TRANSCRIPT:
Rachel: Hey everyone, just a heads up that this episode features some descriptions of torture.
MUSIC mysterious
Charli: I am the accused witch. And you are the… weighmaster?
Sound wood creaking
Isa: I am the weighmaster! Yeah. And I ask you to take your place on the wooden platform. So, I can see if you are weightless or not.
Charli: Okay, let's do it. Am I a witch or not?!
Sound stepping up on platform, wood creaking
MUSIC spooky, atmospheric
Rachel: Hundreds of years ago, tens of thousands of people – mostly women - were murdered for imagined crimes.
SFX stormy sea
“He got it into his head that this wasn't just weather, no, no, this wasn't a storm, this was an attempt on his life and the work of witches.”
SFX thunder crack
“It shows the roots of misogyny in modern society... And it's because 85 % or thereabouts of those accused were women.”
Rachel: But the witch hunt isn’t over.
“We’re still living in the era of the witch hunts really... it kind of doesn’t matter what century you're in, you might end up going down the same path."
"People are being killed. People are being buried alive. People are being poisoned.”
Rachel: So how has the witch hunt transformed?
“It’s a witch hunt. It’s just a continuation of a witch hunt! They want to silence you.”
And how are we still connected to this chapter of history that many of us thought was closed?
SFX drone
Juniper: “History is usually written by the victors. Not by the victims. It all depends on whose eyes you see the story through and who is telling the tale. Who?”
JINGLE
Rachel: Welcome to Season 2 of Don’t Drink the Milk. I’m Rachel Stewart. For those of you who are new here, this is the podcast where we unravel the curious – and sometimes dark – backstories of familiar things and find out what they reveal about our world today. Like the “witch hunt” ... I feel like we hear those words all the time in the news. It's become a kind of throwaway phrase. But there’s a twisted history behind it, and the less we know about its dark past, the harder it is to control its consequences in the present. We’ll get to that....
But first, I’m dying to know if our producer Charli is a witch. So, Charli, what's the verdict?
Charli: Wellll...!
MUSIC mysterious
Sound of scales
Charli: Let me set the scene again. So, I get up on this big wooden platform, it’s a giant old scale, hundreds of years old...
Charli: I don’t normally weigh myself like this but here goes...
Isa: Now your position is off the floor! So, you have a weight in accordance with what you look like. You are not able to fly on a broomstick.
Charli: Couldn't possibly.
Isa: You are far too heavy to fly on a broomstick. And therefore can never be a witch. Because witches fly on broomsticks!
Charli: So, there you have it. Not a witch.
Rachel: Ah huh.
Charli: So, believe it or not, back in the 16th century, one of the most surefire ways to prove you weren’t a witch was just to be weighed!
Rachel: But then could anyone just weigh themselves and be like "look I'm heavier than a feather, I'm not a witch"?
Charli: No, not really. You needed an official certification from a “weigh house”. And although you'd think that would be easy enough, sometimes the weighing was rigged. There was this one weigh house in the Netherlands which gained a reputation for being fair and honest, for weighing people properly. It even got this royal blessing from Charles V. So, basically if you got a certificate from this place with your weight on it, it was your proof that you weren’t a witch.
Rachel: And that’s where you went?
Charli: That’s where I went. These days it’s a museum directed by Isa van der Wee. She showed me around and she explained to me what it was like for people who traveled there from all over Europe desperate to clear their names.
Isa: The person who came into the weigh house had to be undressed and was searched by the midwife. The hair should be loose because they could put extra weight in or on their bodies. And they had to put on a white linen shirt, and had to kneel down on the scales to be weighed…
Charli: And so do you think that a lot of people who did come here thought 'I might be a witch?'
Isa: Yes! Once they were weighed, and got a certificate people were very, very, very happy and relieved.
MUSIC dramatic
Rachel: Because, if you were accused of witchcraft and you couldn't clear your name, you faced persecution, torture, even murder. And about 500 years ago, that’s exactly what happened to many thousands of people.
