From the 15th through the 18th centuries, Europe was a scary place, particularly if you were an elderly woman. Tension between the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church meant that religious terror was rife, bad luck was blamed on Devil worshipers, and the European witch trials claimed the lives of around 200,000 people across Germany, Sweden, France, and Britain.

Witch finders used a range of bizarre methods, often bordering on torture, to entice confessions from the accused or otherwise “prove” their guilt. Would any of these insane tests prove you guilty of witchcraft?

10 Waking The Witch

The Italians pioneered a particularly uncomfortable method for testing witches that became very popular in Scotland. We know it now as sleep deprivation. This may sound like something you have suffered yourself if you work a stressful job or have young children. But for accused witches, it was a creatively cruel trial and punishment.

The accused had an iron hoop with four sharp prongs forced into her mouth. It was then attached to the wall behind her, the effect being that she would be in pain and unable to lie down.

The men charged with guarding the witch were also instructed to keep her awake through whatever means they deemed necessary. Usually, after about three days of this, the victim would start to vividly hallucinate. When questioned in this state, the accused would recount fantastical tales of flying, turning into animals, and partaking in satanic rituals.^[1]

The witch catchers proclaimed that this was the witch “awakening” within the woman and was undeniable proof of her guilt. Those found guilty of witchcraft in Scotland were usually strangled at the stake and then burned.

9 Touch Test

In 1662, two elderly women in England were subjected to the infamous “touch test.” Their names were Rose Cullender and Amy Denny. They were charged with bewitching two young girls who had been suffering with fits.

The witch hunters believed that someone who was under the influence of sorcery would have an unusual reaction to physical contact with the spellcaster. The suspect would be brought into the room and forced to lay her hands on the person having fits. If the illness ceased, this was seen as proof that the accused was guilty.

In the Cullender and Denny case, it was said that the suffering children held their fists so tightly clenched that even the strongest man in the village could not pry their fingers open. Yet, as soon as they were touched by the accused women, the girls stopped their fits and easily opened their palms.^[2]

To test if the girls were lying, the judge had them blindfolded and touched by other members of the court. It was found that they had the same reaction every time someone placed their hands on the girls. So they were faking. Despite this, Cullender and Denny were found guilty and faced execution by hanging.

8 The Rack

Germany is usually considered to be the country that executed the most witches. During the 1620s, the five-year-long Wurzburg trials are estimated to have killed over 900 people. No one was safe from the Prince Bishop Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg, including his own nephew, 19 Catholic priests, and some boys. Seven were found guilty of having sexual intercourse with demons before being beheaded or burned at the stake.

The accused were found guilty following confession, and torture was not yet illegal in Central Europe. The Germans had many cruel methods of forcing confessions from their victims, but the most popular was the rack.

It usually consisted of an iron frame with a wooden roller at one or both ends. The unfortunate souls had their hands bound to one roller and their ankles bound to the other. During their interrogations, their torturers would use the rollers to increase the tension on the binds and essentially stretch the accused.^[3]

The joints of the victim would eventually be dislocated and then separated entirely while they listened to the sickening popping and snapping of their own bones. Would that be enough to make you plead guilty to witchcraft?

7 Pricking

Witch pricking was once considered to be the most accurate way of testing for witchcraft. The accused would be stripped completely naked in front of the court and then shaved from head to toe. The witch pricker (a revered profession) would then seek out the “Devil’s mark” by pricking the victim all over with a thick needle.

It was believed that there would be a spot that did not bleed or cause pain—proof of a contract with the Devil. This was really a form of horrendous sexual abuse. In a society that held modesty in high regard, many women would confess just to end the humiliation.

In Scotland, a witch pricker could expect to make £6 per witch discovered. When you consider that the average daily wage in those days was one shilling, this was a significant amount.

As with most jobs, it was a male profession. But that didn’t stop one woman from becoming one of the most infamous witch prickers of all time. While dressed as a man and calling herself John Dickson, Christian Caddell sentenced as many as 10 witches to death. She was eventually caught and banished to the fever-ridden Barbados. Many people didn’t even survive the voyage.^[4]

6 Spotted By Visgossar

Sweden was unique in its persecution of witches because it relied heavily on the witness testimonies of children (often the offspring of the accused), who were tortured until they provided suitably fantastical tales.

The children would be predominantly questioned about their experiences visiting Blakulla—not hell, but the Devil’s banqueting hall with a peek hole in the floor through which one could observe Hell beneath. Some of the youths would find themselves competing to fabricate the most creative stories, which would ultimately end with the execution of their parents.

The visgossar were young boys who were believed to have the power to spot the invisible Stigma Diaboli (mark of the Devil) on the forehead of the witch. Following a church service, it was common practice for the boys to point at a few women and name them guilty. These poor folks were often executed just days later.^[5]

The boys were paid per witch identified, and this meant that many homeless orphans and beggars would come forward claiming to be visgossar as a way to make easy money. Of course, the profession came with its own dangers. On several occasions, vigossar were found beaten to death by the families of those they accused.

5 Ducking Stool

Often referred to as “dunking,” the ducking stool was the most widespread and trusted method for testing a witch. The suspect was tied to a chair or with her wrists bound to her ankles. Then she was attached to a pulley and lowered into a body of freezing water.

The logic was simple. If she was guilty, she would float on the top and be put to death as a witch. If she was innocent, she would sink to the bottom and drown.

Witch catchers believed this would work for different reasons. Some thought that witches would automatically float to the top of the water because they had renounced their baptisms as a rejection of God. Others believed that witches were able to use their magical powers to float to the top and stop themselves from drowning.

Either way, it was generally accepted that the victim was innocent and would be accepted into Heaven if she drowned and died. In the eyes of the witch catchers, this was a far better fate than living as a guilty witch bound for execution and hell. Sometimes, a floating witch would be dunked repeatedly until she confessed, which was a medieval form of water torture.^[6]

Interestingly, the ducking stool was designed specifically for women only and was also used as a punishment for being a prostitute or scold. A scold was a woman who was generally considered a nuisance, who spread chaos among her neighbors by habitually chastising, quarreling, or gossiping.

In these cases, the ducking stool contraption was sometimes attached to wheels and paraded through the town on the way to the dunking site. This was to ensure maximum humiliation for the accused.

4 Weighing The Witch

Holland had a very famous weighing house in Oudewater. Women from as far away as Germany and Hungary would travel there to prove their innocence. The idea was simple. Souls are heavy burdens to bear. As a witch would not possess one, she would be significantly lighter than an innocent woman.

The weighing house had a large set of scales. The accused would stand on one side, and cast-iron weights would be placed on the other. Women of the proper weight were given certificates to prove their innocence.^[7]

The Dutch were not the only ones who believed that you could find a witch by weighing her. In Aylesbury, England, it was common practice to strip a woman naked and weigh her against a heavy, iron-bound Bible. If the scales did not balance out exactly, the woman would be convicted as a witch.

In other places in Europe, women would be weighed against stacks of Bibles. If they were not found guilty straightaway, extra Bibles were sometimes added to the pile.

3 Cruentation

If someone was accused of murder by witchcraft, they could be proved guilty by cruentation in many European courts. They believed that the soul still resided in the body shortly after death and that the body would react unusually in the presence of the murderer.

