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| The Witch of Yazoo |
It moves slow, heavy with the scent of water and the faint sweetness of magnolia. Somewhere in the distance, frogs croak like a warning. And if you listen long enough, over the hum of the river and the whisper of the trees, you might hear it—
The soft clink of iron chains.
On the hill that overlooks Yazoo City, Mississippi, Glenwood Cemetery rises above the town. Most nights it’s quiet, peaceful even. But locals say when storms drift in from the river, something stirs there. The chains rattle. The magnolias sway. And if you’re unlucky, you’ll hear laughter carried on the wind.
It’s said the grave at the top of that hill belongs to a woman who cursed Yazoo City itself—a woman who swore that when she died, she would return in twenty years and burn it to the ground.
They call her the Witch of Yazoo.
The Woman in the Swamp
Like most old Southern legends, this one begins with gossip.
In the late 1800s, before Yazoo City had electricity or paved roads, there was talk of a woman who lived deep in the swamp. Nobody knew her name. Some said she’d come from New Orleans, others that she’d always been there.
She was tall and thin, with wild gray hair and a voice that could carry clear across the river. People said she knew things she shouldn’t—when a storm was coming, which crops would fail, and who’d fall ill before the doctor did.
Some called her a healer. Others whispered she was a witch.
Children claimed they saw lights flickering around her shack at night, moving in circles like fireflies that refused to leave. Fishermen said they heard her singing over the water, her voice soft and low like the river itself was answering her.
Then two men went missing.
Their boat was found tangled in the reeds, nets half-pulled in, as if they’d stopped mid-haul. A few days later, their bodies surfaced downstream, their eyes open and their faces caked with river silt.
That was enough to turn whispers into fear.
Sheriff Harkins organized a search party. Five men followed him into the swamp, their boots sinking into the mud as the sound of insects rose like static. What they found was something they would never forget.
Near the edge of the river stood the woman, hands black with muck, standing beside two shallow holes that looked like graves. When the men shouted, she turned and ran. The sheriff chased her through the reeds, his gun drawn, the others close behind.
The ground beneath her feet gave way.
Witnesses said she screamed once as she sank into a pit of quicksand. The sheriff reached for her but couldn’t. Before the swamp swallowed her completely, she raised one muddy hand and spat her curse:
“In twenty years, I’ll come back and burn this town to the ground!”
And then she was gone.
The Fire That Came True
The sheriff and his men returned shaken. The townspeople buried the woman on the hill in Glenwood Cemetery, far from the other graves. No preacher would bless the site. No one carved her name into the stone.
Out of fear—or maybe guilt—they wrapped her grave in thick iron chains, driving the stakes deep into the earth. It was meant to hold her there, body and soul.
For a while, it worked.
Years passed. Children grew up hearing the story, but few believed it. Time turned the witch into a fireside tale, a warning about superstition and sin. The chains rusted. The swamp grew quiet again.
Then came May 25, 1904.
It began with a single plume of smoke over Broadway. No one could say how it started—maybe a spark from a stove, maybe something else—but within minutes, the fire spread.
The wind came fast off the river, fanning the flames through the heart of downtown Yazoo. Families poured into the streets, dragging what they could carry. Horses screamed in their stalls as the fire leapt from one building to the next, glass exploding from the heat. The air shimmered like a living thing.
Witnesses said it moved too quickly to be natural.
“The fire jumped streets,” one man recalled. “It wasn’t just wind. It was like it knew where to go.”
Some swore they saw a figure on the hill that night—a woman-shaped shadow standing among the magnolias, her hair wild, her arms outstretched toward the burning town below.
Houses caught like tinder. Wooden storefronts collapsed. The courthouse bell melted where it hung. People ran for the river, but the smoke rolled in ahead of them, choking out the air.
By the time it was over, two hundred homes and nearly every business in Yazoo City lay in ruins.
When survivors climbed the hill to Glenwood the next morning, they found the witch’s grave.
The chains had been torn apart.
Not rusted through. Not pried loose. Broken clean in half, as though something beneath the earth had pulled until the iron gave way.
Echoes in the Cemetery
No one ever proved how the fire started. Newspapers at the time blamed high winds, dry air, and wooden construction. But in Yazoo City, people remembered the curse.
They said she’d kept her word.
