GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: THE DIRT WITCH

The Dirt Witch

We were just two art students crafting costumes for Comic Con—until my best friend stole a strange red crystal to cosplay the Dirt Witch, a local legend known for vengeance and blood. Now she’s missing… and something wearing her face won’t stop staring at me.

When you study costume design, you live for moments like this—being invited to the exclusive “Witches of Salem” party during New York Comic Con, hosted by the queen herself, Bebe West. Andrea and I thought we’d nailed it—our best cosplay yet. This was going to be the party that got us seen. Maybe even launched.

Andrea chose the “Dirt Witch,” a local legend from German Flatts, our hometown area in the Mohawk Valley. I went full fire-scorched Puritan. We’d both been dreaming of this kind of career since high school in Ilion, and now we were studying art together at Pratt Munson in Utica. Cosplay wasn’t just a hobby—it was our escape plan.

We scored the perfect rags and lace at the old Salvation Army in Ilion. Andrea even smeared hers with real mud for that extra cursed vibe. But the real showstopper was in my attic.

We were digging through my grandma’s old theater stuff—she taught drama at Ilion High back in the day and kept everything: playbills from the ’50s, rusty-smelling makeup kits, piles of costume jewelry. There were also boxes of old Shakespearean props and handmade accessories. That’s when I found it.

A small, hand-carved box—black wood, weathered and soft as old leather. I held it while Andrea unlatched it. Inside was a red crystal, nestled in faded velvet. When the light hit it through the attic window, it looked like fire trapped in ice.

“I have to wear this for the Dirt Witch,” Andrea said.

“No way,” I told her. “I need to ask my mom. It could be real. I mean, it’s definitely not plastic.”

“So what if it is?” she said. “Come on. Just look at it.”

I frowned. “Leave it for now.”

She rolled her eyes. “Mamma’s boy.”

She nodded like she was letting it go.

She wasn’t.

That evening, we hiked into the Ilion Gorge for a photo shoot. Andrea looked terrifying—hair matted with dirt, eyes hollow, like she’d clawed her way out of a grave. She held up the crystal and grinned.

“You took it?”

“It’s just costume jewelry, Brady. Relax.”

I lunged, tripped in my boots, and slammed into the ground. She laughed—hard. I was done.

She’d crossed a line. Not just with me—but with my mom, and with the memory of my grandmother. I stormed back toward the car, fuming.

Then I remembered: the crystal.

If I went home without it, my mom would kill me.

As I turned back, I heard her scream.

I froze. It sounded real. Too real.

I shouted her name again and again. No answer.

I found the ruins of an old stone house deep in the trees. Her voice drifted out—weak, trembling.

“Brady… help me…”

I crept in. Moonlight spilled through the rotting roof. Shadows stretched like fingers. In the center, Andrea dangled in the grip of something black and dripping—mud-covered limbs, hair like pondweed, and a skull for a face.

“Give it to me,” it rasped, voice like wind over broken glass.

Andrea sobbed and handed over the glowing crystal.

The Dirt Witch dropped her into a dark pit in the floor.

I should’ve moved. Screamed. Done something. But I couldn’t. I crouched in the corner, frozen, as the witch hovered above the hole. The crystal pulsed—red, then brighter—until Andrea’s scream was cut short and her body twisted into smoke, sucked into the gem.

The witch and the crystal vanished.

Silence. Fog coiled through the moonlight like fingers. The smell of mildew, rot, and leather hung in the air.

I stayed hidden for hours, shaking, crying.

I told no one. Who would believe me?

Now I sleep with the lights on. I wake in cold sweats.

I know the Dirt Witch’s story all too well now. How she was lynched in the 1880s by the Morgans after stealing a rare red Herkimer Diamond. How they tied her to a horse and dragged her through German Flatts until she was nothing but blood, bones, and dirt. How she haunts the Ilion Gorge, searching for her stone—and revenge.

I keep hearing her words: Give it to me.

But now, when I picture the Dirt Witch’s face, it isn’t a skull anymore.

It’s Andrea’s.

And I keep wondering…

Why did my grandma have that crystal?

And when will the Dirt Witch come looking for me?

Art and story by Hal Hefner.
Produced by Catmonkey Studio