The accused was made to call out the name of the dead person, walk around the corpse, and touch the body’s sores. If fresh blood appeared, the body moved, or it began to foam at the mouth, the suspect would be considered guilty.

What the court was actually witnessing was the leaking of a liquid known as purge fluid. It looks a lot like blood and is expelled from various orifices during putrefaction. Dead bodies may also twitch slightly, expel the contents of their bowels, or even seem to “groan” soon after death. This would be seen as the person’s soul leaving the body to further escape his killer (too little, too late).^[8]

2 Have Your Witch’s Teat Discovered

If you had a pet, it was likely that a witch catcher would try to prove your guilt by seeking out your witch’s teat. It was believed that witches kept demons in their houses as pets, disguised as dogs, cats, insects, or rodents and that these familiars suckled on a special nipple gifted to the witch by the Devil.

The presence of a mole, skin tag, or unusual birthmark on the body was considered proof that the accused was practicing witchcraft and feeding her familiar in this manner.

At least 80 percent of the people prosecuted for witchcraft were female, and the idea of a Devil-made and villainous breast is a perfect example of how misogynistic the trials really were. Many breasts of the accused were subject to brutal and humiliating treatment and were often publicly exposed or even whipped.^[9]

Anna Pappenheimer from Bavaria was tortured into admitting to having sexual relations with the Devil. As punishment, her breasts were cut off and forced into her mouth and then into the mouths of her two adult sons before all three were burned at the stake.

1 Be Unable To Cry

The Malleus Maleficarum (“The Hammer of Witches”) was a medieval document published about witches, their practices, and methods to conduct trials and punish them. It was written in Latin by two German monks. For hundreds of years, it was the best-selling book in Europe, second only to the Bible.

Malleus Maleficarum stated that witches would be unable to shed real tears when put in front of a judge or even when subjected to torture. It implored witch catchers to be wary of mischievous witches who were likely to fake tears by spitting on their own faces.^[10]

During the medieval period, a lack of health care and personal hygiene meant that it was common for the elderly to suffer from what we now call lacrimal ducts. This is an infection in the tear ducts that stops the sufferer from being able to shed tears. This meant that many elderly women were executed as witches simply for having poor eyes.

Fennella is a Green Witch living in London. Blog: www.fennellathewitch.com. Instagram: @fennellathewitch

For hundreds of years, witch hunters operated throughout Europe. Their motivations ranged from superstitions and paranoia to an incomprehensible religious zeal. Sometimes, it was just politics.

Nevertheless, it’s estimated that tens of thousands of people were executed for witchcraft in Europe. The witch hunters mostly framed terrified old women. But every so often, a witch trial turned up something much weirder.

10 Thiess, Good Werewolf Of The North

Thiess was an old man from 17th-century Latvia who informed a startled judge that he was part of a local troop of werewolves. He added that werewolves were not servants of evil and actually couldn’t “tolerate the Devil.” Instead, they were the “hounds of God.”

According to Thiess, on certain days of the year, the spirits of werewolves would journey to a “place beyond the sea” and descend into Hell in wolf form to battle the Devil and prevent him from stealing the harvest. The werewolves would triumph over the Devil and beat him with rods of iron. But if they delayed on the journey, they would find the gates of Hell barricaded against them and the harvest would fail.

Thiess’s own nemesis was a dead witch named Skeistan, who would face him in Hell and had once broken his nose with a broom. Under repeated questioning, Thiess insisted that werewolves served the Church and angrily shouted that they were closer to God than the local priests. He was ultimately sentenced to 10 lashes.^[1]

Theiss gained renewed attention in the 20th century because his testimony sounds remarkably similar to the benandanti (“good walkers”) and other southern European groups.

9 The Good Walkers And The War At The End Of The World

The good walkers (benandanti) were members of a widespread and apparently ancient dream cult uncovered by the Inquisition in the Friuli region of Italy. As the seasons changed during the “Ember Days,” the benandanti would enter deathlike trances and journey as spirits to a valley at the end of the world. There, they would wage an epic battle with evil witch-spirits to ensure the safety of the harvest.

One walker described the journey: “I had the impression there were many of us together as though in a haze, but we did not know one another, and it felt as if we moved through the air like smoke and that we crossed over water like smoke.”^[2]

The benandanti were identified at birth, usually by being born with a caul. Belief in them was widespread, and any walker who refused to enter the trance on the Ember Days risked being beaten by his fellow villagers. Without exception, they were shocked at the suggestion that shamanic spirit battles were un-Christian.

8 The Shape-Shifting Sky Battles Of Hungarian Witchcraft

The taltos were Hungarian mystics, presumably the remnants of the pre-Christian Hungarian shamans. They boasted their ability to leave their bodies and journey to distant lands and even into Heaven. (One taltos boasted that she had been lying as if dead for nine days while chatting to God.)

The taltos were most notable for fighting each other in the sky. While their bodies were in a trance, their spirits would take the form of bulls, stallions, fireballs, fiery wheels, or discs of metal. Then they would ascend into the skies, where they would duel in thunderous battles. Many taltos would show off wounds they claimed were gained in these battles, which determined the good fortune of their communities.

One taltos told a court that this was an ancient tradition and that legions of taltos had once waged war “in the skies for the empire.” She added that there were around 700 taltos in the country in 1725 and that “the light of their flag is shining all over the world.”^[3]

The taltos were the subject of a severe crackdown in the 18th century, and many were tortured or executed.

7 The Ladies From Outside

In 1587, a puzzled inquisitor in Sicily hastily sent a warning that “a new sect of witches has come into being.” The Sicilian witches deeply confused the Inquisition because they claimed to be in contact with spirits but didn’t fit the Church’s model of horrifying encounters with the Devil. Instead, they claimed to communicate in dreams with the “ladies from outside” (donni di fuora or donas de fuera), a race of beautiful beings with the feet of cats or other animals.

The ladies from outside were mostly helpful and not apparently evil, although they were reportedly upset by any mention of God or the Virgin Mary. They were ruled by a queen, sometimes called “the Eastern lady,” and her teenage consort. Most contact with them ended in sex, which was reportedly great. The inquisitors recorded one woman’s first journey outside:

She described a kind of witches’ Sabbat—but without devils or any of the usual nasty details; everything that Laurea de Pavia described was beautiful and delightful . . . there was a great plain there on which stood a large platform with two chairs. On one of them sat a red young man and on the other a beautiful woman; they said she was the queen and the youth was the king . . . they told her that she must not worship God or Our Lady. The ensign made her swear on a book with big letters that she would instead worship the king as God and the queen as Our Lady, and promise them her body and soul. After she had worshiped them like this, they set out tables, ate and drank and danced, and then the men lay with the women and with her and made love to them often in a short time.^[4]

6 The Cloud Sailers And French Sky Witches

The tempestarii were a class of storm wizards in ninth-century France. They obtained power through their supposed alliance with the people of Magonia, who sailed through the sky in ships that passed through the air like normal ships passed through water.

The Magonians paid the tempestarii to be their agents on Earth, and the tempestarii would in turn extort money from local farmers. If the farmers didn’t pay, the Magonians would summon a storm to destroy the crops.

