The Killing Curse: Hex Hollow Pt. 1

In 1920s Pennsylvania, folk magic and Christian faith existed side by side. And for John Blymire, a man tormented by mysterious illness since childhood, the line between healing and darkness was about to disappear. In this first installment, Vanessa and Dr. Engels explore the world of Braucherei folk magic, the psychology of curses and belief, and how one man's desperation for answers led him to recruit a deadly team with a dangerous plan. If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Serial Killers & Murderous Minds to never miss a case! For ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts. Serial Killers & Murderous Minds is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios 🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Murder True Crime Stories, Crime House 24/7, and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse https://www.instagram.com/crimehouse/ TikTok: @Crimehouse https://www.tiktok.com/@crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios https://www.facebook.com/crimehousestudios YouTube: @crimehousestudios https://www.youtube.com/@crimehousestudios

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Vanessa Richardson?

  Hi, everyone. Before today's episode, there's another show I want to tell you about. It's called What the Fact with Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum and Carter Roy. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from history and tell you the full story behind them. Plus, Connor's infectious energy that'll make you realize history is the most fascinating thing on earth. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  This is Crime House.

• 0:41Vanessa Richardson?

  They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and most of the time, that's true. But in some situations, too much pain and suffering can drive a person to their absolute limit. In 1920s Pennsylvania, a man named John Blyemeyer was on the brink. He'd suffered from a mysterious, debilitating illness his entire life, and he was sick of being in pain. So John took matters into his own hands. He'd delved into a world of folk magic and rituals in hopes of finding a cure for what ailed him. But in the process, John discovered that the true reason for his mystery was something far darker than he'd imagined. And in his quest to set himself free,

• 1:26Vanessa Richardson?

  John set down a deadly path.

• 1:41Vanessa Richardson?

  The human mind is powerful. It shapes how we think, feel, love, and hate. But sometimes, it drives people to commit the unthinkable. This is Serial Killers and Murderous Minds, a Crime House original. I'm Vanessa Richardson.

• 1:56Tristin Engels?

  And I'm forensic psychologist Dr. Tristan Ingles. Every Monday and Thursday, we uncover the darkest minds in history, analyzing what makes a killer.

• 2:07Vanessa Richardson?

  Crime House is made possible by you. Follow serial killers and murderous minds and subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts for ad-free early access to each two-part series. Before we get started, be advised, this episode contains descriptions of violence, so please listen with care. Today, we begin our deep dive into what's known as the Hex Hollow Murder. In the 1920s, in York County, Pennsylvania, witchcraft played a very real role in many people's lives. When a man named John Blymeyer became convinced that he'd been cursed, he was desperate to find a way to end it. But this wasn't going to be an easy task, and John went to deadly extremes to make it happen.

• 2:50Tristin Engels?

  As Vanessa goes through the story, I'll be talking about things like how some offenders are driven by a need to end their own suffering, the psychology of spells, rituals, and curses, and how magical endeavors can quickly spiral into violence and chaos.

• 3:06Vanessa Richardson?

  And as always, we'll be asking the question, what makes a killer?

• 3:18Vanessa Richardson?

  All John Blymeyer ever wanted was to feel normal, but his entire life, he was haunted by something that felt dark and ominous. To understand what he went through, we need to set the scene. John was born on December 27, 1894, in York County, Pennsylvania. Throughout the 1920s, while John was growing up, the tight-knit community was mostly made up of small farms and rolling hills. Many of the residents were Christian, the descendants of German immigrants who'd come to Pennsylvania in the 1700s. Over 200 years later, their traditions and practices remained strong. Life was ruled by the seasons, church bells, and the sound of livestock.

• 4:01Tristin Engels?

  This is the 1920s. Access to outside information wasn't what it is today. Radio was still emerging, travel was limited, and information tended to circulate more locally. And in many rural or farming communities, knowledge was passed down within families and social networks, often across generations, like you described. So John is growing up in a relatively insulated environment, where the beliefs that he's exposed to aren't presented as an option among... Many options, they're inherited beliefs. And in this case, they trace back hundreds of years. And when you're raised in that kind of setting, what you're taught doesn't always feel like something you can step back and question.

• 4:43Tristin Engels?

  It can feel like your reality because there isn't much available information to compare it against. Now, let's consider the agricultural life back then. Your livelihood depends on factors you can't fully control, like the weather, how your crops perform, and the health and safety of your livestock. When something goes wrong in one of those areas, there's not often a clear explanation for that. So farmers seek a framework to make sense of it because it causes distress for them, their families, and their communities. And one example of the way that they used to do that, and some still do to this day, is the use of the Old Farmer's Almanac, which, again, has been used for generations

• 5:26Tristin Engels?

  as a guide for planting cycles and weather patterns, using at least in part lunar and astronomical observations. It provides structure and an explanation in situations where there might not be any kind of explanation. There's also a social component, living in a tight-knit community. There can be a sense of interdependence there because everyone's contributing to the community somehow. And everyone's survival or comfort depends, to some degree, on the contributions of one another. They share resources. But also, having shared beliefs in that community creates a sense of safety, connection, and belonging. And conversely, if you're challenging those beliefs in that community, that can come with social or financial risk. So for John, what he was taught was expected,

• 6:11Tristin Engels?

  not just in his family, and it wasn't just normal within his family. It was also expected and normal amongst everyone around him because they were largely shared beliefs.

