Don Peterson 19 min read

Deep in the Pennsylvania hills, weather-beaten Dutchman Peter Scheinberger tills his farm, and becomes the center of an old-country tale of hex-craft, curses, and the dark powers of folk magic.

Don Peterson's 1951 story is an atmospheric horror and psi-powers tale rooted in Pennsylvania-Dutch folklore. Eerie, earthy, well-told. Read it for a chilling story steeped in the real hex traditions of rural Pennsylvania, where powwow magic and the sinister white-feather curse work their menace, in a distinctive slice of American folk-horror.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

19 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).