The tempestarii are mentioned in several sources, most notably a polemic by Bishop Agobard of Lyon. He was angry that people paid the tempestarii and then pleaded poverty when it was time to tithe to the Church.^[5]

Belief in the sea in the sky persisted long beyond the ninth century. Gervase of Tilbury, a 12th-century historian, related how an anchor once fell out of a cloud and caught on a church. The people below saw a man climb down the rope, moving like a man underwater, and free the anchor. They seized him, but he appeared to drown in our air and quickly died.

5 Kresniks Were Vampire-Fighting Balkan Witches

Kresniks were spirit warriors from Istria, which is in modern Slovenia and Croatia. Like the benandanti, the kresniks were identified at birth by being born with a caul. They were called to serve at 7, 18, or 21.

Kresniks were shamanistic warriors whose spirits left their bodies while they slept and took the forms of various animals to fight witches and vampires. (The spirit usually left the body in the form of a fly before shifting to a more ferocious animal for the actual battle.)

When the realm was threatened by particularly evil spirits, the kresniks would band together and journey across the sea in eggshells to battle demons in the air above St. Mark’s Square in Venice (an extremely sinister and evil location as anyone who has been a tourist in Venice will tell you).

In some areas of Istria, it was believed that each kresnik had a werewolf-like evil counterpart called a kudlak. One kresnik and one kudlak were born into each clan at a time, and their spirits would frequently do battle in animal form to determine the fate of the family. Those suspected of being kudlaks were sometimes buried with their tendons severed so that they couldn’t return to walk the Earth.^[6]

4 The Peasant Who Used Witchcraft To Catch A Witch

Chonrad Stoeckhlin was a peasant who lived in an isolated village in the 16th-century Alps. In 1586, he accused an elderly local woman of being a witch. He explained that he had been told she was a witch by the phantoms of the night, a group of spirits who flew through the air above his village.

Chonrad said that he would leave his body and journey to mysterious realms with the phantoms. He was genuinely surprised when his testimony got him arrested for witchcraft, too.

According to Chonrad, his journey into the spirit world began when his dead friend appeared to him and ordered him to repent his sins. After he did so, he was visited by an angelic being with a red cross on his forehead who taught Chonrad how to leave his body and introduced him to the phantoms. In turn, they helped him to identify evil witches hiding in the area.

Chonrad Stoeckhlin was executed as a witch in 1587.^[7]

3 The Cunning Trance Werewolf

In the late 16th century, a werewolf panic swept through the town of St. Claude in the Franche-Comte of eastern France. At least one local was stoned to death by a mob of her neighbors after being suspected of attacking children in the form of a wolf. Several other accused werewolves were put on trial and tortured into confessing.

Jacques Bocquet, a local healer or “cunning man,” said that his spirit had attended a witches’ sabbath while his body remained at home. Another suspect said that he often entered extended trances on certain days, such as Maundy Thursday. He described them as draining experiences from which it took days to recover.^[8]

A different suspect, Pierre Gandillon, described transforming into a werewolf. According to Gandillon, he would enter a cataleptic state, lying completely rigid and unmoving on the bed. Then the Devil would clothe his soul in a wolfskin and he would journey to an evil sabbath.

2 Aunt Fairy

In Croatia, vilenicas were people capable of communicating with fairies (vila). Some remarkable testimony has survived, including that from a vilenica questioned by the Republic of Dubrovnik in 1660.

The vilenica was a young woman in her twenties. She said that she was in communication with an entity known as Tetka Vila (“Aunt Fairy”), who appeared to her in the form of a nun. The fairy told the young woman to pick a certain pair of roots if she ever wanted to speak to Tetka Vila. At that point, she would appear and advise on healing and how to identify evil witches.

Although this testimony resulted in a witchcraft trial, vilencas continued to practice elsewhere in the country. One priest mournfully noted:

I do not know if there are any witches or warlocks. Certainly not in public. But there is a witchcraft of some sort. They tie knots through some evil spells cast to forward marriage or obstruct it. [ . . . ] They do not apprehend that by collaborating with the Devil they bring evil.^[9]

1 The Cow Resurrection Game Night

In 1390, the Inquisition in Milan questioned Sibillia (some sources spell it “Sibilla”) and Pierina, two well-off women who confessed to being part of a cult which met regularly in the houses of wealthy Milanese merchants. They said that the meetings were led by a mysterious woman known as the Madonna Oriente (“Lady of the East”) or the Signora del Gioco (“Lady of the Game”).

The highlight of every meeting was a feast of beef at which the bones and hides were saved. At the end of the feast, the Lady would tap them with her stick, causing the cows to return to life. However, the resurrected cows were apparently unhealthy in some way as the testimony specifies that they were unfit for work.

This specific act of magic is reminiscent of several figures in European mythology, most notably Thor. The importance of bones also recalls Siberian shamanism, which holds that the soul resides in the bones. As a result, some writers have speculated that Sibillia and Pierina were part of an underground group with connections to ancient European shamanism.

However, this is disputed. The Inquisition itself apparently decided the testimony was unreliable and released the two women. But they were rearrested a few years later and executed for witchcraft.^[10]

In the United States and other Western nations, children are often taught about the Salem witch trials that saw 19 men and women executed by hanging for practicing witchcraft. These trials fell out of favor as society developed, but that’s not the case in other parts of the world.

Across much of sub-Saharan Africa and other places, the hunting and purging of witches and practitioners of the dark arts continues. Not only is it a pervasive problem, but the scale of these operations has only worsened with thousands of people falling victim to accusations of sorcery.

Here are 10 examples of modern witch hunts that you won’t believe happened so recently.

SEE ALSO: 10 Infamous Witch-Hunters From History

10 Ghana

Much like people in 17th-century Salem, Massachusetts, modern-day Ghanaians sometimes settle disputes by simply accusing someone of practicing witchcraft. An accusation can be all that is needed to remove a potential rival from a situation, and it happens far more often in Ghana than seems logical.

As witchcraft is such a perceived threat in the country, the nation has established eight sanctuaries for the victims/prisoners of witch hunts. Many of these sanctuaries are hundreds of years old; they’re also commonly known as witch camps.

In 2014, it was reported that over 1,100 people languished in these makeshift prisons/sanctuaries across Ghana. Hunts vary throughout the north and south of the country. But they often are instigated by supposed “penis-theft” hysteria, resulting in the accusation and rounding up of purported witches. Usually, these people are killed, though some make their way to the sanctuaries to live out their lives as outcasts.^[1]

9 The Gambia

Following an order by President Yahya Jammeh in March 2009, a group of government “witch hunters” went out into the nation of The Gambia and rounded up approximately 1,000 villagers. They were taken to secret government detention centers where they were forced to drink an unidentified hallucinogenic substance.

According to Amnesty International, “a lot of these people who were forced to drink these poisonous herbs developed instant diarrhea and vomiting while they lay helpless.” They were then beaten and forced to confess to being practitioners of witchcraft.

Those captured were rounded up over a five-day period and consisted of young men and women as well as the elderly. Fortunately, of the 1,000 captured and tortured, only two succumbed to the violence, but the violation of human rights is a serious problem throughout the country.

The incident was reported through Amnesty International, but this wasn’t the first time that Jammeh said or did something controversial. In 2007, he claimed to have found an herbal cure for HIV and ordered the execution of any homosexuals found in his country.^[2]

8 Kenya

The people of Kenya are no stranger to witch hunts, but they seem to come and go in spurts. The history of Kenyan witch hunts dates back centuries, but random acts of intense violence occur somewhat randomly.