• 6:22Vanessa Richardson?

  Is it hard to analyze the mindset of people from over a century ago? Or can we still apply our current lens to issues from back then?

• 6:30Tristin Engels?

  When we're doing a case conceptualization of someone, we use what's called a biopsychosocial framework, meaning we look at biological, psychological, and social factors together. The biological and psychological factors tend to be fairly consistent across time, so we can apply the current lens there. It's the social factors that I feel require the most critical thinking. The 1920s were a vastly different world than it is today, which is why I took time to highlight those environmental differences, because those are central to understanding who John would become, how he developed, and his thinking. That said, social factors require a lot of critical thinking because regardless of whether or not it's a historical case, that's where bias and projection are most likely to enter

• 7:15Tristin Engels?

  clinical and forensic assessment. Social factors are the factors that are most shaped by an assessor's own cultural background, lived experience, and assumptions about what's normal. Biological and psychological factors are more universally documented, and so they're less subject to cultural interpretation.

• 7:36Vanessa Richardson?

  Well, it wasn't just the religious traditions that held strong in John's community. People in York County also had unique ways of staying healthy and caring for each other. For instance, if a child got sick or the cattle stopped producing milk, someone didn't always call a doctor, they'd call someone known as a powwowr or hexenmeister, which was a healer within the Braukarai spiritual practice. Let me tell you about it, because it's not something you'd expect in such a heavily religious area. Braukarai was a centuries-old form of folk magic that worked in tandem with Christian beliefs. It was a mix of scripture, charms, rituals, and incantations used for healing, protection, and banishing evil.

• 8:18Vanessa Richardson?

  Hexenmeisters were people with the ability to heal, protect, and bless. Anyone could be a hexenmeister, as long as they had the gift. And they often used their gifts to perform detailed rituals and prayers to tackle almost any problem. They could cure toothaches, stop wounds from bleeding, aid with someone's crops, and more. From the outside, Braukarai could have been viewed as superstition or witchcraft, but to those who believed, it was very real.

• 8:47Tristin Engels?

  So remember, this is a tight-knit community. They likely rarely leave it, if at all. Their doctors or healers are all within their community. This is their 200-year-old tradition, and it is what is normal for them. And what makes it even more compelling, any time these rituals work, or at least appear to work, it reinforces their belief system. It begins to feel very real to them, and in a community of shared beliefs, that makes the belief even stronger, especially when there are no competing explanations. There's also something in psychology called illusory correlation. That is the tendency to perceive a relationship between two things, a ritual and an outcome, for example, even when that relationship may be coincidental.

• 9:32Tristin Engels?

  So the mind is pattern-seeking by design, and in an environment where ritual is performed regularly like this one, and problems do sometimes resolve following that, the brain is going to naturally connect the two. What makes illusory correlation particularly powerful in this context is confirmation bias working alongside it. People tend to remember and give weight to the instances where the ritual appeared to work, and discount or forget the instances where it didn't. So the belief gets reinforced by selective memory as much as the actual outcomes. And there's inherent risks to that, too, because if the rituals aren't working to

• 10:13Tristin Engels?

  heal someone, for example, and they're overlooking that, that can actually delay or replace conventional medical care that actually would work in those cases.

• 10:22Vanessa Richardson?

  Would people in these kinds of communities tend to feel more secure or optimistic? Does it strengthen people's sense of community?

• 10:30Tristin Engels?

  Yes, it can. Earlier, we talked about how dependent farming communities were on unpredictable factors like weather conditions, disease, crop failure, things like that. Those are things they can't control, but they greatly affect their livelihood. Having a belief system that offers a solution to those things, and an entire community that shares in that belief system and reinforces that belief system can really challenge that feeling of helplessness or loss of control. It can replace it with hope, optimism, and resilience in a way that doesn't make you justify your belief system at all. And shared belief systems are among the most powerful ways that people bond, too. It's how we all make connections to this day.

• 11:13Tristin Engels?

  If you were to think about all of the friends that you have in your life, you're more likely than not bonded with them on something that you had in common, even if that something was your environment, like your school. And of course, there are risks to that, too, which we discussed, like the fear of going against your community.

• 11:31Vanessa Richardson?

