Via Newspapers.com

This--for lack of a better word, let us say, “unusual”--lawsuit was described in the “Dayton Herald,” September 4, 1883:

A few days ago the infant daughter of Mrs. Sarah Kockert died of some ailment, probably marasmus, as the body of the child wasted away or "shriveled up," as its parents say when they claim it was bewitched. A so-called witch doctor was called in during its illness, and he recommended various strange and peculiar methods of treatment to discover who the witch was, in order to remove the cause of the illness. Finally the name of Mrs. Snyder was given as the witch. That lady instituted legal proceedings against Mrs. Kockert, the mother of the deceased infant, for calling her the witch.

The case was heard before Justice Lung, of the eleventh ward, to-day. All the parties are respectable, well-to-do people. Mrs. Snyder swore that she had been accused of bewitching the child and causing its death. Several women testified that Mrs. Kockert's child was sick, and it was charged that Mrs. Snyder had bewitched it. Mrs. Huntzinger testified that the infant died, and that Mrs. Kockert accused Mrs. Snyder of causing its death.

Mrs. Kockert, the defendant, testified that her child was sick, and she sent for a witch doctor, who told her that the child had been taken away by some one. She told the doctor that Mrs. Snyder had asked, "What is the witch doctor doing here?" and he replied, "When you tread on a dog's tail he howls."

Mrs. Kockert continued: "The doctor gave me bits of paper, and said I should put them in molasses and feed them to the child. He also gave me a strip of paper to place around the child's breast to drive the witch away, telling me I must be careful to tie a knot in the paper. I fed some of the molasses with the papers in it to the child, but it could not eat it all. Next the doctor told me, as the child was restless, to take a briar stick and whip the cradle in which the child lay until I was so tired that I could not strike any more. Before striking the cradle I was to take a leaf off the briar whip and dry it on the stove." Much more testimony was given of other curious methods adopted to drive off the witch and cure the child. The justice, after hearing it, decided to send the case into a higher court. -Reading (Pa.) Cor. N. Y. Herald.

I was unable to find how the dispute was finally resolved.

Witchcraft trials are hardly known for their happy endings, so I am pleased to share with you a tale where one remarkable woman took on a notorious witch-hunter--and won.

The villain of our piece is Heinrich Kramer, monk and self-appointed witch inquisitor.  Kramer was a staunch advocate of a theory which emerged in the late fifteenth century--that the practice of witchcraft was not harmless pagan superstition, but a religious heresy practiced by evil minions of Satan himself.  Kramer was anxious to stage a well-publicized trial to showcase his pet belief, and in 1485, he found his opportunity in Innsbruck, Austria.

Kramer called on Innsbruck’s ruler, Archduke Sigismund, presented him with papal decrees formally sanctioning his witch-hunting work, and informed the Archduke that he intended to set up shop.  This put Sigismund in a bind.  He was not fond of the idea of this bossy little fellow interfering in the life and work of his seemingly law-abiding subjects, but on the other hand, well, orders from the Pope are orders from the Pope.  In what I imagine was a somewhat grumpy manner, Sigismund told Kramer to get on with it already.

We know very little about the other major figure in our story.  This is a great pity, because Helena Scheuberin was clearly a person that History would have liked to have known better.  About all that is recorded about her biography is that she was a native of Innsbruck who, in 1477, married a merchant named Sebastian Scheuber.  (As was the custom in those days, when Helena wed, she took on the feminized version of her husband’s surname.  Her family name is unknown.)  

Helena was an attractive woman from what was evidently a prosperous background, so Sebastian had less fortunate rivals for her hand.  Among them was the head manager of Archduke Sigismund’s kitchens (his name is unrecorded.)  After Helena and Sebastian married, our high-level cook consoled himself by taking a Bavarian woman as his bride.  In October 1485, things took a startling turn when the cook and his wife paid a visit to Kramer in order to accuse Helena of being a witch.  The cook explained that before Helena married Sebastian, she had been the cook’s lover.  After their split, things remained so friendly between them that Helena attended the cook’s wedding.  However, at the reception afterwards, Helena made an ominous comment to the bride:  “You shall not have many good and healthy days here.”  The cook’s wife assured Kramer that, sure enough, in the seven years of her marriage, she had enjoyed only one month of well-being.  Well, what additional proof of witchcraft do you need?

Kramer picked up more local gossip about Helena.  Some of her neighbors said that since her marriage, Helena had an “intimate friendship” with a knight named Jorg Spiess.  After she rejected Jorg’s suggestion that they take things to a more physical level, the knight suddenly and mysteriously died.  Jorg’s family told Kramer that on the day Spiess died, he had dined with Helena.  Afterwards, he took ill, wailing, “I have eaten something I can’t get over…the reason why I’m dying is that woman killed me!”  Jorg sent for his doctor, but he died soon after the physician’s arrival.  (As a side note, Helena’s husband Sebastian was having an affair with one of Jorg’s relatives, which could conceivably give the Spiess family a motive for wanting Helena permanently out of the picture.)

Helena herself, meanwhile, was not shy about treating the witch-hunter with the contempt she felt he deserved.  Kramer whined in a letter that “not only did she harass me with constant rebukes from the start (I had scarcely been in town for three days)” but “one time when I passed her and did not acknowledge her, she spat on the ground, publicly uttering these words: ‘Pah—you! You lousy monk! I hope you get the falling sickness!’”  As a bonus insult, Helena not only refused to attend Kramer’s sermons, she encouraged others to boycott him as well.  She found his obsession with demons and witchcraft “heretical,” adding, “When the devil leads a monk astray, he spouts nothing but heresy. I hope the falling sickness knocks him on the head!”  As Marion Gibson noted in her recent book, “Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials,” Helena’s reaction to the witch-finder was remarkably sane: “She was not overreacting,” Gibson wrote, “nor was she ignorant of the risk--the lives of women in her town were in danger, so she spoke up. Far from being a witch, she was an intelligent, engaged Christian.”  Helena argued theology with Kramer in a way he probably had never experienced before--certainly not from a woman.

Helena was brave, of course, but bravery is an excellent way to put a target on your own back.  And that was exactly what happened.  “For this reason,” Kramer went on, “I had to investigate her name and life for the first time.”  He suspected her of being guilty of “double heresy, namely a heresy of Faith and the heresy of Witches.”  Kramer accused Helena of being not only promiscuous, but “deceitful, spirited, and pushy.”  There were other Innsbruck women Kramer believed guilty of various heresies:  Rosina Hochwartin, her mother Barbara, Barbara Pflieglin, Barbara Hüfeysen, Barbara Selachin, and Agnes Schneiderin. Kramer saw them as a literal coven of witches, with Helena as their leader.  Although a total of 63 people were investigated by Kramer, these women were the only ones to be formally charged.  Gibson found it an “inescapable conclusion” that Kramer “was looking almost exclusively for female witches.”

Their trial began on October 29, 1485.  It was a church court, with Kramer acting as judge.  Helena was the first defendant to be questioned.  It is safe to say that it did not go as Kramer had hoped.  His interrogation went off the rails almost immediately when he bluntly asked Helena if she had been a virgin when she married.  Onlookers were shocked.  Witch or not, one did not ask the wife of a respectable Innsbruck merchant that sort of question.  Christian Turner, who was in court as the representative of the local bishop, rebuked Kramer that such things were “secret matters that hardly concern the case,” and ordered him to change the subject.

Turner was not finished.  He demanded to know why Kramer had not presented the court with formal written articles detailing the charges against the women.  Caught off guard by this unexpected resistance, Kramer muttered that the proceedings would be suspended until 11 a.m. while he prepared the articles.  At eleven, Kramer received another nasty surprise.  When Helena reappeared in court, she was accompanied by Johann Merwart, a highly-respected expert in church law.  It was announced that Lord Merwart would be acting as legal representative for the defendants.

Yes.  The witches had lawyered up.

