During the pandemic, my wife, Alice, became infatuated by Amish romance books, a strange reading choice for a non-religious girl from Liverpool. She devoured several a week; their covers, invariably depicting young bonnet-clad girls, stared at me nightly from her bedside table. What she found in them, I have no clue. I tried reading one and only got a few chapters in. It wasn’t just the purple prose. On virtually every page, the narrator commented on her relationship with Jesus, on her faith in salvation. I couldn’t believe that my wife, who although technically Anglican rarely attended church, was reading Evangelical Christian pulp fiction. Was she yearning for a simpler way of life, away from the hustle and bustle of London? Did she find something in the narrator’s faith comforting? I never asked and she never told.
She suggested that we go on a holiday to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the heart of Amish Country. I was not thrilled about spending a week there, but I had never seen her so excited, so, in June of 2022, we went.
My hopes for the trip were raised when we started driving through the countryside. It was truly some of the most beautiful farmland I had ever seen The farmsteads were well maintained, the barns freshly painted. No junk littered the front lawns. It looked like something out of a picture book.
We drove through towns with whimsical names like Bird in Hand, Intercourse, and Blue Ball. There were no billboards along the roads, but there were plenty of signs that advertised every conceivable good and service. From horse treadmills to chainsaw sharpening, from farmland helicopter tours to fresh meadow tea. Cute kitties ($50), mulch ($7/scoop), and mini horse foals ($1,500) were all available for sale, along with homemade shoofly, whoopie, strawberry and chicken pies. There were signs that urged you to vote for Mastriano, to “turn ye from evil ways,” and to drink whole milk (which was 97% fat free).
“If there are so many cows here, why are they advertising milk from New Jersey?” my wife asked, pointing to a sign that advertised “Raw Jersey milk.”
I sighed. She wasn’t joking. “Jerseys are a type of cow. From Jersey, one of the Channel Islands. Nothing to do with New Jersey.” Clearly the Amish novels she had read were a little light on actual farming content.
“Oh,” was all she said.
About 15 minutes later, we reached our hotel, a Victorian mansion that had been converted into a bed and breakfast. After dropping off our bags, we walked around the small town, full of quaint antique shops. We stopped at a nearby restaurant where we enjoyed some local specialties: ham loaf, pig stomach, mashed potatoes, and sauerkraut, along with some shoofly pie for dessert. Definitely not healthy, but it sure was delicious. Afterwards, we sat out on our suite’s balcony, watching fireflies dance across a nearby field.
“I could stay here forever,” my wife said. I nodded. Forever was too long, but I’d be fine for a week. In many ways. it reminded me of my childhood in rural Greece, a world I thought no longer existed. A place where clothes were hung out to dry on lines, where fields were plowed by teams of draft horses, and where, on Sundays, the whole town shut down.
Over the next week, we went on various Amish-themed tours. While my wife was loving every minute, I wasn’t. Everything seemed fake, designed to appeal to the hordes of Evangelical tourists who got off their tour busses, stuffed their faces at one of the all you can eat family style restaurants, went on a tour where the guide would invariably mention the Amish’s deep faith in Jesus, before returning to buy kitschy trinkets at a souvenir shop.
Although the corn was barely knee high, some farm stands sold them. After asking many times where it was from, I finally got one to admit that it was from Florida. The cherries weren’t local either; they’d been grown in Chile. At a bakery, I read the ingredients of their “homemade” blackberry pie. I wasn’t surprised to learn that it was sweetened with corn syrup, and full of artificial colors and flavors, along with some ingredients, like thermiflo, which I really didn’t want to know what they were.
On a trip to an Amish farmstead, one visitor asked what was with the “Pioneer” signs in front of the corn field. The tour guide played dumb, but a quick Google search revealed that Pioneer was a producer of genetically modified crops. The guide didn’t want to tell the tourists that the Amish did not only eat organic, non-GMO foods. It would be like telling a child Santa wasn’t real.
I convinced my wife to attend a talk at a local library by a former Amish man who had left to join the Mennonite Church, hoping to get a more complete picture of Amish life. My wife was shocked by what he had to say. We learned that the Amish ministers were chosen by lot and had no formal training. Astoundingly, many ministers even had trouble reading their Bible, which was in 16th-century German, quite different than the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect they spoke at home. He further said that the Amish were discouraged from studying the Bible amongst themselves, instead urged to rely on the teachings of the ministers, who did not understand the Bible themselves. Basically, the blind were leading the blind. The speaker was no doubt biased, but it was refreshing to hear another perspective.
After the talk, I walked around a small exhibit hall at the library. Instead of exhibiting quilts or furniture, it explored some of the darker sides of the Amish community. There were graphic pictures of puppy mills and harrowing testimony from survivors of childhood abuse. Topics that would never grace the page of one of the romance novels.