  People showed a lot of trust in Hexenmeisters, but sometimes people feared them, too, because Hexenmeisters didn't just heal and protect, they could also invoke curses. And for John Blymire, a life full of hardship eventually led him to believe he was the victim of one. John didn't get to enjoy the sense of community and fulfillment that others did, because his entire life, he was plagued with illness, like headaches, stomach pains, and fatigue. Even though his family didn't have much money, they tried everything to cure him. They firmly believed in their culture's folk practices, so they not only took him to various doctors, but Hexenmeisters, too. But no one could figure out what was

• 12:13Vanessa Richardson?

  plaguing John. All over town, people were mystified by John's ailments. They thought that, out of everyone, he should have easily been able to find a cure, because John's father and grandfather were well-respected Hexenmeisters themselves. So to a lot of people, the fact that they weren't able to cure him proved just how serious his condition was. Meanwhile, John's suffering kept getting worse. As he got older, his pain became so severe, he could barely eat or sleep.

• 12:43Tristin Engels?

  So first thing I want to circle back to is some potential black and white thinking that developed in John that appeared connected to his social environment. That insulation can do that. So notice his thinking. If the rituals are not healing him, then he must be cursed by one of them, or thinks that he's cursed by one of them. It's not, oh, maybe these rituals aren't working. Instead, he's still believing in their abilities, or believing in the abilities of a Hexenmeister, but questioning how they're being applied to him. That fits with the explanatory framework that he operates in, but also with the isolated environment he lives in. What does he have to compare it to?

• 13:25Tristin Engels?

  That said, chronic pain can really narrow thinking and affect quality of life. Cognitive resources like rational thinking, emotional regulation, and reasoning all get redirected to managing the distress that's caused by that pain. Prolonged sleep deprivation alone can cause symptoms that resemble psychosis. Some people experience perceptual disturbances like hallucinations, paranoia, and disorganized thinking from prolonged sleep deprivation. But they typically resolve after they catch up on their sleep. It can also affect behavior in ways the person might not recognize as distorted as well. Decisions that would seem irrational from someone on the outside may feel completely logical to that person in that experience.

• 14:10Tristin Engels?

  That's why today, pain management is such a critical aspect of care for people with chronic pain. And that's not just about medication management. It's also psychological. Cognitive behavioral therapy has become a big part of pain management plans to address this very thing. But that unfortunately was not something that was available in the 1920s, and certainly not in John's environment, given how heavily they relied on their own methods to care for symptoms like this.

• 14:37Vanessa Richardson?

  Could the negative effects of John's mysterious illness have been exacerbated by the fact that he lived in an agricultural society? And do you think his mental health suffered even more just because he wasn't able to participate in his community's norms?

• 14:50Tristin Engels?

  I think absolutely that's the case. We talked about, you know, tight-knit communities and shared resources. And when you think about that... And then not being able to contribute to the community, that can become an identity threat, especially when your value and your sense of self is largely tied to your capacity to work the land, participate in community life, or use your gifts. John may have felt like he was failing one of the most fundamental expectations that his community had of him. That can produce feelings of shame, isolation, and chronic stress. And it's worth noting that stress alone can cause very real physical symptoms like headaches, stomach aches, impaired sleep, and fatigue, the very ones that he's been experiencing.

• 15:33Tristin Engels?

  In fact, there are even psychological conditions that can cause these symptoms as well, especially when you've ruled out medical origin.

• 15:42Vanessa Richardson?

  By the time John was 14 years old, he rarely made it to school. So he dropped out and started working full-time at a nearby cigar factory. And he earned quite the reputation for himself there. Since John's father and grandfather were skilled healers, the Blymeier family was well-known and respected. All of John's coworkers at the factory knew who he was. So they weren't surprised when one day, he showed remarkable powers of his own. According to one story, a rabid dog once approached John and his coworkers. It was foaming at the mouth and appeared aggressive, ready to attack. While others backed away, John stepped forward and recited an incantation, which worked almost instantly.

• 16:25Vanessa Richardson?

  The dog stopped foaming at the mouth and became docile and friendly. It even followed him around for a while.

• 16:32Tristin Engels?

  If John was already experiencing a threat to his identity, like we talked about, feeling helpless or unable to contribute, then this moment was likely very significant to him. Even more so because his father and grandfather were considered gifted healers. That lineage can add an expectation that has now seemingly come to fruition for him. And I wouldn't be surprised if the people around him reinforced this through their reactions to this, their teachings, and the attention they directed toward John because of it. That can cause someone to internalize perceived gifts as the source of their value, which can, in some cases, produce feelings of superiority or grandiosity,

• 17:14Tristin Engels?

  and increasingly rigid beliefs about their own abilities, which is particularly risky because it's not just an individual belief, it's also shared and reinforced now by family and community simultaneously. So if these new, quote, "powers" appear to fail, or if they stop working and someone suggests they've been taken from him, that could be very destabilizing, because it's derailing an entire framework that gave John his identity, or a new identity, and his standing within his family and community.

• 17:48Vanessa Richardson?

