’Tis the season this month to turn our attention toward the “spookier” side of things, which often means the retelling of local or regional tales of ghosts, haunted spaces or other things that go bump in the night. But our story this time around is a bit different: that of an alleged “witch” literally asked to leave the Lakes-area town of Rochester more than 80 years ago.
Irene Ray, her husband Charles and their daughter IIoe moved to the Fulton County town in 1932 amid financial difficulties that led them to apply for welfare support, though many families faced similar struggles during those years of the Great Depression.
Irene’s conflicts with members of the Rochester community, however, went well beyond financial woes. Perhaps contributing to the matter was the supposition that Irene — who had long, black hair — was of Native American descent. The Logansport Pharos-Tribune in 1938 described her as “an Indian of the Algonquian Tribe,” while a Lafayette newspaper described her as “Miami Indian” and the “wife of a white farmer and WPA worker,” though she denied certainty of that claim. She also denied the many accusations hurled at her over the six years following her family’s arrival in the town.
Word spread that Irene used voodoo dolls and spells against those she disliked, and townspeople began to call her a “modern-day witch” who cursed locals with everything from fires and floods to sleep problems and stomach disorders. The Logansport paper said that “strange stories invented by superstitious residents of Rochester” claimed “her favorite means of casting spells was to obtain hair combings from someone she disliked, place them in a bottle with cat hairs and vinegar, and then bury the bottle. Persons so hexed were supposed to wither and eventually die unless she relieved the spell.”
Ray was accused of cursing one farmer’s potato field into non-productivity after he asked her to stop crossing his property as a shortcut to the grocery store.
Things escalated when Irene Ray was blamed for the sudden illness of 25-year-old Georgia Knight Conrad, who suffered from “leakage of the heart.” In this case, one of Ray’s “spell jars” was blamed.
Fear and anger directed at the Ray family reached hysteria in the spring of 1937, when Rochester Chief of Police Clay Sheets died of a heart attack after removing Irene’s 6-year-old daughter from the home due to problems with the “morals of the household.” Rumors abounded that Irene had angrily told the chief he would pay for what he’d done. Not long after, Sheets was dead — though of natural causes.
As demands for action against Ray increased, State Attorney Murray McCarty was asked to press charges against her, but he dismissed the request, noting that witchcraft wasn’t illegal in Indiana in 1938. One paper claimed McCarty even combed records of the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts as part of his investigation.
By May 1938, new police chief Paul Whitcomb was prepared to arrest the 60-year-old Ray, claiming she told him, “I killed one Rochester officer through a spell and I have another so he can’t eat.”
Whitcomb and State Patrolman Estil Bemenderfer, according to the Logansport Pharos-Tribune, investigated the Ray family’s prior stint in Plymouth, where they learned the Rays had also been ordered out of town. The rumor was that Irene conspired with a male “wizard” in Plymouth when especially difficult curses were needed.
Irene Ray was booked on vagrancy charges May 11, 1938, but released the next day on condition that she leave Rochester if charges were dropped.
“The whole thing is wrong, as I can’t do anything like that,” Ray told a Columbus, Indiana, reporter. She added, “If my accusers got right with God they won’t need to put such things on me, as I am living for the Lord and I intend to until I die. I won’t do the work of the devil because witchcraft is the handiwork of Satan. I feel sorry for my accusers because they cannot think any other way.”
The incident made national headlines in newspapers and magazines, and not everyone was sympathetic to the concerns of Rochester townspeople. Reader Carrie M. Styer of Indianapolis responded to an Indianapolis Star report with a letter to the editor that ended with: “But poor Mrs. Ray — arrested and forced to move for ‘hexing.’ No wonder we are going to destruction and starving in a land of plenty. We have no sense.”
The Rays, true to their word, moved out of town, settling east of Rochester on today’s State Road 14, then known as the “north shore road” of Lake Manitou. But turmoil followed them there.
On Oct. 25, 1938, just months after Irene Ray’s arrest, headlines around the state reported that “Rochester’s ‘Hex Woman’” had filed for divorce from her husband, Louis (alternately reported as Lewis) Ray, alleging he was verbally and physically abusive and “failed to provide” for her. Reports said the two separated a few days prior to the divorce suit but reconciled within hours.
Days later, on Nov. 4, 1938, Irene and Louis were struck by a car while walking on State Road 14 between their home and the One Horse Grocery. It was about 5:15 p.m. and pouring rain. The car, driven by May Kern, a local bookkeeper, struck Irene after she swerved to avoid hitting a child on a bicycle.
Ray was killed instantly, suffering a fractured neck, severed limb and other injuries. Her husband sustained a fractured skull and was rushed to nearby Woodlawn Hospital. He survived, though information about his later life is scarce.
The Knight family of Rochester later said their daughter’s heart condition improved after Irene Ray left town, but Georgia died of the same condition two years later.
As for Irene Tedrow Ray, she was laid to rest in Bremen Municipal Cemetery. And even in the nearly 90 years since her passing, stories of her alleged “witchcraft” continue online and elsewhere, even if they may have begun as products of superstition and misunderstanding.
