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In 1928, on the night before Thanksgiving, a sixty-year-old Pennsylvania folk healer named Nelson Rehmeyer was beaten to death in his farmhouse by three men who believed he had cursed them. The house they tried to burn wouldn't burn. The clock above the stove stopped at 12:01. And the trial that followed became one of the most surreal legal spectacles in American history — partly because the judge edited the word "witch" out of the murder confession before the jury ever heard it. This week: Hex Hollow, Pennsylvania Powwow, the grimoire you can still buy on Amazon (four and a half stars), and the question of what happens when a community's entire system for understanding suffering points to a person. Dark, accurate, and genuinely strange.
From Lizzie Borden to Elizabeth Báthory, the infamous Blood Countess, Loreplay explores true crime, haunted history, paranormal mysteries, and the people behind the legends. Join host Dayna Pereira for ghost stories, witch trials, urban legends, cryptids, and dark history told with researched storytelling, sharp sarcasm, and absolutely no patience for historical bullshit.
Follow Loreplay wherever you listen to podcasts and find us on Instagram at @loreplaypod.
Come play.
Key Sources
Arthur Lewis, Hex (1969) — foundational narrative account. Still widely cited.
David W. Kriebel, Powwowing Among the Pennsylvania Dutch (Penn State University Press, 2007) — definitive academic treatment of Braucherei. Source for cure specifics (wound chant, hog bladder remedy, dollar bill vision test).
Johann Georg Hohman, Pow-Wows; or, Long Lost Friend (1820, multiple editions) — free on Internet Archive; annotated academic edition from Penn State University Press; also Amazon.
Shane Free, dir., Hex Hollow: Witchcraft and Murder in Pennsylvania (2015) — free to stream; features descendants of all parties and modern Powwow practitioners. Highly recommended companion viewing.
CrimeReads (2021), "A Tale of Witchcraft and Murder in Jazz Age America" — best single account of the trial proceedings and courtroom dynamics.
Wikipedia, Rehmeyer's Hollow — for baseline fact-check. Note: some popular sources contain errors on dates and childhood healer details; trial transcripts are the more reliable source.
Hey hey, my fellow Lore Lovers… welcome to Loreplay. 🖤
This is the podcast where history gets messy, folklore gets questionable, and I willingly spiral so you don’t have to. I’m your host, Dayna Pereira—your resident investigator of all things creepy, cursed, and deeply side-eye worthy.
Each week, we dig into the stories that make you go “wait… what the hell actually happened?”—from haunted places and urban legends to true crime and historical chaos. We separate fact from fiction… and then stare directly into the uncomfortable space in between.
📲 Come hang out with me outside the void:
Instagram and TikTok: @loreplaypod
Website: https://loreplaypod.com
Prefer to Watch 👀
Find us on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP49XVyr_raHi3VVxXr91_w
📲 Come hang out with me outside the void:
Instagram and TikTok: @loreplaypod
Website: https://loreplaypod.com
Prefer to Watch 👀
Find us on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP49XVyr_raHi3VVxXr91_w
👀 GOT A STORY? (I know you do…)
If you’ve experienced something weird, spooky, glitchy, or straight-up unexplainable—send it in. Your story might be featured in a future episode.
If you’ve experienced something weird, spooky, glitchy, or straight-up unexplainable—send it in. Your story might be featured in a future episode.
📩 Submit here: loreplaypod@gmail.com
⚠️ Listener Discretion:
We talk about dark stuff here—death, violence, and the occasional deeply cursed human behavior. If that’s not your vibe, totally fair… but if it is? Welcome home. 🖤
We talk about dark stuff here—death, violence, and the occasional deeply cursed human behavior. If that’s not your vibe, totally fair… but if it is? Welcome home. 🖤
💀 If you liked this episode:
Follow, rate, review, share it with a friend who also loves questionable life choices and spooky stories. It helps the show grow—and keeps me emotionally stable (barely).
Follow, rate, review, share it with a friend who also loves questionable life choices and spooky stories. It helps the show grow—and keeps me emotionally stable (barely).
And remember…
Just because it’s folklore… doesn’t mean it’s (all) fiction. 😏
Just because it’s folklore… doesn’t mean it’s (all) fiction. 😏
Creators and Guests
What is Loreplay?
Hey there, My Fellow Lore Lovers. Welcome to Loreplay. The show where we dig up haunted history, creepy folklore, and paranormal weirdness and poke it with a stick. I tell you the legend, then I tell you what the actual sources say.. and then we sit together in the gap between the two, because that’s where the good stuff lives. Loreplay is skeptic-meets-believer. I love a ghost story as much as anyone, but I love digging into if we were fed some bullshit, or if the sources check out more. If a “fact” has been passed around for 150 years without a single receipt, we’re going to talk about it. We also don’t pretend history was some charming olde timey costume party. A lot of what gets packaged as spooky folklore was really people in power hurting people with none... women burned as witches, the poor locked away, the “different” made into monsters. Loreplay calls that out. Loudly. With jokes. So, to be clear about where this show stands: we’re pro human rights, pro truth, and deeply anti historical bullshit. If that bothers you, the door’s right there. Bye Girl.. If you love learning about all the fucked up ways history has historied, and you're ready to use that knowledge as your feral superpower, then welcome! We ride at dawn.