.

Sheryl: Mm-hmm. Known as the infancy gospel of Thomas. That feels like a cop out of a name, but I guess so.

Chris: I think if it’s the gospel of Thomas, it’s the infancy gospel. So this was somebody who knew Jesus when he was a baby.

Sheryl: Okay, okay. I think. Okay. The infancy gospel of Thomas tells of Jesus performing miraculous feats like bringing clay birds to life, bringing dried fish back to life, resurrecting a child who had died of illness, raising a man back from the dead after an accident while drawing water from a broken pitcher, and healing a boy whose legs were injured by an axe. But it also portrays a darker side, depicting Jesus as a vengeful, even cursing a child to death for striking him on the shoulder. Nice.

Chris: Don’t hit baby Jesus. You see that boy over there? If he bumps into you, you just let it go.

Sheryl: I mean, I feel like they depict God in the Bible as very vengeful, so this doesn’t seem too out of character. That is true. After Jesus killed the child for accidentally bumping into him, the villagers became upset and complained to him, Joseph and Mary. In response, Jesus strikes the accusers with blindness.

Chris: You know what? You’re all blind and you saw nothing.

Sheryl: And then Joseph reprimands him, quote, when Joseph saw that Jesus had done such a thing, he got angry, grabbed his ear and pulled very hard. The boy became infuriated with him and replied, It’s one thing for you to seek and not find.

It’s quite another to act this unwisely. Don’t you know that I don’t really belong to you? Don’t make me upset. Don’t make me angry. Essentially, you’re not a real dad.

Pretty much. You’re not my real father. Also, I’m God. In another story, Joseph took Jesus to a teacher to learn the alphabet. The teacher said, Hand him over to me, brother, and I shall teach him the scripture, and I shall persuade him to bless all, not to curse. And Jesus hearing this laughed and said to them, You say what you know, but I know more than you, for I am before the ages. And I know when your father’s father were born, and I know how many years of your life.

Chris: This is written in Old timey Bible. The English translation of whatever language Thomas was writing in. So that’s why it kind of reads kind of strange and stilted.

Sheryl: Excellent. Jesus then astonished the teacher with his perfect knowledge of the Hebrew alphabet. Show off. Showy. The teacher then tells Joseph that the child clearly does not belong to this world and asks to take Jesus away. The boy ain’t right. In chapter 3, when the son of the high priest destroys the water, Jesus had gathered on the Sabbath. Jesus cursed him, declaring that his fruit will wither, like a scorched branch, immediately the boy withered.

Chris: Fruit being the fruit of your lines? I guess so. I wonder what a withering child looks like. Maybe it’s like in the old movies where they stake Dracula and they kind of ages a thousand years in one moment.

Sheryl: But it’s not all bad miracles. He healed a woodcutter who accidentally chopped off the soul of his own foot, instantly restoring him. Jesus instructed him to continue his work.

Chris: You know, it just occurred to me. The family business was carpentry. He’s healing the woodcutter, the guy who’s making the wood for their carpentry. So it’s just like get back to work. No slacking on the job.

Sheryl: To be fair, if I saw someone magically heal my foot and then tell me to do something, I’m probably going to listen. I don’t know what else they could do.

Chris: I think if somebody had just recovered from having the end of their foot chopped off, give them like a 15 minute break. I don’t know how you measure time back in the day, but 15-ish minutes.

Sheryl: When Jesus’ water jug broke, he filled his cloak with water and carried it back to his mother. He multiplies a single grain of wheat into a hundred and gives it to the poor widows and orphans. Jesus even stretches a piece of wood so Joseph can complete a carpentry job. In one story, Jesus heals his brother James from a snake bite by breathing on the wound, destroying the snake and ending the pain.

Chris: I guess you got to kill the snake that bit you to cure yourself. Yep.

Sheryl: I like how they just skirt it over the fact that Jesus has brothers now.

Chris: Or how do you stretch wood? Like stretch your arms strong?

Sheryl: I don’t know. Because if you did that it would get too thin and then it wouldn’t work.

Chris: It’s true. But maybe that was fine for the job. Perhaps he went to Joseph and then he was like, hold one end. We’re going to fix this right now and I’ll hold the other and I’ll tug it for as long and as hard as I can.

Sheryl: On another occasion he resurrects a child who had died bringing the child back to life and returning him safely to his mother.

Chris: I wonder if the other half of that story is the child died because Jesus struck him to death and he’s like, oh I should have done that. Joseph’s going to grab me by the ear again.

Sheryl: I mean maybe. Very weird article. Yeah.

Chris: It kind of makes him more relatable like as children we all do, you know, regrettable things. Just based off of pure emotion. It’s true. But apparently the church is like, we can’t have this. It makes them look like a monster.

Sheryl: I mean they have a bunch of books like that so not that make him look like a monster but a bunch of books that they are hiding from.

