The Mystery Hidden Inside an Old Apple Tree

In April 1920, a Montour County farmer cut down an old apple tree and found something no one expected to see buried deep inside the wood: a wooden plug attached to a small lock of human hair.

The discovery was made by James M. Lyons, who lived along Bloom Road in Mahoning Township. According to the newspaper account, Lyons was splitting the tree for kindling when he found a wooden plug driven toward the heart of the trunk. At the inner end was a small bunch of black human hair tied with black thread.  The tree had apparently grown around the plug over many years, hiding it completely.

The newspaper offered one explanation. It suggested the object might have been placed there by an Indian when the tree was young. At the time, that probably seemed plausible. Old and unexplained objects were often attributed to Native Americans when no better explanation was available. But there may be another answer.

Research into Pennsylvania folk medicine reveals a practice sometimes described as “plugging” an illness into a tree. The idea was simple. Something associated with a sick person, often hair or fingernail clippings, was placed in a hole bored into a living tree. A wooden peg was then driven into the opening.  The illness was believed to pass from the person into the tree. As the tree healed and grew over the plug, the sickness was expected to fade away or remain trapped inside. That description sounds remarkably similar to what Lyons found.

An especially striking comparison comes from Monroe County. In 1924, workers cutting an old white oak near Bushkill discovered a wooden peg buried deep in the tree with human hair wrapped around it. In that case, someone still remembered the story.

The hair belonged to Elizabeth “Libby” Jane Miller, who had become seriously ill and partially paralyzed in 1872. Her family believed she had been bewitched. A lock of her hair was cut, wrapped around a wooden peg, and driven into an oak tree. According to family tradition, Libby later recovered. The tree eventually grew completely over the peg, just as the Mahoning Township apple tree had done.

Pennsylvania researcher Patrick J. Donmoyer has documented the practice of plugging illness into trees as part of older Pennsylvania folk-healing traditions. Similar remedies were used for ailments such as croup, whooping cough, asthma, seizures, paralysis, and other lingering illnesses. One New York tradition even called for placing a child’s hair inside an apple tree as a cure for croup. That detail is especially interesting because Lyons made his discovery inside an apple tree.

Pennsylvania-German folk healing, often called Braucherei, brauching, charming, or powwowing, included prayers, Bible verses, charms, herbal remedies, and practices handed down through families and communities.

A person using such a remedy may not have thought of it as magic at all. It may simply have been an old cure learned from a parent, grandparent, neighbor, or local healer. The 1920 newspaper assumed the black hair belonged to a woman, but there was no way to know. It could just as easily have belonged to a child.

Perhaps someone living on the farm suffered from a persistent illness. A family member may have cut a lock of hair, tied it to a wooden plug, and driven it into the young tree as part of an old healing ritual. Then the years passed. The tree grew. The people who remembered the event were gone. And decades later, James Lyons cut down the apple tree and unknowingly uncovered the forgotten remedy. The newspaper called it an Indian mystery.

Today, it looks much more like a surviving trace of an old Pennsylvania folk-healing custom, sealed inside an apple tree for generations.