Episode 62: Desperate Measures

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The human body is a mystery to us.

Well, for most of recorded history, at least.

Yes, we've done our best to explore and decipher the secrets inside ourselves, but so much of it has been pure guesswork.

Thankfully, the past century of medical research has multiplied our understanding exponentially.

But for a very long time, we've been a slave to assumption.

No matter where you look, early folklore always had a focus on our well-being.

Folklore dictated our agricultural techniques, our personal safety, and of course, our health.

And thanks to folk wisdom, our ancestors did incredibly unusual things to fight illness and pain.

They cut themselves to let the sickness out.

They gave themselves mercury enemas for their constipation.

They drank their own urine, drilled holes in their skulls to stop seizures, and chewed tree bark to relieve pain.

If someone said it worked, there were always people willing to try it for themselves.

And of course, we've learned a lot since then.

We now know that mercury is highly toxic and that drinking urine urine has zero benefit to our bodies.

Plus, it's just gross.

And while there's a lot of archaeological evidence that drilling holes in skulls rarely killed people, it also failed to help them.

Sometimes old folk remedies actually worked though.

Ancient Egyptians discovered that the bark of the willow tree was the best way to relieve pain.

It turns out that willow bark is rich in salicylic acid, an active ingredient still used today in aspirin.

But accurate treatments like willow bark were more of a lucky guess than scientific know-how.

People are very good at grasping for straws.

It's part of our hopeful nature.

It's a reflection.

of our belief that human life can be hacked.

We can find any cure if we just look hard enough.

Sometimes, though, people have looked a bit too hard, and it's led to tragic results.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is lore.

Beginning in the late 1600s and continuing well into the 1800s, America welcomed its first major wave of immigrants.

Many of them came from southwestern Germany and settled in what is now Philadelphia.

In fact, the area of the city known as Germantown was once an independent community founded by the earliest of those German immigrants.

Over time, they became known as the Pennsylvania Dutch, which is a misleading term because they weren't Dutch at all.

It was just a variation on the word Deutsch, which means German.

But along with their common language, these immigrants also brought a unique belief system with them, a mixture of Protestant Christianity and European folk magic.

It's not uncommon for folklore to blend with a major world religion.

The biggest example of this might be the voodoo of Louisiana, which is a blending of West African Vodun and Roman Catholicism.

It highlights the flexibility of our belief systems.

The things we believe are rarely static.

They're permeable and ever-evolving.

The result was a folk religion known as Spielberg, or Brauka.

It focused primarily on healing and curative practices, but don't think pharmaceuticals.

This was a bit more, well, unique than traditional medicine.

It was a mixture of passages from the Christian Bible, prayers, and recipes that would look a lot like spells to modern readers.

And this practice leaned heavily on two primary sources for guidance.

The first was the Bible, which no practitioner of Brauke would ever be caught without.

And for Protestant German immigrants, it makes a lot of sense.

Bible passages were so powerful to German-American Christians that many who fought in World War I actually carried small pages of scripture with them as an amulet for protection.

The second primary source was a book called The Long Lost Friend, published published in 1820 by a German immigrant named John George Homan.

In essence, it was a collection of recipes, instructions, and spells that were all aimed at curing physical and spiritual ailments.

But it was based on an even older book from 1788 called The Romanus, or The Little Book of the Roma, full of unusual spells.

What sort of spells?

Well, one was called, To Prevent Witches from Bewitching Cattle to be written and placed in the stable.

Another was Against Bad Men and Evil Spirits which nightly torment old and young people to be written and placed on the bedstead.

And those are just the titles.

An alternative name for the long-lost friend was powwows, a word borrowed from the Native Americans, one that has a lot of magical connotation to it.

And as a result, all of this, the spells, the healing, the incantations to ward off evil, all of it became known by that name ever since.

They called it powwowing.

And it turns out, powwowing was treated almost like a family legacy.

It was common to find whole lineages of Braukers, families that had practiced this combination of folk magic and faith healing for generations.

Families like the Bleimeyers.

They'd been well-known powwow practitioners for at least three generations.