Even going by the dry historical record, Merwart clearly had fun tearing Kramer’s case into judicial ribbons.  He questioned the technical legitimacy of the whole proceedings.  He mocked Kramer for focusing on “hidden sins” rather than focusing on “articles of bad reputation”...but, whoops, Kramer hadn’t even bothered writing those articles.  Merwart declared that Kramer “just seized the women before he instituted the proceedings in the proper setup.”

Merwart was just getting warmed up.  He dismissed Kramer “as being a suspect judge in this cause,” and asked the Lord Commissary to toss the witch-hunter into the nearest jail cell.  Merwart advised his clients to not answer any of Kramer’s questions “because he was no longer their judge.”

Kramer responded to this onslaught by angrily declaring that he was indeed competent to judge the case.  Merwart cheerily replied that he would bring that question to the Pope, and have him decide.

Christian Turner then intervened, suggesting that the trial be adjourned for two days, to let everyone cool off.  He, Turner, would then give his judgment on whether Kramer was competent to try the case.

Coincidentally or not, when the court reconvened, it was on the evening before All Saints--what we today usually call “Halloween.”  When everyone had gathered together, Turner announced his decision: That the trial had been “instituted in violation of the legal system.”  He ordered that the accused women be immediately released from custody.  It was also revealed that Archduke Sigismund had paid the women’s legal bills, as well as the expenses Kramer had run up in Innsbruck.  Wasn’t that nice of him?  Everyone was now free to go on their merry way.  Court officials strongly suggested that Kramer not let the door hit him on the way out.

Unfortunately for the world, Kramer got revenge for his defeat by writing “Malleus Maleficarum,” intended as a training manual for other witch-hunters.  It is one of the most cruel and misogynistic books ever written.  Kramer described all women--going back to Eve--as stupid, sex-obsessed, dishonest, and generally dangerous.  Little wonder, he argued, that nearly all practitioners of the black arts were female.  He declared that these witches must be sought out and destroyed.  Oh, and don’t bother with “legal niceties.”  Just round up those devil worshipers, and torture them until they confess.  His arguments, deranged as they sound, were appallingly influential, resulting in the persecution and death of uncountable numbers of people, largely women.

Although Kramer lost the Innsbruck battle, you could say he won the war.

It seems ironic that a group of colonists who emigrated to free themselves from tyranny promptly started holding witchcraft trials, but that’s human nature for you.  This week, we look at the woman who had the extremely dubious honor of being the first person in Massachusetts to be executed for sorcery.

Margaret Jones lived with her husband, Thomas, in Charlestown, Mass.  We know little about her other than that she was a midwife and “healer” who prescribed various homemade herbal medicines for her ailing neighbors.

Margaret’s path to the gallows began in the spring of 1648, when, for reasons unrecorded, she quarreled with several of her neighbors.  After this, “some mischief befell such Neighbors in their Creatures, or the like.”  People who took her herbal potions began reporting that the medicines only made them feel much worse.  Margaret unwisely replied to these complaints with warnings that if her customers stopped taking her “remedies,” they would die.

The Charlestown settlers continued to experience a rash of accidents and ailments among both the human residents and their livestock.  Margaret and her mysterious concoctions made for an obvious scapegoat, and she soon became extremely unpopular.  To counter her assumed “witchcraft,” some neighbors gathered together “some things supposed to be bewitched,” and burned them.  Margaret was seen looking at the fire with great concern, which was interpreted as fear of her “black arts” being countered.

Word soon spread as far as Boston that Charlestown had a dangerous witch in their midst.  The general panic reached such a level that the general court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony ordered that Margaret and her husband be put under arrest.  The couple was seized, forced into a boat, and brought to Boston for imprisonment and trial.

On May 18, 1648, the “witch test” known as “watching” was performed on Margaret.  Guards came to her jail cell with ropes, and she was hauled to the center of the room, where they had placed a stool.  She was told she had a choice: either sit on the floor with her legs crossed or be bound in that position.  Unsurprisingly, she chose the former.  For the next 24 hours, she was forced to sit in that position, without being allowed food or sleep.  There was a small opening made in the wall, where, it was assumed, her “familiar” would enter.  Then, spies settled down to peer into her cell and await events.

To everyone’s horror, the “familiar” indeed materialized.  According to colony leader John Winthrop, a little child--obviously an imp or demon of some sort--was seen in Margaret’s arms.  The apparition ran into another room, and vanished.  A subsequent search of Margaret’s body found the tell-tale “witch’s teat” in her "secret parts."

Whatever it was Margaret’s guards saw--or thought they saw--in her cell, her fate was now sealed.  However, it is good to know that at least some people stood by her.  It is recorded that a woman named Alice Stratton continued to assert her friend’s innocence.  Alice regularly visited Margaret with a Bible, where the two women could be seen sobbing over the tragedy they both knew was coming.

Margaret’s trial was held in Boston’s First Church in early June 1648.  Winthrop summarized the case presented against her:

June 15, 1648: At this court, one Margaret Jones, of Charlestown, was indicted and found guilty of witchcraft, and hanged for it. The evidence against her was:

1. That she was found to have such a malignant touch, as many persons, men, women, and children, whom she stroked or touched with any affection or displeasure, or etc., were taken with deafness, or vomiting, or other violent pains or sickness.

2. She practising physic, and her medicines being such things as, by her own confession, were harmless, – as anise-seed, liquors, etc., – yet had extraordinary violent effects.

3. She would use to tell such as would not make use of her physic, that they would never be healed; and accordingly their diseases and hurts continued, with relapse against the ordinary course, and beyond the apprehension of all physicians and surgeons.

4. Some things which she foretold came to pass accordingly; other things she would tell of, as secret speeches, etc., which she had no ordinary means to come to the knowledge of.

5. She had, upon search, an apparent teat...as fresh as if it had been newly sucked; and after it had been scanned, upon a forced search, that was withered, and another began on the opposite side.

6. In the prison, in the clear day-light, there was seen in her arms, she sitting on the floor, and her clothes up, etc., a little child, which ran from her into another room, and the officer following it, it was vanished. The like child was seen in two other places to which she had relation; and one maid that saw it, fell sick upon it, and was cured by the said Margaret, who used means to be employed to that end. Her behavior at her trial was very intemperate, lying notoriously, and railing upon the jury and witnesses, etc., and in the like distemper she died. The same day and hour she was executed, there was a very great tempest at Connecticut, which blew down many trees, etc.

In the face of what everyone present saw as overwhelming evidence that Margaret was a witch, the “guilty” verdict was a foregone conclusion.  She was hanged on June 15.  Although many pleaded with Margaret to repent and confess her guilt, thus at least saving herself from an eternity in Hell, she refused.  One neighbor, John Hale, later recorded, “But she constantly professed herself innocent of that crime. Then one prayed her to consider if God did not bring this punishment upon her for some other crime and asked if she had not been guilty of stealing many years ago; she answered, she had stolen something, but it was long since and she had repented of it, and there was grace enough in Christ to pardon that long ago; but as for witchcraft she was wholly free from it, and so she said unto her death.”

Via Newspapers.com

You have to admit that “I was a crocodile at the time” isn’t an alibi you hear in every murder trial.  The “Greenville News,” March 23, 1963:

BLANTYRE, Nyasaland (UPI) A man accused of killing a child by dragging her into a river while disguised as a crocodile testified Friday he had changed himself into a crocodile through magic taught him by a witch doctor's ghost. Elard David Chipandale, 35, said, however, he could not change into a crocodile before the court because he "threw away my magic powers when arrested" on the murder charge. He said he could not testify in "crocodile language" for the same reason. Chipandale is charged with murdering 8-year-old Mponde Lyton. Also on trial is the girl's grandfather, Odreck Kasoci.