  After seeing how John tamed the rabid dog, his coworkers turned to him for help with all their aches and illnesses. He was happy to do it, but it also caused problems, because the factory workers earned wages for each cigar they rolled. And the more time John spent tending to people, the less time he had to work. Since he wasn't earning much money, he grew thinner and hungrier. By this point, he was also married with children, so his meager income was detrimental to them, too. John's stress and hunger only made his illness worse, so he started seeking help again. Eventually, in 1928, when John was about 34 years old, one doctor thought they knew what was wrong.

• 18:31Vanessa Richardson?

  They believed John had a nervous disease known as hypochondriacal melancholia, which is a form of depression driven by someone's deep, even delusional conviction that they are dying.

• 18:42Tristin Engels?

  So remember earlier how I mentioned that stress or mental health conditions can cause the physical symptoms that he was experiencing? Well, this is what I was referring to. Hypochondriacal melancholia is not a diagnosis we use today. The closest thing to that would be somatic symptom disorder, major depressive disorder with somatic features, illness anxiety disorder, or even conversion disorder.

• 19:06Vanessa Richardson?

  Well, after John received that diagnosis, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital. And once he got there, doctors believed he was dealing with something far worse.

• 19:27Speaker 03

  Did you know a volcano once blocked out the sun and accidentally gave us Frankenstein? Or that the most feared pirate in the Atlantic, the man who terrorized an entire ocean, may never have actually killed anyone? Hi, I'm Connor Tomlinson. You might know me from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing and has been my whole life.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact. Every week, we take three of the wildest true things ever recorded and tell you the whole story behind them. The facts that sound made up, the stories that got buried, the moments that changed everything.

• 20:03Speaker 03

  Carter brings the history.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Connor brings the facts, the tangents, and the occasional British accent.

• 20:09Speaker 03

  Pip, pip. The wildest stuff is real.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  And the real stuff is wilder than you think.

• 20:15Speaker 03

  New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 20:29Speaker 04

  Why have so many crop circles appeared around Britain? How did thousands of people demonstrate powers of telepathy? Can the dead suck the life from the living? Join me, Tim Harford, for a trip into the paranormal throughout Halloween month on Cautionary Tales. Listen to Cautionary Tales on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 20:59Vanessa Richardson?

  In November of 1928, 34-year-old John Blymeier was diagnosed with a nervous disease. He checked into a psychiatric hospital, where he explained to doctors that he was a powerful healer himself, a hexenmeister, or witch doctor.

• 21:14Vanessa Richardson?

  Even though most people in John's hometown believed in folk magic, not everyone in the area felt the same. After the doctors heard him describe his so-called powers, they determined John was suffering from delusions, and they decided to address the issue by giving him electric treatments.

• 21:31Tristin Engels?

  So this is interesting. When you hear the term "electric therapy", most people, including myself, are likely thinking of electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT. But this was 1928. ECT wasn't invented for another decade. So the treatment that John likely received would have looked very different from anything that we would recognize today. Back then psychiatry was in an experimental phase because this was an era before effective targeted medication even existed. The treatment that he likely had, and this is truly an estimated guess because I have no way of knowing for sure, but it was likely a dangerous and inhumane form of shock therapy known as insulin coma therapy,

• 22:16Tristin Engels?

  where they would deliberately induce hyperglycemic comas using high doses of insulin. And the intention was to target schizophrenia or psychosis, which it appears they suspected John may have suffered from because they felt he had delusions. They believed, back then, that waking patients from a deep insulin-induced coma would somehow jolt them out of psychosis. A decade later, ECT was developed. That uses controlled electrical current to induce a seizure in a psychiatric patient. The theory is that inducing a seizure would somehow reset or recalibrate brain function and subsequently, mental health symptoms. Today, ECT still exists.

• 23:01Tristin Engels?

  It is used more than most people realize, but not as frequently as it was in the past. And it's used primarily for severe treatment-resistant depression, acute mania, and catatonia, and only when all other interventions haven't worked. So modern ECT is much more humane than it was in the past as well. It's administered under general anesthesia with muscle relaxants. It's carefully dosed. And it is considered both safe and effective for the conditions it targets. It looks nothing like what popular culture or historical practice suggests. That said, I personally have never witnessed it in practice.

• 23:44Vanessa Richardson?

  In your opinion, do you think this treatment was appropriate for John?

• 23:47Tristin Engels?

  Absolutely not. Most treatments back then were premature and deeply inhumane. But more importantly, they failed to consider the environmental and social factors that shaped his belief system in the first place. They likely wouldn't have called him delusional if he believed he was healed by prayer or by God. That distinction says a lot about whose belief systems were considered legitimate and whose weren't. And what I talked about earlier with regard to biases of the assessor on those very areas, the social factors, and the harm it can cause. It seems like they fundamentally misunderstood who John was and where he came from, and then subjected him to treatment that was, by any measure, barbaric.

• 24:29Tristin Engels?

  Which leaves you wondering, what does that do to someone? What does that do to his relationship with authority or with institutional help, for example? Or with his own belief system going forward? He went in for a nervous condition, one that was affecting his physical health, and suddenly he was being treated as someone with psychosis. I just see so many ways in which he was failed there, but I also can recognize how limited it was back in those days.

