The Legendary Witch Who Froze To Death

Cold temps are fast approaching and the residents of Leonardtown, Maryland know that this can only mean one thing, that along with the freezing rain and snow, the curse of Moll Dyer will cast a dark shadow over the town's people yet once again. In 1697, Moll Dyer, a woman accused of being a witch simply because she survived the bitter cold without so much as a sniffle while most of the town's people were suffering from famine, hunger, disease, and eventually death, was forced from her only shelter and thrown out into the zero degree temps with only the rags on her back.

The colonists believed Moll Dyer to be a witch who had cast an evil spell over them. Irritated that she appeared to be of sound health while the rest of the citizens were meeting their demise by record numbers, Moll Dyer was pulled out of her home by the angry colonists. Fearing for her life she ran into the nearby darkened woods where she stood watching while the town's people burned down her only shelter. Witchcraft was illegal in the seventeenth century, and was punishable by death, so the colonists felt that this was their only recourse to eliminate the curse that they believed had taken over Leonardtown.

Moll Dyer fled the area in an effort to save her own life, all the while repeating strange words, promising to curse the very people who had sentenced her to her own cruel and inhumane death. Moll Dyer followed the creek until she could walk no more. Her body had become numb from the brutally freezing temps. Forced to slow her pace as hypothermia set in, she stopped to rest on a large boulder, kneeling down with one hand resting on the 875-pound rock and the other hand stretched out to the heavens.

Her frozen body was found in this very position by a young boy a few days later. When they removed her body, the colonists discovered that her fingerprints were embedded in the rock, confirming their allegations that she was in fact a witch that needed to die. They also realized that she had left behind a heavy curse that they could do nothing about as they watched one family member after another die a cruel death caused by starvation and illness which they believed to be nothing more than bad luck brought on by the old witch.

Today, the Moll Dyer Run that follows along the creek is considered one of the most haunted and cursed areas in Maryland. Anyone touching the rock is stricken with illness, shortness of breath, and the feeling of being squeezed. Moll Dyer Road today runs along with the property where Moll Dyer succumbed to death and is witness to fatalities and unexplained automobile accidents despite it being a straight run road with no curves or blind spots. The owners now living on the property claim that they see dark shadows and ecto-mist resembling the outline of Moll Dyer.

The location of the cursed rock that Moll Dyer once perched on sits in the heart of Leonardtown at the St. Mary's County Historical Society building. The curse today is as strong as it was back when Moll Dyer first condemned the colonists and their descendants to the darkest depths of hell with nothing but bad luck following them into eternity.

Today, those who dare to touch the rock have reported the strange feeling of suffocation, almost like drowning and a case of bad luck that eventually subsides over time. The locals know that it is best to just walk past the rock as Moll Dyer's curse is just as strong today as it was over 300 years ago she first cast it. On March 27, 1697, the Council members of Maryland, during proceedings, commented on the bad weather, stating that "It hath pleased God that this winter hath been the longest that hath been known in the memory of man."