SFX drone
Now you've probably heard of the Salem Witch Trials which happened in Massachusetts in the US in the late 1600s. They've been immortalized in modern pop culture – think Arthur Miller's 1950s play, The Crucible (film clip) "Did you see Goody Proctor’s spirit?” Never!" or 90s movies like Hocus Pocus (film clip) "Twist the bones and bend the back, trim him of his baby fat, give him fur black as black… just.like.this."
But Salem wasn’t actually the first witch trial in the US, and it was also relatively small compared to the witch hunting that took off in Europe about 100 years earlier.
MUSIC dramatic
From the late 1400s, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Scandinavia – they were all sites of intense witch panics... and institutionalized hunting. Tens of thousands of accused witches – mostly women - were tried, tortured and executed.
Around 40%1 of those executions took place in Germany alone. But there's another country that caught our eye in the gruesome statistics. A country that, in relation to its small population, killed five times as many accused witches as the European average. A country which was home to some of the most infamous witch trials of the period, and where the whispers of the past are getting louder.
MUSIC dramatic & SFX whispering voices
Nicola Sturgeon: Today, on International Women’s Day, as First Minister on behalf of the Scottish Government, I am choosing to acknowledge that egregious historic injustice and extend a formal, posthumous apology to all those accused, convicted, vilified or executed under the Witchcraft Act 1563…
Rachel: Scotland. 2022. Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister at the time, is dedicating her International Women’s Day speech to people accused witchcraft hundreds of years ago. Because this small northern European nation seems to have noticed something important – that the rest of us might have missed. To figure out what exactly, we're going on a trip through time and over the North Sea.
SFX ocean
MUSIC upbeat, bagpipes
Juniper: Are you ready?! Good.
And vow! Tam saw an unco sicht!
Warlocks and witches in a dance;
Nae cotillion brent new frae France,
But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels,
Put life and mettle in their heels.
MUSIC jolly
Sound bustling city
Charli: We've made it to the Scottish capital, Edinburgh. It's cold, it's windy and kind of damp… We're following Juniper the witch around the city. She's got this black cape on, a pointy black hat, and she's carrying a broomstick. She’s definitely giving witch. But what she has to tell us takes us far beyond this well-worn stereotype, don't worry. Just now we heard her reciting some poetry...
Juniper: So that was Old Scots, and it's an excerpt from Tam O'Shanter, a very famous poem by Scotland's national poet. Does anybody know who that is?
Charli: Someone did know! And of course, it was our Rachel.
Rachel: Robert Burns, obviouslyyy.
Juniper: Yes, we have a literary witch right there! Here we go. Burns, yes. And it was about witches dancing, which probably just meant women having a dance. But that, in the political and religious times of the era, meant that you were in league with the devil and you were doing bad things. Suspicious indeed.
Charli: It's often thought most of the accused were healers and midwives. That was sometimes the case, but, actually, people could be accused for all sorts of reasons. For dancing! For simply for looking or behaving differently. Or for doing things that other people - usually men in positions of power - didn't like.
Juniper: Gellis Duncan - anybody heard of her? Gilly Duncan from Outlander?
Rachel: This time it was Charli with her hand up!
Charli: Outlander was my pandemic indulgence, don’t judge me.
Juniper: Yes, there we go! An Outlander face that is. Now she was a real woman. She worked as a maid servant for a man called David Seton out in East Lothian. But she was also a very gifted healer. And she would do a hard day's work and then every other night or so she'd sneak out of her master's house at night. And she'd go off and help people sick or needy. When David Seaton found this out he accused her of being a witch. Which she denied but that made no difference at all.
Charli: Once accused, suspected witches would have a “confession” forced out of them.
