Teddy Bear Sentenced For Witchcraft

Lucas: On Halloween Eve Day, six year-old Jack Narby stood with tears running down his cheeks watching the scarecrow frame of Reverend Richard Piper hold aloft his teddy bear outside the Irish Grove City Hall and condemn it for witchcraft.

     The plight of Rags the Bear began strangely enough when on October 28, Irish Grove's Mayor, Theo Smoot appointed the Reverend Richard Piper of The First Church of the Last Days to the unusual position of Town Witch Finder. Citing the strange occurrences at a nearby abandoned quarry, the eerie circumstances surrounding the death of Roger Faust in the Chariton River (see: Curse On Stolen Fishing Tackle Kills Thief, August, 1997: vol. 4, Issue #8), and the imminent end of the Millennium, Mayor Smoot said that Piper had persuaded him that dire evils had come to Irish Grove and that he (Piper) was the man to fight them. On October 30, Piper alleged that Rags the Bear afflicted him and several other members of his small congregation with excruciating gas pains while they were handing out evangelical leaflets in downtown Irish Grove.

     Little Jack shouts during an interview later that evening, "That mean ol' freak had the Sheriff take my bear away!"

     "What sort of monster is this guy?" demands Jack's Mother, Alice Narby. "Jack and I were just minding our own business and this Rev. Piper shoves a leaflet in my face. When I told him I wasn't interested , he started starin' at my son's toy bear . He turned white as a sheet and grabbed his belly and started screaming. Then five or six other people all dressed like him started rolling around on the ground yelling and moaning. It was like being in some sort of bad Halloween play. Well, we got out of there but then the Sheriff's deputy comes up and takes away my boy's stuffed toy, saying, 'The Town Witch Finder has probable cause the toy is in league with Satan!' These are the warped ramblings of a nutcase! He should be in an institution, not running a house of worship! And Smoot oughta be in the padded room next door!"

     Strangely, the Office of Witch Finder is the vestige of a Mayoral Decree dating from the mid 1920's made by then Mayor Dickerson Sackbutt III. "Every Halloween, the city shall appoint an individual, to be aided by the sheriff, whose duty it shall be to discover and disclose the identity of those responsible for bringing ill luck, discord, discontent, misfortune, misery, or any other mischief to Irish Grove by conspiring with evil forces and the Powers of Darkness."

     But according to Irish Grove Historian, Alf Gunther, Sackbutt's dire decree was made more in the spirit of fun and politics. "Sackbutt used the decree to appoint his brother to go out an blame all sorts of nonsense on Sackbutt's political rivals in town---especially right before an election. That's why the man stayed in office for twenty years. It's useful to be able to laughingly say at Halloween that your political opponent has made a pact with the Devil and has brought all sort of bad luck to the town. Sackbutt and his cronies would gather at the town hall wearing ridiculous tall hats and the Witch Finder, Otis Sackbutt, would come in with the sheriff with some of Mayor Sackbutt's rivals in tow and they'd have this mock trial. Then they'd sentence them to something silly, sometimes it was to buy a beer for the Mayor---which was impossible since it was Prohibition during that time---or something like sweep the steps in front of the town hall.. After Sackbutt was voted out, nobody carried on with it anymore. Well, it weren't nothing like burning at the stake or that; it was all in fun."

     But Rev. Piper sentenced Rags the Bear to be burned at the stake.

     Upon this announcement, Sheriff's Deputy John Osbourne and several other prominent citizens rescued Rags from Piper and returned the bear to Jack Narby's arms.

     "I don't know what our Mayor was thinking when he did what he did," says the recently elected town councilman, Victor Wingate, in a recent interview. "The town council's looking into it. But that Piper is sure a weird and unsettling sort of character---especially for a minister---that bald head, big hook nose, and a look that'll even freeze coffee from MacDonald's. He and his congregation live out on the northside in three mobile homes; there's about twenty of 'em, now. Always dressed in long black cloaks---most dower, joyless bunch I've ever seen. Why he went after a teddy bear and not after that Dice Dorn fellow in the bookstore---I don't think anybody'd been surprised it if he'd done that. Maybe he is nuts, after all."