Chris: Oh that’s true. Yeah. Yeah I think his brother James is in the Dead Sea Scrolls or something like that. Well Sheryl has given the first new story. I will input the second story titled, Australian prisoner, sewers for his human right to eat Vegemite.

This was written by Rod McGurk on November 18th for the Associated Press. A convicted murderer is taking his love of Vegemite all the way to the Supreme Court of Victoria arguing that banning the iconic spread in prisons violates his human rights as an Australian.

Sheryl: I checked with Sydney and she said that’s a thing. I bet.

Chris: My sister Sydney spent a couple years in Australia, probably half Vegemite by now. Andre McKechnie, 54, serving a life sentence for 1994, killing claims that withholding Vegemite denies him the right to enjoy his culture as an Australian.

His lawsuit targets Victoria’s Department of Justice and Community Safety and Corrections Victoria with a trial scheduled for next year. Vegemite, the Salty, Sticky, Yeast-Based Spread. That’s a glorious description. It sounds so appetizing. It’s just, doesn’t it? Beloved by most Australians and reviled by many outsiders, has been banned in Victoria’s 12 prisons since 2006.

Sheryl: Wait, they only have 12 prisons… oh wait, Victoria. I was like, there’s only 12 prisons in Australia but…

Chris: There’s just one and it’s Australia. Officials say the spread interferes with drug sniffing dogs and inmates once smeared contraband with Vegemite to mask its end. So we distinctly enough already, so just imagine this covered in Vegemite.

The yeast product is also prohibited because of its potential use of in-brewing alcohol, which I’ll let you, the listener, Google this, but the term for prison hooch is jankum and the procurement of such is utterly disgusting. Excellent.

Sheryl: Maybe don’t Google that.

Chris: Google it on a friend’s computer. That’s right. You don’t need to pollute your algorithm. Yes. McKecney argues the ban breaches both the state’s Charter of Human Rights and the Corrections Act, which requires prisons to provide adequate food for inmates’ well-being.

Sheryl: I mean, adequate food doesn’t feel like it would be Vegemite. Yeah.

Chris: It’s a spread. Yeah. It’s a garnish. Maybe it’s like, you know how people just eat Nutella straight out of the jar without ever spreading it on anything? Yeah. Maybe. The case touches a nerve in Australia, where Vegemite is considered a cultural staple. More than 80% of households reportedly keep a jar in the pantry, as other 20% people are bucking tradition, I guess.

Mm-hmm. And the spread has been part of national identity since its creation in 1923. Oh, it’s over 100 years old as a couple years ago.

Yep. As an alternative to Britain’s Marmite. It’s best known abroad, thanks to Men It Works 1980s hit Down Under and its infamous Vegemite sandwich lyric. Not everyone is a fan. Former US President Barack Obama once declared, it’s horrible. Even Australian singer Colin Hay has admitted Americans often dislike it because they spread it too thick. Victims advocates have criticized McKecney’s lawsuit as insensitive.

Lawyer John Herron, whose daughter was murdered in 2019, called the case frivolous and offensive to victims’ families. It’s not a case of Vegemite or Nutella, he said. It’s an extra perk that is rubbing our faces in the tragedy we’ve suffered. Recently in Canada, Vegemite sales were briefly banned in Toronto, sparking Vegemite Gate before relenting. Which is not something I heard of.

Sheryl: No, it wasn’t something I heard of either. And I wonder why it was banned.

Chris: Yeah, they’ll have to look that up. That might be the topic of our next episode. That’s right. For now, the fate of Vegemite behind bars in Australian prisons rests with the courts. And with it, the question of whether Australia’s most polarizing spread is a cultural right or contraband.

Sheryl: I gotta say, if we told prisoners they couldn’t have maple syrup, I think there would be riots.

Chris: That’s true. Yeah. Based on how they describe Vegemite, I’m gonna say maple syrup probably tastes way better than Vegemite.

Sheryl: Yes, although I don’t think it can mask contraband, so.

Chris: We have a dog, we have maple syrup. I just need to get some contraband.

Sheryl: I don’t think he’s trained to sniff out contraband.

Chris: That’s true. It’s weird that all dogs can smell drugs. The real training part is getting them to tell you about it. That is the second story. Sheryl will input the third and final story for calibration.

Sheryl: Okay, this article is called Facing a Spike in Deadly Bear Attacks. Japan turns to the military and drones the bark. This is from CNN on November 6th, and it’s written by Jesse Young and Junkel Uguro. The northern prefecture of Akira is known for its lush forests, lakes, and valleys, and for being a hotspot for this year’s deadly bear attacks in Japan. Akira Governor Kenta Suzuki said, The situation has already surpassed with the prefecture and municipalities can handle on their own, and exhaustion on the ground is reaching its limit.

It’s a national problem fueled by the climate crisis and habitat change. Across Japan, at least 13 people have been killed, and more than 100 have been injured since April this year, according to the government’s figures. Some of the highest numbers since the records began in 2006.

Chris: All previous records eaten by bears.