MUSIC spooky
Juniper: Now we've always been very, very creative in Edinburgh and certainly we didn't hold back on creative torture. So has anybody heard of the Pillywhack? The Piliwack is a metal device that goes over your two thumbs. And it’s tightened and tightened and tightened until the bones burst under the pressure. SFX bones cracking. Now, if you didn't confess with the Piliwack, you might be winched, which is a rope around your neck, SFX rope tightening. then bound around your head and tightened until the facial bones are crushed. This happened to Gellis, but she wouldn't confess. So, they threw her into the prison. SFX prison door opening. In prison she was starved of food, water and sleep. And then, because she still wouldn't confess, they brought in the witch-pricker. SFX prison dungeon ambience. At the time, they believed that if you were a witch, you'd made a deal with the devil, and he'd visited you and licked you and left a mark on your skin. SFX sizzling. This mark, which could be a mole or a blemish or even a freckle, would be pricked with a pin or a needle or a knife about this length... SFX knife being sharpened. And if they found one that didn't bleed and didn't make you scream in pain, that was proof that you were a witch.
SFX spooky voices
Rachel: A mark was supposedly found on Gellis's neck and her fate was sealed.
MUSIC dramatic sting
MUSIC whimsical, magical
Juniper: Now I bet you're going to wish you had brought your brooms because we're going all the way up to the castle now. So, follow me my darlings, take your time!
Sound Edinburgh city, chatter
Charli: After getting some of the gorier details about the Scottish witch hunts from Juniper, we brave the winds of hilltop Edinburgh to meet history professor Julian Goodare from the University of Edinburgh. We wanna know where this deranged concept of witch-hunting came from in the first place and how it spread so ferociously.
Julian Goodare: We're just below Edinburgh Castle which is perched on its rock. It was known as castle hill. And it's the open area where many witches were burnt.
MUSIC forboding
Charli: Julian has written three books on the witch trials that gripped early modern Europe. He also created a database mapping out historical witch accusations and murders across Scotland. And he tells us why this exact spot at the foot of the castle, high up on a rock in the center of the city, was the perfect location for burning the strangled bodies of accused witches.
Julian Goodare: ...you know the smoke from the pyre will be visible for miles. It will send a very definite signal. You should be tied to a stake and strangled and burnt for an example and terror to others...
Rachel: It's such a chilling image - the smoke from burning human flesh rising up high above the city for all to see as a kind of warning... Nearly 4000 people were tried for witchcraft in Scotland alone, and more than half of those were executed. Across Europe, the death toll is thought to have reached at least 50,000.
MUSIC tense
Rachel: The wind eventually gets the better of us, so we take shelter in a nearby library, where Julian tells us how the European witch hunts really got going.
Julian Goodare: Well the idea of the conspiratorial group of evil witches who are in league with the devil is basically a 15th century idea and it starts to be invented by a group of writers in the French speaking Alpine region in the 1420s and 1430s.
Charli: Julian explains that something similar to the modern word for 'witch' starts to get used in various languages to describe heretics, who are supposedly worshipping the devil. After book-printing takes off in Germany from 1440, these ideas spread further and wider. And there’s one book that really captures the public’s imagination...
Julian Goodare: The Malleus Maleficarum…
Charli: The Malleus Maleficarum – or ‘The Hammer of Witches’. This was a book written by a German churchman and inquisitor guy called Heinrich Krahmer. It’s basically a manual on how to identify, torture, prosecute and execute supposed witches. Pretty misogynistic and homophobic stuff. So, naturally, it was a hit!
Rachel: But was it actually?
Charli: It actually was - second only to the Bible in book sales for 200 years.
Rachel: Wow.
Charli: At least, that’s what the publishers claim in the book blurb.
Rachel: What, it’s still in print?!?
Charli: Yes. You can literally still buy this book. And if you’re as obsessed with the idea of witches having sex with the devil as Heinrich seemed to be, it could be something for you!
Rachel: Ew.
Charli: I know...
MUSIC dramatic
Charli: Of course, the idea of witches, sorcery and magic existed in many different forms around the world long before all of this. But the witch Heinrich and his mates were talking about was a different kind of witch - the demonic witch.
Julian Goodare: The demonic witch! And that’s the witch who is in league with the devil, has made a pact with the devil, has sold their soul to the devil. And that's a specifically Christian idea and...
Charli: This specifically Christian idea of the demonic, devil-worshipping witch helps set the stage for the widespread witch trials of the next two centuries. Julian explains that there were only a few places in Europe that didn’t get swept up in this murderous trend – like the Balkans, which at the time was part of the Muslim Ottoman Empire. Elsewhere on the continent, the Protestant Reformation added a new sense of urgency to the panic around witchcraft.