Chipandale told the court his witch doctor uncle's ghost taught him to tie certain "magic twigs and bark" to his body, transforming him into a crocodile. He said the change into a crocodile was gradual. He said "my teeth became as large as index fingers, my mouth and nose became huge, and my fingers became as sharp as knives." He testified Kasoci offered him money to kill the girl but at first he refused because "I was a friendly crocodile who ate only fish." But after persistent requests, Chipandale said he agreed to murder the girl for $12.60. But he testified Kasoci paid him only $1.40 for the job. Several witnesses testified Thursday they believed Chipandale could turn himself into a crocodile by magic, although no one had seen him do it.

The case came to notice in August 1960, 16 months after the girl died, when Chipandale sued Kasoci in a native court for the blood money. At that hearing Kasoci admitted hiring Chipandale to kill the girl, but said the price was only $7. Chipandale won the case and got his money for the job. A native policeman who attended the hearing reported the case to authorities and both men were arrested. The state charged that Chipandale, dressed in the bark of a tree to make himself look like a crocodile, waited by a river for the child.

Then he dragged the girl, slid into the river, stabbed her and broke her left arm. When nearby villagers, attracted by her screams, approached, the "crocodile man" swam off down the river. However, Kasoci denied to the murder court that he paid Chipandale to kill his granddaughter. He said the native court "intimidated" him into paying Chipandale the money. Kasoci testified that police beat him into signing a confession and that he did not pay Chipandale any money.

You probably will not be surprised to learn that both men were sentenced to death.

For a period during 1894-5, the “Louisville Courier-Journal” covered--in a remarkably matter-of-fact way--a series of bizarre occurrences taking place in the city.  It is a tale of witchcraft and paranormal phenomena that sounds more like something out of medieval Europe than late 19th century America.

The fun started in November 1894, when Sallie Morton, the proprietor of what the “Courier-Journal” euphemistically called a “disorderly house,” found salt sprinkled in her yard.  Subsequently, Morton found that someone had hidden in her bed a bundle of red flannel containing human hair and three severed human figures.  Folklore says that all these items would bring death upon the unfortunate recipient.  

Clearly, someone was not overly fond of Ms. Morton.  Sallie believed that “someone” was her next door neighbor Alice Tucker, who managed a rival establishment.  It is not clear whether Tucker targeted Morton out of a desire to snag some of her customers, or because of simple personal spite.  Whatever the reasons for Tucker’s witchery, it proved highly effective.  On January 18, 1895, Morton obliged her enemy by suddenly dying of angina pectoris.

Morton’s demise was the kickoff for things really getting weird.  After the coroner had examined her corpse, the body was carried upstairs to be prepared for burial.  While this sad task was going on, everyone present in the house heard “four pieces of mournful music” emanating from the piano in the parlor.

No one was near the piano at the time.  Or, to be more accurate, no one among the living was near the piano.

That night, the bed holding Morton’s corpse began shaking.  Then, the entire bedroom started quaking, to the point where “a glass of water could not be kept on the dresser or mattress without a weight being placed on it.”  A mirror on the wall swayed back and forth. Several women in attendance fainted, most notably Alice Tucker, who was probably shocked by the potency of her curses.  The shaking continued all the following day, attracting a crowd of some 1,500 Louisvillians with nothing better to do.  Policemen were summoned, but all they could conclude was the unhelpful statement that the floor was shaky.

The funeral took place in Morton’s home/bordello on January 20, although there was no preacher in attendance.  A quaint touch was provided by a fellow known only as “Slippery Bill,” who had the brilliant idea of charging people ten cents each for the privilege of entering the house and gazing at the still-shaking bed.  These looky-loos apparently provided the only burial ceremony.  Bill’s entrepreneurial spirit earned him about ten dollars until the police shooed him off.

Even after Morton was buried, she was apparently not resting in peace.  Days after the funeral, Alice Tucker--no doubt unnerved at the possibility of Sallie seeking revenge from beyond the grave--repeatedly called the police complaining of the eerie noises coming from Morton’s now-empty house.  Some of the neighbors were so terrified, they moved away.

As late as 1904, the “Courier-Journal” reported that Morton’s long-deserted home was still believed to be haunted.  The owner was unable to find anyone willing to live there, due to “the taint of the hoodoo.”

Via Newspapers.com

This little story--which is weird even by the standards of this blog--appeared in the ”Hillsboro News Herald,” November 18, 1875.  It’s a reprint from the “Mechanicsburg (Pennsylvania) Journal.”

Mechanicsburg is in Cumberland county, but the scene of this ghost story is laid in Warrington township, York county, and the plain, unvarnished tale is unfolded to the editor of the Journal by one for whom he vouches as "one of our most reliable and truthful citizens, and an unbeliever in all things supernatural." Several weeks before the story opens there came to the house of a Mrs. Nesbit, living in the county and township aforesaid, a woman with a burned arm, who asked to be allowed to stay all night Mrs. Nesbit declined to grant the request, whereupon the woman asked her how she would like it if she should not be allowed to rest? Mrs. Nesbit replied that she did not know, with which truthful, though not entirely novel remark, the interview appears to have terminated.

Shortly after the above conversation, Mrs. Nesbit discovered in an old hut adjoining the house they live in, and also in their own house, the face of a human being, with large eyes, resembling balls of fire, moving around from room to room in both houses. Pleasant, was it not? Did she scream? Did she faint? History is silent on this point, but shortly after she was stricken with rheumatism so badly she could not rest in any position, and thus became a fine example of retributive justice. After a time the rheumatism left, but not so the ghost. It was a most persistent as well as disagreeable intruder, and unlike most ghosts, which content themselves with scaring their victims out of their wits, resorted to personal violence. As the conditions grew more favorable it materialized a full, but naked human body, the eyes still fiery, and in this shape it would visit Mrs. Nesbit's bedside nightly, pick her up, bed-clothes and all, and fling her into a corner, where she would either faint or go into convulsions. What Mr. Nesbit was about all this while does not appear. It is only incidentally that we learn of the existence of such a man, and it is tolerably safe to presume that while the above tragedy was being enacted he was under the bed.

Of course nobody could stand such treatment long; and so Mrs. Nesbit called the neighbors in, and on their arrival the house was too small to hold them.  Promptly on time the ghost appeared, apparently gratified at having so large an audience. All in the room could see the fiery eyes, but only Mrs. Nesbit could see the human form.

Still the witnesses beheld the two large balls of fire roiling back and forth, approaching the bed where the lady was, and grasping the bed-clothes. The lady fainted, and several going to her assistance, the balls of fire moved away from her and grasped the child in the cradle, but it was also released by persons standing by, and the balls disappeared, leaving all very much frightened and disconcerted. This was dreadful, surely.  We cannot blame the people for being frightened.

But now comes the strange part of our story, an expression which suggests the alarming possibility that such performances as have already been described are quite a matter-of-course in York county. In the neighborhood lived Dr. Gusler, famous for his many cures in witchcraft, another extraordinary character. He being called in, pronounced it a clear case of bewitchery, and instructed the afflicted lady to heat a sickle red hot at a certain hour next night and pass it several times down her arm as close as possible without burning herself. Also, if anybody should appear and ask her for anything, nothing was to be given on any account. The instructions were obeyed, and, sure enough, next day appeared the woman with the burned arm and asked for some lard to grease it. This being refused, she asked for a cloth to tie it up, and then for a pin; but nothing was given her. and she went off. Here the interesting narrative breaks off. The editor says a complete cure was effected, but does not say whether or not the ghost was laid. Neither does he give us the key to the mystery, and we can only conclude that York county is a highly undesirable place to live, or else that Cumberland county whisky must be of a peculiarly virulent quality.

This week, we visit a curious footnote in English history: That country’s first legal proceeding involving witchcraft where detailed records have survived.

