From the Creepy Cleveland Archives
—
Contributed by Steve
Everybody from the Cleveland area has at one time or another heard tales and stories about the “witches ball”. I myself have been there a few times. My parents used to go there when they were kids and so did my grandparents when they were kids. Through all of the generations, the story behind the mysterious ball remain the same and true. The local legend about a witch being buried at the old cemetery on Myrtle Hill Rd.is in fact true according to vague documents at the town library. If I remember correctly the only markings on her grave is her last name “Kolthoff” -or- “kothloff”. There are no dates or no other wording on the eerie tomb. The few times I visited, there was always a fresh black rose resting on the grave.
The story about the witch is a long one so I will try to trim it down a bit to make less reading. More than a 150 years ago lived a quiet widowed women on Myrtle Hill Rd. nobody bothered her and she bothered nobody. After her late husband died she was thought to practicing witch craft in the barn behind her home. Many neighbor’s were losing their animals such as dogs, cats, chickens etc… People were starting to get suspicious about the old woman. One late night when she was asleep some neighbors gathered up and broke into her barn to find weird marking on the wall and on a small table there were several bones of animals stacked nice and neat. One of the neighbors turned toward a fire pit in the barn to find the collar of his dog inside.
The very next night they got together again and went to the barn, this time with the witch in it. Rumor has it before they broke in they could see her from an outside window standing by the fire and she was gazing into it while the fire changed colors from red to blue to green. The people were scared and they felt threatened so they decided to take her life right then and there. They busted the door down and ran in and grabbed the old women tied her up to a pole in the barn and piled wood beneath her legs. She started to scream and chanting words they never heard before. She looked right into the eyes of all the people and told them this would not be the last time they would see her. She said she would put a curse on her grave before she passed. The barn was burnt down to the ground and the next day her remains were gathered and placed at the old cemetery on Myrtle Hill Rd. She went many years without a tomb stone until her niece who also practices witch craft provided her with one. It is a huge ball that stands about three feet off of the ground.
The curse she put on her grave is a strange and spooky one. If you go to the cemetery and place one hand on her grave and feel that it is cold, she is resting in her grave. If you touch it and is warm or hot I recommend you leave then because she is out of her grave and running!! One of the times I was there with several friends in the middle of winter we were standing near the grave when a friend and I placed our hands on the ball to find that it was extremely warm!! Second after we removed our hand you could hear loud footprints and the sound of breaking branches coming from the small woods near her grave. It was then we all took off, not waiting around to see what was going to happen next!!
True story,
Steve in Cleveland