Julian Goodare: Half of Europe became Protestant. Only half. And the other half remain Catholic. Each side hates the other side. Each side is convinced that they're good and the other lot are wicked. But because they’re good and the other lot are wicked they have to prove that they're good...
Charli: Nations and rulers were desperate to prove their devotion to God, and one way to do this was to go on a crusade against the devil and against witchcraft. And although you’ll often hear terms like “witch panic” or "witch hysteria," witch hunting was actually something highly organized and systematic. Witchcraft was a crime enshrined in law across Europe and prosecuted through the courts.
Rachel: So ... It’s really not just villagers waving pitchforks.
Charli: Not at all! And one of the rulers who really latched onto this whole witch-hunting hype as a means of maintaining power was one young King James VI, Son of Mary, Queen of Scots. And someone who got caught up in his crusade was Gellis Duncan - the woman whose torture Juniper described earlier.
Juniper: Finally, Gellis confessed that she was one of the North Berwick witches. She agreed to their suggestions that there were over 200 of them and that they had cursed King James' ships on the beach at Halloween, speaking rhymes and riddles into the sea, before dancing up the hill to the church and cavorting with the devil himself.
SFX ocean, chanting, lightning
Rachel: The North Berwick witches. Looks like we're heading east.
MUSIC upbeat, Scottish
Gordon (Tam O’Shanter):
Ah! little ken'd thy reverend grannie,
That sark she coft for her wee Nannie,
Wi' twa pund Scots, ('twas a' her riches),
Wad ever grac'd a dance of witches!
SFX stormy sea
Sound train arriving at station
Rachel: Brrrrrrr! *rubs cold hands together*
Charli: So, we've arrived in North Berwick!
*crickets*
Rachel: Yes, the bustling North Berwick!
Charli: Haha.
MUSIC whimsical
SFX waves
Charli: Quaint and charming it is. Bustling it is not. North Berwick is half an hour on the train east of Edinburgh. It's a super cute seaside town with squat stone houses and cobblestone streets, sat atop the rough, rocky coastline of East Lothian. Cute with a side of brutal history.
MUSIC dark
Charli: Because this is also where one of Scotland’s most infamous, deadly witch trials played out. The very one that saw Gellis Duncan and up to 200 others burned at the stake. Given how important this place is in the history of the witch trials, surely this is where we’ll see how Scotland is reckoning with its dark past, and why.
MUSIC whimsical adventure
Charli: So, we set off looking for signs. Quite literally!
Charli: Off we go! ‘Town Center Beach’, straight ahead...
Rachel: No, no but he did say turn right?
Charli: Brrrrr it’s cold.
Rachel: Omggggg!
Sound walking in town
Charli: But very quickly... we get sidetracked...
Charli: Rachel has found ‘Sugar Mountain’, which is this adorable, fairy-tale looking chocolate and sweets shop.
SFX door opens, jingles
Sound inside shop
Rachel: Ohhhhh I’m so excited!
Sound handling sweets
Rachel: Ok I’m going to get some Edinburgh rock; some tablet and some macaroon bites.
Charli: But don’t worry, it does lead us to a clue.
Sweet shop lady: I’ll leave you one open, how ‘bout that?
Rachel: Perfect, thank you. Do you get a lot of people here doing like witch trial tourism?
Sweet shop lady: Witch trials?! Do yer know about witches like?
Rachel: We're actually here to do a podcast about witches.
Sweet shop lady: Witches! There's probably some poor women who were accused of being witches buried in the cemetery. Because back in the day, just anybody, you know what I mean, yer had the wrong color eyes, and then they just said 'burn them!'
Rachel: Yeah.
Sweet shop lady: Have you got a wee bag?
Rachel: All good I’ll pop it in here.
Charli & Rachel: Thanks, bye!
Charli: Taking the sweet shop lady’s advice, we decide to check out the cemetery around the corner.
Sound walking along
Charli: So we're approaching an open cemetery...
