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50 free Witch trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
44 free Witch trivia questions with answers. Witches have been feared, burned, worshipped and turned into sitcom stars, and this quiz covers the whole span. It moves from the Salem trials and the European witch hunts (Matthew Hopkins, the Pendle witches, the Malleus Maleficarum, the last executions) through folklore and literature (Baba Yaga's chicken-legged hut, Macbeth's Weird Sisters, Roald Dahl's Grand High Witch) to modern Wicca and the witches of pop culture: the Wizard of Oz, Bewitched, Hocus Pocus, Sabrina and Wicked. Easy questions cover things anyone knows from Halloween. Harder ones ask who was hanged first at Salem, what the witch cake was made of, how many were executed across Europe, what skyclad means, and where Wicked opened on Broadway. It suits a Halloween party, a history class or a spooky pub quiz round. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the trials, the folklore, Wicca and the films and shows, and each question carries its source.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Salem witch trials took place in which years?
1692 to 1693
The Salem trials ran from 1692 to 1693: the first accusations came in February 1692 and the last acquittals in May 1693; they began in Salem Village, today the town of Danvers, Massachusetts.
Q 02How many people were executed by hanging at Salem?
Nineteen
Nineteen people were hanged at Salem between June and September of the trial year, fourteen women and five men; a further man died under judicial torture and at least five others died in jail.
Q 03How did Giles Corey die during the Salem trials?
Pressed to death under stones
Giles Corey, aged about 81, refused to enter a plea and was pressed to death under stones, the peine forte et dure, over two days ending on September 19; legend has him answering only 'more weight'.
Q 04Who was the first person tried and executed at Salem?
Bridget Bishop
Bridget Bishop, a thrice-married Salem woman with a long reputation for quarrelling, was tried on June 2 and hanged on June 10, the first of the Salem executions.
Q 05In what year was the last convicted Salem witch, Elizabeth Johnson Jr., formally exonerated?
2022
Elizabeth Johnson Jr., convicted but never executed, was formally exonerated in 2022 by a clause in the Massachusetts state budget, after an eighth-grade civics class in North Andover campaigned for it.
Q 06What did the 'witch cake' baked at Salem to detect witchcraft contain?
Rye meal and the urine of the afflicted girls
Neighbour Mary Sibley had a cake of rye meal and the urine of the afflicted girls baked and fed to a dog, hoping the witch would be revealed; the minister Samuel Parris later denounced the 'diabolical' remedy.
Q 07The Malleus Maleficarum, the notorious witch-hunting manual of 1486, was written by which inquisitor?
Heinrich Kramer
Heinrich Kramer, a Dominican inquisitor from Alsace, wrote the Malleus Maleficarum after the Innsbruck church authorities threw out his 1485 witch prosecutions; it was printed at Speyer in 1486 and ran through many editions.
Q 08Which 1953 Arthur Miller play dramatised the Salem trials as a McCarthy-era allegory?
The Crucible
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.
Q 09Which pope issued the 1484 bull Summis desiderantes affectibus against devil-worshippers?
Innocent VIII
Innocent VIII, pope from 1484 to 1492, issued Summis desiderantes affectibus on 5 December 1484, confirming the inquisitors' authority in Germany; the authors of the Malleus later printed it as the book's preface.
Q 10Modern historians estimate how many people were executed for witchcraft in Europe?
35,000 to 60,000
Estimates since the 1990s put it at 35,000 to 60,000. Around three-quarters or more were women, and central and southern Germany saw the heaviest persecution.
Q 11Which self-styled 'Witchfinder General' drove England's witch-hunting peak in 1644-47?
Matthew Hopkins
Matthew Hopkins, a Suffolk clergyman's son based at Manningtree, toured East Anglia with John Stearne from 1644 to 1647, charging towns for his services; his methods included sleep deprivation, pricking for the Devil's mark and the swimming test.
Q 12Which king attended witch trials after storms hit his bridal voyage and wrote the manual Daemonologie?
James VI of Scotland
The North Berwick trials saw more than 70 accused; James later became James I of England, Shakespeare's patron.
Q 13The Pendle witches were tried in 1612 in which English county?
Lancashire
Q 21The concept of a witch's 'flying ointment' first appears in records from about which year?