Sheryl: In October alone, shoppers were attacked in the supermarket. A Spanish tourist was scratched by a cub at a heritage site. Well, to be fair, don’t touch a bear cub. I will come and fight you myself. A trail runner was forced to wrestle a bear in the woods before sprinting to safety.

Chris: I gotta say, with these three anecdotes, the guy who got scratched by a baby cub, he got it easy. He did not have to wrestle a bear.

Sheryl: That’s true. He’s lucky mama bear didn’t show up.

Chris: Yep. He didn’t have to encounter a bear in the Vegemite Isle.

Sheryl: A problem has become so bad that the British government added a bear warning to its travel advisory for Japan. In Akita, local authorities requested formal military assistance from Japan’s self-defense forces, saying their existing measures, which included box traps and bear repellent sprays, weren’t enough.

Troops being deployed are not allowed to cull bears due to Japanese law. Instead, they provide logistical support, like setting up traps and transporting carcasses that are shot by hunters. The actual culling is reserved for licensed hunters and local hunting associations, but the group is shrinking and aging rapidly amid Japan’s demographic crisis, prompting fears that they alone can’t handle the scope of the problem.

Chris: Kids these days don’t want to go out shooting fuzzy animals.

Sheryl: The federal government has acknowledged these limitations. Local governments and hunting associations who work together as wildlife control teams are now severely exhausted. Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said at a news conference in October, I believe that it’s only natural to consider what can be done in response to the requests from local governors. The National Police Agency announced Thursday riot police would be authorized to shoot the bears in residential areas Akita and Iwate prefectures when hunters can’t respond in time. Local authorities are also considering more high-tech countermeasures such as AI-equipped surveillance cameras and drone-based alert systems. Similarly, in central Jifu prefecture, the government is experimenting with drones that play a sound of barking dogs and fireworks to scare bears away. Bark, bark, bark, bark.

Chris: You’ve been to Japan, do the police there carry firearms?

Sheryl: Not that I could recall. I’m sure there’s probably areas where maybe they do, but in Tokyo did not see any police officers with firearms.

Chris: Maybe it’s like crowd control right here and they’re just shooting beanbags at bears.

Sheryl: It could also be that like they only take the guns out when they know they’re going to need the guns. Would be my guess.

Chris: Okay. Yeah. If you grab the gun when you’re out on patrol while your co-workers are like, what do you need that for?

Sheryl: Yeah, that would be my guess. You’re directing traffic, Bob. Or like if we used to have in Canada, it could be that like different levels of different police officers carry firearms. Okay. Yeah, not all levels of police are trained with firearms. Potentially, I don’t know. I don’t know enough to. I don’t know enough about Japan. We’ll have to go.

Mm-hmm. Meanwhile, residents and officials remain on edge. Some have taken to loudly rattling their door handles before leaving the house. Those here marks a record surge in fatalities. The number of bear human incidents has been rising for several years.

This is partly because bears are venturing out of their traditional habitats and into urban areas in search of food. Another factor may be Japan’s demographic shift. For years, younger generations have moved to the big city for better opportunities, leaving dwindling, elderly populations in rural villages.

That means more abandoned farmland, overgrown bushes, fruit trees, and fewer people along the borders of these towns. There are also just more bears. At one time, they were over-hunted, but protections introduced in the 1990s allowed the bear population to recover. Brown bears more than doubled their number in the last 30 years to a population of 12,000. Asiatic black bears are now more than 42,000. That’s a lot of bears. That’s a lot of bears.

Chris: They’re going to move into these abandoned towns and start putting on the Japanese people’s clothes and start running their abandoned shops and creating a bear society. Three stories have been input into our Curse-O-Meter. We will now get it to calculate the cursiveness of each story. Activating the Curse-O-Meter. Please stand by.

Speaker 3: And the cursiveness of the first news story about evil baby Jesus, the Curse-O-Meter says, definitely cursed.

Sheryl: It didn’t sound like a good child. I mean, not that there are children that 100% are good all the time, but maybe don’t kill people.

Chris: Yeah. Especially when you do something wrong and then you just, and when people complain to you about it, you make them blind. That’s just a dangerous individual. Yeah. It reminds me a little of that Twilight Zone story where everybody had to placate that little boy because he had the power to do anything.

Sheryl: Yeah, that basically sounds like what it is.

Chris: It’s good that you did that. It’s good that you made them blind, little baby Jesus. The second news story about the human right to Vegemite, the Curse-O-Meter says, probably benign. It’s a spread. It’s not a food, you guys.

Sheryl: And it makes sense that the prisons want to keep it out. Also, it makes me wonder if this guy just wants it for nefarious reasons. Like, if he actually just wants to eat it, they should be able to just spread it on some bread and deliver it to them without having to give him… That’s true. Yeah. Like, it sounds like we put it on too thick in North America, so if they need less of it than what I’m thinking, then they’re not going to be able to use it for anything. Yep.

