96 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.

How were nineteen people executed in the Salem witch trials, despite the popular myth of burning?

By hanging: fourteen women and five men died on the gallows, and the idea that witches were burned in America is a popular but false one.

Which nation's all-female bomber regiment did German troops dub the 'Night Witches' in World War II?

The Soviet Union's 588th Night Bomber Regiment idled its engines and glided in to attack, and the rush of air is said to have reminded German soldiers of broomsticks.

In L. Frank Baum's original Oz novel, which color are the magic shoes that take Dorothy home?

Silver shoes turned into ruby slippers for the 1939 film, which changed the color to red to show off the three-strip Technicolor process.

Which animated villainess was drawn to resemble Divine, the American actor and drag queen?

Ursula, the sea witch of The Little Mermaid, shares Divine's eye makeup, jewelry and build, but the performer died in 1988, a year before the film came out.

Which sweet does the White Witch use to win over Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?

Turkish delight is the enchanted confection that buys Edmund's loyalty, and sales of the real thing rose after the 2005 film reached cinemas.

Which Gaelic festival on 1 November, a root of Halloween, do modern witches keep as a major sabbat?

Samhain was a threshold festival when the boundary with the Otherworld was thought to blur, letting spirits and departed souls cross into this world.

Which Fleetwood Mac hit did Stevie Nicks often introduce on stage as being about an old Welsh witch?

Rhiannon was written after Nicks read the novel Triad, whose characters bear little resemblance to the Rhiannon of Welsh legend.

How does the child-eating witch of the Grimms' Hansel and Gretel finally meet her end?

Shoved into her own oven by Gretel, the witch had been fattening Hansel to eat; in the Grimms' text her cottage has bread walls, a cake roof and sugar windows.

Which Hogwarts witch, the stern head of Gryffindor House, was played on film by Maggie Smith?

Minerva McGonagall teaches Transfiguration, and Maggie Smith played her in seven of the eight Harry Potter films, missing only Deathly Hallows Part 1.

Which woman, enslaved by Salem Village's minister, was the first there to confess to witchcraft?

Tituba later said that the minister, Reverend Parris, had beaten the confession out of her and coached her on what to say.

Which sorceress of Homer's Odyssey changes Odysseus's crewmen into swine on her island of Aeaea?

Circe is outwitted only because the god Hermes hands Odysseus the herb moly, which protects him from her potion.

Which Arthurian enchantress, often King Arthur's half-sister, takes the dying king to Avalon?

Morgan le Fay starts out in the earliest tales as a benevolent healer and protector of Arthur, and only later romances recast her as his enemy.

Which king of Israel visits the Witch of Endor in disguise to raise the ghost of a prophet?

Saul had outlawed sorcery himself, as the woman reminds him before agreeing; the spirit then foretells his defeat by the Philistines the very next day.

Which old woman of European folklore flies on a broom to bring children gifts on Epiphany Eve?

La Befana is Italy's answer to Santa Claus: in legend she was too busy with housework to join the Magi on their journey, then changed her mind and went looking for them.

In Charmed, the three Halliwell sisters cast their spells from a Victorian manor in which city?

San Francisco is the setting, but the Victorian house filmed as Halliwell Manor actually stands on Carroll Avenue in Los Angeles.

Which magical daughter of Samantha and Darrin on Bewitched later starred in her own spin-off?

Tabitha was shared by twin toddlers Erin and Diane Murphy from season three, and the 1977 spin-off made her a twenty-something only five years after the original ended.

Named for an English missionary saint, which festival has witches gather on Germany's Brocken peak?

Walpurgis Night falls on 30 April, and Goethe made the Brocken revels a famous scene in Faust; the Harz Witches' Trail, nearly 100 kilometres long, now crosses the mountain.

Which US state is home to slanted 'witch windows', said to stop broomsticks flying in?

Vermont builders more likely tilted the windows to squeeze a full-size sash into the narrow gable wall between two roof lines; they are also known as coffin windows.

The 'witch' in witch hazel, whose twigs made divining rods, probably traces to an Old English root meaning what?

Pliant: the name probably comes from Old English wice, used for trees with bendy branches and surviving in wych elm, not from the spell-casting kind of witch.

In Tomie dePaola's Strega Nona, the witch's magic pot nearly floods her town with what?

Pasta buries the streets because her helper Big Anthony never saw the three kisses that stop the pot, so his punishment is to eat it all.

Which shy student, played by Alyson Hannigan, becomes a powerful witch in Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

Willow was hard to cast because she had to be shy yet likable; Alyson Hannigan won the part after seven auditions and went on to appear in all 144 episodes.

Which American writer of the 1800s was the great-great-grandson of a Salem witch-trial judge?

Nathaniel Hawthorne probably added the w to his surname in his early twenties to distance himself from his forebear, Judge John Hathorne.

Wendy the Good Little Witch made her 1954 debut as a companion to which Harvey character?

Casper the Friendly Ghost befriends Wendy after stopping a battle between witches and ghosts; like him, she was written as the kindly opposite of her scary kind.

Sabrina the Teenage Witch first appeared in 1962 in a humor title from which publisher?

Archie Comics ran her in Archie's Madhouse as what her creators expected to be a one-off, and they were surprised when readers asked for more.

Which Spanish artist painted a Witches' Sabbath, ruled by a giant goat, onto his own house walls?

Goya left all fourteen of his Black Paintings untitled on the plaster of the Quinta del Sordo; labels such as The Great He-Goat came only after he died.

