{"id":10319,"date":"2019-04-03T20:11:33","date_gmt":"2019-04-04T02:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10319"},"modified":"2019-04-12T21:09:14","modified_gmt":"2019-04-13T03:09:14","slug":"texas-witchcraft-murder-archive-finds-a-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10319","title":{"rendered":"Texas Witchcraft Murder Archive Finds a Home"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
\"\"\r\n
I have diversity right here in the trunk of my rental car, officer.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The first problem on any university campus finding a parking spot. I pulled in behind the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum<\/a>, which is part of West Texas A &M University, and all the faculty spaces were full.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

There was an empty place for the president’s office. Hmmm.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Ah, there! “Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer.” I reckon that by being on their campus, I am bringing types of diversity that this edu-crat never thought of.((Put me in charge, and I would fire his\/her ass and give all that bloated salary money as pay raises to adjunct professors in the English Department.)) I call the museum’s research center director, a soft-spoken archivist named Warren Stricker<\/a>, and tell him that M. and I have arrived. He promises to be right down.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

A campus cop drives up, but he is talking to someone else. I am unloading cartons out of the trunk, like I have a perfect right to do so. A timid squirrel sneaks up on a spilled cup of Sonic<\/a> french fries. The campus cop looks at M. and me, but stays in his vehicle.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n
\"\"<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Three months ago, I completed an article for the Journal of Religion and Violence on what happened when one of the higher-up figures in the Church of Wicca was tried for murder back in 1980.
<\/a>
The defendant, Loy Stone, and his wife, Louise, were both alumni of West Texas State University<\/a> in Canyon, Texas \u2014 now known as West Texas A & M.1<\/a><\/sup> I had approached Texas State University about taking my archive of documents about the case, but Texas is so big that the university archivists (except maybe at UT in Austin) think regionally. TSU’s response was, “We’re all about south Texas. You should talk to the Panhandle Museum.”<\/p>\r\n

And so I did. Warren Stricker was immediately interested.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Dimmitt, Hereford, Plainview \u2014 these locales are all right in their front yard, so to speak.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I came away with a Temporary Custody Agreement, but Stricker assured me that his committee had already talked over the donation and wanted it all \u2014 the psychic impressions, the private investigator’s reports, the correspondence, the legal depositions, the evidence tags, all of it. Hurray! I am not in the archive business, but I could not bear to just toss all of that in the trash, not after the Stones’ two daughters had saved it all for forty-plus years.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

And I like the idea of seeding America’s university libraries with witchcraft materials.<\/p>

  1. The university still plays up the fact that that a young Georgia O’Keefe taught there from 1916\u20131918. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The first problem on any university campus finding a parking spot. I pulled in behind the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum, which is part of West Texas A &M University, and all the faculty spaces were full. There was an empty place for the president’s office. Hmmm. Ah, there! “Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer.” I reckon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,275,282,6,29],"class_list":["post-10319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-religion","tag-new-religious-movements","tag-texas","tag-wicca","tag-witchcraft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-2Gr","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":558,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=558","url_meta":{"origin":10319,"position":0},"title":"Under Southern Skies","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 13, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Doug Ezzy, sociologist and co-editor of Researching Paganisms also edited an anthology by \"Down Under\" Witches called Practising the Witch's Craft: Real Magic Under a Southern Sky. He writes to say that it is now available from Amazon for the rest of the world. It ranges from Gardnerians to Goddess\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Australia\"","block_context":{"text":"Australia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=australia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12955,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12955","url_meta":{"origin":10319,"position":1},"title":"Witchcraft, Paganism, and Detective Fiction","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 27, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Jen Bloofield's Witchcraft and Paganism in Midcentury Women's Detective Fiction\u00a0is avallable as a free PDF download from Cambridge University Press through 7 July 2022, if I understand correctly. Paperback copies are US $20. From the publisher: Witchcraft and paganism exert an insistent pressure from the margins of midcentury British detective\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Britain\"","block_context":{"text":"Britain","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=britain"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11816,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11816","url_meta":{"origin":10319,"position":2},"title":"Call for Papers: Pagans and Museums","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 16, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"NOTE UPDATED DEADLINES AT BOTTOM Museums and contemporary Paganism are inextricably linked. Gerald Gardner, founder of modern pagan witchcraft, first publicized Wicca in 1951 at Cecil Williamson\u2019s Folklore Centre of Superstition and Witchcraft at Castletown (later The Museum of Magic and Witchcraft) on the Isle of Man. Some of his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"museums\"","block_context":{"text":"museums","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=museums"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ray-buckland-34-17-at-museum.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ray-buckland-34-17-at-museum.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ray-buckland-34-17-at-museum.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9764,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9764","url_meta":{"origin":10319,"position":3},"title":"Women + Plants = Witchcraft?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 4, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"From the Society of Ethnobiology website comes the saga of the battle between ethnobotanist Myrdene Anderson and the city of West Lafayette, Indiana. Instead of a chemically treated and ritually mown lawn, she wanted plants and trees. And she ends up being accused of giving her neighbor cancer . .\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ethnobotany\"","block_context":{"text":"ethnobotany","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=ethnobotany"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/myrdene.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":458,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=458","url_meta":{"origin":10319,"position":4},"title":"Witchcraft and Magic: North AmericaAs\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 23, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Witchcraft and Magic: North AmericaAs long as I am promoting books that I myself have not had an opportunity to read yet (but will when I can), look for Helen Berger's new anthology from the University of Pennsylvania Press, covering North America in the \"Witchcraft and Magic\" series. You can\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4754,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4754","url_meta":{"origin":10319,"position":5},"title":"Pentagram Pizza: Buy It by the Slice in the Occult City","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 30, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2022 David Metcalfe writes in depth about the \"Mapping the Occult City\" event that I mentioned earlier. \u2022 The one true religion \u2014\u00a0 the Church of Aircraft. It has some bizarre rituals too. \u2022 Dver on polytheism: \"Gods are not characters.\" \u2022 A rare book on witchcraft \u2014 a manual\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"pentagram pizza\"","block_context":{"text":"pentagram pizza","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=pentagram-pizza"},"img":{"alt_text":"pentagram pizza","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/pentagrampizza1-126x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10319"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10357,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10319\/revisions\/10357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}