Charli: But, sadly, there’s no mention of witches in sight at all. Just mossy headstones and the crumbly old ruins of a long-abandoned church.
Rachel: Excuse me. We're looking for the like site of the North Berwick witch trials...?
Lady on the street: Right, ok. It’s either this or by the harbor there’s an old thing...
Charli: Onwards we go.
Sound ocean, seagulls
Charli: We're looking for a little chapel and some ruins, where the witches used to congregate…
Rachel: Oh here we go.
Charli: St Andrews Auld Kirk... Oh, here are the ruins!
Rachel: Ohhhh...
Charli: This patch of grass with some old stones is in fact the place we've been looking for. It's the site of the old chapel, where 200 witches supposedly once gathered to dance and conspire with the devil himself. There's supposed to be some mention of it here, but we can't see anything.
Rachel: We’re not having much luck, but remember that story about King James and his cursed ships on Halloween? That scene played out right here, just around the corner.
Sound ocean, ascending steps
Charli: We’ve made it to the sea...
Charli: We gaze out over the turbulent Firth of Forth. This is the very harbor where King James was supposed to bring his new bride ashore, Princess Anne of Denmark. But when severe storms out at sea thwarted the crossing several times, James concluded that it must be the work of witches out to get him.
SFX stormy sea
MUSIC dark
Charli: It may sound nuts, but this is what triggered one of Scotland’s earliest and most notorious witch trials. And yet, there’s nothing here to commemorate it.
Sound music playing in background
Rachel: But then, we get a tip from an unlikely place – the Seabird Center.
Sound inside seabird center
Rachel: Hiya, quick question. We were actually looking for information about the witch trials, is there anywhere where we would see something about that.
Man: Um…
Rachel: I know it's not a seabird question, sorry!
Man: The only thing I've ever seen out and about is further up the road... You see the white lifeboat building? If you take the road...
Rachel: Ah okay, thank you!
Sound outside
Charli: Didn't he say it was between...
Rachel: Omg yeah! Literally by the toilets! Okay so it says... In the 1590s, several local people were accused of causing a storm which delayed a ship carrying King James VI and his bride from Denmark... And there’s quite a creepy picture...
Charli: Yeah, it’s a bunch of deranged looking witches... mostly women... long hair, pointy noses, breasts, ah, visible, and they’re wearing skirts, kicking up their heels...
Rachel: And there’s the devil in the middle! With massive wings and horns... They’ve all got bare feet. They’re dancing around candles, and they look soo out of it.
Charli: They look possessed!
Rachel: Yep.
Rachel: I find it just a bit disrespectful that, you know, the witches haven’t got anything, apart from an old sign with seagull poo on it right next to the public toilets. So, I dunno. Maybe they don't want people to know that much about it?
MUSIC thoughtful
Zoe Venditozzi: No nation really wants to look at the bad things that happened in the past, do they?
Rachel: We’ve travelled a little further north to Dundee to meet author Zoe Venditozzi.
Zoe Venditozzi: And Scotland really, really likes to see itself as this progressive sort of semi-Nordic country where we invented loads of stuff, and we travelled around the world being amazing. But we know that Scotland was involved in lots of terrible things. You know, we were really involved in colonization of different countries. We were really involved in the transatlantic slave trade. We made a lot of money off that...
Rachel: Thinking about it, Scotland has often hit the headlines in recent years for positive, progressive stuff – especially when it comes to women's rights. They have a relatively high proportion of women in parliament at nearly 50%. And in 2021, they famously scrapped the so-called "tampon tax" where period products are taxed as luxury items. So if the country's got a pretty good track record today, why keep raking over the past?
Zoe Venditozzi: We need to know about the difficult things that happened in history so that we are a better nation, so we're better people.
Rachel: Talking about these difficult things is one of the main reasons that Zoe launched the "Witches of Scotland" campaign, together with barrister Claire Mitchell. They want justice for the accused witches – public awareness, proper memorial sites and official acknowledgment. Yep, it was pressure from their campaign which led to that apology in the Scottish parliament.
