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The fears of many are illuminated in the darkness of night. Even the bravest souls find their valor tested when confronted by the looming shadows of dusk. There is a forest buried deep among the foothills of the Appalachia where creatures’ forms are twisted into unrecognizable beasts. Therein lies an ancient evil that crept up from the bowels of Earth when the mountains were formed. Some say it is a demon; cast out of heaven when Lucifer betrayed God. Others say it is the nightmares of children made flesh by the ancient magic that is the Appalachian Mountains. As for the eternal wonderers, the myths and legends, the tall-tales and folklores, she is a sister; a witch.
Man has given her many names: Baba Yaga, Hecate, Jenny Greenteeth, and The Witch of Endor. But those are new names.
The evil that would become the witch crept up through the shifting tectonic plates that formed the Appalachian Mountains over 450 million years ago. An entanglement of burning rock and sin, the stone-skinned witch haunted the mountains from her birth. She gained strength and magic as she fed on the earliest forms of life. Her first taste of flesh was when the hunter-gatherers came East across the land bridge from Asia. Her favorite part was the liver and the poisonous blood within. In the centuries to follow, she became the predator to man and the nightmare to children.
The Cherokee called her U’tlun’ta, “the one with the pointed spear.” Her right forefinger was an obsidian knife, shaped like a spear. Her mouth was stained with blood from the livers she had eaten and her skin was hard as stone. She holds her heart in the palm of her hand and only lays it down to feast on her victims. Explorers from the East gave her many names: Vikings called her the Troll Wife, the Spanish called her La Chusa, and white Europeans translated U’tlun’ta as Spearfinger.
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