Our story opens one night in November 1323.  A group of 27 “gentlemen” from Coventry and Warwickshire gathered at the house of John de Nottingham, a well-known necromancer.  Robert Latoner, who served as the spokesman for these potential customers, explained to Nottingham that they had enemies in the very highest places in the land: the Prior of Coventry, the Earl of Winchester, royal “favorite” Hugh le Despenser, and--last but certainly not least--King Edward II himself.  Latoner said that he would pay Nottingham £20, and the sorcerer’s assistant Robert Mareschal £15, if they succeeded in using their witchy arts to kill the king and the other named pests.  They also promised Nottingham that once the deed was done, he would be provided with lodging at any religious house he chose.  (After murdering the king, Nottingham would naturally want to keep a very low profile.)

Nottingham saw no reason to refuse, so in December 1323, a week after the Feast of St. Nicholas, he received partial payment in advance, along with four pounds of wax and two rolls of canvas that were needed for his important work.  He used these materials to create wax figures representing the king, the Earl of Winchester, the prior (along with the clergyman’s Cellarer and Seneschal,) Hugh le Despenser, and a man named Robert de Sowe, who was apparently used as a test case.  After some weeks of performing occult rituals, Nottingham held up the image of Sowe and chanted an incantation while Mareschal pushed a spike into the figure’s head.  The following morning, Nottingham sent Mareschal to Sowe’s home to observe results.

What Mareschal found was very satisfactory indeed.  Overnight, Sowe had gone raving mad.  He was screaming hysterically, had completely lost his memory, and was unable to recognize anyone around him.  Poor Sowe remained in this condition for some days, until Nottingham removed the pin from the waxen Sowe’s head and pushed it through the heart.  Sowe died about a week later.

Nottingham’s clients must have felt that warm sense of satisfaction that comes when you know you have gotten value for money.

Our little band of necromantic assassins decided not to waste time.  Their next victim would be Edward himself.  Fortunately for that monarch, before this plan could be carried out, Mareschal got cold feet.  Killing some small-potatoes nobody was all well and good, but the King of England was a different ballgame.  He wasn’t about to risk a charge of regicide for a lousy £15.  Mareschal went to the Sheriff of Warwickshire with quite a story to tell.  The result was that the Sheriff, on the personal command of the King, immediately arrested Nottingham.  The wizard’s former clients turned themselves in.  Predictably enough, they denied everything.  Friends of Richard Latoner and the other “gentlemen” paid their bail, on the promise of returning to face justice after Easter 1325.  Nottingham and Mareschal were put into the custody of marshall Robert de Dumbleton.

Fifteen days after Easter, Dumbleton was ordered to bring John de Nottingham before the King.  Alas, the marshall sighed, that was impossible.  His prisoner had died suddenly.  (It will be forever unknown if Nottingham passed away from natural causes, or if this was the medieval version of “Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself.”)  This oh-so-convenient demise meant that the case against Latoner and Co. collapsed, and the men were set free to go their merry way.  Mareschal’s fate is unrecorded, but it is assumed that he died in prison.

And that, as they say, was that.

If you’re one of those people with a hankering to escape big city hell for the quiet bliss of rural small-town life, I present to you the following case, which would not be out-of-place in an episode of “Midsomer Murders.”  It’s a handy reminder that evil is everywhere.

Elizabeth Miller was a 38-year-old spinster who lived in Siberia, Indiana.  The township’s name suited it:  Siberia was a tiny, isolated farming community of less than 100 people.  After the death of her mother, which took place about a year before our story opens, Miller lived virtually as a recluse.  She spent most of her days shut up in her little house, with the doors firmly closed and the windows always covered by curtains.  It seemed that all she asked of the world was to be left completely alone.  Unfortunately, that seems to be all we know about her.

On the morning of May 10, 1929, a group of children walked past the Miller house on their usual route to school.  They were bemused to note that Elizabeth’s front door was wide open.  When the youngsters approached the house, they were stunned to see Miller’s body lying in a small hallway a few feet inside, surrounded by blood.  The children ran to the nearest neighbor, who summoned police. 

Detectives noted that the modest home was undisturbed, except for a large rock near the front door, and a broken window.  It was surmised that during the night, someone had thrown the rock through the window to get Miller’s attention.  When she opened the door, this someone fired four rounds of birdshot into her from a 12-gauge shotgun.  Neighbors told police that at around 10:30 the previous night, they heard the sound of gunshots.  However, none of them had bothered to investigate the noise.  They added that during the past week, a man they didn’t recognize had visited Miller’s home, always at night.  This was highly unusual, as normally her only visitor was her brother Frank, who came by once a month.  This man was never identified.  (Note: I suspect that this "mystery man" was a red herring, invented by Miller's neighbors to draw suspicion away from themselves.)

Although police had little luck coming up with any suspects, the probable motive for the murder became clearer.  Elizabeth Miller was not popular among her fellow Siberians.  To be brief, the townsfolk regarded her as highly strange, even sinister.  Her neighbors admitted that they had all been afraid of her.  A few were forthright enough to say they were glad she was dead.  Although the adults refused to say much about Miller, or to provide any hints about who might have killed her, their children were more forthcoming.  Siberia, like many rural communities, had a strong belief in superstitions and the paranormal.  Omens, hexes, curses, ghosts, and the like were very real to them.  The children of Siberia unhesitatingly told authorities (and eager journalists) that their parents had warned them to stay well away from Miller, because she was a witch.  Miller, they said, could cause anyone to have rheumatism.  Her “evil powers” caused a great deal of misfortune among her neighbors.  The adults told of bewitched farm animals and a local abandoned cabin that was haunted by malevolent spirits.  A farmer told reporters about a man “who can milk a cow although the cow is several miles away from him.”  “I know,” he added angrily, “for he cast a spell of that kind on my cow when he was mad at me.”  The seemingly sleepy, pastoral town turned out to be something straight out of “The Wicker Man.”

"Racine Journal Times," June 12, 1929, via Newspapers.com

Thanks to the uncooperative attitude of the townsfolk, the police had no choice but to give up their investigation, and Miller’s murder was soon forgotten by the outside world.  Although it was, to the authorities, an unsolved crime, it was probably not a mystery to the victim’s neighbors.  In such a small, close-knit community where everyone knew everything about everybody, I suspect that all of Siberia knew who had killed Miller, and their only regret was not being able to give the murderer a ticker-tape parade.  My one big question about this strange case is this:  When Siberians continued to have their share of hardships:  the cattle dying, the crops failing, little Johnny coming down with whooping cough--Whom did they blame then?

Show me a story about beer-swilling Scottish witch cats, and, naturally, my immediate reaction is to yell for joy and start typing.  A blogger lives for that sort of thing.

Our little tale opens in late 1718, at the Burnside of Scrabster home of a mason named William Montgomery.  He and his family had a cat problem.  Of late, a number of highly sinister felines had mysteriously invaded his home.  They terrorized his servant into quitting, (after hearing the cats talking among themselves in human and intelligible voices,) and left Mrs. Montgomery so frazzled that she threatened to leave her husband and retire to the less cat-plagued town of Thurso.  Worst of all, the diabolical kitties drank up his ale.

Montgomery decided serious measures were called for.  Arming himself with a sword, a dirk, and an ax, he launched an assault on the unwanted guests, killing two of the cats and wounding several others.  At least, he thought at the time that two of them were dead. Curiously enough, by the following morning their corpses had mysteriously vanished.  He also noted that the wounds he had inflicted drew no blood.

Then things really got weird. A local woman, Helen Andrew, who had long been suspected of being a witch, died unexpectedly.  Another reputed sorceress named McHuistan killed herself by leaping into the sea.  Most startling of all, an old lady named Margaret Nin-Gilbert had one of her legs suddenly fall off.  The local residents--who could put two and two together as well as anyone--immediately concluded that the three women were among the cats who had infested the Montgomery home. Nin-Gilbert’s “black and putrefied” leg was presented to the local sheriff (something which must have really made his day) and he was ordered to take the appropriate steps.

Margaret was quickly arrested.  Under what was probably not very gentle questioning, she soon admitted that she had been inside Montgomery’s house in the form of a “feltered [shaggy] cat,” and that the loss of her leg was due to the injuries his dirk had inflicted.  Nin-Gilbert stated that the trouble began when a woman named Margaret Olson had been evicted from her lodgings due to the “wickedness of her behavior.”  The Montgomery family moved into her former home.  As a result, Olson solicited Nin-Gilbert to “do mischief” in revenge.  