Chris: Just supervise him and make sure he swallows when he eats it. Yeah. And the results for the third and final story about Japan’s war with the bears, the Curse-O-Meter says, the real curse is people.

Sheryl: Yeah, we kind of created this situation that the bears are now in because climate change and habitat destruction and…

Chris: That’s true. Or in the cases where everyone’s moving away from these towns, habitat creation?

Sheryl: It’s not habitat creation because the houses are still there. That’s just an unexpected side effect of…

Chris: I feel like it is habitat creation. If the humans leave, the bears will fill their void.

Sheryl: They’re not going to live in the houses. Not yet. Yeah. Not Goldilocks and the three bears.

Chris: It’s going to be like Planet of the Apes, but with bears. All right. Now that we have our Curse-O-Meter nice and calibrated, we are going to take a quick trip over to the probably cursed museum and gift shop to talk about today’s artifact dropping on our shop.

Sheryl: So before we talk about our cursed artifact, Chris and I wanted to announce the passing of our little bird, Zekina. Listeners have probably heard him in the background of our episodes, trying to add his own commentary. It’s a little quieter around the house without him, and he will be missed. Yeah.

Chris: He was the loudest and very vocal. He was a third host on the show. Yeah, absolutely. From the other side of the house.

Sheryl: Also because birds are extremely social, we’re announcing the arrival of our new bird, Havoc, to the house. She was hatched on September 20th, and she’s just a baby. So Hex and Havoc are solely getting used to each other. And just this morning, they were both chewing on my cell phone case together. Group activities. Yep.

You may hear the birds still on occasion, but won’t be as noisy as before. They’re in bed right now. Yep. So now to this month’s artifact. For this month’s artifact, we have a Sailor Doll from the Empress of Canada. The doll is made in England by Nora Wellings, who was a British toy maker that was born in 1893 and died in 1975. Ages ago.

Yep. The Sailor Doll is part of her Jolly Boy Sailor line and will have been sold on cruise liners. Not Jolly Bee. No, not Jolly Bee. Although their faces are kind of a little similar.

Chris: One may have influenced the other.

Sheryl: This doll was likely sold on the actual Empress of Canada ship as a souvenir.

Chris: Which was a cruise ship you told me about?

Sheryl: Yep. It was a cruise liner. It’s a felt doll in a velvet jumper and it’s wearing a hat with the words Empress of Canada on it. I have it behind me here. Yep.

Chris: He’s got creepy eyes.

Sheryl: Yeah, I was just about to say the face appears to be hand-painted and he’s got a bit of a mischievous grin on his face. You could think elf on the shelf, but creepier.

Chris: This is one of those Sailors on a ship where you look at him and you know that guy has all the contraband in his cabin.

Sheryl: Yeah. It’s a doll and the ship that it’s associated with have a lot of history. So I was curious about the Empress of Canada just because, well, or Canadian. And discovered that the Empress operated as a transatlantic ocean liner from 1961 to 1972. It would have regularly traveled between Liverpool, England and Canada for Canadian Pacific, which for those of you who don’t know, Canadian Pacific Railway is our railway system here. And so they also had a cruise ship line at some point.

Chris: I wonder if they had a cruise passenger train as well.

Sheryl: I mean, some of those passenger cars get really fancy. The ship was a first class vessel and it would have transported approximately 850 tourists at the time. Although the ship was operated under the name Empress of Canada for just over a decade, she continued to be operated under various other names until she was officially retired in 2003. They changed the name of the ship? Yeah, like four times. Bad omen.

Chris: I think the owners wanted it to sink so they could get the insurance and get a new one.

Sheryl: It never actually sunk. Not once.

Chris: No? Nope. But they’re just stomping on their hats with rage.

Sheryl: The Jolly Boy is an interesting piece of Canadiana and he knows it. Just look at the smile on his face. He does know it. He could be yours if you want to check out our shop at probablycursed.etsy .com.

Chris: I will also state here that we are going to be putting the shop on pause for a little bit this month in January. So be sure to check on the 15th, I think. We will reactivate the shop and you will be able to take a look at them and purchase them, bring them home. He can eyeball it you from any shelf in your home.

Sheryl: Yeah, yeah. Creep out your kids or whoever else you think needs a creepy sailor doll.

Chris: Creep your dog, creep your cat, creep your goldfish. Your neighbors just prop them up in the front window.

Sheryl: Now onto our haunted update. I always find it funny because the week before we start recording I say to Chris the house has been quiet and then something happens. We should say that more often.

Yeah, really should. Last weekend Chris and I were watching TV on the couch when four books on our bookshelf fell over and knocked one of our Lego display items off the shelf and onto the floor.

Chris: It was the Riddler-Copter. Yes. It was part of the Bat Plane and Riddler-Copter Lego collection. For you Lego nerds out there.

Sheryl: Yes. And poor Freddie was like super spooked. He ran away from the bookshelf and then hid in the kitchen for a bit.

Chris: It’s the only safe place.

