Neshaminy Journal: Witches, Evil Spirits, Superstition

Neshaminy: The Bucks County Historical and Literary Journal takes a candid look at Pennsylvania-born novelist and poet John Updike, detailing how Updike rose from middle-class beginnings in Berks County to become America’s most significant man of letters. Updike says he grew up in a witchy part of the country where his Pennsylvania Dutch grandmother was full of superstitions and the area was saturated with notions of evil spirits. Updike’s best-selling novel was The Witches of Eastwick, filmed with Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer, and later a Broadway musical and an ABC-TV series. The author of the Updike profile, Don Swaim, sheepishly depicts himself in less than flattering terms. As the article bluntly reveals, two of Swaim’s three encounters with Updike were awkward, if not embarrassing.

Also in the journal’s fall/winter 2024 issue, Laura Irvine looks at the history of Halloween in Bucks County and shows the area’s preoccupation with mischief, costumes, black cats, and haunted houses. Maximillian Bogus III provides a scary fictional take on Henry Mercer’s obsession with a strange object called the Lenape Stone and how Mercer was terrorized by nighttime horrors of a woolly mammoth, still alive although long thought to be extinct.

William J. Donahue interviews young-adult novelist Diana Rodriguez Wallach who recounts her fascination with the supernatural, the nature of evil, and high-profile murders of the distant past, such as the notorious 1892 Lizzie Borden axe-murder case in Fall River, Massachusetts.

Donahue also interviews multifaceted artist Addie Hocynec, whose painting “Waterfall at Graeme Park,” graces the cover of the current issue. Hocynec says, “I’ve come to appreciate places that are not too perfect looking… When I traveled to France, they make decay look good; they get so much charm out of an old building that’s almost crumbling.”

The issue features an extended study of the prolific illustrator John Philip Falter who painted 129 Saturday Evening Post covers, many depicting scenes of Bucks County where Falter’s studio was in Hilltown Township. Doylestown’s St. Paul’s Church made one of Falter’s Post covers. Falter’s home still stands and was Bucks County’s 2024 County Designer House and Gardens Showcase.

Also in this issue: A photo-panorama of the grounds and graves of the historic Laurel Hill Cemetery. The origin of man-made Lake Nockamixon near Quakertown. A look at the Andalusia Historic House, Gardens, and Arboretum in Bensalem. And a glimpse at a monument along the Delaware River celebrating abolitionist Harriet Taubman. Plus fiction by Jill Lupine and poetry by Joseph Brunetti, Arlene Geller, and Kal Stein.

The Fall/Winter 2024 issue of Neshaminy: The Bucks County Historical and Literary Journal, published by the Bucks County Writers Workshop and the Doylestown Historical Society, can be obtained at the DHS, 56 S Main St., local bookstores, select art galleries, and online from Amazon.com. The journal welcomes submissions with a Pennsylvania link. Information at https://neshaminyjournal.org.