Halloween is famous for its many monsters. From skeletons to vampires and all in between. One of the most famous ones is witches.
Witches have been a folktale since the beginning of time. They were there before we have been able to write. They have been everywhere in the world.
Almost 25,000 years ago, during the Paleolithic era witches weren’t seen in as malicious a light as they are now. They were seen more as preachers of God. They would use herbs and runes to help others. They would perform magic and rituals in the name of God to help their communities. They were a big part of the church, and the bishops and other religious figures let them continue doing their magic.
Hecate (or Hekate) was a Greek goddess of magic whose origins can be traced to the pre-Greek Thracian, which was in the 2nd and 3rd millennium BCE. She is the goddess of magic, witchcraft, ghosts, the night, and crossroads. Her symbols are a pair of torches, snakes, dogs, crows, and a key. She is a triple headed goddess showing her different magical aspects. She is accompanied by her dog and weasel, both of which used to be mortal witches who she turned to animals. Her existence proves that witches weren’t just a thing millenniums ago but were common enough to have a goddess.
The Greeks had many other witches like Circe, Medea, Lamia, Pasiphaë, the Graeae sisters, the Telchines, Agamede, and Thrace. Even though there were many they weren’t respected. They were both worshiped and feared. This was when we first start seeing witches becoming malicious creatures. The common thread between them was that they either had a connection to the underworld, were evil women, or had been cursed.
The growing fear of witches kept evolving into the Roman period. The Romans took some of the Greek Gods and combined them with their gods. Because of this Hecate (now known as Trivia) and other witches were still worshiped out of fear. Witches were known to be evil and often fought against societal norms.
After the Roman Empire fell the fear of witches was still there. In 1450 a man called Heinrich Kramer wrote to the pope about how we should torture anyone we even suspect as a witch. The pope and other religious figures didn’t agree with him, and they even ran him out of his town after he accused five women of being witches. His teachings didn’t get far until about a century later.
In the 1580s the fear of witches and witch trials ramped up once again, especially in the German town of Trier. The town had immense snowstorms in the summer that killed all their crops. The leader of the town, Johann von Schoenenberg, who was already paranoid of witches decided that witches were creating this weather. This kicked off Trier’s famous witch hunt.
The town had a witch hunting committee that would torture anyone who they thought was a witch until they had a statement saying that the supposed witch was a real witch. The judge for the witches was the ruthless Dietrich Flade. Sadly, most of the witch trials from this period no longer exists so the first witch trial that we know of is the one of Margaretha Braun.
Flade was leading the way to get even more witches killed when karma gets him. The witches that he imprisoned say that they saw him at the witch Sabeth. With so many reports and Johann falling ill after Flade visits him doesn’t paint Flade in the best light. He gets imprisoned and later burned at the stake for his crimes. After Flade died the Trier witch trials started swindling down until there were no more witches being accused. In the more than 10 years of the witch trials over 500 people got accused of being a witch and died because of it.
The most famous witch trial that happened in the United States was the Salem witch trials. Salem was a town of Puritans which was split into two families and their allies, the Porter and Putnam households. Samuel Parris was a minister in their congregation whose daughters started experimenting with magic. Shortly after this the daughters start having seizers where they randomly start screaming.
The people of Salem started to believe that witches were gathering and hurting their kids. The first three women that got accused was Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and the slave Tituba. The other kids of Salem start accusing those women too of witchcraft. After Tituba gives her confession that she is a witch, the leader goes to Sarah Good’s four-year-old daughter and asks her if her mom is a witch. She says yes and that she is a witch too. All of them get sent to prison in Boston where more witches join them soon. In 5 months, 81 people got accused of witchcraft.
The trials were unfair, it was word against word with little to no evidence for every case. What makes it worse is that spectral evidence was used as evidence. Spectral evidence is when someone who has been harmed by a witch can see the witches’ aura. It can not be proven or disproven. The witches that plead guilty are put in prison but not killed but the ones that don’t plead guilty are killed.
On the June 2, the first witch that got hanged was a women named Bridgette Bishop. On the June 19, five more women are executed, one of them being Sarah Good. Even though doubts about the witch trials start to spread, five more people were executed on August 15. One of them is a former minister, George Burrows, who when he was about to be accused repeats a verse of the Bible perfectly. It was a common belief that witches couldn’t get through a verse in the Bible without messing up so when George did, the crowd started a riot. One of the leaders of the town got the crowd to calm down, and George ended up being executed.
On September 18 one of the witchcraft suspects, Giles Corey, refused to plead at his trial. Because of this the leaders torture him to get a confession out of him. They pile rocks on top of him for two days, not allowing him to eat or drink, and they kept asking for his plea. When he didn’t comply, they pilled more rocks on him until he died. Days later his wife was also executed. In seven months, 185 people were accused, 59 gone to trial, and 19 were hanged while others died in prison.
After the witch trials have been going on for several months the governor got a letter from a clergyman and scholar from Boston saying that the witch trials don’t have a basis to use spectral evidence and that some of the witches have been wrongly accused. This letter, plus the governor’s wife being accused of witchcraft, makes him shut down the witch trials. Every witchthat was imprisoned got released including Tituba. Sarah Good’s daughter went mentally insane in prison, and she never recovered.
The people of Salem village ran Samual Parris out of the town, and he was one of the only judges never to apologize for the trials. The other judges and even the state of Massachusetts declared a public apology for the Salem witch trials.
What makes witches and witch trials so scary is that they have been around for centuries and are unexpected. Anytime people didn’t know why a phenomenon was working, they would blame witches. Witch trials killed hundreds of people and imprisoned thousands more. If you got accused a witch, you couldn’t disclaim it. Witches have earned their place as one of Halloweens best monsters.
THE BEAR FACTS 