Liberty Hill Witch Hunt

Several years ago, I don't know exactly when because this event is not important enough to have registered that detail in my mind, I was at my sister's house in Georgetown about a week or so before Halloween.   It was on this evening that we decided to find a witches' grave.

To begin the evening, we watched some horror movie that had us in the mood for Halloween Hijinks (TM).  My brother-in-law and I spent the next hour or so, to my sister's delight, brainstorming what we were sure would be the best Halloween Haunted Hayride (TM) ever conceived.

In our mind, we were going to borrow a friend's house in Liberty Hill that has a nice long dirt drive, about a half mile long, that leads up to a house that is, essentially, a large single room with windows on all sides.

The hayride would start from the road and we would only allow between four and six actual riders with the rest, probably another four, being actors who are in on the whole gag.

The hayride starts off down the drive with possibly a few lame scares and decorations on the trail.  Then a little ways more, a blood-curdling scream, and an actress runs out on the trail.  She's freaking out and explains one of the other actors assaulted her.  She was trying to get him off her, but he bit her arm.  She's bleeding profusely.  The driver of the wagon agrees to stop at the house that's along the trail, where the actors take their breaks, to call the police.

When they get to the house down the trail, zombies encircle the group and they have to hole-up in the house.  Over the course of the next half hour or so, the real hayriders would see the actors they rode in with killed, torn apart, and zombiefied, hopefully to realistic and incredibly interactive effect.  We imagined calling the "police" who would show up only to be ripped apart by the now "horde" of zombies.  We thought of ways to arm the riders with weapons so that they could fight their way out of their predicament.

Of course, the more beers we drank, the more grandiose the sets, props, cast, and make-up effects got.  To the point where the cost of such a production began to bring us to reality and kill our good-humored bullshitting session.

Still, though the Deville Events Liberty Hill Zombie Attack Halloween Haunted Hayride (TM) was dead in the water, we needed some way to get our spooky fix.  With Liberty Hill on our minds, Chris asked if I'd ever heard the story of the Liberty Hill Witch.

There are several versions of the story, but Chris' Great Grandmother had told him a version close to this one, and she was a direct descendant of Andrew Mather, who was the first child born in that area and a Texas Ranger.  So this is probably the most enduring version.

There had also been some local news stories about the legend.  One anchor reporting on location from the witches' grave got skeeved out on live television and had to leave.  Supposedly if you lay some coins out on the top of the grave and walk away, when you come back, the coins will be neatly stacked.  If you don't bring the coins, or tribute, bad things will happen to you.

It sounded creepy and cool, and so in the middle of the night, we decided to go find the grave.  After about a half hour drive we got near the cemetery.  I say near because in our haste to leave, we didn't bother looking up any exact directions or location.  Chris knew his great grandmother was in an adjacent cemetery, so that got us near enough, but it took some further bumbling around in the dark before we found the right location.

The other difficulty that we ran into was not having a properly working flashlight.  The flashlight in Chris' truck would work for a few seconds if you smacked it and then fade back to darkness.  For a few people trying to be scared, that provided enough creep factor for the outing.

Which was good because we never found the grave.  Like I said, we didn't have a working flashlight in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere.  So while we made it to the cemetery, we confirmed later that we'd been in the right place, we never actually found the grave.

Was it a let down?  For a group of people who had time to kill and a desire to be scared, it provided enough entertainment.  Finding the grave may have been more of a let down, because even if we found it, and even if an accused witch had been buried there, we would not have found any supernatural activity.  We could have laid coins out and waited any amount of time and they would not have been stacked.

How can I know that?  Because those things don't and can't happen.  And if you think you can prove they do, give the Amazing Randy a call.  He's had a million dollars in escrow for a decade for anyone who can prove the existence of supernatural phenomena under scientific scrutiny.  And no one has succeeded yet.

Supernatural phenomena are, by definition, "outside" nature and cannot happen.  I don't remember thinking this way at the time.  That's more a result of my increasing skepticism over the past few years. 

Still, knowing that there's no ghostly energy surrounding the witches' grave doesn't make the memory of trying to find it any less fun.  And it wouldn't prevent me from trying to go out and find it again.  So long as I have time to put dying batteries in my flashlight.