15 Most Notorious Witches

It's difficult to strike the right chord when talking about witch trials and the events surrounding them as they are, through the eyes of a modern historian looking back, both violent and outlandish. Today, the phenomenon of charging people with crimes of magic and enchantment and putting them on trail seems more suited to a Monty Python sketch than events from a 'civilsed' world. But of couse, they were deadly and anything but ridiculous.

For centuries, thousands of people accused of witchcraft were totured and killed in the most sadistic of ways. For the townsfolk and villagers living in the time of witch trials, you were either religious or you were damned. And so a pattern emerges in the tales- women who lived at the fringe of society, maybe on a second or third marriage and perhaps involved in healing. When the harvest is bountiful and the animals healthy, such figures can be tolerated. In the middle of a harsh winter, with failed crops or sick family members with an illness one can't understand, that outcast on the edge of town becomes a figure of suspicion.

As events gather pace, genuine fear and worry transform into hysteria and neighbours and being accused of anything from consorting with the devil, to eating babies, to smiting an enemy's crops to flying around on pitchforks. No longer were the trials about defeating the devil, they were about rivals setting old scores.

The accused had no hope - innocence was a hard thing to prove and many innocent actions would often be seen as indicative of witchcraft or enchantment. The price to pay was high and many of the accused alive, drowning and beheading were common, and this was often after torture had secured a confession.

Isobel Gowdie

Location: Auldearn, Scotland

Year of accusation: 1662

Isobel Gowdie takes her place in this collection for two reasons. The first is that her remarkably detailed testimony provides insight into the folklore surrounding witchcraft towards the end of the witch-hunt era in Europe. The second is that she appears to have volunteered the information, no violent torture necessary.

Not much is actually know of Gowdie’s life; it’s generally agreed she was of low social status and most likely illiterate, but there are no records of whether she was arrested or came forward voluntarily. It is also generally agreed that she