So when John Bleimeyer was born in 1896, he represented the fourth.

And all those years within the field had earned the family a reputation.

They weren't superstars by any stretch of the imagination, but generations of dedication had at least earned them the respect and patronage of their neighbors.

John, though, had health troubles early in his life.

At the age of five, just when a little boy should be growing like a weed, John began to lose weight, and not a little either.

John's condition was noticeable, which alarmed his parents.

And of course, his father tried all the natural remedies at his own disposal.

But no matter what he did, John's rapid weight loss continued unchecked.

Which led John's father to a darker conclusion.

His son, for whatever reason, had been hexed.

And if he was going to save the boy's life, he needed to find a way to remove that evil curse.

But this wasn't small magic.

A hex was something powerful, something dangerous.

So John's father decided that he needed the help of someone wiser with a level of experience that surpassed his own.

There were a lot of choices out there too.

Powwowing seemed to have been accepted everywhere in Pennsylvania Dutch country.

John's father could have taken his son to any of the popular, well-known healers in the region.

Catherine George, Andrew Lenhart, John Rhodes, even Nellie Knoll or the deeply revered Mountain Mary.

But there was only one person in the area who came to mind.

While the others were respected, this man stood head and shoulders above everyone else.

He was a legend, a leader, and quite possibly the most talented Hexenmeister in the country.

If you needed a cure, everyone knew that Nelson Raymeier was the man to see.

Nelson Raymeier lived in an area of southern Pennsylvania known appropriately as Hex Hollow.

He was born there in 1868 and by most accounts he was a shy introverted boy.

As he grew up, he took on the family business of farming potatoes and of course learning the ins and outs of powwowing.

When John Bleimeyer and his father arrived at Raymeier's doorstep in 1901, he was 33 years old and had grown into a mountain.

Descriptions say he was a tall, 200-pound tower of intimidation, but that wasn't his fault.

Inside, he was still the shy private man he'd always been.

It was his desire to help others that made having a public life a necessity for him.

Raymeier listened to John's father.

He checked the boy over.

Then, he gave them a prescription.

Mr.

Bleimeyer was to collect his son's urine in a jar.

and then boil an egg in it.

Once hard boiled, he was told to poke three holes in the shell and then find an anthill to place the egg on top of.

Nelson assured him that after the ants had fully consumed the contents of the shell, the hex would be gone.

Yeah, I know.

Most of us would probably have just laughed and found someone else to help us, but not John's father.

He went home and did exactly what Nelson Raymeier told him to do.

Because that's what you did.

This was tradition.

It was core to who they were as a culture.

And as crazy as it might seem, it worked.

John's weight loss stopped.

And then life moved on, as it always does.

John, perhaps emboldened by his encounter with Raymeier, started diving into powwowing on his own within a couple of years.

Local legend says that he performed his first cure at the age of seven.

He was a child prodigy, some say.

But there was a lot to learn.

At the age of 10, John took a job on Raymeier's potato farm, and I can't help but assume he also also sat at the older man's feet and learned all that he could about powwowing.

But while things were looking up for John, life was taking a darker turn for Raymeyer.

His wife Alice wasn't a fan of his career choice as a faith healer and after doing her best to deal with his growing fame and all the people who kept knocking on their door, she took their two daughters and moved into a nearby house.

Alice and Nelson remained married for the rest of his life, but they never lived together in the same house after that.

In 1909, when John was just 13, he moved to the city of York, maybe 12 miles to the north.

He took a job at a cigar factory, but the work there was dark, filthy, and unhealthy.

John made up for it by earning himself a reputation as a talented faith healer.

It's said that he helped cure one man's eye infection, and when a rabid dog threatened a few co-workers outside, John calmed the dog in a way that seemed almost supernatural to those who were with him.

But all that success was overshadowed by something more troubling.

His weight loss had returned.

A stronger power than I had got hold of me, John later said.

It tormented me almost every day of my life from then on.

I couldn't eat.

I couldn't sleep.

My skin was getting loose on me.

John even claimed that his own power to heal others had left his body.

