I am writing this story down while I remember it and for others to understand. This event happened one year before the civil war started. I was working as a town deputy at Red Bluff in the Kansas Territory. I was riding out of town to track down an anti-slavery troublemaker named Charles Davis. It was October 31, 1859, and as I rode through the barren Kansas landscape after four hours I came across a Victorian house. It looked like one of those old fashion New England places and I had a question why was it here.
Since the sun was going down I decided to make camp, eat dinner and go to bed. It was one a.m. when I saw lights lighting up the sky and when I got up that house was on fire. I realized that since no one could survive that I turned around and went back to my bedroll. I got up about 6 a.m. had breakfast and as I mounted my horse I saw that the house had not burned down.
I decided to find out what was going on ignoring the feeling of dread. When I was 1000 yards from the house my horse got panicky and threw me and the last thing I remember was hitting the ground and everything went black. I woke up tied between two pillars by ropes stripped to my waist. As I looked around the darkroom I saw a cauldron on fire and implements of torture on the walls and two witches.
Both women had hooked noses with the wart at the tip and black pointy hats and black robes. I never felt fear until now. They were speaking some weird language over the cauldron and I felt a very cold evil seeping in. One of the witches who had grey dirty hair looked at me and said, “You were warned, young man, to stay away. Now you will pay with your life and our brothers and sisters in Salem will be avenged.”
I was tied up wondering what the hell was I going to do. The other witch held a knife and was looking at me and was mumbling something over the fire and it didn’t sound nice. I knew what was happening, but my mind didn’t want to consider the truth.
I slowly tried to loosen the ropes and for a minute I was succeeding. The second witch saw what I was doing and said, “I see what you’re doing and I am getting stronger ropes; you will die.” Just then a rat jumped on my arm and when she got closed I held my arm up and the rat jumped at her and she screamed jumping back and tumbled off the stairs knocking the cauldron over and the house went up in flames.
I got loose and was running to the door and it wouldn’t open. As the fire got closer and closer I could feel the heat and when it got two steps from me I passed out. I woke up feeling cold water on my lips and opened my eyes to two twenty-year-old women standing over me. Both were wearing clothes similar to what they wore up in New England. She looked at me and said, “Your horse threw you and we followed him back here. I got up as they smiled at me and the blond woman said, “Thank you for freeing us.” They both kissed me on the lips and when I turned around to look at the remains of the house it was gone. I turned back to the women and they were also gone. I decided to ride back to town and realized that no one would believe me, not at least till Halloween of next year.