The practice was fairly prevalent until well after World War II, but most of those who still don witch hazel for the holiday don’t know its symbolism, and only do so because they remember a parent or grandparent wearing it. In this manner the tradition might limp a little further into the future before completely disappearing. There’s a tale, though, that is now rarely repeated save around the kitchen tables and fireplaces of real old-timers. It begins in the year 1853, in the barrens village of Cadalbog, a place that presently exists as only one crumbling chimney and the foundation of a vanished glass factory lost among the pines. The loose-knit community of glassmakers, blueberry harvesters, colliers, and moss rakers, had been there since 1845. By 1857, the village was deserted.
A reminiscence of the place that has survived in the diary of one Fate Shaw, the wife of the factory owner, describes Cadalbog as “an idyllic place of silence and sugar sand as soft and white as a cloud. The local cedar ponds are the color of strong tea, and along lower Sleepy Creek there always seems to be a breeze shifting through the pines, even in the heart of August.” Supposedly Mrs. Shaw did everything within her power to provide for her husband’s workers and their families. She was well liked and well respected, as was Mr. Shaw. One of the events she put on every year was a Halloween celebration.
Unlike the citizenry of most of the other settlements of the barrens, either Swedish or Puritans from Long Island, Cadalbog was founded by Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine back home. Their Halloween antics were brought with them from the Old World. There was disguise, not as monsters or ghouls, but people would dress up and pretend to be dead relatives. Turnips were carved instead of pumpkins. There was always a huge bonfire, dancing, fiddle and tin whistle music. Out in the middle of a million and a quarter acres of pine forest, in the spooky autumn night, it didn’t seem so outlandish that those who’d passed on might return to beg for prayers to shorten their stays in purgatory. In that setting, even these pragmatic people, who’d survived much, could believe for a few nights that spirits were afoot.
In 1853, Halloween fell on a Monday, and the celebration could not be held on the night of a workday. Likewise, Sunday was out of the question, as it was given over to the lord. So it was Friday, October 29 that the incident occurred. There was a cold breeze out of the north. A roaring bonfire licked the three-quarter moon with a snapping flame, and the music reeled. A strong fermented brew called heignith, concocted from crab apples, wild blueberries, cranberries, and raw honey, among other ingredients (its full recipe is lost), was consumed by the barrelful.
Attending the celebration that night was Miss Mavis Kane and her sister, Gillany. These two women, identical twins, were well-known even though they lived on the outskirts of the village. Gillany had been married at one time, but her husband, Peter, a Quaker collier who’d been born in those woods, succumbed to a rattlesnake bite, leaving the sisters to fend for themselves. By the account of Fate Shaw, they managed quite well. To quote from her diary, “The Kane sisters are a stoic pair—dour and pale and of few words. They move silently like ghosts around their property, chopping wood, repairing the steps to the front door, throwing a stick for that black dog of theirs, Brogan.”
As reported by Fate, their sole uniforms were ankle-length black dresses of a sateen weave. Even in summer, out in the forest, hunting the yellow shelf fungus that grows on the sides of trees (they made a good profit drying it, crumbling it up, and curing it with honey to make a kind of sweet brittle), they wore light corsets and high collars. Their long black hair was gathered into one large knot and left to lay upon the spine. To the Halloween celebration they brought a basket of Kane’s Crumbs, as the local treat had come to be known. The sisters, though both handsome women, weren’t asked to dance. They didn’t drink or eat but sat and simply stared at the fire and the goings-on. Their fixed expressions were the only masks they needed.
Sometime after the drunken singing had turned to whispered laughter a small meat cleaver appeared, as if from nowhere, in Gillany’s left hand. Its blade glistened in the glow of the dying fire as it sliced the air, struck, and split the backbone of Ray Walton, the foreman at the glass factory. As he screamed, blood immediately issuing from his mouth, Mavis put a knife through the throat of the Ahearn girl, who folded to the ground like a paper doll. They each went on hacking out their own private trails of horror: fingers flying, blood and bowels falling, eyes skewered, ribs cracked, wrists hacked. A storm of screams broke the stillness of the barrens.
It took some time for a group of factory laborers—male and female—to subdue the sisters. The Kanes fought, it seemed, without awareness—as if they were under a spell. By the time the two murderers were tied up and being led away, there were six dead and twenty wounded. That’s a lot of people to dispatch in a relatively short time with only sharp kitchen utensils. The Burlington County sheriff in Mount Holly was sent for, and the twins were incarcerated in separate store rooms in the glass factory. Old Dr. Boyle, once of Atsion and since run away to the woods after accusations of malpractice, was already on hand, drunk, pronouncing death and treating the wounded. He agreed with Mr. Shaw’s assessment that the attack was too random and mindless to have carried an intention of murder. Most everyone who witnessed it firsthand agreed.
When his duty to those injured at the celebration was finished, Boyle went to the factory to inspect the Kanes. By then the sun was coming up, and the breeze dropped yellow oak leaves in his path. The smoke from the bonfire pervaded the air, bottles lay strewn about the clearing behind the factory and down the path into the deep pines. He entered the brick structure and was greeted by Shaw, who showed him down a back hallway to a small door hidden by shadow. Boyle, a careful man, put his ear to the door and listened. The factory was empty and unusually silent.
“Who can tell the difference, but I think someone who would know said this was Gillany,” said Shaw.
“Is she tied up?” asked Boyle.
“Oh, yes, quite securely.”
“Did she say anything when you got her in here?”
“Nothing. She foamed at the mouth and spit. Growled some.”
“Okay,” said Boyle, and nodded.
Shaw moved forward and inserted a long iron key into the door’s lock. He turned it, there was a vicious squeal from the hinges, and they entered. The room was small, with a low ceiling and one window at eye level looking out across an expanse of reed grass toward the pond. The only light in the dim room came from that source. Boyle felt claustrophobic. He set down his bag, took off his hat and coat, and hung them on the back of a chair. The only sound was that of the woman’s breathing, steady and strong. She was asleep on the floor, her hands bound behind her back, feet tied. Her black hair was unknotted and covered her face. Blood soaked the sleeves and skirt of her dress.
The doctor had Shaw fetch him a lantern, and by that, he examined her. When he rolled her onto her back, he discovered her eyes were wide open as she slept. “Most unusual,” he said, bringing the light closer and closer to them, unable to make the dilated pupils constrict. As he wrote in his personal report of the case (held, along with surviving files of his other cases, at the Joseph Truncer Memorial Library at Batsto Village), “There were a number of odd signs upon the first of the Kane women I examined, not the least of which was a high fever. The eyes were like saucers, the skin around the sites of her lymph nodes had gone a vague green, her eyelashes had fallen out, and there was a silvery substance dribbling from her left ear. All of these struck me as potent signs of disease. When I inspected her lower body, I found her legs covered with insect bites, which I knew were chiggers from that feel of sand when I brushed my open palm against her shins.”