FIELD FILE · WITCH-OF-YAZOOSPECTRALLOCAL LEGEND

Witch of Yazoo

Also known as Yazoo City witch, The witch’s grave

Glenwood Cemetery, Yazoo City, MississippiFIRST REPORTED: 1904SPECTRAL & SUPERNATURAL

A river-swamp witch who, legend says, swore as she sank in quicksand to burn Yazoo City in 20 years – and the 1904 fire that seemed to keep her promise.

Yazoo City sits where the Mississippi Delta meets the hills, on the banks of the Yazoo River – and in the old section of its Glenwood Cemetery lies a grave ringed with heavy chain links. Locals call it the Witch’s Grave, and it anchors Mississippi’s most famous small-town legend.

As the story is told, an old woman lived alone in a shack along the Yazoo River and lured passing fishermen inside, where she tortured and killed them. When the sheriff and his men finally chased her through the swamp, she fled into quicksand. Half-drowned and sinking, she cursed the town, vowing to return in twenty years and burn Yazoo City to the ground. Townspeople buried her in Glenwood and, to be safe, circled the grave with chains.

On May 25, 1904, fire swept through Yazoo City and destroyed most of its business district and hundreds of buildings, including over 200 homes – a disaster from which the town took nearly two years to recover. Witnesses spoke of flames leaping through the air on unusually strong winds, though weather records of the day mention no gale. The legend adds the clinching detail: when people entered Glenwood the morning after the fire, the chains around the witch’s grave were found broken.

The tale gained a national audience through Yazoo City native Willie Morris, the celebrated editor of Harper’s Magazine, who wove the witch into his 1971 boyhood memoir Good Old Boy: A Delta Boyhood and later children’s fiction. Morris was a famous prankster, and when he died in 1999 he was buried in Glenwood just thirteen paces from the witch’s grave – which only added to the lore.

Today the chains are repeatedly repaired, cemetery keepers are said to make sure they never disappear entirely, and the original headstone, marked only with the initials “T. W.,” has given way to a newer stone that reportedly cracked soon after it was installed. The Yazoo County Convention and Visitors Bureau embraces the legend with maps to the grave and costumed cemetery tours.

Type: Spectral
Status: Local legend
First reported: 1904
Best-known location: Glenwood Cemetery, Yazoo City, Mississippi
Also called: Yazoo City witch, The witch’s grave
Reported in: Mississippi

What witnesses describe

Pictured as an old, wild-haired woman living alone on the river; after death she is a vengeful spirit associated with fire, wind and the broken chains around her grave rather than a visible apparition.

Where and when it’s seen

The swamps and river bottoms of the Yazoo River and Glenwood Cemetery in Yazoo City, Mississippi. Visitors traditionally seek out the grave around Halloween and the May anniversary of the 1904 fire.

Notable sightings

May 25, 1904The great Yazoo City fire Yazoo City, Mississippi
A fire destroyed 324 buildings, including most of the business district and more than 200 homes; a canal stopped it short of the 1872 courthouse. Its cause was never confirmed, but the legend credits the witch’s curse, and tradition holds that her grave’s chains were found broken the next day.
1971<em>Good Old Boy</em> is published Yazoo City, Mississippi
Willie Morris’s memoir of growing up in Yazoo City featured the witch and spread the story far beyond Mississippi, turning a local ghost story into a regional classic.
August 1999Willie Morris buried beside the witch Glenwood Cemetery, Yazoo City
After Morris died on August 2, 1999, he was laid to rest in Glenwood’s old section, thirteen paces south of the witch’s grave – a final joke many residents believe he would have enjoyed.
2012“Spookiest cemetery” honors Glenwood Cemetery, Yazoo City
Glenwood Cemetery was voted the second “Spookiest Cemetery in the US” in a Huffington Post readers’ poll, largely on the strength of the witch legend.

What could explain it?

Accidental fire: historical accounts trace the 1904 blaze to an ordinary household fire – one popular version names the parlor of a woman preparing for her wedding, another a boy playing with matches – spreading through a town of closely packed wooden buildings.
Folklore and fiction: Willie Morris presented the witch as a character in his storytelling, and much of the modern detail likely grew from his books and local retellings.
Retrospective storytelling: the ‘curse’ fits a common folklore pattern in which a later disaster is explained by an earlier wrong, with dates adjusted to match.
Chains and stones: metal chains and cheap stones break and corrode over time; their repeated failure needs no supernatural explanation.

Legend, culture and tourism

The witch is Yazoo City’s signature legend, promoted by the Yazoo County Convention and Visitors Bureau with a downloadable map to the grave and costumed storyteller tours of Glenwood Cemetery. Willie Morris’s books, including Good Old Boy and later Good Old Boy and the Witch of Yazoo, keep the story in print, and his own grave nearby has become a pilgrimage spot where visitors leave trinkets.