Besides Olson, Nin-Gilbert named four other women as her cat-confederates.  Naturally, they were arrested as well.  Margaret died in jail soon afterward.  (Accounts vary as to whether she succumbed to natural causes, or if she was murdered by the women who were, thanks to her, fellow inmates.)

Eventually, the whole affair reached the ears of Lord Advocate Robert Dundas.  He wrote a stern letter to the sheriff scolding him for proceeding on such a matter without his authority.  The entire case, to his mind, was so utterly absurd that he ordered the investigation to cease.  The women Nin-Gilbert had accused were freed, and that, it seems, was that.

Unfortunately, history does not record if Montgomery ever saw the cats again.

Richard Dadd, "Come Unto These Yellow Sands"

Witchcraft trials were inevitably full of all sorts of quaint and curious details, but among aficionados of such things it’s often claimed that the weirdest one of all was of an Aberdeen, Scotland, resident named Andro Man.  Man’s case is unusual because he claimed to hobnob not with the bog-standard devils and witches, but with fairies.

Andro Man was about 70 years old when he became a target in what is now generally called the Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1597.  The Aberdeen resident was accused of being “a manifest and notorious witche and sorcerer.”

That description doesn’t give the half of it.  According to Man’s testimony, when he was a boy the Queen of Elfland visited his mother’s house to give birth to a child.  Beginning around 1565, he began having a sexual relationship with the Queen.  This resulted in the birth of several children, whom he occasionally saw, but had no hand in raising.  He stated that the Queen gave him certain magical abilities, such as the knowledge of all things, and the ability to heal any disease.  (Alas, he was denied the power to raise the dead.)

Man socialized with other residents of fairyland.  At one of their meetings, he was introduced to the ghosts of James IV and Thomas the Rhymer (the latter was also a lover of the Queen.)  Man served an angel-like spirit clad all in white named Christsonday.  (Of course, Man’s interrogators believed Christsonday was the Devil, and the so-called Queen was merely one of his demons.)  Man could summon the spirit any time he wished by uttering the word, “Benedicite.”  (A Latin word meaning an invocation of a blessing.)   Dismissing Christsonday was a bit more complicated.  In order to get his spirit to leave, Man had to place a dog under his left armpit, throw the unfortunate animal into Christsonday’s mouth, and say the word, “Maikpeblis.”

According to Man, the Queen could take on any appearance she wished, have sex with any male who took her fancy, and “makes any king whom she pleases.”  He explained that “The Queen has a grip of all the craft, but Christsonday is the gudeman [husband or master of a household] and has all power under God.”  His interrogators were particularly displeased with Man’s claim that Christsonday was God’s son-in-law.

Man stated that Christsonday gave him a vivid description of the eventual Day of Judgement.  “The fire will burn the water and the earth and make all plain,” after which Christsonday will stand at the gates of Hell with a book recording the sins of every individual.  After the good have been separated from the evil, Christsonday himself will be cast into the flames of Hell.

Man described how on Rood Day [more commonly known as the Feast of the Cross Day] of 1597, he saw Christsonday come out of the snow in the shape of a stag.  Accompanying the spirit were the Queen and a crowd of elves riding white horses.  The elves looked and acted human--they were particularly fond of food, strong drink, and general revelry--but they were far stronger than humankind.  There were other humans there, but they were the Queen’s captives.  (This is a probable reference to the Scottish belief that spirits of the dead could become imprisoned in the fairy realm.)  Man often attended fairy parties and feasts, waking up the next morning in a moss, surrounded by the grass and straw that were the genuine appearance of the lavish furnishings and decorations which had decorated the fairy hall the night before.

On a more practical level, Man was taught how to protect crops and livestock.  He kept cattle from disease by placing four charm-stones in the corners of their field.  To prevent them from running away, he dipped a plough-iron in salmon water.  Before doing any ploughing, he repeated a certain charm nine times to ensure a good crop.  (He could also, if he chose, curse a crop by throwing straw into the corn and saying nine times, “The dirt to thee and the crops to me.”)  Man stated he once cured a man of disease by moving him nine times through a hank of yarn, and a cat nine times in the opposite direction.  This cast the sickness on the cat, which hardly seems fair.  This multi-talented fellow also did a spot of palm-reading.  Unlike most “witches,” his alleged activities were apparently all meant to be beneficial.  That hardly stopped the authorities from arresting him, of course.

At his trial in October 1597, Man tried to escape punishment by turning super-grass.  He not only confessed, he offered to reveal to officials the identities of other witches in the area.  For some weeks, he kept everyone entertained by visiting various localities and pointing to various residents with details about their alleged supernatural wrongdoing.  Fortunately, none of the accused were ever brought to trial.  By January 1598, the authorities had gotten bored with Man’s increasingly unhelpful line of patter.  And the expense of feeding and housing him was getting prohibitive.

So they burned him.

Via Newspapers.com

Door-to-door salespeople can be a pesky lot, but it would be hard to top the one featured in this report in the “St. Louis Post Dispatch” on August 2, 1908:

That a gypsy woman has bewitched her and her little nephew is the firm belief of Mrs. William Koester of 4126 Osceola street. 

An old gypsy woman, with a pack on her back, who looked like a witch, called at her home last Wednesday and became angry because Mrs. Koester did not buy from her. As she left, the gypsy said: "You will be sorry you did not buy," and Mrs. Koester says the old crone gave her a look that made her think of stories she had heard of "the evil eye." 

"She was the queerest old hag I ever saw,” says Mrs. Koester.  “She was bent and had a hump on her back exactly like the pictures of witches you see in the story books.  When she first came in I was afraid of her. She put her pack down and opened it, and although I told her I would not buy, she insisted on taking out all her goods and showing them.

"And as I refused to buy each article she became more and more angry. At last she packed up and with a look in her eyes that I can never forget she patted my little nephew on the head and then came over to me and rubbed the palm of her hand across my head and mumbled something in a strange tongue.” 

The old gypsy woman had not been gone long from the house until strange things began to happen. The first unusual thing Mrs. Koester heard was the striking of a clock in her front room, although she has no clock in the house. 

“It struck four times slowly and distinctly like the tolling of a funeral bell," says Mrs. Koester.  

Next she saw the table go tipping and dancing across the floor, she says. Then, as she sat at the table, some strange force took the shoe lace from her shoe and wound it around a broom-handle. 

Her little nephew became frightened and declared that he saw a man in the house moving around from room to room. He was a little old man, bent and with an evil-looking face. Mrs. Koester tried to soothe him and convince him that he saw nothing, but every little while he would run, screaming to her and bury his face in her lap and cry out that the man was after him. 

Mrs. Koester’s husband works in a shoe factory; they own their home and they have never been erratic.  But Mrs. Koester told this story last night: 

"As I went into my front room this afternoon leading my little nephew by the hand I saw a man standing at the chiffonier. I saw him plainly. He was small and old and his figure was bent. His face bore a strong resemblance to the gypsy woman. I asked him: 'Who are you?’  He answered: 'I am a friend of yours.' I asked him:’What's your name?' He answered: 'M.W.’  I never knew anyone with a name those initials would fit and I am mystified to know what it means." 

The neighbors are taking a deep interest in the case and nearly two hundred of them visited the house last night.

So now you know why people put up “No Soliciting” signs.

The "Memoirs" of Sir John Reresby (1634-1689) contain a reference to a minor witch trial which somehow morphed into one of the oddest "ghost" sightings on record:

Leaving the public affairs for a while, at this untoward pass, I would venture to take notice of a private occurrence which made some noise at York.

