THE GREAT OREGON WITCH HUNT

                  

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                         "THE GREAT OREGON WITCH HUNT"

                          ---------------------------

      A high school girl commits suicide and a small town falls victim to

               fears and hysteria right out of the Middle Ages...

                              By  Stephanie Fox

OAKRIDGE is a little town nestled in the green mountains of the Pacific 

 Northwest. It's a typical small Oregon lumber town, the sort of place where

people still talk about the day the town's brothel burned down back in 1928.

In the spring of 1983, a politically ambitious police chief and a 

fundamenalist minister managed to stir up enough excitement to last the town

through another 60 years.

 Durring the winter of 1982 a young girl named Ginny Walker* killed herself

in a fit of adolescent despair, leaving behind two shocked parents. But the

Walkers' grief was disturbed only a week after her death, when they were 

approached be police chief John Schurz who said he had evidence that Ginny

had been involved with witches. These witches, Schurz claimed, were responsible

for the girl's suicide.

 Before her death Ginny had told some friends how she had rescued the head of

a childhood doll from a trash fire and how she found a coyote's skull in the

forests surrounding Oakridge. In going through Ginny's possessions after her

death, her parents found the scorched doll's head, the coyote's skull, an

incense burner, and buttons of various rock groups. Her friends later recalled

Ginny's mundane explanation of these items, but to the police chief they were

proof of her involvement with witchcraft.

 The police began an investigation of the girl's friends and found that

Ginny's best friends mother , Susan Newell,* was calling herself a witch.

Newell actually knew nothing about modern-day Withcraft or Pagan beliefs.

She was not aware of the basic tenets of modern Witches--that the earth is

sacred,that everything is connected to everything else,and that each person

is responsible for his own actions.**

Newell had no notion of witchcraft's origins in the ancient nature-worshipping

religions of pre-Christian Europe. All she knew she had learned on the

late-late show and in cheap Gothic novels. But that was sufficient for the

police.

 Newell was taken to the police station for interrogation, where for several

hours police chief Schurz asked her questions.

  Schurz: "In my line of work, I work with alot of people. Sometimes I can tell

alot about people. You know what I think? I think that you're a high priestess.

  Newell: "What?"

  Schurz: "You're a witch,aren't you?"

  Newell: "I guess you could call it that."

 When further questioned in the manner, Newell claimed that she was the high

priestess of the Golden Dawn, the name of her coven, so Schurz related.

 That she was an actual member of the Golden Dawn is highly unlikely. This was

a notorious group of early-20th-Century British occultists who included

Aleister Crowley as well as the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. It disbanded

in 1947. It may have been the only real occult group Newell had ever heard of

and was probably the first name that came into her mind.

 Under the pressure of the interrogation Newell named six other witches 

residing in Oakridge. Several of these people had been friends of Ginny Walker.

 Selected portions of the tapes of Newell's interrogation were played to the

city council and local ministers. Durring these selected playings only two of

the accused witches' names were mentioned. The newly accused were two young

women, Betty Taylor* and Jennifer Lindsay.* Both attributed the public relase

of their names to Schurz's personal dislike of them.

 "I'm an uppity woman," said Taylor. "I live with my boyfriend and I don't

wear a bra. I don't have church connections. I'm not one of them." She said

that since the tapes were released publicly indicating that she was a witch,

"grocery store people whisper and scurry away, pointing fingers."

 Lindsay left town to avoid the harassment to which she was subjected. Taylor

continued to live in her Oakridge home, spied upon by neighbors.

                                

                                  ------------- 

MEANWHILE, Dave Stewart, a minister and part-time police officer, took the

doll's head and other "evidence" of witchcraft to show his and other 

congregations.

 Witchcraft had caused Ginny's death, the people were told. No other reasons

were advanced as causes of her suicide. Never mentioned were the rumors of the

Walkers' marital problems, Mr. Walker's failing health, of Ginny's possible

lack of adult guidance.

 Public meetings were schedualed, led by Schurz and a fundamentalist minister,

the Rev. C. E. Thomas. The first meeting attracted only a handful of people

but the second drew nearly 40, quite a crowd for the small town. And the press

was there in force.

 Although state law says that public meetings must be opened to all, announce-

ments distributed in the churches contained this sentence:"Unwanted people

will be excluded from the meeting." The meetings were advertised to "discuss

witchcraft, sexual abuse, child abuse and pornography," but witchcraft was the

only topic ever spoken of at the meetings.

 Dispite the "evidence," the Walkers doubted that witchcraft had any part to

play in their daughter's suicide. "We'er not blaming anybody," they told 

the press.