The town rebuilt, slower and smaller than before. Yet with every generation, the story was retold—around church suppers, in barbershops, and on front porches when storms rolled in from the river. Parents warned their children not to mock the witch or disturb her grave. Teenagers dared each other to sneak into Glenwood after dark. The legend became a part of Yazoo itself, stitched into its identity like smoke in old brick.
Over the decades, the story grew. The witch’s grave became a curiosity for travelers, the kind of thing whispered about in small-town diners. A sign was placed in Glenwood acknowledging the legend, and the site became part of local tours each October.
Caretakers have long claimed strange happenings there.
One said his lantern went out every time he passed the grave, “like something didn’t want to be seen.” Another swore he found the chains rearranged overnight, twisted into patterns he couldn’t explain.
In the 1960s, two teenagers sneaked into Glenwood after midnight on a dare. They came back pale and shaking. “We heard the chains move,” one told a reporter. “Then something laughed. It wasn’t wind.”
In the 1990s, a visitor photographing the grave captured what looked like a faint mist swirling around the headstone. When the picture was developed, a shadow shaped like a hand reached out across the dirt.
Even in daylight, Glenwood has a weight to it. The magnolias grow thick around the fence, their leaves whispering when there’s no breeze. Visitors say the air feels warmer there, heavy and electric, as though the earth itself is holding its breath.
Local historian Evelyn Ford, who researched the legend for the Yazoo Historical Society, once called it “part of who we are—half folklore, half memory.”
And she’s right. Because in Yazoo City, everyone knows the story.
Even if they don’t believe it, they lower their voices when they pass the hill.
The Lesson of the Witch
Folklorists will tell you this story is a coincidence. That fires happen. That chains rust and break.
But Southern legends aren’t built on facts alone—they grow from fear, from guilt, from the kind of silence that lingers long after the truth has gone.
The Witch of Yazoo stands at the intersection of myth and memory. Whether she existed doesn’t matter. The town still burned, and the grave is still there.
Maybe she was a killer. Maybe she was just an outcast woman who became a scapegoat for tragedy. In a time when independent women were often labeled witches, it’s not hard to imagine how easily rumor could become condemnation. The swamp woman’s story mirrors countless others across the South—women who lived alone, healed with herbs, or simply refused to conform, and were punished for it.
Either way, her legend endures because it speaks to something old and human—the need to explain what we can’t control.
Every time the wind howls over Glenwood and the chains clatter faintly in the dark, Yazoo City remembers.
Similar Legends
The Bell Witch (Tennessee)
In the early 1800s, the Bell family of Adams, Tennessee, was tormented by a spirit that whispered, struck, and spoke aloud. Some believed it was the ghost of a wronged woman. Others said it was something older that fed on fear itself.
The Soucouyant (Caribbean Folklore)
A witch who sheds her skin at night and becomes a ball of fire, slipping through cracks to drink her victims’ blood. Salt in her skin traps her forever.
The Witch of Pungo (Virginia)
Grace Sherwood was the last woman tried for witchcraft in Virginia. Thrown into the river to test her guilt, she survived and lived to old age. Locals still claim her ghost rises with the tide.
The Boo Hag (Gullah-Geechee Folklore)
A skinless witch who steals the breath of sleeping victims. To keep her away, people paint their doors “haint blue” and scatter salt on the windowsills.
The Witches of Chiloé (Chile)
Along Chile’s misty coast, legend tells of sea witches who command storms and travel on ghostly horses across the waves, their secret coven hidden in sea caves.
Each story carries a warning: some spirits, once wronged, never rest.
The Witches of Halloween
The Witch of Yazoo remains one of Mississippi’s most enduring legends—a ghost story woven into the town’s history and burned into its memory.
More than a century after the fire, Glenwood Cemetery still draws visitors who want to see the grave where iron chains once held a curse. Some say they rattle when the wind rises from the river.
Maybe the fire of 1904 was chance. Maybe it wasn’t.
But the story endures because it feels true—the idea that vengeance can cross years, that some promises don’t die.
So if you ever find yourself in Yazoo City, climb the hill to Glenwood Cemetery. Look for the grave marked only Witch. The magnolias will whisper, the air will smell faintly of rain, and the chains will lie quiet in the grass.
At least, they usually do.
📌 If you enjoyed this episode, check out last week’s story: La Tunda – Colombia’s Shape-Shifting Jungle Witch.
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