In May 2008, it was reported that a mob rounded up and burned to death as many as 11 people accused of practicing witchcraft in the western region of Kisii. In total, eight women and three men between 80 to 96 years old were dragged from their houses into the street and individually burned.

The mob then burned down each of the victims’ houses with everything they owned still inside. That particular hunt began after someone found an exercise book at a local school containing the minutes of a so-called “witches’ meeting.” It had an accompanying list of people who were to be bewitched in the near future.^[3]

All of the victims’ families were forced into hiding. This attack was by no means an isolated incident. Kenyans have long suffered under the threat of witch hunts with no indication that it will end anytime soon.

7 India

You might not think India would fall on a list like this one, but certain regions of the country remain deeply enshrouded in a fear of mysticism. From 2001 to 2006, approximately 300 people were rounded up and killed in the northeast state of Assam.

The majority of those rounded up were women, which resulted in an increase in the number of homeless children in the region. The remaining children are often a major issue when it comes to the aftermath of a modern-day witch hunt, but the problem seems to be exacerbated in India.^[4]

Further killings took place throughout the country in various regions, usually resulting in as many as 5 to 35 deaths in each case. A report from 2010 estimated that 150 to 200 women are hunted down and killed each year throughout India. The estimate included accounts between 1995 and 2009. This puts the total number of women slaughtered in India due to a perceived practice of witchcraft during that period at over 2,500.

6 Nepal

A strong belief in witchcraft is common throughout Nepal, which is why hunting people suspected of practicing witchcraft isn’t as rare as it probably should be. The majority of people targeted in these hunts are low-caste women who are rounded up, beaten, tortured, humiliated in a public forum, and often murdered.

When these hunts occur, the families of the victims are often accused and dealt with in much the same way. In one instance in 2010, a woman was captured, beaten, and tortured for two days while she was forced to ingest human excrement until she “confessed” to being a witch.

She was targeted by a mob of around 35 people who showed up at her home and took her away. This kind of practice happens almost regularly to low-caste women throughout the country. But unlike other examples, the victim is often released after she confesses.^[5]

Murders do occur. But in many cases, the victim is released after being tortured for an extended period of time. That isn’t to say that the practice isn’t brutal and needs to be stopped, but the death toll in Nepal is significantly lower than some of the other examples on this list.

5 Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia may be one of the richest nations on the planet, but its society still lives in fear of sorcery. The majority of Muslims believe in the practice of sorcery and witchcraft, which may be why the country defines its practice as a legitimate criminal offense.

Not only can someone accuse another person of practicing witchcraft in Saudi Arabia, they can then be tried by the government for committing said crime. If the person is found guilty, the punishment is death.

Reporting on the total number of these cases doesn’t get outside the country often. But several high-profile cases resulted in imprisonment and death at the hands of the Saudi government, which was accused by Human Rights Watch in 2009 of “sanctioning a literal witch hunt by the religious police.”

Numerous cases indicate that the punishment is beheading. In fact, that sentence was carried out as recently as June 19, 2012, on Muree bin Ali bin Issa al-Asiri, a man accused of practicing witchcraft and sorcery in the Najran province of southern Saudi Arabia.^[6]

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Bizarre Witch Burials

4 Indonesia

For 31 years, the people of Indonesia suffered under the rule of Suharto. But that all came to an end in 1998 when the militaristic dictator resigned.

On the surface, Suharto’s resignation was a positive move forward for the country. But his leaving office caused widespread unrest, a severe financial crisis, and for some reason, an intense witch hunt resulting in the deaths of some 400 people. These hunts consisted of a series of brutal killings throughout many parts of the island nation, though many were likely called witch hunts to cover up murders.

In September 2000, a mob in West Java rounded up a 70-year-old woman who was accused of casting spells that made local residents ill. She was decapitated, her eyes were gouged out, and her limbs were torn from her body and tossed into the street.^[7]

The anger and hatred toward purported witches in the country often led to the brutal death and dismemberment of anyone accused of witchcraft. This is why Indonesia’s post-Suharto witch purge is one of the more brutal examples on this list.

3 Papua New Guinea

Interestingly, Papua New Guinea allows a legal practice called “white” magic, which is used for faith healing and other benign practices. In the 1970s, the nation passed a law called the Sorcery Act, which imposed a two-year prison sentence on anyone found engaging in “black” magic. As the country outlawed the negative aspect of using magic, the nation saw a rise in violence and extrajudicial torture committed against alleged practitioners of “black” magic.

As recently as 2013, four women were accused of witchcraft because their familial home was made of wood. All four women were tortured, and one was beheaded. That incident occurred not because the women were practicing magic, but because they were economically better off than their accusers.^[8]

Similar crimes have been committed throughout the country, typically against young women who are tortured and often beaten to death. Fortunately, the country repealed the Sorcery Act in 2013 and defined the killing of accused witches as murder.

2 Cameroon

Fortunately, not all witch hunts end in the brutal deaths of purported practitioners. When it came time for the mob to launch a witch hunt in the city of Buea, Cameroon, in January 2014, the unleashed fury only resulted in property damage.

Residents of the southern Cameroonian town rioted and destroyed the homes and vehicles of several people identified as witches. The rioters claimed that the victims were members of a cult responsible for some recent deaths in the region. Blogger and reporter Mathias Mouende Ngamo said, “16 homes and 10 shops were destroyed. There were also the shells of burned-out cars on the streets.”^[9]

In another incident in the 1970s, a child witchcraft scare spread throughout part of the country which resulted in the rounding up of several children believed to be witches. Fortunately, the children were not terribly harmed. After they were forced to confess, they were “rewarded” with large amounts of meat meant to induce a purifying vomit and were released to their families.

1 Tanzania

Of every example on this list, Tanzania is by far the worst. In the 21st century alone, it’s believed that an estimated 20,000 people have been rounded up and slaughtered for practicing witchcraft.

But these witch hunts aren’t strictly limited to the practice of the dark arts. In addition to denouncing people for witchcraft, Tanzania has targeted and slaughtered homosexuals or people accused of being homosexual.

Between January and June 2017, the Legal and Human Rights Center reported 479 deaths from so-called “mob justice” throughout the country. These deaths included mainly elderly women accused of witchcraft as well as government-sanctioned murders of homosexuals.^[10]

Many murders have been carried out under the direction of local governors, while others were the result of a mob frenzy. Regardless of their reasoning, Tanzania is the deadliest place to live for anyone accused of practicing witchcraft in the 21st century.

While nowhere near as famous as the Salem witchcraft trials that took place in 1692, the great Connecticut witchcraft panic, which lasted intermittently from 1647 until 1697, set a precedent in American history. Of course, these trials presaged the later series of events in Salem. But the manner in which the trials came to an end opened the door for more rational and logical examinations of supposed supernatural phenomena.

10 The First Recorded Confession

In the mid-17th century, a single witness was all it took to get someone tried for witchcraft. Sometimes, all that was needed was one accusation from a prominent member of society. In 1648, Mary Johnson was tortured into confessing that she was involved in witchcraft.

