Smith County deputies investigate 911 witchcraft call - KYTX CBS 19 Tyler Longview News Weather Sports

SMITH COUNTY (TYLER MORNING TELEGRAPH) - A woman called 911 on Monday to report a witch performing a little black magic under her home, according to a Smith County Sheriff's Department report.

Three sheriff's units responded to a residence on Hagan Road after the 911 call about 5:25 a.m. Monday.

The woman then hung up on the sheriff's dispatcher, but on call back she told the dispatcher about the witch.

A quick search of the woman's home and under her house, where she said a neighbor was performing witchcraft, provided no evidence of a witch.

Lt. Larry Wiginton did not know the details of the report but said calls such as this are not as uncommon as one would think.

"We get calls from people seeing all kinds of things in their house, outside, on their roof, and we have to respond," he said. "We usually send more than one deputy, because we don't know what we might find, for our protection and the protection of the caller. OK, so maybe we haven't had a lot of calls about witches, but we have calls on just about everything else."

Wiginton said repeated calls to 911 could be considered abuse of the system, and a person could be charged. However, when a person evidently is experiencing mental issues, the deputies typically will take them to a hospital for evaluation.

He added that deputies rarely arrest callers and charge them with 911 abuse.

"Usually it has to be someone that has repeatedly called multiple times, and then we have that option to charge them, but most of our calls like this are from people needing help for mental health issues," he said.

The woman who called Monday was not charged in the case.