OLD MILL WITCH

Inscription

OLD MILL WITCH
AMBER-EYED, SILVER-HAIRED
GHOST OF HEALER
WHO PROTECTED MILLWORKERS
WITH REMEDIES AND CHARMS
STILL WALKS VILLAGE STREETS.
ALABAMA FOLKLIFE ASSOCIATION
WILLIAM G. POMEROY FOUNDATION 2021

In this haunted turn-of-the-century mill, workers toiled away in brutal conditions breathing white cotton dust and listening to the ceaseless rattling din, all while hungry machines stood ready to eat limbs and lives. In the early twentieth century, job seekers had flooded in from the surrounding hills to take up any available mill work. Children labored beside adults for low pay and less security. Employees feared illness or injury, which would steal their meager jobs and forfeit their hard-won, company-owned homes.

Into this harsh environment entered a flesh-and-blood woman, known to some as the Old Mill Witch, with a lined face, long silver hair, and amber eyes. She too had come from the hills. Even before her arrival, there had been stories of spirits peering down from the mill’s rafters, souls lost to the factory, their lives and limbs sacrificed in exchange for quick profits. It was said the Old Mill Witch could commune with these spirits; it was whispered she could transfigure boys who stared too long at her into insects; and it was even hinted that she hastened the demise of the cruel mill boss, who turned ill and died as his hilltop mansion crumbled.

But more prominent are the stories of a good witch, one whose aim was to heal workers. In a mill town, the company owns the doctor. A sick employee was an expendable employee, and an expended employee was jobless and homeless. The Old Mill Witch aided mill employees in avoiding the doctor and preserving their jobs with her special knowledge of spells and poultices, folk medicines that were attributed to her Native American ancestry. She made balms for men with brown lung, distributed herbs to expecting women with morning sickness, and soothed the workers’ weary and broken bodies.

Even after the mill closed, it was still said to be a haunted place. As the factory was being dismantled, workers claimed to hear strange noises, unexplained footfalls, and disembodied whispers, the shades of generations of laborers who had literally worked themselves to death. To this day, some claim to see the spirit of the Old Mill Witch wandering the streets of Mill Village.