Two years earlier, Johnson, a servant, was accused of theft. A local minister named Samuel Stone believed that Johnson was guilty of much more, so he whipped her until she said that she had trafficked with the Devil. In particular, Johnson claimed that she had conspired with the Devil to complete her household chores, sleep with several men, and even kill a child. In December 1648, Johnson was executed for these crimes.

While in prison awaiting her trial, Johnson gave birth to a son who was quickly indentured as a servant to Nathaniel Rescew. The boy would remain under Rescew’s tutelage until he turned 21.

9 The First To Die

It is widely believed that Mary Johnson was the first accused witch to die in Connecticut (if not America). However, a woman named Alse (Alice) Young is the rightful holder of this ignominious title. On May 26, 1647, Young was hanged at Meeting House Square in Hartford (the site of today’s Old State House) following her brief trial.

Little is known about Young. It is believed that she was born in England around 1600. Her husband was a man named John Young, who settled in the town of Windsor sometime between 1630 and 1640. It likely that Young was executed for the crime of making herbal folk remedies for her fellow settlers. Alice Young Beamon, Young’s daughter, would later be accused of witchcraft while living in Springfield, Massachusetts.

8 The Peculiar Town Of Wethersfield

During the early 1650s, several individuals were hanged for supposedly practicing witchcraft throughout Connecticut. The convicted included John and Joan Carrington (both executed in 1651), Goodwife Bassett and Goodwife Knapp (executed in 1651 and 1653, respectively), Lydia Gilbert (executed in 1654), Rebecca and Nathaniel Greensmith, and Mary Sanford and Mary Barnes (all hanged in 1662).

Although some of these individuals came from places like Hartford, Fairfield, and Windsor, some came from or had connections to the town of Wethersfield. A later “witch,” Katherine Harrison, was a medical practitioner in Wethersfield.

Because of this fact and because Wethersfield was the hometown of Mary Johnson, the term “Wethersfield witches” has been used by historians and amateur scribes alike. Interestingly, the Carringtons and Johnson, all of whom were from Wethersfield, were active members of their community prior to the allegations levied against them.

In colonial America, many accused witches were neither fringe members of their community nor easily classifiable as “outcasts” or “misfits.” This was certainly the case in Wethersfield.

7 The Great Hartford Panic

Between 1662 and 1663, the city of Hartford fell under the spell of an intense anti-witchcraft hysteria. Beginning in March 1662, Anne Cole found widespread support from her community when she accused Rebecca Greensmith and Elizabeth Seager of using magic to torment her. When an eight-year-old Elizabeth Kelly died after suffering prolonged stomach pains, her parents accused a woman named Goody Ayres of strangling their daughter through the use of black magic.

Many of the stories from Hartford were incredibly bizarre. One woman claimed that Satan had caused her to speak with a Dutch accent, while one eyewitness claimed that she saw her neighbors transform into large black hounds during the nighttime. All told, three accused witches were executed.

6 The Saga Of Katherine Harrison

As previously mentioned, Katherine Harrison was a practicing physician in Wethersfield at the time that she was accused of being a witch. Harrison was accused of practicing astrology and using her spectral familiars (including a black dog and a calf’s head) to visit the houses of her neighbors on moonlit nights. Harrison was formally indicted in May 1669.

Amazingly, despite being accused of witchcraft by approximately 30 witnesses, Harrison was acquitted after a jury could not reach a verdict. She returned to Wethersfield, but several residents signed a petition urging that she be sent back to prison. Finally, in May 1670, Harrison was once again released from prison after the colonial governor and several clergymen challenged the evidentiary standards used in Harrison’s case.

5 The Importance Of John Winthrop Jr.

Also known as John Winthrop the Younger, Winthrop was the son of John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Prior to becoming the governor of the Connecticut Colony, the younger Winthrop had been educated in England and had traveled extensively in Europe. According to one historian, Winthrop learned alchemy in Europe and practiced folk magic for much of his life.

As such, Governor Winthrop knew firsthand how difficult practicing “natural magic” could be. As governor, Winthrop began to question the flimsy evidentiary standards of his colony’s witchcraft trials. In particular, Winthrop grew to question the legitimacy of “spectral evidence,” or eyewitness claims about being “tormented” by spirits or seeing spectral familiars.

4 New Standards Emerge

Because of Governor Winthrop’s hesitancy to accept “spectral evidence,” he played a major role in the two acquittals of Katherine Harrison. Indeed, following the conclusion of the Hartford panic in 1663, Winthrop, along with several magistrates and clergymen, established new guidelines for future witchcraft trials.

First and foremost, Winthrop clearly defined what constituted diabolism. Winthrop believed that only pacts, or sealed contracts made with the Devil, made someone a witch. Crop failures or sudden deaths did not necessarily mean that witchcraft was afoot.

More importantly, Winthrop decreed that for a witchcraft trial to proceed, two people had to see a witch’s specter at the same time. This ruling drastically reduced the number of witchcraft panics for almost three decades.

3 Witch Hunting Moves To Massachusetts

The standards set by Connecticut held for many years. In 1688, however, a new witchcraft panic gripped Boston, the largest and most important city in Puritan America. Following the death of Winthrop in 1676, New England lost the greatest champion of a rational approach to the supernatural.

Winthrop was replaced by Increase Mather, a Harvard-trained theologian and the author of “Remarkable Providences.” Mather believed strongly in the existence of witches. Although he accepted many of the dictates established by Winthrop and the Connecticut magistrates, he nevertheless oversaw the execution of Goodwife (“Goody”) Ann Glover.

Ann Glover and her daughter worked as housekeepers for the family of John Goodwin. Following a dispute over some missing laundry, the Goodwin children began acting strangely. A local doctor diagnosed them as being bewitched.

Soon enough, Glover, an Irish Catholic who probably only spoke Gaelic, was accused of being a witch. Mather himself deduced that the Goodwin children were bewitched. Glover was hanged in November 1688. She would be the last “witch” to be hanged in Boston.

2 The Stamford Panic Of 1692

During the same year as the Salem witchcraft trials, a servant named Katherine Branch mysteriously fell ill. For weeks, she suffered convulsions and mused wildly about her affliction. At one point, Branch began telling people that a cat often spoke to her about possessing the finer things in life. Branch also said that this cat would sometimes transform into a woman.

Following a flurry of accusations, two women—Elizabeth Clawson of Stamford and Mercy Disborough of Fairfield—were formally accused. Fortunately, many people were suspicious of Branch’s story. Following a series of experiments (including dunking the accused witches in a Fairfield pond), both Clawson and Disborough were ultimately acquitted.

1 The Last In Line

While Sarah Spencer and an unknown individual named Norton were the last accused witches in the history of Connecticut (they were accused in 1724 and 1768, respectively), Winifred Benham and Winifred Benham Jr. were the last two accused witches of the 17th century.

Almost five years after the conclusion of the witchcraft panic in Salem, the Benhams of Wallingford (some documents say that they were from New Haven) were tried for making a pact with the Devil to gain the power of transformation. Similarly, both Benhams were accused of using their spirits to inflict bodily harm on their neighbors.

Luckily, both Benhams were acquitted. It’s likely that early criticisms of the proceedings in Salem helped to save these two women from the gallows.