• 24:58Vanessa Richardson?

  We don't know much about how John responded to that treatment, but overall, he hated being in the facility. And he could tell the treatments weren't working. They never made him feel any better. Soon, he lost faith in the medical community. He wanted to return to the Hexenmeisters and seek their help instead. So John escaped the hospital and ran away back to his wife. But it wasn't a loving reunion. While the details are unclear, John apparently tried to kill her. He was quickly arrested and spent four months in jail. Once he was released, he immediately continued seeking help from Hexenmeisters. He went to healer after healer with little to no answers. All the while, he continued to suffer.

• 25:43Vanessa Richardson?

  On top of the physical pain, John couldn't seem to hold down a job. Then tragically, at some point later in 1928, two of his three children died. And after an especially intense fight, his wife left him. After so much pain and so much heartbreak, John needed answers. He sought out more healers. And soon, someone helped him realize the true cause of his lifelong misery. All his suffering and hardship must have been the result of a curse.

• 26:15Tristin Engels?

  There are actually a lot of things to touch on here. So recall that John was raised, again, in an environment that relies on explanatory frameworks for an unpredictable lifestyle. So his constant search for an explanation for his physical health makes sense. And it also makes sense as to why nothing is working. Because if the source of his ailments are in fact psychological in nature, that's the one thing that he, and even the institution he was in, was not truly addressing, which is the root of that. Secondly, we talked about his black and white thinking earlier also. He's still not able to, or willing to, apply the reality that Hexenmeisters may not be reliable sources for his healing,

• 26:59Tristin Engels?

  at least not this particular ailment. Instead, he believes that he's cursed because that preserves his belief system entirely. It's either I believe in this or I don't. There's no middle ground available in black and white thinking or rigid thinking. And the timing matters here, too. He ran away from a hospital, attempted to kill his wife, went to jail for several months, lost two of his children tragically, and his marriage ended. It's psychologically easier in a time like that with compounding stressors to believe something is being done to you. Then to sit with the possibility that you may be responsible for some of it,

• 27:40Tristin Engels?

  or that loss this devastating is simply just happening with no explanation and no spiritual remedy for it. So in comes the curse for the explanatory framework. It externalizes blame, it provides hope, it stabilizes his world right now, and it removes accountability all at the same time.

• 28:01Vanessa Richardson?

  These days, do mental health patients tend to see better results if they feel they fully understand what they're experiencing? And what about whether or not they believe in the treatment they're being given?

• 28:12Tristin Engels?

  Absolutely. Psychoeducation is such a significant part of treatment, especially when it comes to somatic symptoms, panic, or even psychosis. Those experiences involve involuntary physiological responses that can feel completely out of a person's control and are sometimes mistaken for medical emergencies and can be absolutely terrifying for people. Understanding what it actually is and normalizing it in context removes a lot of the uncertainty and a lot of the fear. Without that, people can get caught in a negative feedback loop that really exacerbates it. Treatment efficacy also depends heavily on therapeutic alliance and their trust in the process.

• 28:56Tristin Engels?

  So if someone doesn't believe in their diagnosis and their treatment, or they don't understand it, or they don't like their provider, the outcomes tend to reflect that.

• 29:07Vanessa Richardson?

  In John's mind, a supernatural problem required a supernatural solution. So he kept seeing Hexenmeisters, hoping someone would know how to lift the curse. The first few people confirmed John's suspicion and said they could help him. But each time, whatever spells or rituals they performed didn't seem to satisfy him. John decided that the simple protection spells they used weren't strong enough. He needed to find someone willing to take a more aggressive approach. Soon, John met a woman named Emma Knoll. She was known as "The River Witch of Marietta", a town on the Susquehanna River, almost 20 miles outside York County. We don't know a lot about Emma. She might have been around 70 years old,

• 29:50Vanessa Richardson?

  although some reports say she was closer to 90. Either way, she'd spent her life honing her powerful skills as a hex doctor. John paid her a few visits. At first, she could only confirm that he was, in fact, cursed, even though multiple hexenmeisters had already told him the same thing. There was something about Emma that kept John coming back.

• 30:13Vanessa Richardson?

  Then, one day, when John arrived at Emma's creaking wooden home, she told him she'd found a way to decipher even more about his curse, specifically, who was behind it. Emma asked John to hold out his hand. Then, she smoothed a single $1 bill across his palm and started reciting an incantation. Her voice was so low, John could barely hear what she was saying. It seemed like Emma was in a complete trance. Then, all of a sudden, Emma jerked her head up and her eyes met John's. She told him to clear his mind and concentrate on the dollar bill. And when he removed it, he would see the face of the man who placed the curse on him, right there in the palm of his hand.

• 30:57Vanessa Richardson?