Sheryl: And he wouldn’t go back to the bookshelf for like the rest of the night. He just kind of like hid near the stairs. So poor little guy. We can’t say for sure that it was paranormal. But the books that were in place that fell over they’ve been in place for months now with no incident. So yeah, it did feel kind of weird that they just randomly decided to fall.

Chris: It took months to change their centre of balance.

Sheryl: Yes. So if you would like some spooky activity in your house, maybe you can purchase one of the haunted items. Yeah.

Chris: Purchase of every item from our public shop goes to help fund this podcast and go towards our future dream of owning a cursed item museum.

Sheryl: Well now that we have visited our gift shop and museum, it’s time for Chris to go to the main topic.

Chris: Throughout history, people have believed that luck and misfortune are not merely the random effects of a chaotic universe, but rather are something that can be influenced. But what happens when a person believes they’re being targeted with misfortune? How far will they go to resolve it? Today we will discuss this in the Hex Hollow Murder. My sources of information for this episode are Medium.com, Wikipedia, and AmericanHauntingsInk.com.

Sheryl: It’s good of you to do that. I keep forgetting to do that. Most of my episodes I just go right on in.

Chris: You know what? That just makes it harder for people to rip us off. That’s fair. Another source I had for this episode was a book called Pow-Wowing Among the Pennsylvania Dutch by David W. Kreibel. And up top, I’m going to clarify that the term Pow-Wow in this episode does not 100% relate to the indigenous term, but the term was definitely stolen from indigenous people. Pow-Wow in this episode’s context refers to an almost extinct practice of Dutch immigrant Christian folkloric magic, also known as braucherie, which is very hard to say.

Yeah, good job though. And it was mostly practiced in Pennsylvania. Why it’s a practically extinct practice now I’ll also be getting to in this episode.

So with Pow-Wow, you can heal and cure illnesses. You can tell the future. Find things that went missing. Remove hexes or curses. All sorts of useful stuff.

Interesting. It can be practiced by anyone, so it’s pretty much magic for the people. But members from certain family lineages are said to have a better knack for it. And those families would make their living removing hexes or making charms and magic amulets for people, you know, the good family business. Those families would collect their knowledge into books and someone published them for sale. The most famous book of which was titled The Long Lost Friend. And it was advertised as a talisman in and of itself with claims that it would ward off harm just by carrying it around.

Sheryl: A long lost friend doesn’t like a imaginary friend? You know, I don’t know.

Chris: It’s also the translation from German. Okay, yeah, fair. But the German direct translation pretty much is the long lost friend. Along with spells, it also had recipes for beer and molasses and included a charm for catching fish.

It came with all sorts of goodies. If this sounds like light magic stuff, you’re right. And if you’re wondering if there’s a dark version of this practice, you’re also right. It’s called hexerei. It’s practiced by hex doctors, or often just called witches. They draw their power from the devil and they did nasty things with their magic, making your livestock sick, having your crops fail, causing health problems, placing hexes on people, etc.

Sheryl: Does that mean our bird also is communicating with the devil?

Chris: You know, maybe she’s been babbling a lot lately when she’s alone in the room. And hexerei even had their own magic book called The Sixth and Seventh Book of Moses.

Sheryl: More forbidden books of the Bible.

Chris: Yeah, exactly. That’s exactly right. Oh, all right. They included directions on how to control spirits and demons, create the plagues of Egypt, and teach you how to turn your staff into a snake.

A good gift to give your herpetologist friends. Apparently these books were authored by Moses himself, with a bunch of secret knowledge that couldn’t be put in the Bible. Interesting. Owning this book though has its drawbacks. Reading the book could be fatal, or attract the devil, or cause you to obsessively read the book like you couldn’t do anything but read the book.

Sheryl: I mean, I feel like most things kill you, so worth the risk.

Chris: Although if you are obsessively reading the book, you can be cured of this just by reading the book backwards.

Sheryl: Oh, I don’t think I could read it backwards. Like do they mean like letters backwards or like the words like in reverse order?

Chris: You know, I don’t know. If you have the sixth and seventh book of Moses, and this has happened to you, which backwards reading worked for you? Replying the comments. So we’ve got Pow Ours and Hexerie, and funnily enough you don’t have to be one or the other. You could be both. You could own both magic tomes, and hex some people, and heal others, which some people did for money of course.

Sheryl: I was going to say, as you do when you have magic powers.

Chris: It’s true. In the States. Everything’s for sale. Yeah. So now with the mini educational segment over, we move on to the hex hollow murder, and the figure at the center of it, John Blymire. Born in 1896, he was a third generation powowwer, born in one of those more powerful families. He started seeing visions at the age of four, and performed his first healing at age seven.

Sheryl: What kind of healing?

Chris: He didn’t say. Oh, okay. But apparently he was notable enough. Interesting. He had a rough childhood, didn’t start school until eight years old, and was made fun of by all the kids. His teachers considered him, quote, slow normal, or very slow normal on the school teacher intelligence scale of the time.