1456
The Bavarian court physician Johannes Hartlieb described the ointment in his 1456 Book of All Forbidden Arts; the plants in later recipes, such as henbane and belladonna, contain skin-absorbable tropane alkaloids.
Q 22What older English word for a broom names the twiggy version witches ride?
Besom
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.
Q 23Baba Yaga, the witch of Slavic folklore, lives in a hut that stands on what?
Chicken legs
Lancashire's Pendle Hill families, the Demdikes and the Chattoxes, were tried at Lancaster Assizes in August 1612; ten were hanged, and clerk Thomas Potts published the proceedings as The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches.
Q 14Anna Göldi, often called Europe's last person executed for witchcraft, died in 1782 in which country?
Switzerland
Anna Göldi, a maidservant accused of bewitching her employer's daughter, was beheaded in Glarus, Switzerland, in June 1782; the Glarus parliament exonerated her in 2008.
Q 15Which French historian's 1862 book La Sorcière portrayed the witch as a rebel against feudal oppression?
Jules Michelet
Jules Michelet's La Sorcière (1862) recast the medieval witch as a peasant woman driven to rebellion by feudal lords and the Church, a romantic reading that influenced later writers on witchcraft.
Q 16Which country executed a man for practising witchcraft and sorcery in 2014?
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia beheaded a man for sorcery in 2014. Witchcraft accusations have also led to violence in parts of Africa, South Asia and Papua New Guinea in the 2010s and 2020s.
Q 17In English folk belief, what is a 'familiar'?
A demon in animal form
A familiar was a demon in animal form, typically a cat, toad or hare, that a witch was said to feed with her blood; English trial records from the 1560s onward are full of them.
Q 18Which modern religion, made public by Gerald Gardner in 1954, is the main form of contemporary witchcraft?
Wicca
Wicca took shape in Gerald Gardner's New Forest coven and his 1954 book Witchcraft Today; a retired colonial civil servant, Gardner had his High Priestess Doreen Valiente rewrite much of the ritual liturgy.
Q 19Wicca is typically duotheistic, honouring a Triple Goddess and which male deity?
The Horned God
The Horned God, lord of the hunt, the wild and the dying year, is the Wiccan counterpart to the Goddess; his antlered image draws on figures such as the Celtic Cernunnos and the Greek Pan.
Q 20What is the traditional Wiccan word for practising rituals in the nude?
Skyclad
Skyclad, meaning clothed only by the sky, is the Wiccan term for ritual nudity, a word Gardner borrowed from India's Digambara ('sky-clad') Jain monks, who renounce clothing.
Baba Yaga's hut stands on chicken legs and turns to face whoever knows the rhyme to command it; she herself rides in a mortar, steering with a pestle and sweeping her tracks away with a broom.
Q 24In Macbeth, which goddess scolds the three witches for meddling with Macbeth without her?
Hecate
Many scholars believe the Hecate scenes were added by another writer, possibly Thomas Middleton.
Q 25Holinshed describes Macbeth and Banquo meeting three women 'resembling creatures of' what?
Elder world
Holinshed's Chronicles (1577) describe the three women as 'in strange and wild apparel, resembling creatures of elder world'; Shakespeare turned them into the Weird Sisters, from wyrd, Old English for fate.
Q 26Which actress played the Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 film?
Margaret Hamilton
Margaret Hamilton, a former kindergarten teacher, played the Wicked Witch of the West after first choice Gale Sondergaard withdrew when the role changed from glamorous to ugly; her green copper-based makeup took hours to apply.
Q 27How does Dorothy accidentally destroy the Wicked Witch of the West?
She splashes her with a bucket of water
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.
Q 28In the 1939 film, how does Glinda the Good Witch arrive?
In a bubble
Glinda, played by Billie Burke, arrives in a bubble, a shimmering orb that floats into Munchkinland, grows and bursts to reveal her; she leaves the same way.
Q 29In Hocus Pocus, what is the surname of the three witches?
Sanderson
The Sanderson sisters, Winifred, Sarah and Mary, played by Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy, are hanged in colonial Salem and revived on Halloween 1993 by a lit black-flame candle.
Q 30What punishment do the Hocus Pocus witches inflict on Thackery Binx?
They turn him into an immortal black cat
They turn him into an immortal black cat: Thackery Binx, cursed after failing to save his sister Emily, cannot die, and the spell lifts only when the witches are destroyed.