The assizes being there held on the 7th of March, 1686-7, an old woman was condemned for a witch. Those who were more credulous in points of this nature than myself, conceived the evidence to be very strong against her. The boy she was said to have bewitched, fell down on a sudden before all the court, when he saw her, and would then as suddenly return to himself again, and very distinctly relate the several injuries she had done him: but in all this it was observed, the boy was free from any distortion; that he did not foam at the mouth, and that his fits did not leave him gradually, but all at once; so that, upon the whole, the judge thought it proper to reprieve her, in which he seemed to act the part of a wise man. But though such is my own private opinion, I cannot help continuing my story. One of my soldiers being upon guard about eleven in the night, at the gate of Clifford Tower, the very night after the witch was arraigned, he heard a great noise at the castle, and going to the porch, he there saw a scroll of paper creep from under the door, which, as he imagined by moonshine, turned first into the shape of a monkey, and thence assumed the form of a turkey-cock, which passed to and fro by him. Surprized at this, he went to the prison, and called the under-keeper, who came and saw the scroll dance up and down and creep under the door, where there was scarce an opening of the thickness of half a crown. This extraordinary story I had from the mouth of both the one and the other: and now leave it to be believed or disbelieved, as the reader may be inclined this way or that.

You have to admit, this is not the sort of thing that happens every day.

Via Newspapers.com

About all I ask from the Blog Gods is that every so often, they send me stories about towns haunted by sinister witch cats.  The “Buffalo Enquirer,” January 22, 1897:

Toledo, O., Jan. 22. About twenty-one miles out of Toledo in a little town known as Richfield Center, a remarkable condition of affairs exists, and the German country residents are panic stricken. Nearly twenty families are down with a disease which baffles them completely. They can find no explanation for it, and tell extraordinary tales of the singular manifestations of some evil influence among them. They believe they are bewitched, and nothing can move them from this opinion. 

The afflicted ones insist that they can neither eat nor sleep, and that many of their number are slowly dying from witchcraft. A. F. Miller, a farmer, came in from there last night after a daughter who was in the city and whom he wanted to go home and assist in nursing her mother who is down with the disease. In his family there are also four sons stricken, and one of them is near death. He says, and in this Henry Nieman, another farmer, confirms his story, that at night their great trouble occurs. Black cats, in some mysterious manner, enter the bedrooms, no matter how securely the doors may be fastened, and hiss, snarl and caterwaul about the room, leap up on the bed and follow the inmates about the room when they arise. If the bedrooms are vacated the animals disappear as miraculously as they appear. 

The epidemic, affliction or plague started three or four weeks ago, although a disease somewhat similar existed in the community last autumn. The youngest son of one of the families who is afflicted cannot sleep in a bedroom, but lies down in the kitchen beside the stove. He will not go into a room where there are any beds. It is claimed this is true with the children in at least a dozen other families. 

One woman, who has three children, says that they have all been sleeping in one room recently, and that as many as four of the black cats have entered the room at a time and their actions are such as to frighten the strongest hearted. A farmer, Andrew Wolson Miller, it is related, put up a stove in his barn and took his family there to sleep, but they experienced the same illusions as in the house. The livestock also became frantically alarmed. 

Miller says the farm horses, which have been in good condition until recently, will suddenly snort and rear around their enclosure, wild with fright. Sometimes the animals will do this for several hours at a time, until completely exhausted. Several have died as a result of fright and exhaustion. The milk of the cows in these families, it is alleged, is red, and this is cited as one of the surest evidences of witches.

Another remarkable part of the story, as told, is that the feathers in their pillows and beds have been found to be formed in perfectly made wreaths, hard and compact. Mrs. Miller says that she has destroyed at least ten pounds of feathers in a hope of removing the spell, and that the other women in the neighborhood have burned whole feather beds for the same reason. One man says that wooden chips in a box near a bedroom door curled into wreaths.

Doctors seem unable to give any relief or diagnose the condition of affairs. They are of the opinion that the trouble arises from some sanitary arrangement from which a disease which plays havoc with the imagination grows and which is slowly spreading in the neighborhood.

As late as May of that year, newspapers continued to report weird, mysterious illnesses and deaths in Richfield Center, for which no cause could be found other than our goblin cats.  Then, as generally happens, the story seems to have quietly faded away with no known resolution.

"A Visit to a Witch," Edward Frederick Brewtnall

Back when there was a common belief in witchcraft, a surprising number of people openly boasted to their neighbors about their alleged Satanic powers.  Whether it was from a desire to feel superior to their peers, a mischievous delight in inspiring fear, or sheer bloody-mindedness, some “witches” proudly identified as such.  Such boasting, of course, brought a great many of them to the gallows.

Deliberately allowing those around you to think you have sinister supernatural powers was a particularly dangerous pastime during certain eras.  A fine example is the case of one Janet Wishart, who was among the most prominent figures in what has gone down in history as the Great Scottish Witch Hunt.  If her trial testimony is to be believed, Wishart was a veritable Energizer Bunny of Evil.

For some 25 years, the residents of Aberdeen, Scotland were convinced that Wishart was a witch--a belief she did absolutely nothing to contradict.  Everyone in town lived in supernatural terror of her.  Her diabolical ways were first recorded in 1573, when two boys, John Leslie and John Johnson, caught her stealing from a neighbor.  When the boys were found drowned a short time later, townsfolk were convinced that Wishart had bewitched them into committing suicide.  In 1581, she cast a spell upon the wife of one Malcolm Carr, causing the woman to be ill with fever for six months.

Four years after that, Wishart was involved in a more complicated affair.  After a brewer named Katherine Rattray managed to get on Janet’s bad side (reportedly not a difficult thing to do,) Wishart cursed Rattray’s stock of ale, leaving it all spoiled.  When Rattray’s daughter, Katherine Ewin, begged Wishart to restore the ale, the witch relented.  She told Ewin to go to the brewery before dawn, taking care beforehand not to cross herself, speak, wash her hands, pass over water or breastfeed her baby.  Then Ewin was to say, “I to God, and thou to the Devil” three times and throw a charm of red, green, and blue threads into the fire.

This brought the ale back to normal, but when Ewin was indiscreet enough to teach the ritual to others, Wishart, irked at having her trade secrets revealed, placed a fatal curse on Ewin’s baby.  Then Ewin’s store of ale disappeared from a locked room where only she had the key.  As if all this wasn’t bad enough, for the next twenty nights, a cat appeared in the bedroom of Ewin and her husband Ambrose, keeping them awake and, on one visit, biting off a chunk of Ambrose’s arm.

In 1591, Wishart was seen hobnobbing with Satan himself at a military blockhouse.  In the following year, she placed a curse on one Andrew Ardes, causing him to come down with a fever which killed him eight days later.  In 1593, a merchant named Walter Healing refused to sell Wishart some wool.  She responded by placing a spell on Healing’s child which soon led to the infant’s death.  In 1594, Wishart’s servant, James Ailhows, decided he had enough of working for a witch, and handed in his notice.  By this point in our little tale, you will not be surprised to learn that Wishart then put a spell on Ailhows which left him bedridden for months.  He was only cured when he paid another witch to lift the curse.  (For those of you curious about such things, Ailhows was brought back to health by washing in south-running water and passing through a horse’s saddle-strap.)

In that same year, she placed a spell on one Bessie Schives, which for over four months left the unfortunate woman “the one half-day roasting as in a fiery furnace, with an extraordinary kind of drought, that she could not be slaked, and the other half-day in an extraordinary kind of sweating, melting, and consuming her body, as a white burning candle, which kind of sickness is a special point of witchcraft.”

In 1596, Elspeth Reid, the sweetheart of Wishart’s son Thomas, caught Janet and another woman performing some manner of Midsummer ritual.  Wishart’s response was entirely predictable: Reid fell into an illness which lasted for six months.

It must be said that on at least one occasion, Wishart used her powers in a commendable manner.  When her son-in-law, John Allan, took to beating his wife, Janet avenged her daughter by coming through Allen’s window in the form of a brown dog and attacking him.