The last night of our trip, we decided to go for a drive, hoping to see some more of the countryside. We drove north, where the farms got progressively smaller, the terrain hillier and the soil rockier. At dusk, when we were turning around a sharp bend, our front right tyre blew. No spare, no cell service. We were stuck.
We waited a few minutes, but no one drove by. There was a farmhouse a quarter of a mile away, candles burning in its windows. We set off for it.
I knocked on the front door. A middle-age man opened it. He was wearing black pants and an indigo-colored shirt with suspenders. Beard but no mustache. Amish. He stared at me but didn’t speak.
“Good evening,” I said. “I’m Giorgios, and this is my wife Alice. I’m really sorry to bother you, but our car got a flat and we have no cell service. We were wondering if you could direct us to the closest phone.” I didn’t expect him to have a phone in the house, but I had learned that some Amish families have phones in their barns, and was hopeful.
“Get in,” he said, in his German-tinged English. Alice and I followed him to a small sitting room. To my shock, there were three young men with rifles aimed out of the windows. I looked outside, trying to see what they were looking for. Nothing but a barn and a barren field, bordered by a thick pine forest.
I took in the rest of the scene. Along the far wall was a cot, surrounded by five women. A young girl, her body covered with layers of quilts, lay motionless. An old man, who looked about ninety, sat on an upholstered chair. On a small table sat a thick, leather-bound book.
“I’m Abe, and this is my family. I’m sorry we cannot have proper introductions, but you must stay here,” he said. “The nearest phone is a half mile away. It is far too dangerous to make that trip now.”
“What’s going on?” Alice asked. “Have wolves been sighted, or bears. Is that what the guns are for.”
He did not respond, but picked up a rifle that was propped against the window and knelt down by his sons.
Alice and I sat down on an empty sofa.
“Do you think that they have kidnapped us?” Alice whispered to me.
“Yeah, I do. They need the blood of an English girl to make an offering to Jesus.”
She slapped me and started crying. “This isn’t funny. Remember what happened In Ireland?”
“Don’t be silly. Of course they didn’t kidnap us. As you said, there are probably some wolves in the area. They’re pacifists. Remember what one of the tour guides said, they only have guns for hunting and to shoot vermin and predators.”
A few seconds later, the men started shooting. I looked out the window. There were a few dozen bipedal ape-like creatures advancing from the forest towards the farmhouse. They were small, probably about three feet in height, and covered in reddish-brown fur. After a minute of shooting, they had all fallen.
“What you just saw was an albatwitch,” the old man said. “According to the old stories they used to be as plentiful as catbirds in July. But they were a pest. Stealing apples from orchards, chickens from hen houses. So they were exterminated. My grandfather told me a story from when he was a boy. This was before the Civil War, around 1860 I would guess. He was hunting in the Welsh Mountains with two of his cousins when they came across one drinking from a muddy stream. It must have been a juvenile, he said it wasn’t much more than two feet in height, nothing more than skin and bones. They must have been near extinction by then, probably only a few dozen still left, hiding in remote corners of this county. The Welsh Mountains have always been a place of refuge, first for Indians, then for escaped slaves and indentured servants. It would make sense that in that remote corner the albatwitch made its last stand. But they have been gone now, for over 150 years.”
“Then how are they back?” I asked.
There was no answer. As I debated what to do, the doorbell rang. Abe went to answer it. He returned a few seconds later with a middle-aged man, dressed like an accountant in a blue dress shirt and khakis. He looked at us, confused.
“Tourists,” Abe said. “They had a flat tyre.”
“It’s very nice to meet you,” the man said. “I’m Michael Yoder. Abe here is my cousin. My grandfather decided to leave the Amish Church to join the Mennonites when he was 20, which explains the difference in our appearances. I’m a professor at Lancaster Bible College. Area of expertise, if you can call my knowledge expertise, is—”
“Please Michael,” Abe said, “we do not have time for this. You must get to work immediately.”
“Abe, I cannot fathom your sorrow, but I am afraid that there is nothing I can do. I am not going to recite any spell. You know as well as I do that it is a sin. Both testaments make that clear. Let us instead pray.”
“I already recited it,” said Abe. He picked up the book from the table and opened it. As Michael read it, a look of horror came over his face.
“Did you understand what you were reading?” he asked.
“Some of it,” replied Abe. “It’s different than our German. Didn’t know what a lot of words meant. But what was I supposed to do? The doctors said that she had only a few days left, that she could either die in the hospital or die at home. But she didn’t want to die. She’s only four. You understand?”
“I understand your pain,” Michael said. “But we must respect God’s will. The text is in Middle High German. But it’s not some Christian white magic, nor some powwow folk magic, although that’s still be a sin. This is a pagan prayer, addressed to Frija and Wodan, also known in Norse mythology as Frigg and Odin.”
