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| Detroit Free Press, July 24, 1929 (enlarge) |
So you've got a plague, eh? Well, at least you're not being pursued
by a witch. Detroit of the 1920s was a mystical malaise of voodoo,
occultism, cults and mob murder. Not that Detroit was alone in such
incidents, as the last article shown here attests to, concerning the
Burgess murder in Kalamazoo not long before this incident, as well as
the Evangelista cult slayings in Detroit where the entire family was
decapitated.
In the summer of 1929 Roy and Della Tomlin went to Detro
it
police with their 5 children (Alec, 9, Elvina, 4, Evelyn, 16, Clice, 1 and Leona, 8) begging for protection from a witch and
were promptly placed under psychiatric care at Receiving Hospital.
According to their 16-year-old daughter Evelyn the episode started with
a hex from an old Livonia woman with an evil eye near their previous
home at Plymouth and Farmington Rds. She was capable of moving tables
and making a broomstick dance and had warned them that perhaps she was a
witch, PROOF!.
Apparently there was a ghost, too. After the
family moved to Detroit a white visage appeared at a window in their
home at 15016 Bramell Avenue. Roy chased the ghost down the street and struck at it but his hand
went through the white figure to the astonishment of the afflicted
family. Or so they said.
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| Detroit Free Press, July 26, 1929 |
Hospital officials thought otherwise and
Delia was later adjudged insane, having previously suffered mental
failings. I could find no determination upon Roy but his wife destined
for the asylum at Eloise or Pontiac, though I can find no record of
which she was eventually sentenced to.
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| Detroit Free Press, July 25, 1929 |