  John focused on nothing but the money in his hand. After a few moments, he ripped the bill away and stared down. He couldn't believe his own eyes. There, in the center of his palm, he saw the face of a man. But not just any man, it was someone he recognized, someone he'd known all his life. The man's name was Nelson Raymeyer. Like John, he was also born and raised in York County, and in 1928, he was 60 years old, living a modest, quiet life, alone on his farm. People in the community thought of him as kind and friendly, a man who largely kept to himself, but was always there when others needed help. Because Nelson was a well-known hexenmeister.

• 31:42Vanessa Richardson?

  In fact, John first met him when he was just five years old and his family tried to find a treatment for his mysterious ailment. In one instance, when John was in particularly rough shape, his family believed Nelson's spellwork saved his life. After that, he became like part of the family. John had even briefly worked on Nelson's farm picking potatoes. It didn't make sense to him that he would intentionally cause John harm.

• 32:08Tristin Engels?

  What appears to have happened here is a combination of expectation, suggestion, and existing cognitive bias, none of which would have felt that way to John. Let's start with the ritual. Emma's ritual was structured to produce a specific outcome. She outlined a sequence of events that requires his compliance for the results that he wants. So that builds anticipation and it narrows his focus in a way that makes his mind highly receptive to suggestion. That's why he's able to, quote, "see a face at all." And the fact that John already knew Nelson is also significant. Our minds tend to retrieve familiar faces more readily than unfamiliar ones,

• 32:51Tristin Engels?

  particularly under conditions of heightened emotional arousal and focused expectation like this. John came to Emma already believing that he was cursed by someone with knowledge of folk magic. Nelson was a hexenmeister, and he fit that profile. That is confirmation bias. The mind tends to find what it's already primed to look for, especially in high-pressure situations like this one.

• 33:16Vanessa Richardson?

  In your opinion, were there other elements of Emma's ritual that served to influence John's experience and what he actually saw?

• 33:23Tristin Engels?

  Yes. Again, in addition to what, you know, I already discussed. I'm glad you asked this because what immediately stood out to me was that she told him that he would see the face of the man who cursed him. That's the power of suggestion right there. She's not saying a person. She's saying a man specifically, not a woman, not a child, a man. That's not neutral language. It's already priming him and narrowing what his mind is searching for before the dollar bill is even removed. And that directly influences what John sees at the end of the ritual.

• 33:56Vanessa Richardson?

  John had searched far and wide for this exact information, and now, the more he thought about it, the more he realized Nelson did have a questionable side. He'd always been a bit unusual or eccentric. For one, he had a wife and kids, but they'd moved out of the farmhouse a while back and chose to live separately. Nelson and his wife never divorced and even kept in friendly contact, and all of this was considered odd at the time. On top of that, Nelson was known to read a lot of socialist literature, which, given the time period and social climate, was considered dangerous. But despite those oddities, Nelson was a beloved member of the community. Now, though, John wondered if his kind nature was all just a ruse.

• 34:41Tristin Engels?

  I can see why he's going there in his mind. Social belonging in communities tends to depend on conformity to shared norms, and deviations from that, even harmless ones, can generate suspicion. But Nelson still shared the core beliefs of his community. He was a Hexenmeister. He helped people in his community. He even helped John's family at one point. Yes, his wife lived separately from him, but so did John's wife, though under very different circumstances. The difference between John and Nelson is Nelson maintained, at least from what we understand, a warm and friendly relationship with his wife, whereas John tried to kill his wife. So even with the socialist literature,

• 35:23Tristin Engels?

  Nelson's positive standing held in the community regardless of that. So that's the halo effect. His good reputation was absorbing that so-called deviation from social norms. What I'm more curious about now is John's social standing at this point. He'd escaped a psychiatric facility. He attempted to kill his wife. He's gone to jail. He lost two children. And he's been abandoned, essentially. And from what we know, he's been acting erratically. He's very preoccupied with his health and his healing. He's almost like doctor shopping, but with hexenmeisters. And now he's believing that he's cursed. The belief that someone in his own community would curse him,

• 36:06Tristin Engels?

  I would imagine would rattle the community alone. If his standing in the community had deteriorated, which seems plausible to me, that would explain a great deal about why Nelson's face, of all faces, appeared for him. There may be some displacement happening, where feelings that belong to one source himself get redirected onto another, or projection, where John attributes to Nelson something that actually originates within himself. So for example, if John feels that he's under suspicion from his community because of all of his actions and his past, he's thinking, then why isn't Nelson? Or he too had a wife that left him. He too deviates from social norms. So it's just something worth considering

• 36:51Tristin Engels?

  as to why Nelson, of all people, is the face that he so-called saw in his palm.

• 36:57Vanessa Richardson?

  As for John, he couldn't shake the gnawing fear. After all this time, all these years of torment, could this finally be the answer John was looking for? Could Nelson be the person responsible for his life's miseries? He told Emma what he saw in his hand, and she insisted that Nelson must be responsible for the curse. John wasn't about to question the ancient practices of his people, so he asked Emma what he had to do next. She gave him the answers. But Nelson had no idea of the horrors that awaited him.

