46 Fun Facts About Witch

Doubts about which kind of evidence helped end the Salem witch trials?

Spectral evidence was testimony that a suspect's spirit had attacked the accuser, and Increase Mather's Cases of Conscience warned against relying on it.

Which Salem judge alone later publicly confessed his guilt?

Samuel Sewall confessed after a run of family deaths, including a stillborn child, that he feared were God's punishment for the trials.

How did Giles Corey die during the Salem trials?

Giles Corey refused to enter a plea and was pressed to death under stones, a refusal said to have kept his estate from being seized.

Who was the first person tried and executed at Salem?

Bridget Bishop had faced a witchcraft charge back in 1680 without being convicted, yet in 1692 she became the new court's first case.

Eighth-graders won a 2022 exoneration for which last convicted Salem witch?

Elizabeth Johnson Jr. was sentenced to hang in 1693 but spared, and earlier bills clearing the accused had left her out.

What did the 'witch cake' baked at Salem to detect witchcraft contain?

Rye meal and victims' urine went into the cake, which neighbour Mary Sibley had fed to a dog to expose the witch; the afflicted girls soon named names.

The Malleus Maleficarum, the notorious witch-hunting manual, was written by which inquisitor?

Heinrich Kramer wrote it after the bishop of Brixen ordered him out of Innsbruck, where his witch trial had been suspended.

Which 1953 Arthur Miller play dramatised the Salem trials as a McCarthy-era allegory?

Arthur Miller's The Crucible opened on Broadway in January 1953, using the Salem trials as an allegory for the hunt for communists; Miller himself was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1956.

Which pope issued the 1484 bull Summis desiderantes affectibus against devil-worshippers?

Innocent VIII's bull confirmed inquisitors' powers against witches in German lands, and the Malleus Maleficarum later printed it at the front of the book.

Roughly how many people did early modern Europe execute for witchcraft, by historians' consensus?

About 50,000: economists later found the trials surged where Catholic and Protestant churches competed hardest for followers.

Which self-styled 'Witchfinder General' drove England's witch-hunting peak in 1644-47?

Matthew Hopkins toured East Anglia from Manningtree with John Stearne, and suspects in his care were kept awake for nights on end until they confessed.

Which king attended witch trials after storms hit his bridal voyage and wrote the manual Daemonologie?

James VI of Scotland had accused witches examined in his presence, and they confessed to plotting to drown him at sea on his way home from Denmark.

The Pendle witches were tried in 1612 in which English county?

Lancashire's Pendle trials leaned on nine-year-old Jennet Device, whose evidence helped send members of her own family to the gallows.

Anna Göldi, often called Europe's last person executed for witchcraft, died in 1782 in which country?

Anna Göldi, a maidservant accused of harming her employer's daughter, was beheaded in Glarus, Switzerland; Glarus declared her innocent in 2008.

Which French writer's 1862 book La Sorcière portrayed the witch as a rebel against feudal oppression?

Jules Michelet even claimed that Paracelsus, burning the old medical books, said all he knew he had learned from witches.

Which country executed a man for practising witchcraft and sorcery in 2014?

Saudi Arabia beheaded Mohammed bin Bakr al-Alawi for sorcery in August 2014, though Amnesty has said Saudi law does not formally make sorcery a capital crime.

In English folk belief, what is a 'familiar'?

A demon in animal form, or imp, was said to suck a witch's blood, and searchers checked suspects' bodies for the teat it fed from.

Which modern religion did Gerald Gardner make public in 1954?

Wicca: Gardner claimed that a coven of witches meeting in the New Forest had initiated him in 1939.

Modern witchcraft typically honours a Triple Goddess alongside which male deity?

The Horned God is said to be born of the Goddess at Yule, to die as the year wanes and to be born again the next Yule.

What word do modern witches use for practising rituals in the nude?

Skyclad means clothed only by the sky, and one 1899 witch gospel told followers to be naked in their rites as a sign that they were free.

Which plant appears in old recipes for the flying ointment witches were said to use?

Belladonna, deadly nightshade, carries scopolamine, a drug that can work through the skin and cause delirium.

What older English word for a broom names the twiggy version witches ride?

Besom, from Old English besma, was the ordinary word for a broom before 'broom', named for the shrub, replaced it; the witch's besom is a bundle of birch twigs lashed to a hazel or ash handle.

Baba Yaga, the witch of Slavic folklore, lives in a hut that stands on what?