Nicola Sturgeon clip: “Before this parliament right now is a petition demanding a pardon for the more four thousand people in Scotland – the vast majority of them women – accused and in many cases convicted and executed of being ‘witches’ under the Witchcraft Act of 1563. Those who met this fate were not ‘witches’. They were people. It was injustice on a colossal scale, driven at least in part, by misogyny in its most literal sense – hatred of women."
MUSIC thoughtful
Rachel: In this speech, then Scottish premier Nicola Sturgeon draws a direct connection between that past violent injustice and the struggles of women today. From everyday sexism to financial inequality or even physical danger.
Nicola Sturgeon clip: "Of course, the lives of women are still blighted each and every day by an epidemic of harassment, abuse, threats and violence – an epidemic that seems to be getting worse, not better. That problem is real and very current. But the misogyny that motivates it is age old.”
MUSIC thoughtful
Charli: And what about the age-old misogyny hidden in our language? We haven't even stopped using the word "witch". Like Zoe points out, even if it's not meant literally, it's still such a loaded insult.
Zoe Venditozzi: Witch is so handy because witch sounds very like the word bitch, but it's not actually swearing. So you can get away with saying it and it's not, it doesn't seem as harsh as if I was to say, oh, she's a bitch. But you can say witch and then it's also kind of ha ha, that's funny too. And the picture people have in their head of like, you know, kind of the warty nose and the pointy fingers and, you know, eating children and all that kind of thing. It's just a really quick shorthand to diminish women, isn't it? It works.
Rachel: This kind of caricature of the witch is deeply ingrained in pop culture. Take the Wicked Witch of the West or the Slavic Baba Yaga — they’re both frightening, evil old women.
MUSIC scary
Wizard of Oz, Wicked Witch of the West (film clip) “I’ll get you my pretty...and your little dog, too!”
Rachel: On the other hand, the words we use for men with magical powers, like wizard or warlock, they don't tend to carry the same stigma.
Charli: Yeah. Imagine hearing about a ‘wizard hunt’ - that would just sound like a cool game, don’t you think?
Rachel: Exactly! But then again, there is a "good witch" in the Wizard Of Oz, too.
Charli: True.
MUSIC whimsical, magical
Rachel: And actually, when I think about it, many of the witches I met in books or on screen growing up – they were characters I kind of idolized - or at the very least wanted to be friends with them.
Charli: Like Sabrina Spellman, Hermione Granger, the Charmed witches...
Rachel: Yes! These characters are all kind of relatable, but they’re gifted with magical powers. It’s pretty easy to see why that appeals to little girls...
MUSIC thoughtful
Zoe Venditozzi: We're told from birth, you can't look after yourself, you're likely to get murdered, you can't go out at night. If you do go out at night, make sure you can run, don't wear this, but wear that, be with boys, be with men. You know, we’re told ‘you’re ‘powerless’ from the get-go. So, I think it's natural that we would try and find a magical power within ourselves, and enough time would elapse between the witch trials and modern culture to be able to say, right, well, you know, I could be like Sabrina.
Rachel: We’ll be back in just a moment.
TRAILERS: Secret Life of Canada & The Greatest Scam Ever Written
Rachel: And we’re back. Where were we? ...So, the image of the witch has morphed over time. Of course, nowadays plenty of people proudly identify as witches. It means different things to different people. But what about the witch hunt?
SFX TV static
MUSIC upbeat, curious
Donald Trump: "This trial is a total witch hunt…The entire thing has been a witch hunt... It's a witch hunt, that’s all it is... It's a witch hunt. It's just a continuation of a witch hunt. They wanna silence you... Are you talking about the witch hunt is that what you mean? Russian witch hunt! ...it’s a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time... It’s a witch hunt in the truest sense of the word... You know I call it a witch hunt. And it is a witch hunt.”
Charli: Hundreds of years on from the European and Salem trials, ‘witch hunt’ has become a common catchphrase for powerful people who think they're being treated unfairly. Most of them male, many of them politicians - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ex-South African President Jacob Zuma, and many former US Presidents, like Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon… Although, none quite so loud as Donald Trump, who between 2017 and 2021 tweeted the words ‘witch hunt’ 379 times. Basically once or twice a week.