• 37:37Speaker 05

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• 38:22Speaker 05

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• 38:39Vanessa Richardson?

  In 1928, 34-year-old John Blymire discovered that the person responsible for the lifelong curse he thought he was under was Nelson Raymire, a hexenmeister John had known all his life. The witch John had consulted with, Emma Knoll, told John what he had to do to break the spell. She said he could either obtain a lock of Nelson's hair and bury it in the ground six to eight feet deep, or he had to find Nelson's copy of "Long-Lost Friend", a common browkerai text, and burn the book to ash. She said either option would successfully put an end to the hex. To John, it sounded easy enough. He'd finally be able to live a normal, happy life, and no one had to get hurt in the process.

• 39:24Vanessa Richardson?

  He left Emma's home feeling optimistic for what must have been the first time in years.

• 39:30Tristin Engels?

  John is likely feeling this way because he finally has an explanation in a viable path forward that seems easier and actionable than living with the distress of chronic pain and discomfort. There's no longer ambiguity regarding relief for him, or at least as he sees it. But also, neither option required violence or harming Nelson directly. An argument can be made that both of those paths would psychologically cause harm to Nelson. But he was asked to perform a ritual, which is something that was considered normal and acceptable, not just to John, but also to Nelson. So it was justified and rationalized in his mind. And he has renewed hope. And that is something that is tremendously powerful for people who experience any measure of despair.

• 40:14Tristin Engels?

  And chronic pain can certainly create feelings of despair.

• 40:18Vanessa Richardson?

  What risks do you envision for John as he embarks on this path? Do you think there's a chance he could lose his grip on reality? Or maybe his perception of things might spiral out of control?

• 40:29Tristin Engels?

  I think for starters, this seems like the kind of task that really only gives you one shot. If John is unsuccessful in obtaining the lock of Nelson's hair or the book, and let's say he's caught in the act, then Nelson's now suspicious of them, or even potentially aware that he's being targeted. That's going to significantly narrow John's options. Getting close enough again to Nelson, or to get access to what he needs, becomes much harder. And that's when desperation, which is already driving this, becomes more intensified. That escalation is where the real risk lies. If he discovers an obstacle, the threshold

• 41:09Tristin Engels?

  for what feels like a reasonable response can shift. John has already demonstrated a capacity for violence. He tried to kill his wife in the past. So if the ritual path closes off, if his ability to do what was suggested by Emma is no longer viable, I can see how that can spiral. I can see how violence could become the tool he reaches for to ensure the outcome he believes he needs. Or conversely, he may reach for that first, to avoid the potential for any mistakes to begin with. Desperation is a powerful motivator. It doesn't necessarily make someone lose their grip on reality, but it does narrow thinking, more so than he already is.

• 41:55Vanessa Richardson?

  John was relieved, and he felt like an end was in sight. However, his feelings soon changed, when John met a man who would set him down a deadly path. His name was Milton Hess. Milton was a factory worker who lived on a farm in town with his family. One day, while on a break at work, he stepped outside and ran into John. The two got to talking, and Milton confided in John. He said he and his family were having a lot of problems on their farm lately. Animals were going missing and harvests were failing. Not only that, but one of Milton's sons, Wilbert, had been sick for his entire life. And that wasn't the end of it. Milton went on to explain that his sister-in-law owned the farm next door,

• 42:39Vanessa Richardson?

  and the two had been having land disputes so volatile that, well, he wouldn't be surprised if she'd paid someone to put a hex on him. At this point, alarm bells started ringing in John's head. Everything Milton was saying sounded oddly familiar. His mind started to race. If Nelson Raymeyer was as malicious as he thought and had cursed John, what's to say Nelson hadn't hexed others in town? Then, John learned something that solidified his suspicion. Milton's farm was less than 10 miles away from Nelson's.

• 43:13Tristin Engels?

  Stemming from our earlier discussion on confirmation bias, what John encountered in Milton's story was essentially a mirror of his own experience. And because of that, he wasn't evaluating Milton's situation objectively. He was filtering it through an explanatory framework he'd already committed to very strongly. The detail about Nelson's farm being less than 10 miles away is a good example of how confirmation bias works in practice. That's not evidence of anything on its own, but within John's existing framework, it becomes meaningful because it fills a gap. He's looking for consistent evidence. And he will find consistency in details that some neutral observer might dismiss.

• 43:56Tristin Engels?

  There's also a social reinforcement element here. John had been carrying this belief mostly by himself until now. Milton's story, which happened coincidentally, but he may have once again turned it into an illusory correlation, would have likely felt like an external validation for him. Someone else was suffering in the same way, in the same area, with the same suspected curse. And remember what we talked about with regard to shared beliefs? Those can strengthen this, but also make it appear more like an objective reality to John.

• 44:32Vanessa Richardson?

