"Hexes" .

In downtown Chicago three years ago a "Hindu" fakir was put out of business. Bring him the photograph of your enemy, and he would put it face down beneath a rug, walk on it with bare feet reciting an incantation. The enemy would languish into strange death.

In downtown New York two years ago men of big business paid $25 to consult an astrologer, who would squint at the stars (as they did in Babylonia 2,500 years ago) and tell what stock would rise, what fall.

In a town adjacent to Atlantic City five years ago the Chief of Police encountered the Jersey Devil sitting on City Hall Square, shot at him, tried to make an arrest. But the hideous sprite whirred past on infernal wings, and the Chief of Police entered a note to that effect on the station house blotter.

Thus eternally, in this age of grace and reason, belief in the powers of darkness has bobbed up. This month it was seething in York, Pa., following the confession of a man and two youths that they killed Nelson D. Rehmeyer, aged hermit and "powwow doctor" of the vicinity, in an effort to cut from his head the magic witchlock.

The man was John Blymyer, a rival "powwow doctor." To him had come young Wilbert G. Hess, upon whose home rested a "hex" or witchly curse. "Cattle died and members of the family were poorly." Reinforced by the lad John Curry, they went to snatch . Rehmeyer's witchlock. When he resisted they clubbed him, saturated the body with kerosene, kindled it.

Investigation disclosed that eight murders, five of the victims being infants, during the last two years were probably due to witchcraft in the neighborhood. Farm lands and city are gripped by terror of evil spirits and "hexes." Barns and cowsheds bear strange crosses, hieroglyphics against the "hex." Black cats are scarce in the county; for a favorite way of making one's peace with the Devil is to plop one alive into boiling water, keep the last bone for an amulet.

In the modern, thriving, bustling city of York it is common to see men gather up the hair cut from their heads at the barbershop, take it home with them in paper bags. If the hair were swept out and birds should build a nest with even one strand of it, the head would ache until that nest were beaten down by the weather.

A number of manuals of black magic circulate covertly in the vicinity, such as the Himmelsbrief or Heaven Letter, the Seventh Book of Moses and the Long Lost Friend. They give incantations to be said for various diseases, for love, for riches, for vengeance. The incantations mingle scripture, profanity and gibberish in equal measure.

To stop hemorrhage, for instance, the "powwow doctor" recites: "Upon Christ's grave three lilies grow. The first is named youth. The other virtue. The third Subul. Blood stop." Then he makes the sign of the cross thrice over the'patient.

A long incantation from the Seventh Book of Moses covers every conceivable kind of ailment. "It must be spoken three times, three Fridays in succession when the moon is in the taking-off sign. In the morning before sunrise one must go to a flowing stream of water and turn his face in the direction in which the water flows, and on three willow twigs make three knots, in the name of the three most high."

Said Rev. G. W. Enders, pastor of a rural Lutheran parish near York: "Nearly all of my congregation, perhaps, have been powwowed for, at one time or another. ... I just ignore it."

York County medical men were planning last week for some action to check "hexers" and "powwow doctors." Inspection of the Pennsylvania statutes revealed a law passed against witchcraft in 1861. The new legislature is to be asked to make it more stringent. According to Coroner L.U. Zech last week, three-fourths of the 150,000 people of York County believe to some extent in witchcraft.