Benjamin Welton is a freelance author based in Boston. His work has appeared in The Weekly Standard, The Atlantic, , and other publications. He currently blogs at literarytrebuchet.blogspot.com.

Between the 16th and 18th centuries, tens of thousands of people were executed for witchcraft in Europe. Then as now, witches were typically thought of as female, and most of the victims in the witch trials were women.

However, men were occasionally accused and executed for witchcraft as well. Sometimes, they were linked with a female witch. Other times, they were accused independently. In a few areas of Europe, such as Estonia and Normandy, men actually made up the majority of the accused.

10 John Fian

In late 1589, the Scottish king James VI traveled to Scandinavia to marry Princess Anne of Denmark. While sailing home, James and his new queen were stalled by terrible storms. Instead of bad luck, the Danish authorities blamed the weather on witchcraft, duly arresting and executing six supposed witches. Back in Scotland, some of James’s subjects were accused of a conspiracy to magically sink the king’s ship.

John Fian, a schoolteacher, was allegedly one of the plot’s ringmasters. According to the many wild legends surrounding him, Fian could fly and unlock doors by blowing on their locks. In one bizarre story, Fian asked a local boy to steal pubic hair from his sister. The hair was an ingredient for a love charm. But Fian was tricked and given cow hair, making a cow fall in love with him instead.^[1]

After being taken into custody for treason and witchcraft, Fian was tortured and interrogated. He confessed that the charges were true, escaped from jail, and then ended up being tortured again. This time, Fian recanted his confession and refused to budge, even after having his nails pulled out and his legs crushed. Despite Fian’s resilience, his interrogators and King James VI weren’t convinced. Fian was strangled and burned at the stake in Edinburgh in January 1591.

9 Thomas Weir

Thomas Weir was probably the last person anybody would suspect of being a witch. He was an elderly veteran of the English Civil War, a stern, religious man who was greatly respected in Edinburgh. In 1670, however, Weir suddenly suffered a kind of breakdown. He’d been harboring a lifetime of guilt and wasn’t nearly as saintly as everybody believed.

From the time his sister, Jane, was 16 until she was 50, Weir had repeatedly slept with her. He’d also had sex with his stepdaughter, his maid, and some mares and cows.^[2] After the secret was leaked, Weir and his sister were arrested for incest. Jane not only confirmed her brother’s claims but told the authorities that she and her brother were witches.

Weir freely admitted to being a witch. He claimed that he’d slept with the Devil and that his walking stick was actually a wand. In the end, Jane was repentant about what she’d done. On the other hand, Weir refused to apologize. Both brother and sister were sentenced to death, although curiously, only Jane was convicted of witchcraft.

8 John Walsh

Not everybody who used magic in Early Modern Europe was considered evil. In England and Wales, for example, the “white witch” used its magic for good. Since the label “witch” was a negative one, these benevolent magicians went by other names, like cunning-man, wise woman, or conjuror. Though they might have been popular with the ordinary people, these folk healers and seers weren’t always safe from the law.

In August 1566, an English white witch named John Walsh was arrested and questioned in Essex about his powers. Walsh claimed that he was in contact with fairies and that he could tell when a person was bewitched. He also had a familiar, a supernatural creature said to help witches with their magic.

Walsh’s familiar would come to him in the shape of a dog, bird, or cloven-footed man. It could identify thieves and tell Walsh where the guilty had hidden what they’d stolen. Walsh swore that he never hurt anybody with his magic, but what ultimately happened to him is unknown. Witches were hanged rather than burned in England. Convictions were rare, so there is a chance that Walsh was acquitted and let go.^[3]

7 Thomas Looten

In September 1659, a merchant named Thomas Looten was plagued with gossip that he’d killed a neighbor boy. Looten had given the boy a plum. When the boy died a few days later, some neighbors believed the plum was bewitched. To clear his name, Looten asked the town bailiff to arrest him and give him a trial.

Looten was apparently confident that the judges would take his side, saying he didn’t need a lawyer or counterevidence to prove his innocence. As it happened, things turned out the exact opposite. His neighbors testified against him, and a torturer claimed that there was a Devil’s mark on Looten’s body. After being strangled with a garrote, Looten told his interrogators that he attended sabbaths and earned his wealth from money that the Devil gave him.^[4]

A witchcraft confession was exactly what the authorities wanted. A day after his confession, Looten died in jail from his wounds. His corpse was burned and then publicly displayed. To cover the rest of his court costs, Looten’s property was also seized and sold off.

6 Quiwe Baarsen

The Sami, the indigenous people of Scandinavia, had a rich tradition of shamanism. Since ancient times, Norwegians had consulted Sami shamans, who maintained that they could tell the future and travel out of their bodies. The shamans used a special drum for their rituals, which put them in a trance and allowed their souls to roam around.

In 1625, the shaman Quiwe Baarsen was paid by a Norwegian named Niels Jonsen to summon wind for a voyage to the village of Hasvag.^[5] A while later, the wife of a man who left with Jonsen paid the shaman again, asking for good wind that would bring her husband’s ship home. This time, the spell went awry and Baarsen was afraid the wind was too strong.

Coincidentally, Jonsen and his crew drowned during a storm on their way back. Two years later, in May 1627, Baarsen was brought to trial by a court in Hasvag. He admitted to creating wind for Jonsen’s ship and explained how a Sami drum worked. The Christian court took Baarsen’s words as proof of witchcraft, ruling him responsible for the drownings and sending him off to be burned at the stake.

5 Andrew Man

Today, fairies are regarded as harmless, fictional creatures, but some witchcraft interrogators believed that they were demons in disguise. Other interrogators figured that they were delusions caused by Satan. But whatever the cause, people who claimed to be involved with fairies were sometimes tried for witchcraft.

In Scotland, several witch trials mentioned a figure known as the Queen of Elphame, a fairy queen who had an angel husband named Christsonday. Andrew Man, an elderly man who went on trial in 1597, said that he had a sexual relationship with the fairy queen.^[6] Man had first met the Queen 60 years earlier when he was a little boy. She later gave him the power to heal any animal or human.

Man had other magical powers as well, such as being able to steal a cow’s milk and tell the future. Christsonday acted as his familiar, and Man could summon the angel by uttering the word “Benedicite.” Man called Christsonday his lord and king, and he also said that he kissed Christsonday’s bottom. To the authorities, the bizarre story reeked of the Devil, and Man was burned for witchcraft.

4 Johannes Junius

Between 1624 and 1631, nearly 300 people were burned for witchcraft in the German city of Bamberg. The city was gripped with paranoia, and even government officials were suspected of being witches. In June 1628, the mayor Johannes Junius was questioned after he was allegedly seen at some sabbaths.

As with many other witch trials, Junius swore he was innocent until he finally broke down after being tortured. According to his confession, Junius met a demon woman who turned into a goat and threatened to break his neck unless Junius gave himself up to her. The woman disappeared and came back with more demons, and Junius was forced to renounce God and worship Satan.

Junius took the new name of Krix, and the demon woman who converted him became his lover. The demon encouraged Junius to kill his children. But he refused, leading her to beat him on one occasion.^[7]

A few weeks before his death at the stake, Junius sent his daughter a secret letter from prison. He said that his words were “sheer lies” and “made-up things” to keep himself from being tortured. He also mentioned his accusers, who admitted to lying and apologized to Junius before their own executions.