Sheryl: I feel like I would also be slow normal. So I get it.

Chris: I start every day at slow normal. He was often sickly, and also working on his powowwing career, which affected his school attendance. At age 13, he quit school, dropped out, and got a job in a cigar factory.

Sheryl: So wait, he started school eight and he dropped out at 13. So he made it to grade four? I think so.

Chris: All right. 13 is grade six.

Sheryl: Yeah, but he didn’t start school until he was eight.

Chris: Oh, right. Yeah. He gave it a good five years.

Sheryl: Yeah, okay. Just checking.

Chris: So over time, he has gained a reputation as a powerful powowwer. And as said, his cures were effective and long lasting, and he charged no fees, and once even calmed a rabid dog with his powers. But something was not quite right in John Blymire’s life. Quote, A stronger power than I had got a hold of me, tormented me almost every day of my life from then on. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. My skin was getting too loose on me, and I had the opneema, which is an old timey slang word for a wasting disease linked to spiritual possession.

Okay. After a while, he suspected someone had placed a hex on him. But who? This is also what he has to figure out in the story.

You’re asking all the right questions. Blymire’s family tried to remove the hex, but nothing worked. At this time, he believed he was cursed by the ghost of his great grandfather, the first powowwer in the family, who was the seventh son of his seventh son. This is apparently a quality that makes you extra powerfully magic.

Sheryl: Oh, well, this is going to be fun when we do the episode that I have not next time, but the time after.

Chris: Oh, you got another seventh son of a seventh son?

Sheryl: I have a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. Whoa. Yeah.

Chris: I assume it’s the same thing, only, yeah. No way of knowing. So how did he come to this conclusion about his great grandfather? One night, after his clock struck 12, he heard an owl hoot seven times. Okay. Informed with that owl’s testimony, Blymire packed up and moved as far from where his great grandfather was buried as he could.

Sheryl: So opposite side of the earth, he just picked up a globe and was like, there. I think he stayed in the state. Oh, well, all right.

Chris: It was harder to travel back then. That’s fair. You probably had to do it on foot.

Sheryl: He probably thought the Pennsylvania was the edge of the world after quitting school in grade five.

Chris: It’s true. He’s not going back to Germany. No. And it seemed to work, at least for a bit. He could work his magic confidently again, and he even got married. But soon Blymire’s fortunes turned for the worse again. Two of his children died in infancy. He often felt sickly and unable to eat or sleep. He was unable to work his magic. He went to the physician to talk about his problems and was told it was likely his own belief in the hex that was the root of the cause. He tried other doctors who performed electric treatments on him and other things that didn’t work. Oh yeah, our electrotherapy device is also still up for sale on our shop at probablycursed.etsy.com. You too could practice on yourself the electric therapy that doesn’t work that John Blymire probably went through.

Sheryl: We don’t recommend using the machine though that we have because it already looks like it’ll just catch on fire the first time you plug it in. But!

Chris: It might just be a burn your house down machine. Or fry your nervous system disease machine. Yes, that’s correct. As time went on, Blymire again became obsessed with the idea that he had been hexed. He visited dozens of other powowwers trying to remove it, and this put him in touch with a very dangerous powowwer, Andrew Lenhart. Lenhart was dangerous because he had a reputation for attributing his clients as hexes to their spouses. One such client shot and murdered her husband in order to lift a hex. It didn’t work.

Sheryl: Yeah, I mean I feel like back in the early 1900s when this probably happened, being a single woman with children was not a good idea.

Chris: Not a good idea. Not a way to make a living. In 1923 Lenhart convinced Blymire that the perpetrator of the hex was someone very close to him. Slowly, Blymire came to suspect his wife. And his wife. Now you may be thinking here’s where the hex hollow murder comes in.

And you’d be wrong. Blymire’s wife knew of Lenhart’s reputation and once her husband started visiting him she began to fear for her own life. With the help of her own father they were able to get Blymire committed to a state hospital for psychiatric treatment. Catastrophe avoided.

Sheryl: I mean I like the part that she couldn’t do it herself. She needed to get her dad involved to convince them that he was crazy. Whereas like the other way around my husband was like yeah my wife’s crazy. They’re like commit her. Yeah.

Chris: So that’s just the way it was back then.

Sheryl: They’re like, ah man women don’t know anything about crazy people.

Chris: Women are born hysterical. Yeah. You can’t listen to them. That’s right. Unfortunately, Blymire wouldn’t be rehabilitated. The hospital was understaffed as Blymire was one of 900 patients assigned to his doctor. Wow. Security was also lax. After a month and a half Blymire just walked out the door and left. And no one ever came looking for him. But when he returned home his wife had already begun divorce proceedings.

Sheryl: As you should for trying to murder your wife.

Chris: Yep. John Blymire resumed his desperate efforts to remove the hex, consulting many more powowwers from all over until he was finally referred to the River Witch of Marietta, Miss Nellie Knoll, who apparently took pity on him and came out of pow-wow retirement to help him for $5 a session, which is about $90 in today’s money.

