Meade County: Come Visit Us for a Spell

This family-friendly event will celebrate the complicated and tragic life of Leah Smock. Speakers will include, historians, paranormal investigators, and Weird Meade County. This event will also celebrate the spooky season lead-up activities

The Story of Leah part 1

Kentucky, and Meade County especially, are some of the oldest inhabited parts of the Americas. From its protection during the ice age to its stubbornness to be settled, this dark and bloodied ground seems to hold secrets.

There is a place called Lapland, where the sun seems to be dimmer and the animals a little quieter. For generations, there have been strange legends of creatures that seem not to belong and stories of women that could wield the powers of nature.

Our tale is of one such woman and although she was only in Lapland for 2 years, her story is still told in hushed tones today. This is the story of Leah Smock, the Battletown Witch.

Leah had the terrible misfortune of being both intelligent and beautiful in 1840 Kentucky. She could also heal with herbs, could predict the future, and was whispered to be a witch. Leah finished school early because she learned all that the teacher knew. She went on to learn from everything around her. How if you kill the weeds near a pond, cows can still die because the poisonous roots are still touching the water. Oh, she tried to warn those around her, but they were either too stubborn or too proud to listen. She still had her companions, even close friends. It has been rumored that she was in love in the later summer of 1840.

Leah was the oldest of three children and had dark hair and dark eyes. She spent her days helping her father make barrels or trapesing through the dark woods of Lapland. She carried a walking stick that was made by her Native American friend Jim. It had the head of a snake coming out of the wood at the top. There is some irony in that, you will find out more about that later dear reader. Leah learned from the Cherokee that remained in the area after the Indian Removal Act of 1830. But times were tough in 1840 and her Daddy was in a land dispute with one of the neighbors. It was no fault of his, some big-city huckster by the name of Hardin sold their land twice. Leah had been making herself known more and more with the neighbors and rumors had been swelling for the entire 2 years they had come to know those parts. In that late August Leah had been accused of curing a horse that she wasn’t allowed to pet and causing its death. She also wanted to hold a baby and wasn’t allowed. The baby passed the next day and everyone just assumed it was Leah. What is beside the point is that infant mortality rates were not even calculated at that time due to them being so high and nothing resembling a doctor being around for miles.

In times of hardship, people turn their ire on what they do not know and this time, their scrutiny became increasingly trained on Leah.

On August 21 of 1840, John and Margaret Ann Smock left to visit the nearby town of Staples. They took two of their three children with them. Why they left their third child home on that day is a question that remains to be answered. When they left, John and Margaret were unaware this would be the last time they would see their daughter Leah.

So on that late summer day, unknown neighbors tied the 22-year-old’s arms and legs and hauled her out to the family’s smokehouse. These men, brimming with superstition, stood outside and struck a match. They felt justified as they bore witness to the flames until only silence came from the structure. They left, but that is not the end of Leah’s story.

If you would like to learn more about the legend of Leah Smock check out the Story of Leah pt 2.

The Story of Leah Part 2

The first sighting of Leah’s ghost was seen by her mother. According to the old legend, Leah’s mother watched the smokehouse burn with her daughter inside. The next day, she confirmed all those rumors and spoke unafraid to Leah’s ghost. Floating over the smoldering ruins Leah emerged. Margaret asked her daughter’s spirit why she did not use her powers to free herself.

Now we have stated many times before that Leah was not one to suffer fools in life, why would that change in death. Her legend recounts that the neighbors responsible for her ghost were those who now saw Leah’s ghost. She bore a stare of knowing in their direction.

The people of Staples imagined they had buried their dirty deeds with Leah and began to carry on. Some word-of-mouth stories even state that they laughed about her murder, proud of themselves. That was until a week after her death. The neighbors no longer saw her over the smokehouse they rejoiced that they had “burned the witch” until two hunters were out a week later. The unnamed hunters were near John Smock’s land and close to the newly formed cemetery. It has been lost to time what they saw, but it was enough. A group of men was once again determined to hold Leah down. Whispers state that they were the same men that ended her life. They were frightened of what they had unleashed and hauled two wagon loads of pure, white sandstone rocks to cover her grave. It was a tradition in the old countries to use these stones to keep a spirit from rising. They took the purest white stones, said to convey protection, and buried Leah again. But their effort was futile, Leah belonged now to the trees and nature that she loved so much. no grave No grave could hold her body down. Leah was one with the land and she was now free to roam those 300 acres until the sun stopped shining and the earth stopped turning.

You see this smokehouse was made well and made sturdy, after all her father was a Cooper by trade. Everyone knew that Leah was inside and she was long gone, but they had to wait days for the fire to die to retrieve her. Once they safely could bury her, she was placed in a coffin and a wagon carried her to what would late be known as the Betsy Daily Cemetery. She was the unlucky first grave in that cemetery because no churchyard would welcome a witch. Her father interred her on his land for her to stay until time ends.

Leah at first was seen around her grave. First-hand accounts show her in a white gown still bound with black ties at each wrist and a long black tie at her waist.

As time went on Leah became more legend than person. Her details got fuzzy outside of Battletown. In 1970 this is how she is described in the Meade County Messenger “There are stories that there was a witch’s grave in the Betse-Daily Cemetery. Her name is Mrs. Smock. She comes out of her grave wearing a compete black outfit and walks around the cemetery.” This is odd, because if you read the first and second-hand accounts in Kay Hamilton’s book “Burned as a Witch: the Legend of Leah Smock” she has 100 years of accounts of Leah sightings and her appearance never waivers from the white gown and long black hair. These also include the more modern sightings of her in the now closed Battletown Elementary School.

Leah’s story is as amazing and interesting as she was in life. There are several modern tropes associated with her that we attribute to movie myths. Stick with us for a moment and listen to an account of a Halloween night in the 1980s. It became a rite of passage to visit the “witch’s grave” on Halloween night in Meade County. In a story recounted in Gerald W. Fischer’s book “Battletown Witch: Leah Smock, the Evolution of Witchcraft, and the Last Witch Burning in America” he recounts as story that would be oddly similar to the Blair Witch Project almost 20 years later.

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