Donald Trump clip: “I’m the victim here! …It’s a witch hunt with no jury… if I weren’t running for President and doing so well this wouldn’t be happening…”
Charli: In Trump’s case, he's currently involved in a litany of legal battles - all of which he sees as unjust. And in July 2024, there was also an attempt on his life. But... he still doesn’t seem to have much in common with people targeted in the original witch-hunts.
Marion Gibson: And he really has the profile of a witch hunter, doesn't he? You know, he's male, he's powerful, he's a central figure in government, he aligns himself with certain aspects of the Christian right, these are all positions that you imagine a witch hunter to occupy... but he repeats this claim that he is in fact the victim of a witch hunt.
Charli: The tables have turned. That’s Marion Gibson, by the way. She has the seriously cool job title of “Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures” at the University of Exeter in the UK. Her book - ‘Witch Hunt: A History in 13 Trials’ - maps witch-hunting all the way from the Middle Ages up to this modern twist on the term. And she explains that it's been used all along the political spectrum.
Marion Gibson: It's used as far back as the 1950s. People might have come across the idea of the communist or anti-communist, rather, witch hunts of the 1950s in America. It just keeps coming back again. So, Arthur Miller wrote the play The Crucible, for example, about the idea that the communists were being, quote, “witch-hunted” in America. So, he thought, well, why don't I, why don't I dramatize this by using the Salem witchcraft trials and actual witchcraft trial as a metaphor for anti-communist hunting in the fifties. So ever since then, I think Americans have been kind of primed to use the idea of the witch hunt in political contexts.
Rachel: And now people at the very top of politics - it seems like they’re kind of weaponizing this very real historical term, right?
Charli: Yeah. And you know, it kind of ties into the confusing cancel culture narrative that we have today, where powerful people, celebrities or politicians, are called out for things like racism or transphobia or even breaking the law. And, when they’re faced with consequences, they say they feel like they're victims of a mob – victims of a hunt.
Rachel: It's kind of ironic that when I hear the word "mob," the first thing that comes to mind for me is images of Trump supporters storming the US capitol!
Charli: Ha, right... and this whole thing is even more jarring when you consider one vital part of the story that we haven’t even got to yet.
Marion Gibson: All around the world people are still on trial for witchcraft, you know, whether that's in Indonesia or Nepal, or Southern Africa, hundreds and hundreds of people are on trial for witchcraft and many of those are murdered.
MUSIC tense
Charli: Okay, perfect. We're recording on your phone. We're recording here. Hi Leo, how are you?
Leo: Yeah, I'm great. And you?
Charli Shield: Yeah, good, good!
Leo Igwe: My name is Leo Igwe. I'm from Mbise in southeastern Nigeria.
Charli: Leo Igwe is the founder and director of the Advocacy for Alleged Witches - a human rights organization he started in 2020. In the past several decades in Africa, tens of thousands of people are estimated to have been murdered for suspected witchcraft.
MUSIC tense
Charli: Children are often targets, as well as people who aren’t seen as fitting in, but mostly, it’s single elderly women. So-called 'witch refugee camps' have sprung up in Northern Ghana and in South Africa, where women branded as ‘witches’ live in exile.
Leo Igwe: It is still not known the scale of witch hunting in the region. The reason is that first of all, it happens in rural areas and when it happens in these areas, the perpetrators are the powerful ones, socially or culturally powerful ones. There are no repercussions... many of the witch hunting incidents go unreported. That's number one. Number two, the victims are usually the poor. There are people in very weak financial, social, and cultural positions. So... they will not be able to take any action in terms of reporting.
Charli: The belief in evil spirits and the concept of magic, for good and for bad, has likely existed in pretty much all human societies since... forever. But before colonization and before the spread of certain branches of Christianity, there weren’t anti-witchcraft movements in Africa. And it was rare that suspected witches were killed.