That’s pretty good. But over the course of many sessions Miss Nellie was able to slowly divine one detail after another. First that he was indeed hexed. Second that the Hex doctor was a man. Third that the Hex doctor was old. Fourth they lived in the country. Fifth they were someone Blymire had known since childhood. And on the final session she had the name. So this is like six sessions. So it’s like $30.

Sheryl: Yeah. Okay.

Chris: Thomas. Nope, not her Thomas. That was the guy who wrote the book about evil baby Jesus.

Sheryl: Yeah, I know. I was just trying to think. If I had to pick a name of a random guy in the 1900s, it could be a Bible name.

Chris: Imagine that these are Dutch immigrants though. So they’re more German. Although I guess his name is John.

Sheryl: Yeah, I was going to say. And the other guy was, I can’t remember.

Chris: You probably won’t guess his name. No, okay. It’s not a name that I would be able to guess. We’ll be able to guess, okay, fair. It was a name that surprised Blymire. It was a man who was a family friend and a pow-ower who had removed a Hex from Blymire when he was a boy. Blymire couldn’t believe it at first. And Miss Nell said she could prove it. First, making Blymire lay a dollar bill in the palm of his hand. Then she removed the bill and then John could see in his own palm an image of the man he knew so well from his past, Nelson Rhymeyer.

Sheryl: A lot of Myers. Yeah.

Chris: Yeah. Blymire still couldn’t believe it and tested Miss Nell several more times, which is probably another $30.

Sheryl: I was just going to say, he lost $7 right there every time she takes the dollar out of his hand.

Chris: Oh yeah. She probably didn’t give it back. No. So yeah, he tested her several more times just to be sure. She reiterated that Nelson was the Hexer and on top of that had also Hex co-workers of his at the cigar factory.

That’s just rude. She told Blymire there was two things he could do to remove the Hex. One, bury a lock of Nelson’s hair 10 feet underground, which is really deep.

Yeah. Or two, burn Nelson’s copy of the long lost friend, his magic book. Afterwards, Blymire consulted other powowwers to verify Miss Nell’s statements. However, despite any of them being unable to confirm it, Blymire decided Nelson was the one who had hexed him.

Sheryl: I mean, if nobody else can be that straightforward about it, then it’s got to be right. It’s true. You just got it. You don’t have to be 100% right. You just have to be confident. Yep.

Chris: You have to do the picture in the palm of the hand trick. That’s a pretty good trick. I don’t know how you would do it now. No. So in 1928, Blymire paid a visit to Nelson, bringing along one of the co-workers that Miss Noel claimed Nelson had also hexed. They knew what to do to remove the hex, but the plan fell apart as soon as Nelson opened the door. Blymire found that Nelson looked way bigger and meaner than he remembered. Making up an excuse on the spot, Blymire explained he wanted to learn from Nelson about his magic practice and had some questions about the long lost friend. They ended up talking late up into the night, and their conversation went so late, Nelson invited the two men to spend the night, and they agreed.

They took him up on his offer. After Nelson went upstairs to bed, Blymire and his accomplice ransacked the lower floor, looking for the long lost friend book, but to no avail.

Sheryl: I mean, the guy probably sleeps with it under his pillow. Probably.

Chris: Yeah. Accused nearby. Yeah. After leaving in the morning, the two men decided that, with the help of just one more person, they could subdue Nelson and get a lock of his hair. Finding their third man, they returned to Nelson’s house the next night. The three men were upon Nelson the moment he let them inside. Nelson was tackled to the floor, and the men frantically tried to tie him up with rope. But things went awry. From here the testimony of the three men differ, but the end result was Nelson was beaten and strangled to death.

Sheryl: All for his hair. All we had to do was just find Sydney’s hairbrush and we just pulled the hair out on our own.

Chris: It’s true, the shoulders went to his, oh my guess they didn’t have indoor bathrooms a hundred years ago, his powder room? Yeah. Maybe? Blymire, though, was determined to finish what he came for. He got a lock of Nelson’s hair and searched the house top to bottom, eventually finding the copy of the long lost friend. Now they had everything they would need to remove the hex. Before leaving, they staged the house to look like a robbery, and they removed all the valuables They then doused the magic book in Nelson’s body with kerosene and set it ablaze. Trusting the fire would destroy all evidence of their presence, the three fled the house without looking back. Now what happened after could have been a fluke incident, or maybe Blymire’s hex was still operating, or maybe as some claim, Nelson Rhymeyer had some magic left in him. The fire that was hoped to destroy the house put itself out almost immediately. Well done. Nelson’s body was found a couple of days later, and police later arrested John Blymire. I couldn’t quite see what they had on him.

Sheryl: Or how they figured it out was him?

Chris: They just figured it out. Maybe Nelson’s house was right across the street from the police station, and they just watched this whole thing during morning coffee.

Sheryl: Or they spoke to another powwower, and they were like, you know who did it?

