Hex Murder House
The Hex Murder house in York County became famous for a number of reasons. It forced folks to acknowledge that hex was alive and well in York County. In November 1928, right before Thanksgiving, Nelson Rehmeyer was brutally murdered. And it was no simple attack. Rehmeyer was murdered because he practiced pow-wow.
John Blymire was the driving force behind the events at Nelson Rehmeyer’s house. At an early age, he learned the art of German folk magic, or pow-wow. He became well-known in the area as a healer. But after suffering from a period of bad luck he believed that someone was ‘hexing’ him. Another pow-wow practitioner, Andrew Lenhart, told him that someone near him was causing his troubles. His continuing obsession with the hex scared his wife. She managed to have him committed to an asylum for treatment. Less then two months later, he escaped from the asylum and was back to work at a cigar factory. On the job, he soon met two other like-minded fellows. John Curry and Milton Hess, also felt that someone’s hex was the cause of all their troubles.
Still trying to discover the source of the hex, Blymire consulted Nellie Moll, a well-known pow-wower in Marietta. She convinced him that Nelson Rehmeyer was the source of all the hex troubles plaguing Blyimire and his friends. To end the hex, Noll told him, the solution was fairly simple. He needed to obtain Rehmeyer’s copy of the Long Lost Friend and a lock of Rehmeyer’s hair. He then needed to bury these items six feet underground.
Blymire Makes a Plan
On November 26, 1928, Blymire and Curry went to visit Rehmeyer. His estranged wife told them he was at his house in the hollow. The pair visited with Rehmeyer, asking him questions about pow-wow. It was getting late and Rehmeyer invited them to spend the night downstairs. Once Rehmeyer was asleep , they searched in vain for the Long Lost Friend, the Pow-Wow spell book. Considering trying to snag a lock of his hair, they decided they would need another person to help.
The next night, Blymire and Curry returned to the house, along with Wilbert Hess. Before Rehmeyer could ask why they had returned, they tackled him to the floor. The visitors tried to tie him up with a rope they brought along. In the ensuing struggle, they beat Rehmeyer and strangled him to death. They tried to cover their tracks by setting a fire in the house. The trio beat a hasty retreat, figuring that with Rehmeyer dead, the hex curse would no longer be a problem. They were wrong. The fire went out, leaving evidence of the crime.
The Aftermath
Two days after his murder, Rehmeyer’s body was found by a neighbor. The discovery of the crime stunned the locals. Their shock, however, was mild compared to the excitement generated when the nature of the crime was revealed. Even though the locals were quite familiar with pow-wow, it was news to outsiders. Suddenly, any death with even the tiniest connection to hex in any way was blamed on hex.