{"id":1546,"slug":"moll-dyer-rock-leonardtown-maryland","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Moll Dyer Rock is Maryland's witch stone — the boulder where, legend says, Moll Dyer froze to death in February 1698 after a Leonardtown mob blamed her for the influenza killing the county and burned her cabin on the coldest night of the hardest winter anyone remembered. A boy found her days later, one hand on the rock and one raised to the sky; when they pulled her loose, the story goes, her handprint stayed in the stone.","Moll was probably real — a migrant woman, an herbalist, maybe a healer trained in the West Indies, living alone on charity at the edge of a suspicious town. Whether the mob and the burning happened as told is legend, but the county named a road and a stream for her, the rock was found in the woods in 1968 and moved to the Old Jail in 1972, and in 2021 Leonardtown gave it a shelter at Tudor Hall and made February 26 Moll Dyer Day. Visitors still leave trinkets on it; the curse is still said to make you dizzy if you touch it.","The file keeps the rock: the 1698 winter, the mob legend, the found stone, and the town that eventually made its accused witch a memorial.","Moll Dyer Rock is the archive's witch file — the influenza panic, the frozen handprint, and the stone Leonardtown shelters now."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Moll Dyer Rock is the archive's witch file — the 1698 legend, the rock with the handprint, and the town's late apology.","A stone that holds a curse keeps its shelter — the file's suggestion being that Moll Dyer's hold is the community's guilt: the witch they burned, the rock she froze to, and the day they finally gave her name a holiday."]}],"name":"Moll Dyer Rock","aliases":[],"type":"FOLKLORE_MONUMENT","type_label":"Folklore Monument","cats":["LOCAL_FOLKLORE"],"groups":["legends"],"desc":"Folklore monument associated with published local folklore.","full_desc":"Moll Dyer Rock is a folklore monument in Leonardtown, Maryland. Folklore monument associated with published local folklore. The name the accounts keep returning to is Moll Dyer. The dossier holds 1 reported claim, 1 legend and 1 named or described presence — all telling, no verified spine yet, and the file says so plainly. Access details are unverified — research before visiting.","address":null,"city":"Leonardtown","county":null,"state":"Maryland","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":38.303891,"lon":-76.639653,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"UNKNOWN","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":"Historical society identifies present location at Tudor Hall; original site differs.","ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Discovery record. Coordinates, earliest legend source, independent history and current visitor rules require further verification.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"LOW","score":45.6,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0,"source_quality":0.8,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":770,"type":"FOLKLORE_LEGEND","description":"The historical society recounts Moll Dyer supposedly freezing at this rock. Moll Dyer Rock's file is thin on proof and long on persistence — the standard profile of American place-lore. 'Moll Dyer Rock' preserves the telling; the record keeps it filed where it belongs, as lore. The legend does what legends do — it explains the place in a way the records can't.","evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","evidence_label":"Documented legend","entity":"Moll Dyer","where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.75,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Moll Dyer Rock","url":"https://www.stmaryshistory.org/content.aspx?club_id=706426&module_id=487754&page_id=22","publisher":"St. Mary's County Historical Society","type":"HISTORICAL_SOCIETY","authority":2},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"The historical society recounts Moll Dyer supposedly freezing at this rock. The site in Leonardtown, Maryland gives the account a documented setting: real place, real history, unresolved reports. The account has a collector's pedigree — written down as legend, which is the most honest status it can hold. Every community keeps one story like this; this is theirs.","earliest":null,"evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","source":{"name":"Moll Dyer Rock","url":"https://www.stmaryshistory.org/content.aspx?club_id=706426&module_id=487754&page_id=22","publisher":"St. Mary's County Historical Society","type":"HISTORICAL_SOCIETY","authority":2}}],"entities":[{"name":"Moll Dyer","claimed_identity":"Moll Dyer","verified":null,"summary":"The historical society recounts Moll Dyer supposedly freezing at this rock. The site in Leonardtown, Maryland gives the account a documented setting: real place, real history, unresolved reports. Named presences persist where anonymous reports fade — the file's name here is Moll Dyer. The telling survives; the proof stays folklore.","behavior":"The historical society recounts Moll Dyer supposedly freezing at this rock.","area":null,"first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"Moll Dyer Rock","url":"https://www.stmaryshistory.org/content.aspx?club_id=706426&module_id=487754&page_id=22","publisher":"St. Mary's County Historical Society","type":"HISTORICAL_SOCIETY","authority":2}}],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Moll Dyer Rock","url":"https://www.stmaryshistory.org/content.aspx?club_id=706426&module_id=487754&page_id=22","publisher":"St. Mary's County Historical Society","type":"HISTORICAL_SOCIETY","authority":2}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Moll Dyer","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moll_Dyer","desc":"Alleged witch in Maryland, US","extract":"Moll Dyer is the name of a legendary 17th-century resident of Leonardtown, Maryland, who is said to have been accused of witchcraft and chased out of her home by the local townsfolk on a winter night. Her body was allegedly found a few days later, partially frozen to a large stone.","img":null,"score":75},"counts":{"claims":1,"history":0,"legends":1,"entities":1,"sources":1}}