A Letter from Krystal

Hey! This is a letter from Krystal that she wrote. She was supposed to write about dragons and dragon rights but she wrote about witches more.

Che'

Hi everybody! My name is Krystal and I really like making potions and spells. That’s because my grandma is a witch. She lives near Rugby Tennessee which is in the Cumberland Mountains. Sometimes she does a class at the Museum of Appalachia. She taught me all the things I know about witchcraft.

Che’ asked me to say something about dragons. I don’t know much about dragons but he said I should talk anyway. So I just want to say that ALL dragons should be free to do whatever it is they want to do. Because I think everybody should do whatever they want and that nobody has a right to tell anybody what to do. EVER. I also think most dragons are really, really cute.

I don’t know much about dragons but I know a lot bout witches. My grandma is really old. In fact she is actually my great great aunt. I think she is 93 or maybe even older. She has been a witch a long time. She learned witchcraft from her aunt who was also a witch. I think a lot of people don’t know very much about witches especially the old type of witch. A lot of people think that witches all worship nature. That’s not true AT ALL. My grandma doesn’t like nature which is why she is a witch. Yeah she does use nature to make potions and things. But if you ever saw her beat the heck out of a squirrel by pounding it really hard on a table you’d say to yourself “Hey she really doesn’t like nature very much.”

My grandma thinks that there is a lot of power out there inside nature. So she thinks pretty much everything has a use. Like toad skins and toad livers and toad legs all are used in different ways. She also smokes a lot. She grows her own tobacco and makes corn mash into whiskey. She doesn’t have many teeth.

My grandma is a REAL witch. Most of my friends who say they are witches are just stupid. They don’t know anything about it. Because to be a REAL witch you have to be able to pluck the eyes out of a rat with your finger nails while its still alive, and chop up snakes into little bits and eat bugs. I don’t do that kind of thing but I do buy all my ingredients for my spells from grandma.

A long time ago the witch had to live outside the community but they were really important. People, especially women went to see the witch if they had a problem. Sometimes the witch helped with women when they were having a baby. Some witches were mean. Like my grandma told me there was a witch who was really old
and she wanted someone to help her so she made a family give her one of their children or she would put a spell on them. The kid ran away from the witch but the family made the kid go back and live with the witch because they had too many kids already and they didn’t like the kid anyway. I think that kid was my grandma.

Back in the 1930’s a lot of people like my real grandparents moved into cities like Knoxville or Nashville to work making clothes. So my grandma was all by herself. Then some people from Vanderbilt went out and talked to her and wrote down some of her stories. She still lives by herself but a lot of people give her food and things. Even though I think it’s cool to be a witch I don’t think I want to be an old witch like her. I just like casting spells.

I think if there were dragons they would be like my grandma and kind of crazy and people would just see them to get their gold or maybe make them into potions. I think dragons would want to be left alone so they could do whatever they want. I think dragons should be allowed to eat people if they want to and I know a lot of people that would not mind being eaten by dragons.