History & local legend
Hexenkopf Rock in Williams Township takes its name from the German for “witch’s head.” The Northampton County outcrop became associated with two different Pennsylvania German traditions: witches gathering there and religious healers transferring illness away from their patients to the rock.
In M. S. Henry’s 1860 History of the Lehigh Valley, an unnamed observer encounters witches dancing around an oak growing from a crack in the stone. Their song threatens livestock and the surrounding community. When they discover the listener, they flee on broomsticks. The healers’ tradition belongs to braucherei, often called Pennsylvania German powwowing, rather than to that witches’ gathering.
Roy Kichline Jr. offered a more recent memory in a 2016 interview. He and three friends had planned to spend a night on the rock in the early 1970s. Beneath a clear, starry sky, he recalled an enormous dark cloud appearing and stopping over them. The four abandoned the outing and went back to a friend’s house.
Sources
- M. S. Henry, History of the Lehigh Valley (1860), pp. 44–46, oak, witches’ circle, song and flight
- Martha Capwell Fox, National Canal Museum, Hexenkopf, healing practices, story of the witches and the county preserve
- Michelle Merlin, The Morning Call via the Associated Press, Haunted Rock Legends Live On, published October 30, 2016, interviews with the Heindels and Roy Kichline Jr.
- USGS Geographic Names Information System, feature 1176930, the rock
- USGS-derived geographic record with the separate pillar’s exact coordinates
- The Morning Call/AP, Kichline interview (alternate archive)