Leo Igwe: Before Europeans came, Africans we’re also living their lives and making sense of their fortune and misfortune using the supernatural… Now, they now introduce their own religion which they made Africans to understand that that was a better religion. Now, within the religion, there is also a witchcraft narrative... So, Christianity reinforced the witchcraft belief.
MUSIC atmospheric
Charli: Leo says that the modern-day belief in demonic witchcraft in Africa is often ‘explained away’ like it's just part of tradition, superstition or a "backwards" belief system. But actually, it has a lot to do with things like the spread of disease and profound economic hardship, which is tearing communities apart.
Leo Igwe: In the absence of social welfare, in the absence of state support, in the absence of a good economy, a lot of people spiritualize their problem. And on the basis of this spiritualization, they take actions against neighbors, innocent people... In 2019 a parent poisoned the children because a pastor said in a church that...the problem in their families were caused by the children... So, the parent poisoned the children, three of them.
Charli: This atmosphere of hardship and resentment is causing a deep rift between generations. And Leo tells me that some young people in Africa - lacking jobs and opportunities - are despairing over their future. Looking for someone to blame, they might latch onto the witchcraft conspiracy.
Leo Igwe: They spiritualize it and sometimes make these elderly ones scapegoats… So, sometimes they kill them in the night. Sometimes they kill them secretly, they kill them and bury them without anybody getting to know. People are being killed. People are being buried alive. People are being poisoned.
MUSIC tense, thoughtful
Charli: It’s not just happening in Africa though. And it's not just happening at a community level. In 2022, a state in Malaysia officially outlawed ‘shamanism and witchcraft’5. In 2009, the Saudi Arabian government created a special "Anti-Witchcraft Unit" to investigate people suspected of sorcery. Many of those targeted appear to be foreign workers6. And as recently as 2014, a man was beheaded there for allegedly practicing black magic7.
Rachel: These are real victims of real witch hunts. And they do have a lot in common with those original victims from hundreds of years ago. Vulnerable outsiders, people struggling to explain extreme hardship and misfortune and falling victim to conspiracies. Here's Marion again.
Marion Gibson: The Middle Ages in Europe was not a happy time. Not only was there religious conflict, but there was also famine, there was plague... And it's also been described as an era when the Little Ice Age, as it's sometimes called, is kicking off. So, the climate is more unpredictable. Things are more difficult for people. There are more crop failures and more extreme weather... And those are the kind of things that tend to get blamed on witches.
Rachel: Conflict, pandemics, extreme weather... sound familiar?
Marion Gibson: This is by no means saying, oh, these places are backward, they are doing the same things as Europeans were doing in the Middle Ages. It's something far more complicated than that. But I do think there are similarities... it's about the social conditions in which these things happen. And if they are the same, it kind of doesn't matter which century you're in. You might end up going down the same path.
MUSIC reflective, thoughtful
Marion Gibson: The idea of the witch has changed a lot over time, but people are still being prosecuted as witches around the world. And we're still using the word witch, even though we're not always sure what it means.
Charli: Language is important, and there's no denying that the language of the witch hunts is rooted in a very dark, very violent history. Whether it's in Scotland or Nigeria or the United States – parts of that history are still so relevant. So I guess what we're saying is, this history matters.
Marion Gibson: And if you don't look back at the roots of the witch trial, which are in the Middle Ages in Europe, then you really don't understand where this is all coming from. For me, this is a long history of persecution. And if you don't understand how persecution begins, then it's very difficult to understand why it's still carrying on today.
MUSIC fades out
Rachel: This episode was written by Charli Shield and me, Rachel Stewart. It was produced by Charli Shield. It was edited by Sam Baker, who's named after a witch herself, fact-checked by Katharina Abel, and scrutinized by our token man, Chris Caurla. Thank you so much for listening. If you like us, leave us a rating and a review so that other fans of curious histories can find us. We’ll be back in two weeks.
SFX match being struck, flame
MUSIC magical
Juniper: Dear Cailleach, ancient one, heed our call tonight. Unveil our fortunes and guide us through with your wisdom and your might. As day turns into night and light fades into shadows art, bestow on these new witches your whisper, a magical chart. And now we just listen...