Although all the above were the high points of Wishart’s resume, history records a miscellany of other disagreeable doings: causing stillbirths, dedicating a section of farmland to the Devil, causing a neighbor’s cow to produce poison instead of milk, bewitching some sheets into turning another neighbor insane (don’t ask,) killing hens, “raising the wind” in order to winnow malt barley (thus leaving her neighbors with no wind at all,) destroying businesses, and the like.

Wishart’s son Thomas Leys proudly carried on the family tradition.  It was said that he helped his mother bewitch the property of one Andrew Clark.  When Clark threatened to sue, Thomas warned Clark would receive a fatal curse if he persisted.  On Halloween night in 1596, Leys led a group of witches, dressed “some as hares, some as cats, some in other likenesses” in a dance around the Mercat Cross.  The music was provided by the Devil himself.  There was one unfortunate moment in this diabolical rave, when Thomas hit one of the participants, Kathren Mitchell, “because she spoilt the dance and ran not so fast as the rest.”

Given all this, it says a lot about Wishart’s formidable reputation that it wasn’t until early 1597 that the authorities decided that something had to be done about her.  Janet, along with her husband John Leys, her son Thomas, her daughter Violet, and Elspeth Reid, were all arrested.  It is recorded that as Janet and Thomas sat in their cells awaiting trial, they were visited by the Devil.  Mother and son asked, “What will become of us?”  The Devil replied, “Deny everything.”  Although he promised to return later with more legal advice, they never saw him again.  (Pro tip: Satan makes a lousy defense attorney.)

To no one’s surprise, Janet was found guilty of eighteen of the thirty-one witchcraft accusations brought against her.  On February 17, 1597, she was burned at the stake.  Thomas followed her into the flames a short while after.  Elspeth Reid and the rest of Wishart’s family were freed, but banned from Aberdeen for the rest of their days.  

And thus ends our look at domestic life in 16th century Scotland.

Via Newspapers.com

Since few things personify the Strange Company spirit better than “hoodoo cats,” here is a fine example of the breed from the “Cincinnati Enquirer,” March 3, 1892:

English, Ind., March 2. English and vicinity are stirred up by an incident for which, had it occurred in the days of the forefathers, some one would have been ducked in the horse-pond and burned at the stake. For many years Zip Bennett was a prominent and successful farmer of Sterling Township, and he and his family dwelt in peace and plenty within what might be well termed a palatial frame residence in a country like this. All this it at an end. The Bennett family have swapped the home of their youth, where fruit abounded the year around, and where the smokehouse, cellar and granary were never empty, for a little residence in English, valued at no more than $230.

Mr. Bennett and his family claim that their late residence has been haunted by witches in the form of a black cat with a white ring around its neck, which they honestly believe to be one of numerous neighbors versed in the black art. "And," said the old man to your correspondent today, "they are all poor, worthless wretches, and they will never be any better for it; for the devil has that creek, and he will have all of them what's a working by his methods to beat honest people out of their homes. Yea, I swapped my old home to Sam Benz for the little house in the suburbs, but I have had one good night's rest and one day free from the devil’s plague. And this is more than I have had o. the farm these many months.”

The black cat with the white ring around its neck has been guilty of all sorts of pranks, such as sitting before the bread-tray and preventing the "light bread" (wheaten bread) from rising; watching the yeast with the same sinister purpose, and sitting with its eyes fixed upon the oven to prevent the bread from baking properly. On such occasions the bread was sure to be flat, soggy, and sour, unfit for eating. There was no use to kill the d----d thing. Nothing could hit it, and it always vanished like a flash when an attempt was made. Though each room was mouse-proof, the cursed witch went out at the hole left by the carpenter despite bolts and locks. The imp of darkness has been known to evade a bullet and jump at least 100 yards in two leaps.

Other ordeals which these good people had to undergo was to see this veritable witch leap upon the table and select the choice bits, sit on the pillow and make night hideous with its cries, jump upon horses in the stable or set them wild by scratching them, kill young chickens, suck eggs and a thousand other things.

The farm upon which these scenes occurred is not three miles from the town of English, on the Louisville, Evansville, and St. Louis Railway. It contains 128 acres of fine land one third of which is bottom land, a fine orchard, and a lot of meadow land: in short. yesterday morning it contained everything that ought to satisfy a Crawford county farmer in the way of comfortable residence, stable and out-houses. 

Mr. Benz, who is a prominent merchant and sensible man, saw a bargain in this and felt that he could rent it to advantage, as well as to have pasture for his horses and cows.  In one point he was wrong--everyone whom he approached yesterday shook their heads dubiously and showed plainly that they believed as faithfully in the matter as Mr. Bennett and his family did.  No one wanted it. No one would have it as a gift.  Mr. Benz threatened to send to Germany for a kinsman to cultivate it and prove the foolishness of their ideas, but this morning some of Bennett’s old neighbors who wished to end the witch's work at that place set fire to every building on the place. Benz is at a loss what to do. He dreads the effect of the ignorance of a few adjacent farmers may have upon his place, but has given out that he "don't care, he didn't want the houses any way and intends to make a sheep farm of it."

Mr. Bennett’s family claim to have been sick all the time of late months, and that no medicine was beneficial while they remained on the farm. This was especially the case with Mrs. Bennett, who, though but a few days in town, is now moving about her house work with alacrity. The occurrence proves that there are many believers of witchcraft in the community, who are shaking their beads knowingly, but will not name the ones whom they "know" to be disciples of the black art.

Some years ago, I read a poll which stated that the number-one complaint people had about their neighborhood was “their neighbors”--a finding that can be confirmed by taking a quick peek at Nextdoor. Sometimes, these neighborly squabbles get bad enough to end up in a civil court--or, with the more extreme cases, a police station. Still, it could be worse: in the old days, such disputes often led to a witchcraft trial. One of the more famous examples took place in 1582, in the small English village of St. Osyth.

Two residents of this village, Grace Thurlow and Ursula Kempe, had been on bad terms for years. It was an ordinary example of two women rubbing each other the wrong way--the sort of thing you see in any community--until their simple mutual irritation turned into a grave legal matter indeed.

The trouble began when Thurlow’s young son Davy suffered a serious illness. One day, Kempe came by to try a little friendly white magic on the boy. She held his hand, intoned the words, “A good child how thou art loden,” and left the house. Kempe returned a moment later and repeated the ritual two more times, reassuring Thurlow that Davy would now soon get better. Fortunately, she proved to be correct.

At that time, Thurlow was about to have another child. Kempe apparently assumed--particularly after her success with young Davy--that Thurlow would ask her to assist at the birth. When she learned that Grace had secured the services of another woman, Ursula took this as a personal insult, and wasted no time in marching over to the Thurlow residence to let her know what she thought of such ingratitude. In response, Thurlow made reference to the fact that she had recently been troubled by lameness. She hinted ominously that if it didn’t go away soon, she would go to a magistrate and blame Kempe for her disability. Kempe offered her a deal: if Grace allowed her to attend Grace’s upcoming labor, she would teach Grace a ritual that would cure her lameness.

It is not recorded if Thurlow took her up on this witchy offer, but soon afterward she gave birth to a healthy daughter. Ursula offered to act as wet-nurse for the new baby, but Grace again refused her services, opting to nurse the child herself. Three months later, the baby fell from her cradle, fatally breaking her neck. Ursula’s response was one of the cruelest “I told you sos” on record: she sniffed that if Thurlow had just allowed her to nurse the child, the baby would still be alive.

You will not be surprised to learn that this incident ended any pretense of friendship between the two women. Grace’s lameness returned with a vengeance. Ursula told her that for the price of 12 pence, she would cure her ailment. Thurlow was in such pain, she agreed. Her lameness went away. All was well until a few weeks later, when Kempe called on Thurlow to collect her payment. Thurlow had to tell her that she was simply too poor to scrape together such a sum. Kempe, infuriated at this welshing of their deal, told Grace in very unladylike language just what she thought of her, and stalked off. Immediately afterward, Thurlow’s mysterious lameness came back. Worse still, the sickness of her only surviving child, Davy, returned.