Baba Yaga's hut turns on chicken legs, and she flies about in a mortar, driving it with a pestle and sweeping away her tracks with a broom.

Shakespeare based Macbeth's three witches on an account in which historian's Chronicles?

Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles made Banquo Macbeth's partner in killing the king, a role Shakespeare took away from him.

Which actress played the Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 film?

Margaret Hamilton was burned on her face and hand during a take of her fiery exit from Munchkinland.

How does Dorothy accidentally destroy the Wicked Witch of the West?

Dorothy ends the witch by accident: she splashes her with a bucket of water meant to douse the burning Scarecrow, and the witch melts away ('I'm melting!'); her guards, the Winkies, then hail Dorothy.

In the 1939 film, how does Glinda the Good Witch arrive?

In a bubble: Glinda floats into Munchkinland inside a glowing orb and leaves the same way after sending Dorothy down the Yellow Brick Road.

In Hocus Pocus, what is the surname of the three witches?

The Sanderson sisters, played by Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy, are hanged in colonial Salem and return when a black-flame candle is lit on Halloween.

What punishment do the Hocus Pocus witches inflict on Thackery Binx?

They turn him into an immortal black cat, and three centuries later Thackery Binx helps Max and his little sister fight the witches.

Which streaming service released Hocus Pocus 2 in September 2022?

Disney+ premiered it nearly three decades after the 1993 original, a box-office flop that grew into a cult Halloween favourite.

How does Samantha cast spells on Bewitched?

By twitching her nose: the 2005 film spin-off even cast Nicole Kidman as a real witch hired to play Samantha in a TV remake.

Who played Samantha's mother Endora on Bewitched?

Agnes Moorehead drew Emmy nominations as Endora but won her only Emmy for a single guest role on The Wild Wild West.

In the musical Wicked, what is the green-skinned future Wicked Witch of the West called?

Elphaba: Gregory Maguire built the name from the sound of L. Frank Baum's initials, L-F-B, as a tribute to the Oz author.

Wicked premiered on Broadway in October 2003 at which venue?

Wicked opened at the Gershwin Theatre, Broadway's largest house with about 1,900 seats, on 30 October 2003; it won three Tonys in 2004 and passed $1 billion in Broadway grosses in 2016.

Where do the two future witches meet as students in Wicked?

At Shiz University, headmistress Madame Morrible spots the green-skinned student's raw magical power and privately tutors her in sorcery.

In Roald Dahl's The Witches, what does the Grand High Witch plan to turn all of England's children into?

Mice: even after the boy is turned into one, he sneaks the witches' own potion into their soup.

The Witches is set partly in England and partly in which other country, home of the boy's grandmother?

Norway: Roald Dahl, born in Wales to Norwegian parents, gave the boy a Norwegian grandmother who knows all about witches.

In Sabrina the Teenage Witch, what is the family's talking cat Salem's backstory?

A warlock doing a century as a cat: the Witches' Council sentenced Salem for trying to take over the world.

From the 1920s, Margaret Murray popularised which now-rejected theory about people persecuted as witches?

That they kept an old pagan faith was Murray's claim, and she even wrote Encyclopaedia Britannica's 1929 entry on witchcraft to push it.

What term did English villagers use for local practitioners of helpful magic, as opposed to witches?

Cunning folk healed, found lost or stolen goods and fought curses, and at times even identified the witch blamed for a victim's troubles.

Which governor's arrival with a new charter created the special court for the Salem cases?

Sir William Phips set up the special court in May 1692, and after he later ordered it closed, no more accused witches were hanged.

Which medium was jailed in 1944 under Britain's 1735 act against pretending to summon spirits?

Helen Duncan's conviction led Winston Churchill to demand a report on why the 1735 Witchcraft Act had been used in a modern court.

How was Grace Sherwood of Virginia tried for witchcraft in 1706?

By ducking in water: Grace Sherwood floated in the Lynnhaven River, which counted as guilt, and in 2006 Governor Tim Kaine pardoned her.

In which country did the Torsåker trials execute 71 people for witchcraft in one day?

Sweden's Torsåker trials were driven by the parish priest Laurentius Hornæus, and their 71 victims were beheaded and then burned.

Which Alpine region saw early witch trials begin in 1428, lasting six to eight years?

The Valais trials started in the French-speaking lower Valais and spread to German-speaking areas, coinciding with the Council of Basel.

Which American folklorist published Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches in 1899?

Charles Leland credited the manuscript behind the book to Maddalena, his informant on Italian witch lore.