I am not sure how many families in the Upper Ohio Valley can claim documented proof of a witch’s spell being cast.

This Halloween Thursday, Oct. 30, between astronomical twilight and midnight, the veils between the spirit world are thin in the darkness. The apparitions that make their way into your home can be found in stories told in front of ancestors’ hearths that date back centuries.

I will be presenting a program at 5 p.m. in the Vincent Room of the Brooke County Library in Wellsburg.

I am under a generational witch’s spell cast under the celestial clock of the late 18th century in an old English tongue. That magic strength is based on the willingness of the living generation to believe, according to my research. I am the oldest living male child of the only female line from Daniel Higgins Sr., who is buried in the old graveyard in Warren Township, one of the 14 townships of Jefferson County.

During the time of witching, strange lights were seen across the skies in Canada, Russia and Europe. I put a lot of work into building the back story — the event is believed to have taken place in Brooke County, Va. My four-time great-grandfather was bewitched during the Sugar Moon, which, according to Native American moon cycle tradition, falls in April.

The witch story comes to me as part of a family oral tradition, “Gobbler Tale” lore. I have done a lot of background research, turning the pages of countless crusty yellowing journals on the winter of 1796-97, which was the coldest known, citing David Ludlum’s “Early American Winters.”

The witch story comes down in a formal work by Emma Frances (Higgins) Craft, which was written in 1936 in the state of Indiana, where I am a proven ancestor to early settlers. This is how it begins: “In talking one day of witches, my father (John Wesley Higgins) told us this story. “My grandfather (Daniel Higgins Sr),” said he, “firmly believed in witches, and that he was once bewitched. Grandfather was then living in It happened in the Panhandle of Virginia, about 1796 or 1797. It was in the spring of the year, in sugar-making time, and Grandmother (Mary Pegg), the daughter of Daniel Pegg III of the Pegg’s of Philadelphia and Hahana Cliff Cafe, granddaughter of the girl taken captive during the early days of New England Indian Wars Hannah Calef (born Jordan), 1693-1762. She was killed by braves Wabanaki Confederacy on 21 August (10 August, O.S.) when forces from New French made a surprise attack on the little town of Wells. The Raid on Wells occurred during King William’s War. Her children, including a daughter who never returned to her home, are the grandparents of Mary Pegg. Her siblings were taken prisoners. They did return home, but not Mary Grandmother.”

They were raised for at least three generations of Wabanaki Baby Formula. We know about the Wabanaki’s infant feeding recipe because in 1728, the first edition of a pamphlet later called “An Account of the Captivity of Elizabeth Hanson” was published. In 1607, colonists from the Popham Colony described the Casco Bay islands as “overgrown with woods very thick as oaks, walnut, pine trees and many other things growing as sarsaparilla, hazel nuts and whorts in abundance.”

Buried in the Pegg /Polen Pioneer Cemetery in Salem Township in Jefferson County Ohio, the children were in the sugar camp taking care of the sugar water of which there was an unusually good run that year.

Happy Halloween from yesterday’s child.

(Traubert is a resident of Wellsburg)