Thurlow had had enough. In February 1582, she went to the local justice of the peace, Brian Darcy, and accused Kempe of putting a curse on her and her children. Ursula seems to have been a very unpopular woman--and from what little is recorded of her, that’s not really surprising--so other villagers saw this as an excellent opportunity for a bit of payback. On that same day, another woman, Agnes Letherdale, went to the magistrate with her own charges against Kempe. She told Darcy that Ursula had asked her for some scouring sand. Kempe would, in exchange, dye her a pair of hose. However, Letherdale, “knowing her to be a naughty beast,” refused. When she saw this sand being delivered to another household, Ursula was heard to mutter furious words to herself. Immediately afterward, one of Letherdale’s children fell gravely and mysteriously ill.

Letherdale went on to say that she visited a “cunning woman” to learn the cause of her child’s sickness. She was probably unsurprised to be told that Ursula Kempe’s witchcraft was responsible. When Letherdale confronted Kempe with this news, Ursula just shrugged and denied everything.

When Ursula was brought in for questioning, she told Darcy her side of the story. She claimed that some years back, she herself had become lame. She visited a “wise woman” in the neighboring village of Weeley, who informed Kempe that she had been bewitched. The woman gave Ursula a detailed cure for her ailment (it involved hog’s dung and drinking ale infused with sage and St. John’s Wort.) Having found that the treatment worked as advertised, she shared the formula with two other women who had also been “witched” into lameness, with the same happy results.

Darcy felt that this was all well and good, but it did not address the point at issue: did Kempe bewitch the Thurlow and Letherdale households? The magistrate, in essence, offered Ursula a plea bargain: confess everything, and she would not be treated harshly.

In response, Kempe burst into tears, and sobbed out a tale that was probably even more than Darcy bargained for. She claimed that she had four “familiars.” Two (a black toad named Piggin and Tiffin, a white lamb) caused sickness to her enemies and their cattle. The other two (cats named Titty and Jack) brought the ultimate curse: death. These evil spirits were responsible for the sickness plaguing the Thurlow and Letherdale children, as well as the death of Grace’s baby. As if that wasn’t damning enough, Kempe also volunteered that she had sent Jack to murder her sister-in-law.

Darcy brought in Grace and Agnes to confront this self-confessed murderer. Kempe hysterically begged their forgiveness, saying that in addition to her own crimes, she had arranged for another village woman, Alice Newman, to send her own “familiars” to torment Agnes’ child and Grace.

After a good night’s sleep, it began to dawn on Ursula that perhaps she had been a tad too chatty. The following day, she offered Darcy a slightly revised story. She said that a few months back, she and Alice Newman had quarreled. During the argument, Newman threatened to tell Darcy that Ursula was a witch. Despite this, the two patched up their differences, and by the time Alice left her house--carrying with her Ursula’s four spirit pals in a pot--they were good friends again.

Some time later, after Ursula’s fight with Grace Thurlow, she asked Alice to send Titty to cause Thurlow some grief. After Ursula got into a dispute with a John Stratton and his wife, she had Alice sic Jack on them. The women would reward the spirits by allowing them to suck their blood, like demonic mosquitoes.

Naturally, Alice Newman was brought in to see what she had to say. She confirmed that she and Ursula had quarreled, and she did indeed call her friend a witch, but she stoutly denied the rest of Ursula’s testimony--particularly the part about her possessing spirit contract killers.

Darcy then pulled a stunt worthy of Lieutenant Columbo: he threatened to take away her spirits if she did not tell him the truth. Alice snapped that it was impossible for him to remove them. Uh...if she had any spirits to remove, that is.

Oops.

More villagers came forward to rat on the accused women. One William Hook told Darcy that he had once overheard Alice’s husband William blame her for all his troubles. Hook added that dinnertime conversation between the Newmans often took an odd turn. Whenever Alice served meat, Hook would overhear William saying “doest thou not see?”--which Hook took to mean that evil spirits were sharing their meal. Alice would reply that if William should see “something,” he should just give it some of their meat, and it would leave.

Meanwhile, Ursula had not finished incriminating her neighbors. She now said that other village women, Elizabeth Bennett, Alice Hunt, and Agnes Glascock, also kept spirits that they used to torment--and sometimes kill--anyone who happened to get on their bad sides.

When Glascock was hauled in for questioning, she stubbornly denied everything, even when a search of her body found suspicious spots in several places. When Ursula repeated her charges against Agnes to her face, Glascock erupted with rage, calling Kempe a witch and a whore. She maintained that, far from being a guilty party, she herself was a victim of Kempe’s sorcery.

Alice Hunt was not made of such stern stuff. She initially denied everything Ursula had said, but when she learned that she was to be arrested anyway, she, like Kempe, tried throwing herself on the mercy of the court. She went to Darcy and confessed that she did indeed have two spirits, Jack and Robin. They had even warned her that Ursula would eventually grass on her. She added that her sister, Margery Sammon, also had a pair of spirits. The siblings had inherited them from their late mother, who was also a witch. After a bit of prodding, Margery acknowledged that her sister was telling the truth.

It was beginning to look as if practically every woman in St. Osyth kept killer spirits around the house in the way normal housewives kept pots and pans. Evidently under the assumption that the more they talked, the easier Darcy would be on them, the accused women kept naming more and more of their neighbors.. A widow named Joan Pechey was said by Alice Hunt to be an even more skilled witch than Alice’s mother had been. Henry and Cicely Sellis were alleged to have used their spirits to unleash various forms of mayhem on their neighbors. A constable from a nearby village accused one Alice Manfield for causing his cart to become stuck in the ground. (She afterwards admitted to having four spirits.) Alice Hunt’s daughter and Ursula’s son confirmed that their mothers were witches, providing previously-unknown details about their diabolical doings. Kempe’s own brother, Lawrence, joined in. He declared that his wife, who had long been on bad terms with Ursula, had been “witched” to death by his sister.

Once Ursula began confessing, you couldn’t shut her up. Every time she was examined, she gave her questioners new names of witches, new crimes they had committed. To hear Kempe tell it, virtually every death, every illness, every bit of ill-fortune in and around St. Osyth was due to witchcraft.

On March 29, 1582, all the accused women stood trial for various crimes at Chelmsford Assizes. Ursula and Elizabeth Bennett were found guilty of murder by witchcraft and sentenced to hang. The others were either acquitted or remanded. (The latter often proved to be a death sentence; a number of the prisoners died in jail before they could be discharged.) The Great St. Osyth Witch Hunt was finally over, although I assume it was quite some time before the village settled down to anything like normal life. I also wager that for a long time afterwards, the inhabitants were very careful about how they argued with each other.

Thankfully, the days when you dealt with pesky neighbors via witch trials are extinct. Although from what I’ve seen of Nextdoor, there are a lot of people who would like to see such tribunals make a comeback.

[Note: Centuries after Ursula’s execution, there was a darkly humorous footnote to her tragic story. In 1921, a St. Osyth resident unearthed in his garden a skeleton. As it was nowhere near any burial ground, it was presumed that these were the remains of Ursula Kempe, who, as a convicted witch, was buried in unconsecrated ground. After spending some years in a local museum, the bones were purchased by an eccentric artist named Robert Lenkiewicz, who proudly displayed the skeleton in his library, next to the embalmed body of a tramp. After Lenkiewicz died in 2002, the bones were finally given a formal examination by an archaeologist. This study revealed that the skeleton was that of a young man, whose identity is fated to remain forever unknown.

This long-time impostor was given a dignified burial in a local cemetery. The real location of the bones of Ursula Kempe is still a mystery.

Addendum: For some background information on St. Osyth and how it relates to their witch hunt--highly interesting, but too lengthy to include here--see my main source for this post, Willow Winsham’s “England’s Witchcraft Trials.”]