Witches infested Harlan County in the 1850's or so Wood Lyttle 
told the Rev. James J. Dickey in an interview in 1898. According 
to Lyttle, it began with "cattle dying and hair balls being found 
in them, hide whole but the internal part shot to pieces." 
Log heaps were made and all the horses, hogs and cows that had died 
were burned as a torture to the witches. The people who feared the 
witches kept their pockets turned wrong-side-out-wards, at night, 
for safety. 

Elizabeth Clay Turner, wife of James Turner Sr. and daughter-in-law 
of William and Susannah Turner, was one of the witches named by Lyttle. 
The other two witches named by Lyttle were "old Aunt Dinah," a slave of 
William Turner Sr., and Salina Sturgeon, a white woman who was the 
concubine or wife of Negro George, also a slave of Turner's. 

Turner and his wife, Susannah Bailey, were apparently one of the main 
targets of the witches. Lyttle speaks of them as being both about 100 
years old at this time although other evidence places them in their 80's. 

In an attempt to cure the Turners, guards were placed around them and 
their home at a distance of about 500 feet, so that no one could come 
in for the four days it took to effect the cure. No one was allowed to 
enter the circle for if anyone inside of the guarded circle gave or 
sold as much as the value of a pin the charm would be broken and no 
cure could be affected. 

Lyttle says that negro women would scream that the witches were coming 
through the roof to them but he goes on to say that some of these women 
told him that they pretended to be bewitched in order to keep from work. 

He also states that the Middletons were especially afflicted by the 
witches and that women, negro boys and sometimes men were bewitched.