Press: Witch

Last week’s weirdest newspaper story was an Associated Press dispatch from the small town of Woodbridge, N. J., 24 miles from Manhattan. The A. P.’s 1,350 members were informed by wire that one Theresa Czinkota had been publicly accused of witchcraft by five of her neighbors in the town’s Hungarian section. In rich detail the A. P. told how spying neighbors described to a Police Recorder what they had seen through the windows of Mrs. Czinkota’s home.

“Her head would shrink to the size of my fist,” whispered one. “Horns would appear on her head, and she would walk on all fours like an animal.”

“I saw blazing streams of fire coming from the witch’s head,” said another, under oath.

“When the church bells began to ring and I started to read my prayer book, I would not be able to keep my place and I knew the devil was abroad, trying to interfere with my prayers,” another of the women told the Recorder’s interpreter.

“I saw her bend down,” a fourth woman muttered, “and her head changed to a dog’s head and she had big bumps on her back.”

Soon the Recorder had Mrs. Czinkota and a Perth Amboy attorney in court. Cried the lawyer to one witness: “Do you actually believe there is such a thing as a witch?”

“Seeing is believing,” the woman murmured uneasily.

All over Woodbridge, Hungarian housewives were soon gabbling in terror. According to the New York Times, doors and windows were locked & barred. The Times reported that Mrs. Czinkota had been observed to “change herself into a horse and walk on her hind legs,” and that she had also caused “horns to appear on her head.” The New York Post, too, printed a special dispatch from Woodbridge. The Postman heard a woman say that one night she had seen the witch “dressed in the skin of an animal, with a stream of fire over her head.” The New York Sun reported Mrs. Czinkota’s neighbors believed her to have mixed magic brews while mysterious balls of fire had shot from her head. According to the Sun, Mrs. Czinkota was seen to change herself into “some sort of an animal . . . immediately after the church bell would ring.”

No believer in such tales, the Woodbridge Recorder surprised the complainants by ordering them to cease their blather about Mrs. Czinkota. When the Hungarians continued to shiver and mutter, the authority of the Church had to be invoked. The local Hungarian-speaking priest commanded the women to forget their fears, pacifically explained that Mrs. Czinkota might have been “under hypnotic influence” when observed by Hungarian peeping-Toms.