So at the age of 18, John quit his factory job and poured all his time and focus into finding a cure.

Well, not all his time.

He somehow managed to fall in love with and marry a woman named Lily.

But John's first love would always be powwowing, and finding a cure for his illness fell under that umbrella.

Lily would always take second place to that.

Years went by.

John consulted a number of other local healers, including Andrew Lenhart, who was known for telling more than a few married people that they'd been hexed by their spouse.

There were even some murders as a result, although there is no evidence that Lenhart was ever charged with any crimes.

But it was enough to make John suspect that Lily might be the cause.

She responded by having him examined by a psychiatrist, which resulted in a short stay in a mental health facility.

But that wasn't the help that John thought he needed, so he escaped and came home.

The rest is a blur.

Lily divorced him, and needing a way to support himself, he returned to the cigar factory.

And that's where he was when he finally decided to reach out to Nellie Knoll, an ancient, well-respected powwow witch, to see what she might be able to do for him.

In August of 1929, John went to visit old Nellie.

She was probably 90 years old at the time.

She'd seen almost everything over the course of her life and after she examined John, she told him she could help.

She handed him a dollar bill and asked him to stare at George Washington's face for a long while.

When she took the dollar away, the face of the man who had hexed him was imprinted on his palm.

A face that John recognized.

How could he not, after all?

The silver hair, the dark suit, that tall, mountainous frame.

It was none other than his old mentor, Nelson Raymeier.

John was shocked.

His hero, the man who had healed him so many years ago, how could that be the the source of his hex?

But there it was, as plain as day, right on his hand.

John might have had respect for Raymeier, even a bit of hero worship, but his respect for the faith was deeper.

If Nellie Knoll said it was true, then it was true.

And now that he knew the source, it was time to do something about it.

For what he had planned, John was going to need help.

It wouldn't be easy, after all.

Old Nelly told him that the hex could only be removed one of two ways.

Either he had to somehow get a hold of a lock of Raymeier's hair and bury it, or, even more challenging, he had to steal the old man's copy of the long-lost friend and then burn it.

So, John reached out to two friends from the area.

The first was John Curry, a 14-year-old that had worked at the factory with him.

During their brief friendship, Curry came to appreciate and respect Blymeyer's skills as a healer, even working as his assistant for a time.

And one of the cases the two men worked on was for the Hess family.

The Hesses lived near the Raymeiers and had been experiencing unexplainable misfortune for a long while.

The common assumption was that a witch was involved, but no one could figure out just who that witch was until Blymeyer suggested that it was Raymeier.

Wilbur Hess, a hulking 18-year-old, immediately offered his help.

On the afternoon of November 26th of 1928, Bleimeyer and Curry made their way out to Raymeier's house, but the old man wasn't home.

So they walked to Alice's house a short distance away, who told them that Nelson had gone to visit a neighbor.

So they waited for him to return.

When he did, he invited the two visitors inside.

According to Bleimeyer and Curry, they spent the evening talking about powwowing.

It was so late when they finished that the two young men ended up spending the night there at Nelson's house.

In the morning, satisfied that they learned enough to do what they needed to do, they left.

Back at the Hess Farm, they enlisted Wilbur and the three men prepared to return for a second visit that night.

Close to midnight, Bleimeyer knocked on Raymeier's door.

He told the older man that he'd left something at the house by mistake and asked if he could come in to retrieve it.

Raymeier complied and let them all inside.

Once in, the men surrounded Raymeier.

They demanded that he hand over his copy of the long-lost friend, but the older man refused.

And I think that shows us two things.

First, Raymeier didn't think these men were a threat just yet.

And second, his book was far too valuable to just give away.

Many powwow practitioners considered their copy of the book to function almost like an amulet.

It was was powerful, and he wasn't giving it up.

So they attacked him.

Bleimeyer jumped on him and held him down while the others bound him with a length of rope they brought along.

Then they dragged him to the kitchen, sat him on a chair, and continued to request the book.

The old man, however, was built of stronger stuff.

He offered them his wallet.

and even told them where they might find more money in the house.