  John was now convinced that Nelson had not only hexed him, but the Hess family as well. Fortunately, he knew how to remove the curse. But at this point, he knew he'd need help. So John formed a plan. He just needed to get Milton on board too. Which wasn't hard. Milton knew about John's reputation as a healer himself. He knew he came from a long line of skilled hexenmeisters, and that he'd been born with the gift. So when John told Milton he believed they'd both been cursed by Nelson, Milton believed every word. John explained what had to be done in order to break the curse, which, as a reminder, was to either bury a lock of Nelson's hair deep in the ground, or to burn his copy of

• 45:15Vanessa Richardson?

  the book "Long Lost Friend." Milton was on board, and he asked his son, 18-year-old Wilbert Hess, to help John out. From there, John enlisted another accomplice, his protege, 14-year-old John Currie. Just like John Blymire, Currie had lived a life full of misery and bad luck. He'd suffered a horrible, abusive childhood at the hands of his alcoholic stepfather. He was just 13 years old when he met John at the cigar factory. They struck up a friendship, and Currie finally found the father figure he needed.

• 45:49Tristin Engels?

  That detail about Currie is actually really important, because when a child has experienced an abusive or neglectful home, they still are in need of a reliable authority figure. Currie wasn't looking for a friend when he met John, he was looking for guidance and acceptance. And John stepped into that role, took him under his wing, refers to him as a protege. That dynamic creates influence, because you have a teenager who has found their first experience of what feels like genuine care from an adult, and they will often go to significant lengths to maintain that relationship and John's approval. They aren't going to want to disappoint the person who finally saw value in them. Currie is also from the community.

• 46:32Tristin Engels?

  John wasn't just a father figure to him, he was a healer, someone with perceived gifts. That combination of emotional attachment and spiritual authority creates an influence that would be very difficult for a 14-year-old to resist or even question. And arguably, the same is true of Wilbert. He's 18, and although by today's standards, that's a legal adult, he's being told by his father to help John out. An 18-year-old is unlikely to refuse their father's orders, especially back then.

• 47:04Vanessa Richardson?

  Well, John knew he couldn't break the curse on his own. And by the time he asked Curry for help, the teenager had recently run away from home, so he was eager to help out the man he looked up to most. On November 25, 1928, John went to the Hess farm to meet with Wilbert Hess and John Curry, and they started formulating their plan. Step one was to visit Nelson and get a lay of the land. It had been a long time since John last saw Nelson in person. He wanted to know what he was up against. Then, once they sussed him out and cased his home, they could regroup and decide how to get their hands on either a lock of Nelson's hair or the book.

• 47:44Tristin Engels?

  John has moved from a solitary mission to a collective mission with recruited members. Shared beliefs and goals strengthened that mission, as we talked about, but it also made John more confident because their participation likely felt like confirmation to John. There's also a diffusion of responsibility that occurs within group dynamics. So the weight of any decisions and whatever consequences might follow gets distributed across multiple people now, and that can lower the threshold of what someone is willing to do. And for John specifically, being the one others were looking to for a direction, that likely reinforced his sense of identity as a healer and also as a leader, which is

• 48:28Tristin Engels?

  the role that had given him his only real sense of worth as of late, which is extremely motivating for someone whose self-concept had been as fragile and as threatened as it had been prior to this.

• 48:43Vanessa Richardson?

  John, Wilbur, and Curry felt confident in what they were about to do, but part two of their plan wouldn't be as simple as they'd imagined. Things quickly spiraled out of control, and what started as a simple mission devolved into a cold-blooded murder.

• 49:15Vanessa Richardson?

  Thanks so much for listening. Come back next time for the conclusion of our story on the Hex Hollow murder.

• 49:21Tristin Engels?

  Serial Killers and Murderous Minds is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on Instagram at @crimehouse. Don't forget to rate, review, and follow Serial Killers and Murderous Minds wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference.

• 49:44Vanessa Richardson?

  And to enhance your listening experience, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode of Serial Killers and Murderous Minds ad-free, along with early access to each thrilling two-part series.

• 49:59Vanessa Richardson?

  Serial Killers and Murderous Minds is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson, and forensic psychologist Dr. Tristin Engels, and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Serial Killers and Murderous Minds team: Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Lori Marinelli, Natalie Pritzowski, Alyssa Fox, Sarah Batchelor, and Carrie Murphy. Thank you for listening.

• 50:33Vanessa Richardson?

  Happy Halloween, Crime House listeners. I'm Vanessa Richardson. Did you know horror films like Abigail and Sinister were based on true stories? Join me every Sunday this month on Crime House 24/7 for Crime House of Horrors, where I dive into four stories behind some of our favorite scary movies. From Abigail, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Sinister, and The Taking of Deborah Logan, you'll find one thing in common: the truth is scarier than fiction. Listen every Sunday on Crime House 24/7 or join Crime House Plus for all four right now, ad-free. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or at crimehouseplus.com.

• 51:19Vanessa Richardson?

  If you're looking for your next podcast, check out What the Fact with Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum and Carter Roy. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from history and tell you the full story behind them. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen, or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.