Sean Noyce

Contemplating familial histories for Hex Off, I am reminded of a story about my great-grandmother, who lived in Koosharem, a tiny village in Central Utah. My father claimed she charmed his wart by pricking it with a needle, and with the blood, she wrote “BEADS” on a tiny piece of paper. She then asked him to take the paper into town and drop it on the ground; the next person who picked it up would acquire the wart — a form of transferal magic. 

As an observant Mormon, it’s unlikely that my great-grandmother would claim to be witch — such admittance was highly taboo in the early 1950s. Instead, she undoubtedly would refer to this folk magic as “traditional medicine”.  

One of my prized possessions on the topic of folk magic in the Old West is Popular Beliefs and Superstitions in Utah by Anthony Cannon, an encyclopedic catalogue of over 13,000 “traditional” beliefs in Utah before the 1960s. 

From the book, I was drawn to a ritual that was recorded in 1967 from a woman who claimed: “A charm to keep away evil spirits is a utility bag containing garlic, some soil, a piece of wood, and the toenail of a dog or rabbit, or a bird’s beak, or the hair of a dog.”