3 William Godfrey

In 1609, the farmer William Godfrey rented out a house to John and Susan Barber in New Romney, England. While living there, the Barbers would hear inexplicable dripping and knocking sounds on the ceiling, making them afraid that the house was haunted. After having a baby, Susan swore that three familiars sent by Godfrey tried to steal her child. The Barbers ended up leaving the house. The Holtons, the next couple to take the house, experienced ghostly phenomena, too.

It wasn’t only Godfrey’s house that weirded out his neighbors. The Barbers had terrible luck after moving to a new house and suspected that Godfrey was the cause. Strangely, the Holtons’ son, who suddenly fell sick in 1614, died an hour after Godfrey paid a visit to the house one day. After years of reputedly bewitching people and animals, Godfrey’s neighbors finally took him to court in April 1617.

William Clarke, a man who thought Godfrey had bewitched his ducks, was the first to testify. The trial lasted months. During the wait, Clarke and Godfrey got into a brawl after Godfrey joked about bewitching Clarke’s mare. Other neighbors were brought in as witnesses, but the court ultimately acquitted Godfrey in February 1618. The only person charged with anything turned out to be Clarke, who was fined for assaulting Godfrey.^[8]

2 Chonrad Stoeckhlin

Chonrad Stoeckhlin was a healer and horse wrangler who lived in the German town of Oberstdorf. In 1579, Stoeckhlin met a guardian angel who took him on a nocturnal journey to a “strange and distant place.” Stoeckhlin and his angel would go on these trips several times a year, accompanied by other travelers known as night phantoms. The night phantoms helped turn Stoeckhlin into a powerful healer, and he also learned how to identify witches.

Based on information from his night phantoms, Stoeckhlin accused a woman named Anna Enzensbergerin of being a witch in 1586. Enzensbergerin was arrested, but Stoeckhlin was also taken into custody. His stories about the night phantoms roused the authorities’ suspicion, and soon Stoeckhlin was being investigated as a witch, too.

During his trial, Stoeckhlin’s night phantoms were interpreted as witches. His guardian angel was seen as a demon, and the “strange and distant place” was theorized to be a sabbath. Furthermore, Enzensbergerin and another woman accused by Stoeckhlin confirmed that his mother was a witch.

After the usual bout of torture, Stoeckhlin confessed that everything was true. Ironically, the man who cried “witch” was sentenced to burn at the stake in January 1587.^[9]

1 Louis Gaufridi

In 1609, the French priest Father Romillon became convinced that two nuns, Madeleine and Louise, were possessed by demons. The women would go into horrible convulsions and cried and screamed when Romillon attempted to exorcise them.

Madeleine told Romillon that a priest named Louis Gaufridi had raped her when she was nine years old and that the same man had used spells to fill her body with demons. Months passed without the nuns getting any better, and they made more accusations against Gaufridi when another priest exorcised them.

In February 1611, Gaufridi was arrested and interrogated. He admitted that he was a witch, explaining that he had found a magical book in his uncle’s possessions years earlier.^[10] As he read the book, Gaufridi inadvertently summoned a demon. The demon made a deal with Gaufridi. In exchange for his body and soul, the demon would advance Gaufridi’s career and make any woman he wanted fall in love with him.

Madeleine was questioned as well, and both she and Gaufridi said they attended sabbaths together. In April the same year, Gaufridi was strangled and burned at the stake. Unsurprisingly, Madeleine was eventually accused of witchcraft herself. She was sentenced to life imprisonment but was let out early after serving 10 years.

Tristan Shaw runs a blog called Bizarre and Grotesque, where he writes about crime, folklore, and unsolved mysteries.

Witch hunts and the ensuing witch trials, be they for political or religious reasons, have always been truly dark and nightmarish things. Throughout the history of the world, innocent people, overwhelmingly women, have been interrogated, punished, tortured, raped, and even murdered, all under the presumption that they practiced some sort of occult sorcery, or witchcraft. The twisted, bizarre, strange, and unusual punishments for these people were often painfully slow and equally cruel.

One thing is for sure: For a very long time, societies have been struggling to overcome their more superstitious natures, and thousands, if not millions, of people have lost their lives in this fight. Perhaps someday we can overcome this instinct toward superstition and belief in the supernatural and give in to reason, at least to the extent that we don’t kill innocent people. (Witch hunts still happen today.) We’re all extremely familiar with the Salem witch trials of Massachusetts, but such trials have a long and deeply disturbing history. Here are ten chronological moments in the history of the witch trial, from its inception as mere laws against witches to the height of the most torturous of trial proceedings.

10 Witchcraft In Prehistory

Up until the establishment of dominant and especially monotheistic religions, what we might call witchcraft today was just an accepted practice: Everybody did it, as everybody believed in the supernatural. Witchcraft has existed since the dawn of the human species. In fact, we can actually prove that witchcraft was a thing before civilization and recorded history through the examination of cave paintings, which have depicted various rites being conducted for various reasons, like a bountiful hunt. We also know that shamans were said to have special contact with the gods, the spirits, the forces of nature, you name it, and wielded considerable social power for their perceived abilities.^[1]

Rock and stone art tells us what these people were like, and it’s safe to assume that, while they were highly revered, they weren’t infallible, which means that they had to produce results. If they didn’t, it’s not a far stretch to assume that, in a bloody, prehistoric world, these people would sometimes be killed.

9 Ancient Babylon

Like so much of the story of civilization, from beer to sex rituals to the beginnings of documented prostitution, the history of the witch trial begins in ancient Babylon, and we know this from the Code of Hammurabi. Etched during the reign of King Hammurabi of ancient Babylon, who ruled from approximately 1792 to 1750 BC, the code contains 282 separate laws which governed the conduct of the day.

Among them is possibly one of the earliest laws against witchcraft to ever exist, which set the stage for more laws to come later:

If anyone brings an accusation [of witchcraft] against a man, and the accused goes to the river and leaps into the river, if he sinks in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if the river proves that the accused is not guilty, and he escapes unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put to death, while he who leaped into the river shall take possession of the house that had belonged to his accuser.^[2]

This was not the first known instance of the trial by water, where a witch is forced to jump into or was even thrown into water to test and see if he or she survives. The ancient Sumerian Code of Ur-Nammu (pictured above) contained the same law, and these were the humble beginnings of several nightmarish things which would continue on for centuries, namely the trial by water and the witch trial.

8 Ancient Rome

Let’s skip forward to 331 BC, in the up-and-coming world of ancient Rome, where some 170 or so women have been tried and found guilty of witchcraft, and are now about to die for the crime. Back then, Rome was superstitious and not quite the world power it would eventually become. The humble roots of medicine, mainly consisting of herbs and other plants, weren’t exactly anywhere near scientific at all, and there was a lot of guesswork and trial and error involved in their medicine.

But over 100 years before, around 450 BC, the Law of the Twelve Tables, the first known written legal system of ancient Rome, had been created. This was, of course, the beginning of the entire legal structure that would become that of the Roman Empire which grew around it. And included in the Law of the Twelve Tables, much like the Bill of Rights in the United States or the Ten Commandments in the Holy Bible, were fundamentals of conduct. And in these codes of conduct were laws against witchcraft.

