The stately Carlyle House in Alexandria, Virginia, was built in 1753 by the wealthy Scottish merchant John Carlyle. In the 1970s, when the mansion and its grounds were renovated into a public museum and park, stone mason Jon Battista made a grisly discovery—a mummified cat.
At first, Battista assumed it was a stray that had crawled up into the chimney and died, but then he noticed that the dead cat was resting in a sealed stone alcove inside the chimney that was sprinkled with herbs.
According to folk traditions dating back to 16th-century England, Scotland and Northern Europe, builders would conceal a dead cat—and other artifacts—in the walls of a home to ward off evil spirits and protect the inhabitants from witches. The hearth was a popular spot because it was believed that witches could fly down the chimney.
Another mummified cat, also known as a “dry cat,” was discovered in a sealed room inside a 17th-century cottage in Pendle Hill, England, the site of Britain’s most infamous witch trial, where 10 local men and women were hanged in 1612 for witchcraft.
'Witch Bottles' as 17th-Century Security System
Belief in witches was widespread in Europe and the American Colonies, and concealing certain ritual items in the walls, floors or attic equipped homeowners with a type of occult security system. Home renovation professionals working with historic properties regularly discover strange objects believed to have magical protective properties like a single children’s shoe or a creepy cocktail known as a “witch bottle.”
Witch bottles originated as a trick for reversing a witch’s curse. In the 1671 treatise, “Astrological Practise of Physick,” the English astrologer Joseph Blagrave prescribed several remedies for flipping a curse back onto a witch.
“One way is to… stop the urine of the Patient, close up in a bottle, and put into it three nails, pins, or needles, with a little white Salt, keeping the urine alwayes warm,” wrote Blagrave. “If you let it remain long in the bottle, it will endanger the witches life.”
Rebekah Planto, a doctoral student in historical archeology at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, became interested in witch bottles after discovering one in the walls of a 17th-century Virginia home. She says that hundreds of witch bottles have been found in England, the earliest in ceramic vessels known as Bartmann jugs adorned with the face of a bearded man.
“There’s often urine, sometimes fingernail clippings and locks of hair inside the witching bottle, as well as straight pins or sometimes nails,” says Planto. “There are also pieces of cloth and frequently the cloth is cut into the shape of a heart.”
In archeological terminology, unexplained objects found in walls and under floorboards are called “ritually concealed building deposits.” This differentiates them from the normal detritus of daily life that might fall through the cracks or get randomly trapped behind walls.
Old Shoes as Talismans
Shoes, for example, are one of the most commonly concealed ritual objects. A shoe left in a closet is one thing, but way too many children’s and ladies’ shoes have been found under floors, behind hearths and above lintels for it to be coincidence.
According to Jessica Costello of the National Park Service’s Northeast Museum Services Center, suspicious shoes were discovered in several of America’s oldest and most storied homes. For example, two different shoes were found under the floorboards of the maid’s quarters in the Wayside, a historic home in Concord, Massachusetts, where Louisa May Alcott and her family once lived. And a lady’s slipper was recovered from the front archway of the Longfellow House in Cambridge, Massachusetts, once home the poet Henry W. Longfellow and George Washington’s headquarters during the Siege of Boston.
Costello’s research points to three reasons for hiding up shoes in the walls. Some shoes were placed by builders as a good luck charm during construction. And some children’s shoes were likely concealed as part of a mourning tradition after the death of a child. But when shoes are found near chimneys, doorways or windows, they’re almost always meant as a form of “white magic intended to ward off witches and evil spirits.”
One theory for the magical power of old shoes (and they’re always old, worn shoes, not new ones) is that they have conformed to the shape of a person’s foot and therefore carry their “essence.” Planto suggests the same theory may explain the psychological draw of witch bottles.
“When you talk about the parts of a bottle, there’s the neck of the bottle and the shoulders of the bottle,” says Planto. “With all of these objects inside the bottle, you get a stand-in for the human form.”
Civil War Superstitions
Old homes aren’t the only sites where concealed ritual objects show up. Planto’s colleagues at the William & Mary Center for Archeological Research unearthed what they believe is a broken witch bottle from a Virginia Civil War site. The glass bottle, which lost its top but still contained nails, was buried in layers of clay next to a brick hearth used by Union officers.
Joe Jones, the Center’s director, theorizes that the Union troops who buried the bottle in 1862 weren’t scared of witches, but of Confederate raids. The soldiers, mostly from Pennsylvania, were an occupying army in hostile enemy territory, and might have turned to folk remedies like witch bottles to safeguard themselves from attack.
For now, archeologists and scholars are left to guess why people buried bottles, shoes and cats in their walls and floors. Historians haven’t found any diaries or documentary evidence explaining the custom.
“What is most fascinating is that the practice of concealing objects and the use of so-called witch bottles is really only known through the archaeological record,” says Audrey Horning, an anthropology professor at William & Mary. “People hid the practices and didn’t write about them, yet the finds suggest this was pretty common activity.”
Costello at the Northeast Museum Services Center has advice for anybody who discovers an unexplained object in the walls of a historic home or building: “Document, document document!” Take pictures of the object’s original location and don’t throw it away. “What may look like a dirty old shoe might have quite a story to tell.”
That’s exactly what they did with the mummified cat at the Carlyle House. After taking pictures of the curled up cat, they placed it right back in its hidden alcove, where it remains the star of the Carlyle House tour.