As he read more his face grew more strained. “Rise O dust, and mend / Bone to bone / Limb to Limb / Blood to Blood / To walk the earth again,” he translated. “This isn’t a healing prayer at all. It’s an incantation to raise the dead. Let’s pray for forgiveness.”
“You don’t understand!” Abe yelled. “I know I’ve sinned, I’ve already asked for forgiveness. But the prayer worked. Not the way I intended, though. Sara is still dying. You know what an albatwitch is?”
“Our local version of Bigfoot?,” asked Michael. “Seen ads for the annual Albatwtich festival, but never been. But what does that have to do with it?”
“Because the prayer raised them.”
“The spell resurrected an albatwtich?”
“Not one! Hundreds, maybe thousands. They keep growing in number every time. Maybe there will be millions.”
“Like catbirds in July,” the old man said
“You’re claiming that you’ve seen albatwitches?” asked Michael. “Is this some sort of joke?”
“Not just seen one, they’re attacking here,” Abe screamed, tears streaming down his cheeks. “They are trying to kill us.”
Soon, the gunfire resumed. I looked out the window. This time, there were hundreds of albatwitches rushing towards the house. A large black horse broke down the barn door and attempted to run across the field. Soon, the albatwitches were on top of it, tearing chunks of its flesh off. It seemed to shriek in pain as it tried in vain to buck the albatwitches off. Then, a bullet pierced its head, and it went down.
“Get down to the cellar,” Abe shouted. “We can’t hold them off.”
We made our way down to a small cellar, the young men carrying the body of their dying sister. Once everyone was inside, Abe closed the heavy oaken door and chained it shut.
He then lit an oil lamp mounted to one of the walls, which gave off a soft light. I looked around the space. There was nothing save for some empty sacks, a pile of 2x4s, an axe, and a can of kerosene.
“Do we have hammers and nails to reinforce the door with? I asked. “Or another gun, I can shoot.”
Abe shook his head. He and his sons knelt down, their guns pointed up towards the cellar door.
Michael began reading from the grimoire in what sounded like three different languages. One I recognized as Koine Greek, the second sounded Germanic, and the third I could not place.
From above, I heard the shattering of glass and the sounds of dozens of footsteps above us. Then, the banging on the cellar door started. The door seemed solid, but how long could it hold off hundreds of undead apes?
Michael kept reading frantically, but nothing was happening. The banging was getting louder. “I think these three passages need to be read simultaneously,” he finally said. “One’s Koine Greek, one uses the Hebrew alphabet, and the other is Middle High German. If someone has a pen, I can transliterate the Hebrew into the Latin alphabet and one of you can read it.”
“I know Greek,” I said.
“Good,” Abe said. “My grandfather can read the German section. That will leave my sons and me to fight.”
The old man, the professor, and I huddled around the book. Three columns, written in a neat hand, took up a full page. On the opposite page was an illustration of an army of skeletons attacking a castle. Carved into the castle walls were strange symbols, some of which I had seen before. Under the light of the oil lamp we began to read.
About a quarter of the way through the passage, which called on the Twelve Olympians of the Greek Pantheon for help, a hole emerged in the ceiling above me. An albatwitch stuck his head and an arm through, but was unable to fit the rest of his body through. As it reached for me, I saw Alice pick up the axe and split its skull in two. I returned to the passage.
When I was about 3/4 of the way through, the lines now calling on various Christian saints, the cellar door broke down, and several albatwitches ran into the cellar. New holes were forming in the ceiling, big enough for the apes to drop through. Abe and his sons tried to hold them back, but there were too many. One ran ahead of the pack and dug its teeth into my calf. I kept reading. All I could do. If this didn’t work, we were dead.
I finished the passage. Michael and the old man had already finished, but it seemed like nothing happened. The albatwitches continued to flood into the cellar. Hundreds, possibly thousands. Then, suddenly, they froze. Their arms and legs were torn from their bodies, as if they were being drawn and quartered. As blood gushed out, they emitted high-pitched screams. And then they turned to dust.
I looked around. We were all alive. Bloody, but alive. The men began whooping and hollering. We had done it!.
“Do you recognize the symbols on the castle walls?” I asked the professor. I had seen them twice before, once on an amulet by father gave to me in Greece, and once in the catacombs of an ancient church in Ireland.
“Never in my life. Curiously, the Hebrew was not Hebrew. Yes, it was written using the Hebrew alphabet, but it was not Hebrew. I’m not a Hebrew expert, but I know that much. Didn’t sound vaguely Semitic. Maybe it was some sort of code, maybe it was transliterated from another language—”
Over the cheering, I heard cries of mourning from the women. I turned and saw them crying over the quilts where little Sara lay. Dead.
Abe grabbed the book from us, doused it in kerosene, lit a match, and set it aflame. I watched him walk over to where his daughter lay dead. He kissed her softly and then began ascending the cellar stairs, rifle in hand.
Halfway up, he shot himself.