One day as a teenager, my father was plowing a field for his aunt. When he was finished, he went inside the house and realized that he had lost his keys in the plowed field. He thought it would be nearly impossible to find the keys in the large field but his aunt said she could help. The two went outside, and his aunt picked up a stick and started toward the field, my dad following. When she had reached a certain spot she bent down, took the stick and dug up the keys. In amazement, my dad ask how she had done it. All she said was that sometimes she could do things like that. And she told him not to mention it to anyone, which of course he did.
Several years ago on a certain weekend, my mother had told my father that they needed to go see his grandfather because he would soon die. When they got there, they found that several other family members were there also due to the same premonition. They say that my great grandfather seemed in better health that weekend than he had in years. A few days after my parents returned home, they received a call and learned that my great grandfather had died.
There's an old sort of spell that has been passed down for many generations in Kentucky-it's called witching a wort. My great grandmother could do this. I'm not sure how it worked, but if someone came to her with a pesty wort they wanted to get rid of she could do a certain ritual and the wort would soon disappear. This is a secret that can only be passed down from one generation to the next, male to female or visa versa. There are many who can tell you that it really works, although inexplicably.
Years ago a woman saw her husband's face appear on a sidewalk in Auburn Kentucky. Soon afterwards her husband died.
Edmonson County Woman Remembers a Place She'd Never Been - A long time ago, me and my exhusband went to the Smoky Mountains. I had never been there before. We drove across a bridge and came to this little town. I told my husband that I remembered this town. He said, "I thought you told me you never been here before." I told him that I hadn't. This was true. I had never been to this town, but somehow knew this place. I told my husband that around the curve, there would be a big white victorian house on a hill. When we got around the curve, there was that big white house, just as I somehow remembered it.
Woman Welcomed by Her Deceased Loved Ones - One day my sister-n-law told me that the night before, she had woke up in bed and saw her mother, grandmother and sister sitting in chairs at the other end of her bedroom. They had all passed away before her. She said they all had a glow about them and that they were smiling at her. She told me that she had always been afraid to die until she saw her loved ones smiling at her and saw how peaceful they looked. The same day that my sister-n-law told me this, she went into a diabetic coma and died.
Cotton Reynolds of Perryville Describes Witching - I’m a water witch. I found a little diamond one time that had been lost for fifty-eight years. It wasn’t no bigger than the white on a country match head. But anyway, if you can witch water, you can put whatever you’re looking for on the end of that forked switch. When you go over what you’re looking for, it will pull the switch down. Like if you looking for gold, put gold on the end of the switch. If you’re looking for water, you have to have a live branch with sap in it. You split the branch into a fork and hold the ends apart. An old man had lost the diamond out of a ring fifty-eight years ago. I was out at his house about twelve years ago and was telling him about finding things with a witching stick. He said, “Do you think you can find a diamond?” and I said, “I believe I can.” At that time, I had a Masonic ring with a half carrot diamond in it. So I got me a witching stick and put that diamond ring on the end of it and said, “Well, where did you lose it at?” He said when he married his second woman, she gave him a diamond for their wedding, and he said lost the ring in a lettuce bed. I said, “About where was the lettuce bed?” It covered about fifty or sixty feet in a big circle up there at the barn lot. So I looked around there, and it finally went down, and I said, “Well, it’s right here.” He tried it, and the switch went down for him too. I told him, “Now, Clarence, this is what you need to do. Get you a piece of plastic, and take the dirt up a shovel full at a time and lay it in different spots. Then you see which one of them shovel fulls the switch goes down over, and you ain’t got but one shovel full of dirt to look through to find the diamond. About two or three years later, he called me one Sunday morning and said, “If you ain’t doing nothing this afternoon, come out this way; I want to see you a minute. I got out there, and he said, “I was thinking about that diamond again. I’d like you to see if you can find it again.” I got a switch and got my ring. He let me walk around there for fifteen or twenty minutes. I said, “It’s not here anymore. Something’s happened to it.” He had a little pill bottle in his pocket. He pitched that pill bottle down on the ground and said, “Walk over there and see what happens.” I walked over the pill bottle, and that switch went down. I said, “You done found that diamond.” He had waited two or three years after he’d found it and wanted to check me out to see if I knew what I was doing.
Man Dies On Way to Bury Daughter - A long time ago, on the Grayson and Edmonson County line, a man’s daughter died. He built a coffin for her and loaded it on a wagon. On the way to pick up the body, a major storm came up. The man was later found dead still sitting on the wagon with the coffin. Lightning had struck the wagon and a nearby tree.
Dog Finds His Owner's Grave - Some time ago, during the early part of the twentieth century, a southern Kentucky man had moved north to Indiana to work. The man had always planned to return to Kentucky after he retired, but when retirement came, he was too sick to make the trip. This man had an old dog that was loyal to the end. That dog stayed right by his side until he took his last breath. After his death, the family brought the man's body home to Kentucky for burial. The poor dog was left to wander alone in Indiana. A few months later, the dog was found dead, lying across his master's grave in Kentucky.
Dog Finds Favorite Family' New Home - When my mother was growing up in Barren County, she lived next door to her aunt. Her aunt had a dog that stayed over at my mother's house all the time and had the best time there. Some time later, my mother and her family moved to the other side of Barren County, and since the dog belonged to the aunt, he was left behind. The strange part is this: a few weeks later, that dog showed up at my mother's new house, ready for some more good times.
Mysterious Stove Frightens Family - In Roundhill Kentucky, we moved in this old house where this guy shot his self. Daddy brought a stove in and put it in the living room. There was no heat, electricity or running water. About three weeks after we moved in, we were sitting around one night watching my brothers play cards when the stove door suddenly opened and flames shot out of it. The stove had never been lit. My dad was the first one to run out of the house.