Which grain fungus, chemically close to LSD, did a 1976 paper blame for the Salem accusers' fits?

Ergot poisoning as the cause was disputed within a year by two researchers in the same journal, who noted that most of its symptoms are missing from the Salem records.

Which state, where witch trials began decades before Salem's, voted in 2023 to clear its convicted?

Connecticut executed Alse Young of Windsor in 1647, probably the earliest such case in the American colonies; lawmakers cleared twelve convicted people by 121 votes to 30.

Which Russian composer's Night on Bald Mountain, heard in Fantasia, depicts a witches' sabbath?

Modest Mussorgsky never heard the piece performed; the version most concerts play was arranged by Rimsky-Korsakov five years after he died.

Why is a curve published in 1748 by the mathematician Maria Agnesi called the 'Witch of Agnesi'?

A translator's mistake: Cambridge professor John Colson misread the Italian versiera, a sailing term, as a word for a she-devil and rendered it as witch.

How many witches make up the ideal coven, a figure fixed by a 1921 book rather than old tradition?

Thirteen became the standard only in 1921, when a scholar claimed witches across Europe had met in groups of that size; the word coven was barely used in English before then.

Which astronomer spent years defending his elderly mother, Katharina, in a German witchcraft trial?

Johannes Kepler led her defence himself and won her release in 1621 after fourteen months in prison; she died about six months later.

Which tea clipper is named after a witch's skimpy shift in Robert Burns's poem Tam o' Shanter?

Cutty Sark's figurehead is the witch Nannie herself, gripping the grey horse's tail she snatched as the drunken farmer Tam fled.

Rather than riding a broomstick, the Slavic witch Baba Yaga is best known for flying around in what?

A mortar is her usual vehicle: she wields the pestle as she flies and uses a broom only to sweep away her tracks.

Which Bible book holds the verse, much quoted by witch-hunters, that forbids letting a witch live?

Exodus 22:18 was a favorite text of the witch-hunters, although some modern translations render the Hebrew word as sorceress rather than witch.

Which Gilded Age financier, called America's richest woman, was dubbed the 'Witch of Wall Street'?

Hetty Green earned the label through her dour dress and extreme thrift, and Guinness World Records once named her the world's greatest miser.

Salem Village, where the 1692 witch panic actually began, is now which separate Massachusetts town?

Danvers took its new name in 1752 after decades of petitions to break away from Salem, the larger port where the trials themselves were held.

The Bell Witch, said to have tormented a farm family from 1817, belongs to which state's folklore?

Tennessee tradition adds that Andrew Jackson came to investigate during his army days, only for his men to be frightened away.

The Witch Head Nebula, named for its shape, reflects the light of which supergiant star in Orion?

Rigel lights up the faint cloud, whose dust reflects blue light better than red, which helps give the Witch Head its blue color.

Alice Kyteler escaped a 1324 sorcery trial in which Irish city, where an inn still bears her name?

Kilkenny saw her servant Petronilla de Meath burned at the stake that November, while Kyteler herself is believed to have fled to England or Flanders.

In Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, what is the sea witch's price for her potion?

Her voice goes with her tongue in the 1837 original, and the mermaid's sisters later trade their hair to the same witch for a dagger.

In the 1996 sitcom Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which 600-year-old aunt lives with Sabrina and Zelda?

Hilda was played by Caroline Rhea opposite Beth Broderick's Zelda, and Sabrina stays with the pair until she leaves for college in season five.

Which South American city's Witches' Market sells dried llama fetuses to bury beneath new houses?

La Paz traders sell the fetuses, called sullus, as offerings to the goddess Pachamama, and the market was named part of the city's intangible heritage in 2019.

Which condition, called 'witch riding' in the US South, was blamed on a hag sitting on the chest?

Sleep paralysis is still nicknamed the Old Hag in Newfoundland, and Gullah tradition describes a sufferer as hag-ridden.

Which Boston minister defended the Salem witch trials in his book Wonders of the Invisible World?

Cotton Mather later championed smallpox inoculation, a method he had learned about from Onesimus, an enslaved African man in his household.

Which American novelist wrote The Witches of Eastwick, set in a fictional Rhode Island town?

John Updike said the 1984 novel was about female power; its three heroines gain their magic only after their marriages end.

The yellow Italian liqueur Strega, whose name means 'witch', honors the witch legends of which city?

Benevento's witches were said to gather beneath a walnut tree, and the liqueur made there since 1860 owes its yellow color to saffron.

In Balinese dance drama, the witch queen Rangda forever battles which leader of the forces of good?

Barong's duel with her stands for the eternal struggle of good and evil, and Rangda's name simply means widow in old Javanese.

The Dutch town of Oudewater won fame in the witch-hunt era by offering suspects which honest test?

A weighing on scales that were not rigged ended with an official certificate, since a witch was believed to weigh far too little for her build, light enough to ride a broomstick.

Which mistress of the Sun King was accused of being a client of the Paris sorceress and poisoner La Voisin?

Madame de Montespan was named only after La Voisin was burned in 1680, when the fortune-teller's daughter told investigators of the link; Louis XIV then had the inquiry closed and kept secret.

Which composer wrote the 1893 opera Hansel and Gretel, with a libretto by his sister Adelheid Wette?

Humperdinck's fairy-tale opera, witch and all, was first conducted by Richard Strauss in Weimar, and Gustav Mahler led its Hamburg premiere the following year.