 The Walkers' doubts notwithstanding, Thomas and Schurz were riding high on the

wave of hysteria. They called a third meeting at the high school. Three

hundred persons showed up. The press, too, arrived but television and tape

recorders were banned from the auditorium in direct violation of state law.

 The meeting opened with a plea to bring Christianity and prayer back into the 

schools. Ministers told the crowds that the only protection they had against

the evils of witchcraft was "to come to church." The ministers advised them

that there would be counseling and classes taught by the ministers themselves.

 Another former Oakridge police officer, who claimed to have had ties with the

occult but who recently had been "born again," testified. He, too, had a

late-late-show view of witchcraft. Not everyone in the audience believed his

stories about witchcraft.

 But most accepted what the ministers told them. One man asked Reverend Thomas

for his credentials to discuss witchcraft. Thomas raised a Bible over his

head. "This is my credentials!" he shouted. And the crowd cheered.

 "We used to be able to burn them or cut off their heads," said the reverend

of witches. "We can't do that now, but we can sure stop them."

 Newspapers, television and radio all over the state were covering the story.

Although Thomas wanted the public to be aware of the existence of witches, he

was not happy with the media coverage. It had made the town the laughingstock

of the state.

 Besides the public meetings, the city council, school board and police 

advisory board convened in secret.

 IT WAS IN the secret meetings that officials may have made the decision 

to remove all books pertaining to the occult from the school library. Student

president Shannon McPherson protested. "It's lousy," he said. "They're 

trying to keep us in the dark." The school superintendent, Ken Carver, denied

that the books had been removed from the shelves. He claimed that he had

merely "checked out" all 40 of the books "just like anybody can."

He then passed them on to a censorship committee made up of parents and 

teachers.

 With the books gone, the lack of information availible on witchcraft only 

helped spread to alarm through the school student population. Any excuse was

enough for one student to accuse another and they enacted medieval tests to

determine whether another student was a witch. One student was suspected 

because she wore a black sweater and skirt. She was approached by another 

student who pressed a paper cross against her arm.

 "You must not be a witch," the student accuser said. "because the cross

didn't burn you."

 Other students used the situation to get attention. They pretended that they

were witches; they left death-threat notes on other students' lockers or

claimed they'd hexed or been hexed by other students and teachers.

 The school superintendent made up a list of all students who had ever checked

out any of the occult books and distributed it to the teachers. Those on the

list were watched for possible involvement with witchcraft.

 Reverend Thomas advised parents to watch their children for signs of occult

activity. He told parents and students to look to him and other  local

ministers to lead the fight against non-Christian religions such as witchcraft,

Hinduism and Buddhism.

 "If you arn't a Christian, you can't fight it," he declared. "The devil will

deceive you. This is a spiritual battle and the Devil is as real as God is.

We have witches here in Oakridge from the very pits of hell."

  But the reverend and police chief had log since lost control of the situation,

and the monster they'd created began to turn on them. Thomas was receiving

negative letters from other ministers around the country. "They tell me I'm off 

the wrong end. Well, that's what told Peter and John," he said.

 Betty Taylor, one of the original women accused of being a witch, hired a

lawyer who started making slander-suit noises. Accusations could no longer be

made without proof for fear of litigation. Although it was announced that 

there would be other meetings, none was ever held.

                                  

                                  -------------

 SEVERAL WEEKS after the final meeting, the Walkers appeared on a statewide

television talk show. They told the audience that after learning about

Paganism and Witchcraft from legitimate members of the Old Religion and other

occult groups, they concluded that Newell wasn't a witch, although they still

disliked her and thought she might have some responsibility for their daughter's

suicide. They said they saw nothing wrong with Witchcraft and nature religions

and felt everyone should be free to choose his own style of worship. "We don't

believe in banning any religion," they said.

 The reverend continued to rail against witchcraft, other non-Christian

religions and liberal Cristianity, which he called "tommyrot." But he could no

longer make direct accusations against individuals for fear of legal action.

The police chief was subsequently demoted.

 Ironically, durring the entire episode no one ever explained how so-called

witchcraft had led to Ginny Walker's suicide.

 Since the episode Oakridge has again become the quite little town it once was.

But beneath the surface here, and in places like it, runs a fear of things and

people who might be different. Persecution takes many forms and comes in many

guises. Witch hunts--- real witch hunts--- are not dim memories from the

Dark Ages. They are real, they still happen and they can happen again.

                                 =============

* All names with astericks are pseudonyms.

**See Bjom Thorsson's "The Rebirth of Witchcraft," April-May 1988 FATE magazine.

This article is from the February 1989 issue of:      FATE magazine 

                                                      3510 Western Avenue

                                                      Highland Park, Illinois

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