I remember I was doing laundry I think. It was something that we were doing with my grandmother. There was my grandmother, my aunt, my mom, myself, and they were telling this story about a friend of theirs who had upset his girlfriend. And so she knows how to do the roots and the whole shebang. So he had to find someone to kind of break this curse or this spell that was put on him.  

They told the story of this woman that you have to travel by boat to get to, I don’t know if it’s like downtown Conway or is somewhere in that type of area. But you have to travel by boat in order to get to this woman. You get on the boat, and you’ll see this tall figure driving the boat. You have to bring a personal item with you that you care about. And so when you get there, and she’s like in this like kind of swampy type land, and what you don’t know is that there’s actually a snake driving the boat. It’s not a person is a snake driving the boat. And so I know that in my little six, seven year old head I’m like “Why are y’all telling me this?” Like I gotta go to sleep at night.  

So the guy who was cursed gets there, and she was telling him that his girlfriend had put this spell on him. He was sick, like, couldn’t move couldn’t do anything. She gave him a list of things that he had to do. She gave him a talisman. And she said, “Go home, run some water, get in the bathtub. And when you get out of the bathtub, don’t look back. Don’t look back at what’s in the bathtub and just walk out the door.” And then she told him to bring someone with him, and that person would take a jar, open it, and collect whatever was in the bathtub. So he wasn’t supposed to look at all. He had to hold that talisman to him in the bath, and they said he still has it today, it’s still protecting him.  

I think that one thing that they mentioned was that there is good as well as bad magic. And these gifts that we are given are supposed to be used for good. I remember this, that she told the boyfriend in the story to not worry about who put this spell on him. Because it’s going to come back onto them.  

That was one of the stories that I was told as a kid. I still don’t know what was in the bathtub.