Witch of Yazoo

On 25 May 1904 a fire broke out in Yazoo City, a cotton town on the edge of the Mississippi Delta, and raced down Main Street. By the time it was out, some 324 buildings – more than 200 homes and nearly every business – had been destroyed. The cause was never established; the most popular theory is that it began in the parlour of a house where a young woman was preparing for her wedding. Witnesses said the flames seemed to leap through the air, though weather records mention no strong winds that day. The town rebuilt, and much of its downtown dates from the years after the fire.

The legend that explains the fire belongs to a grave in the old section of Glenwood Cemetery, enclosed by a ring of heavy chain links. In its best-known form, from Willie Morris’s 1971 novel for young readers Good Old Boy, an old woman living by the Yazoo River lured fishermen to her house and killed them. In 1884 a boy saw her standing over two bodies; the sheriff chased her into a swamp, where she sank in quicksand, vowing to break out of her grave in twenty years and burn the town down. She was buried under chains – and on 25 May 1904 the fire came, and the next morning the chains around her grave were found broken.

Visit Yazoo notes that the grave and a version of the story were known locally before Morris, though his book gave the tale its details and its fame. Who is actually buried there is unknown: the only record found shows that the plot was owned by a woman, and an earlier stone reportedly bore just the initials “T. W.” Locals say the chains break again however often they are replaced, and a 1995 marker split in two. Morris himself, who died in 1999, is buried about thirteen paces away.

The Witch of Yazoo is less a ghost than a classic piece of Southern folklore – a story stitched onto a real disaster and a mysterious grave, kept alive by a beloved writer and a town that enjoys telling it. Yazoo City now celebrates her with cemetery tours led by costumed storytellers.

The legend centres on the chains around the grave, said to break on their own after each repair, and on a split headstone. Some locals blame the witch for the speed of the 1904 fire; others say anyone who disturbs the grave is cursed.

The chained “Witch’s Grave” in the historic section of Glenwood Cemetery, Yazoo City, near the grave of Willie Morris. The anniversary of the fire, 25 May, is part of the legend.

The legend is inseparable from Willie Morris, author of North Toward Home and My Dog Skip, whose Good Old Boy popularised it. Yazoo City offers guided Glenwood Cemetery tours and a self-guided grave map, and the witch is a fixture of Mississippi ghost-lore collections.