Chris: It was Nellie Noel. She’s like, I got a tip for you.

Sheryl: It’ll cost you. It’ll cost you $10.

Chris: In court, Blymire’s lawyers tried to argue that he should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, citing his beliefs in witchcraft and magic. Blymire himself testified that he believed he did the right thing, and he felt a lot better after Nelson Rhymeyer’s body was buried with his hair.

All of his locks of hair. However, the judge gave John and one of his main accomplices a life sentence, and the third guy they brought along 10 to 20 years in jail. The kicker though is, while the third guy served his full sentence, Blymire and the other guy were paroled early.

Sheryl: For good behavior?

Chris: I don’t know. Huh? Didn’t quite say why. But maybe Blymire’s hex was lifted and things were finally turning his way. His coworker also kind of became successful as well after being let out of jail. He became a successful artist and he fought and survived in World War II.

Sheryl: I mean that is the tormented artist. It’s true. Right? He survived World War II. He was in prison for a while.

Chris: He’s got a lot of life events to interpret into art. Now remember how I said powwow is a near extinct practice? Yes. It is because of this murder that the practice died out. The story was in newspapers all over the country, and then they read how Blymire was kind of feeble minded and superstitious, and that reputation stuck onto everybody in the area.

Sheryl: Uh, for everyone.

Chris: No one wanted to be caught practicing powwow anymore. It also kind of started an early version of a satanic panic. Anytime a death occurred with the vaguest connection to a powwower, or a crime contained any unusual circumstances, it was believed someone practicing powwow was to blame. Hmm. People were accusing their enemies of being powwowers and so on and so forth, until practitioners of powwow all but disappeared.

Wow. A researcher in 2006 attempted to find any remaining and found half the people he had asked in the area had never heard of powwow. In the end he only found eight people practicing in this area. Yeah, it’s quite the decrease. And that is the story of the Hex Hollow Murder.

Sheryl: Ah, interesting. I do like how we’ve done a bunch of articles where people have tried to remove curses from their in-laws or deal with people that are possessed, and normally those stories end with everyone is okay, or maybe one person died, but this was actually like, nope, the guys just died.

Chris: Yeah, I liked it because it was kind of a mix of witchcraft and true crime. Also sort of a comedy of errors. That’s sort of what drew me to it. It’s a weird thing to have happened.

Sheryl: Yeah, and it’s a religious practice that we don’t really hear of anymore.

Chris: Completely extinct due to one man’s actions. Now with the full story input, let’s see what the Curse-O-Meter makes of the Hex Hollow Murder.

Speaker 1: Please stand by.

Speaker 3: And the Curse-O-Meter says, the real curses people.

Chris: Yeah, definitely. I think everybody believed what they were doing is right, although I don’t know why that witch lady had a specific person in mind as the Hexer, but maybe they had a beef going on. Maybe put her into retirement and she’s like, this is going to be my big comeback, but I just need this one guy out of the way.

Sheryl: My one thought, at least based on the research I’m doing for the future episode that you will find out about later, is that John came to the conclusion himself. She just asked him questions that made him feel like he has come to that conclusion on his own. And then as soon as it was said, oh, so and so, she’s like, aha, yes, him.

Chris: Oh, like Cold Reading with John Edwards? Correct. She, John Edwards, him?

Sheryl: Yeah, that’s my guess.

Chris: That makes sense. Also researching the story, it kind of felt like the way he was saying about how he felt like he couldn’t do his practice anymore, how he was sickly, how he just couldn’t, didn’t have energy. It kind of sounded like he was suffering from depression.

Sheryl: Especially after losing two children in early childhood, that would make anyone depressed.

Chris: Yeah, but he just sort of misattributing it to just a hex being put on him that he would be relieved of it as soon as he took out whatever it was causing him.

Sheryl: I should see what my therapist does if I make that suggestion to her.

Chris: She should just tell her, like, listen, we’ve been wasting a lot of time on tangents. I’ve been cursed. This is what’s really happened.

Sheryl: This is all we need. We just need to figure out how to get the curse to go away. And then all my problems will magically be fixed.

Chris: Do not take advice from us. No. Go see your therapist.

Sheryl: Yes. Well, I would be, I’d just be telling her it was a curse or a hex, and then she would have me committed.

Chris: I know you would. I am saying if you’re listening to this, keep going to your therapist. Yes, that’s correct. Do not cut off someone’s hair and then spend all afternoon digging a 10 foot deep hole to throw it into. Yes. Well, that about wraps it up for this episode.

Sheryl: If you’re interested in buying one of our artifacts, you can visit our Etsy shop at probablycurse.etsy .com. You can also follow us on social media. We have Facebook, Blue Sky, Instagram.

Chris: We got a TikTok. Yeah, okay. We also got, we’re on YouTube shorts. I think that’s it. Yeah. Yeah. You can also go to our website at probablycurse.net and keep up to date on all of our newer episodes. And until next month, stay spooky. Stay spooky, everyone.