The Witch in the Woods

Chapter 15- HOW I ESCAPED THE WITCH'S WOODS

After I texted her, I was trying to distract myself with something. I tried sketching but I didn't really feel it at the time so I got on my laptop. I searched up Cobourg witch. Not much came up unfortunately. Just some websites about Cobourg itself but nothing about a witch. I typed in various keywords about the witch such as "Witch of Cobourg" and "Adeline Winters" . This gave me a list of Facebook profiles and twitter profiles. I was no history geek but I knew that they didn't have twitter in 1840. So promising myself this will be the final try, I typed in "The witch's woods Cobourg". Nothing significant was in the first three pages of the list of hits. In the fourth page, I almost scrolled past the link that said in all capital letters, "HOW I ESCAPED THE WITCH'S WOODS". I realized it looked like a click-bait. But, I was too excited to care. The story was on a blog by a man claiming he studies the paranormal.

The story was about this man named Roger and how he was basically visiting all the haunted places he could. He went to these places and tried to speak to the dead. He used a ouija board to do this. He recounted that he had also visited the witch's woods in Cobourg. He and another person who was filming the whole thing had tried to contact the witch. Things didn't go so well. His story sent chills up my spine. I was reading his account of the event but I didn't dare watching the link that was given to the video.

 The "witch hunt" happened at night. The camera guy (Greg) and Roger were set up by twilight to get the hunt started. Once the light faded out, they began to film. He started out by speaking a bit about the history of the witch. How the woman, Adeline Winters, now known as the witch of Cobourg , had been seen setting up her hexes and magic spells in the town. She was rumored to have killed her own husband and child though those allegations were never proven. Yet, there were witnesses to her witchcraft as she was caught red-handed planting a jar containing a curse in the minister's yard. She was killed in the woods that night by a fire and had sworn revenge on the minister and his family. Strange things had occurred in the town after that which had prompted the minister and his family to move immediately out of town even though the church had later contained the spirit of the witch and her dark magic. After the first few lines that gave more information about the witch, I skimmed the history part as there was nothing new that wasn't from the book. Then the blog got to the encounter the man had.

"After a brief history of the woods. I went deeper into the woods, followed by the cameraman. We had been joking and laughing at the small sounds they had heard. Once we reached the center of the woods, we set up the ouija board. We asked questions and for a while there was no answer. Then we asked again, "is there a spirit with us?" and the planchette moved to "yes". The spirit had told us that it was good and that it wanted to be set free. We had pushed the spirit for more answers about whether she was truly a witch and what she intended to do to the minister and his family. Once that question was asked, there had been no answer. The planchette stood still on the board. Then out of desperation, not wanting to lose the witch, we started making deals with the spirit. I told her that I would do what the spirit asked and set it free if it would cooperate with us and tell us what had happened. The spirit had asked me to bring her protection the next day. I didn't understand. So I asked what that meant.

The planchette kept spelling out "free me" again and again. I refused to do it right away and instead I kept asking more questions. Things got crazy. The planchette went off the board. The breeze that was in the woods picked up and the cold wind made the temperature drop quickly. The cameraman identified a strange smell, similar to flesh rotting that invaded the woods. About fifteen minutes later, light coming from the devices they carried flickered out. "Our sound equipment picked up a strange moaning noise over the wind." I gasped. I took a second off the laptop to turn on the bedroom light even though my bedside lamp was on. I went back to reading. The story continued. "Once the devices flickered off, we lost the camera and the lights and sound equipment and we were basically in the dark forest by ourselves. Greg had a small flashlight and he lit it up. I turned on the flashlight on my phone. There was sufficient light to see into the forest, the way out and lastly the Ouija board. Against the better judgement of the camera man we decided to keep playing and I instructed Greg to film the events on his camera phone."

Once the cameraman had set up his phone to face the table by taping it on a tree branch. They had started to play again. The author described that the air was so cold that keeping his fingers out on the planchette hurt and it was colder than usual for the month of October. He and the camera man had pressed on. I suspect they saw all the spooky things happening as a great way to get people to read the blog. I was tempted to go to the video at this point and see what they saw but I decided that it was probably an unnecessary way to terrify myself and I would rather watch it tomorrow morning or afternoon if I was going to watch it.

"The planchette started moving at this point and we asked a few more questions. We asked why she was stuck here and how we can help her. The planchette spelled out "rescue". We asked how we can do that. The planchette simply moved to spell "rescue" again and again. After several times of doing this We asked how the spirit got trapped. The same answer came. We asked how old she was and how long she has been here. The same answer came, "rescue". At this point, we were getting frustrated and Greg started abusing the spirit and making jokes, calling it stupid." Why anyone would do that while sitting in the woods at night, I had no idea. "The planchette had stopped immediately. We were getting scared." The article said they asked it to stay and even apologized to the spirit. The planchette started moving again after the cameraman had apologized.

The author explained that the planchette was moving much faster and it was jerky and there was a different atmosphere in the air. He had started feeling very scared and though he had initially wanted to keep playing , he wanted to stop immediately. The movements were so fast and jerky that at one point, he had taken his hand off the planchette and it was only the camera man who had managed to hold on. The words "die" and "get out" kept coming up but the planchette was also moving to letters in a random order that didn't spell words. Then without stopping at any letters, it started making the figure 8 on the board again and again. The planchette then went off the table and fell in to the vegetation underneath. The author had stood up and immediately closed the board. Then for good measure, he broke it across his knee and threw it further than the bleak light of the flashlight allowed them to see.

The howling of the wind sharpened to sound like a scream in the darkness and the two ran towards the side of the road with no other light but the flashlight. The author said that he felt a presence closing in on them, like something was chasing them but he was too afraid to look back. When they got to their van parked at the side of the road they drove off.

After that night, Greg told Roger that he had started experiencing sleep paralysis. He wakes up in the middle of the night but he's unable to go back to sleep or to get up and he feels as if somebody is pushing down on him. So he lost a lot of sleep the week following their excursion. He also had horrible nightmares. He sees a woman and the woods. He still experiences these at the time the article was written though he is healthy for the most part. Yet Roger ends the article saying "out of all the crazy places he visited the witch's woods was the most haunted".