But no, he told them, you can't have the book.

All three men became furious.

They beat Raymeier using whatever they could find around them.

One man hit him with a board.

Someone else threw a chair.

And at some point, driven by rage and frustration, Blymeier took some of the rope and looped it around Nelson's neck.

Within a matter of minutes, Raymeier, the man who had once saved John Blymeier's life, The man who had helped a community with his wisdom, was dead.

And the three men were left standing over a blood-soaked body, with a fog of regret and panic slowly descending upon them.

Everything moved fast after that.

Bleimeyer cut a lock of the dead man's hair and tucked it into a shirt pocket.

One of the others decided to make it look like a robbery and retrieved a handful of change that Raymeier had told them was hidden in the house.

And then they set the body on fire.

If they could make it go away, perfect.

If it took the whole house with it, even better.

Back outside, Bleimeyer buried the lock of Raymeier's hair in the yard and then took a deep breath.

He'd done it.

He already felt better, more alive and full of health than he had in years.

For once, his future looked to be full of hope and possibilities, rather than pain and frustration.

Everything was better now.

Except, it wasn't.

While the men were returning to their homes that night, Raymeier's body failed to burn thoroughly, and rather than bring the house down around it, only the kitchen showed signs of the damage.

Which meant that when the mailman arrived the following morning, he didn't find the charred wreckage of a house.

He found a crime scene.

People do unusual things when they lack an understanding of how it all works.

Folklore is that thing that fills the vacuum created by a lack of knowledge.

It helps keep fear from rushing in, like a dam in a river.

And for a very long time, across much of Pennsylvania, powwowing was the dam that held fear at bay.

Obviously, folklore surrounding witches is ancient ancient and full of dozens of cultural nuances, but powwowing holds a special place in American history.

It's given us that image of the local wise person who always seemed to know the right words for any problem, or the proper medicine, or the best way to ward off something evil.

But powwowing seems to have faded into the past for most Pennsylvania Dutch, thanks in no small part to the Bleimeyer trial.

After it was all over, the authorities responded to the superstitious roots of the York witch trial by pushing for better education in science.

The result was sort of like inoculating a country against measles.

Soon enough, it only existed in the most stubborn, out-of-the-way places.

But there was one bit of magic left.

You see, the moment she learned of her husband's death, everything clicked in Alice Raymeier's mind.

The men who had visited that day looking for Nelson.

The fire, the rope, all of it.

So she called the police and told them what she knew.

Bleimeyer and the others were arrested a short while later.

By the beginning of 1929, all three men were on trial for murder, and they immediately confessed.

John made his case for the reasons behind his actions, of course.

He even declared it a success, right there in front of the judge.

But none of that mattered in the trial.

These men had killed someone in cold blood, and that came with consequences.

Life was about to get a lot more difficult for John and his friends.

On January 19th, 1929, all three men were sentenced to terms in prison.

Curry and Hess were paroled a few years later, but John stayed behind bars until 1953, when he was finally released and sent home.

He died at the age of 76.

No one attended his funeral.

I can't help but see the irony in the way things ended for John Bleimeyer.

Powerful words spoken over him in a private ceremony.

Words that would altered the shape and quality of his future.

Words that brought hardship and pain.

It wasn't a hex, I know, but I can't help thinking that his murder trial would have felt like one.

The Raymeier house is still there today, and you can drive past it if you know where to find it.

Nelson's great-grandson lives there now, although locals think the house is inhabited by something else, too.

Something darker.

It's haunted, they claim, and always will be.

Killing someone in cold blood, after all,

always has a way of leaving a mark.

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This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research help from Marsack Crockett and music by Chad Lawson.

Lore is much more than a podcast.

There's a book series in bookstores around the country and online, and the second season of the Amazon Prime television show was recently released.

Check them both out if you want more lore in your life.

I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both.

Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic.

You can learn about both of those shows and everything else going on all over in one central place: theworldoflore.com/slash now.

And you can also follow the show on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Just search for lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button.

When you do, say hi.

I like it when people say hi.

And as always, thanks for listening.

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