These laws from over 100 years before would be used in 331, and after an unknown epidemic of deaths struck Rome suddenly, 170 women would be tried and executed for conspiring to commit a mass poisoning.^[3] This is one of the first known recorded mass witch trials in history.

7 The Bacchanalia

In ancient times, there were cults and broader groups of people who worshiped the god Bacchus in ancient Rome and, before him, Dionysus in ancient Greece. The two gods served to represent many things, chief among them wine, sex, debauchery, and orgiastic hedonism. Massive drunken orgies were carried out in their names from the times of ancient Greece up until the rise of the coming Roman Empire, where they were called Bacchanalia.

This was until Rome passed laws against them in 186 BC. The cults and anyone else who partook in the Bacchanalia festivals faced instant, steep, and heavy consequences: They’d be condemned for sorcery or witchcraft and executed.^[4]

This seemed to be the second great known witch hunt and series of witch trials of ancient Rome, though many more probably took place, as claiming someone was a witch with powers over the supernatural was always a politically savvy way to weaken opponents. And ancient Rome was a place of political strife. The Bacchanalia was forced underground through the passage of witchcraft laws, which attempted to snuff out the cults, though they would be revived when Julius Caesar was in power.

6 The Middle Ages

Contrary to popular belief, the people of the Middle Ages were not so extremely aggressive toward witchcraft and hardly even took the idea of witches seriously, initially.^[5] St. Augustine of Hippo (depicted above), who lived in the fifth century, was a powerful and influential thinker who rose with the rising tides of Christianity, and he truly believed that anything pagan was not only ungodly but of Satan, and thus, the link between anything occultist or outside of the general framework of the Christianity of the day with evil was solidified. This idea still persists in Christianity to this day. This was a pivotal moment, as the rising Christians were soon to become the group of people who were synonymous with terrifying witch trails.

Even still, it wasn’t until the seventh through the ninth centuries that more laws against witchcraft and witches began to take root in medieval Europe. For a few centuries after St. Augustine, nobody really cared, honestly, and most people thought it was superstitious nonsense. After the laws were passed, however, people began starting to believe in magic, witchcraft, and especially sorcery, or maleficium, and practitioners of such were increasingly thought to be possessed by the Devil.

5 13th Century

Unlucky 13. The 13th century saw a very sharp increase in superstition surrounding witches and the real beginnings of their persecution at the hands of the Church. Popes and religious figures began attacking and demonizing anyone who practiced any sort of magic or ritual outside of Christian prayer. The Roman Catholic Church began the Inquisition officially in 1184 under Pope Lucius III, and a new set of laws would be erected to combat any religious dissent throughout Europe.^[6] This gave judicial power to hunt and prosecute witches. And then Pope Gregory IX (depicted above) erected the first judges in 1227, giving them power over almost everything in the name of the Inquisition.

This is when the real torture of the heretics would begin. The Inquisition would roll into the 14th century and start off with a Church political maneuver in 1307: the trial of the Knights Templar. At this point, heretics were tried here and there, but the witch trial as we know it, in all of its horrors, was still in its infancy. The Spanish Inquisition would take things up a notch and began using brutal torture methods to draw out confessions from suspected witches, but even this was just the beginning of what was to come.

4 The Early Modern Period

The early modern period of Europe, spanning from roughly 1450 to 1750, saw a massive increase in witch trials. During this time, around 100,000 people, mostly women, were suspected of witchcraft. Half of them were executed, typically by burning at the stake.^[7] Many of these murders took place in Germany, with two particularly brutal areas being Trier and Wurzburg, and in 1589, 133 people were killed by the hands of the state, at the behest of the Church, in one single day. Germans were killing those they feared were witches ruthlessly. In 1629 alone, 279 people were executed for being witches in these areas.

The idea that any witch, no matter who they were or what they looked like, needed to be executed, spread through Europe like wildfire. Soon, every country from Scotland to Switzerland was killing people en masse. Dozens of massive witch trials took place throughout Europe as the fever of doing so set in. Tragically, thousands lost their lives for so much as being suspected of witchcraft. This spawned a new profession of witch-hunters, who looked for the supposed Devil’s Mark on people, and anyone with any sort of markings could never truly be safe. The state and Church combined, at the time, were mad with power.

3 Connecticut

Persecution mania soon spread to America, and witches were being sought out, witch-hunters employed, Devil’s Marks being supposedly found on just about anyone, and executions carried out, mainly, again, by burning at the stake. Connecticut was the first area particularly hit hard by this hysteria and bloodlust.^[8] Alice Young became the first known victim in Hartford in 1647, and from there, the people of Connecticut began killing others like had happened across the Atlantic in Europe for centuries.

Several towns started mass hunts and witch trials, complete with executions and purges. Pretty much anyone could level an accusation at someone else of being a witch and, with the requirement of only needing one witness, push the state to its methods of scare tactics and torture to obtain a confession. The first recorded witchcraft confession in Connecticut came from a woman named Mary Johnson in 1648. The subsequent years saw many more brutal executions following confessions made under extreme duress.

This went on until Governor John Winthrop enacted a new law in Connecticut in 1662, stating that two, not one, witnesses were necessary to secure a conviction of witchcraft. Up until this point, people were frequently drowned in trials by water, an echo of ancient Babylon. People had been burned alive. The witch trials of Connecticut were the stuff of horror movies. Fortunately, no one suspected of being a witch was killed after 1662.

2 Massachusetts

From Connecticut, witch trial fever spread to Massachusetts, culminating in what’s arguably the most famous massive witch hunt ever, the Salem witch trials.^[9] In 1692, paranoia ran high, and over 200 people were accused of being witches and practicing witchcraft, conjuring the forces of nature to do ill will. Of them, 20 were executed, including small children. This will forever be a dark stain in the history of humanity. Everyone believed deeply that the Devil was trying to destroy them and their families and looked at everyone else around them with grave suspicion. Six quite young girls made accusations which started the firestorm, and the whole town believed it.

In total, between 1692 and 1693, 19 people were hanged for the crime of witchcraft, and another was tortured to death. Somewhere in between 140 and 150 people were arrested in this event of mass hysteria, and it ultimately subsided suddenly. The residents of Salem suddenly began to feel profound guilt, looking around at one another, wondering what they had done. And thus, one of the darkest chapters in human history came to a close.

1 Aftermath

After nearly two years of fear, panic, paranoia, trials, people being placed in torture chambers, and murder, the last of the so-called witches were released, and the witch hunt fever subsided.^[10] Of those six girls who started the hysteria, only one of them came forth and apologized for the lie which caused the chaos, and basically, everyone just went back to their ordinary lives as if nothing had happened. This was pretty much the end of witch hunts and subsequent trials, after thousands of years of pain and punishment in the name of superstition. But that doesn’t mean that this was the end of witch hunts altogether.

Many nations still have issues with witch hunts taking place, usually in deeply religious and superstitious areas, meaning that witch hunt fever isn’t forever done with; it only lies latent in the tendencies of the believing mind, fearful and willing to strike out at perceived threats. As recently as within the past decade, witch hunts have taken place—and gotten people killed—in places like Indonesia, Cameroon, Ghana, and more nations. There is another list on those witch hunts here, which is definitely an interesting read.

Still writing about dark stuff and history. Here’s a fun little thing about the history of the witch hunt.