EP02. The War On Witches
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Most of us think we already know the story of the Salem Witch Trials.
But Salem was only one chapter in a much longer history.
In this episode of Pretty Evil, Jessica explores the history of European witch hunts through the lens of psychology rather than folklore, asking what may be the most unsettling question of all:
How does a community come to believe that one of its own is secretly dangerous?
Rather than focusing only on Salem, this episode follows the evolution of witchcraft from respected folk healers and midwives to one of history's most feared identities. Along the way, you'll hear the stories of Bessie Dunlop, Ursula Kemp, Geillis Duncan, Elizabeth Clarke, Giles Corey, and others whose lives reveal how dramatically a society's interpretation of a person can change.
Together, we'll explore:
Why many accused witches were once trusted members of their communities
How religious and political change reshaped the definition of witchcraft
The psychology of conspiracy thinking and moral panic
Why investigators almost always found the evidence they were looking for
How the Salem Witch Trials fit into a much larger historical pattern
The surprising history behind symbols like the pentagram
What witch hunts reveal about prejudice, fear, and human behavior today
Ultimately, this isn't an episode about magic.
It's an episode about perception.
Because history suggests something unsettling: people rarely wake up intending to participate in a moral panic. Most believe they're protecting their families, their communities, or their values.
Which raises a difficult question for all of us:
Would we recognize a moral panic while we're living through one?
Topics Covered
European Witch Hunts
Salem Witch Trials
History of Witchcraft
Bessie Dunlop
Geillis Duncan
Ursula Kemp
Elizabeth Clarke
Matthew Hopkins
Giles Corey
Canon Episcopi
Moral Panic
Group Psychology
Collective Fear
Conspiracy Thinking
Social Psychology
Human Behavior
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The history of witchcraft spans more than a thousand years and touches history, religion, psychology, folklore, and law. While this episode highlights only a portion of that history, the following books, historical records, academic resources, and digital archives informed the research behind this episode and provide an excellent starting point for anyone interested in exploring the topic further.
Primary Historical Sources
The Discovery of Witches (1647)
Matthew Hopkins
Hopkins' own account of his methods as England's self-appointed Witchfinder General. An essential primary source for understanding how witch hunts were justified by those carrying them out.
Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/discoveryofwitch00hopk
Project Gutenberg (when available): https://www.gutenberg.org/
Daemonologie (1597)
King James VI of Scotland (later James I of England)
Written after the North Berwick Witch Trials, this treatise defended the reality of witchcraft and encouraged its prosecution.
Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25929
Canon Episcopi
(c. 10th Century)
One of the most important early church documents on witchcraft. Rather than encouraging witch hunts, it argued that many supernatural claims were illusions or dreams—a position that would later be dramatically reversed.
English translation: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/canon-episcopi.asp
Recommended Books
The Witch: A History of Fear
Ronald Hutton
Perhaps the most comprehensive modern history of witchcraft beliefs and how they evolved over time. (Audiobook also available.)
Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials
Marion Gibson
A highly accessible examination of major witch trials across Europe using surviving court records.
The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe
Brian P. Levack
Considered one of the definitive academic works on the European witch hunts.
Religion and the Decline of Magic
Keith Thomas
A landmark study examining folk belief, magic, religion, and everyday life in early modern England. Frequently cited by historians of witchcraft.
Europe's Inner Demons
Norman Cohn
Explores the development of the "diabolical conspiracy" narrative that fueled later witch hunts.
The Triumph of the Moon
Ronald Hutton
A fascinating history of modern paganism and the origins of many beliefs commonly (and often incorrectly) associated with witchcraft.
Historical Cases Discussed
Bessie Dunlop (Scotland, 1576)
One of Scotland's earliest well-documented witchcraft cases involving a respected healer and seer.
Survey of Scottish Witchcraft Database:
https://witches.shca.ed.ac.uk/
Geillis Duncan & The North Berwick Witch Trials
The Scottish witch trials that helped shape King James VI's beliefs about witchcraft and inspired portions of Daemonologie.
Ursula Kemp
Midwife, healer, and one of England's best-known accused witches. Her case illustrates how healing practices were reframed as evidence of witchcraft.
Walpurga Hausmännin
A licensed Bavarian midwife whose professional knowledge became central evidence against her during her trial.
Giles Corey
One of the most famous victims of the Salem Witch Trials, remembered for refusing to enter a plea and reportedly responding, "More weight."
Historical Databases & Archives
Survey of Scottish Witchcraft Database
University of Edinburgh
One of the most comprehensive searchable databases documenting Scottish witchcraft accusations.
https://witches.shca.ed.ac.uk/
Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive
University of Virginia
An outstanding collection of primary documents from the Salem Witch Trials.
https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/
British Library
Historical manuscripts, pamphlets, and contextual resources relating to early modern witchcraft.
Additional Topics
European Witch Hunts
Moral Panic
Collective Fear
Group Psychology
History of Folk Magic
Cunning Folk
Early Modern Europe
Salem Witch Trials
Religious History
Social Psychology of Belief
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This episode explores several recurring themes that continue to appear throughout history:
Moral panic
Conspiracy thinking
Collective fear
Confirmation bias
Dehumanization
Prejudice
Religious conflict
The psychology of labels
Social conformity
How ordinary people become participants in extraordinary injustice
While the witch hunts officially ended centuries ago, the psychological mechanisms that fueled them remain deeply relevant today—which is precisely why their history continues to matter.
How we Came to See our Neighbors as Monsters well before 1692
Most of us think we already understand the witch hunts.
Salem. Pointed hats. Women accused of consorting with the devil. It's one of history's most recognizable stories, which is exactly why it's so easy to gloss over. We assume we know what happened, file it away under "mass hysteria and superstition," and move on.
But the deeper you look, the stranger it gets — and the less it has to do with the Salem we think we know.
Many of the people accused of witchcraft across Europe and colonial America weren't fringe figures or social outcasts. They were healers, midwives, herbalists, respected members of their communities. They delivered babies, cared for the sick, found missing livestock, interpreted dreams. Their neighbors relied on them. And then, gradually, those same neighbors came to believe they were servants of the devil.
That's the part that kept pulling at me while researching this episode of Pretty Evil. Not the accusations themselves, but the transformation underneath them: how does an entire community reinterpret someone they've known for years? How does a person become a symbol — and once they do, what happens to them?
The witch you picture probably isn't the historical one.
The black cat, the cauldron, the pointed hat — most of those images were layered onto witchcraft long after the major European trials had already ended. They're cultural sediment, not history.
What the records actually show is something more unsettling: accusations frequently targeted people whose knowledge had once made them valuable. The same herbal remedies that earned a woman trust in her community could, under the right circumstances, be reframed as evidence of dark arts. The same ability to find a lost animal could become proof of forbidden knowledge. Nothing about the person had necessarily changed. What changed was the lens through which everyone around them was looking.
What's striking isn't that false accusations happened. It's how total the reinterpretation could be.
Neighbors turned on neighbors. Former patients testified against healers. Once suspicion took hold, it had a way of making everything fit — helping someone recover from illness became evidence of supernatural influence, and even denying the charges could be read as further proof of guilt. The story about a person became more real, to the community, than the person themselves.
That psychological mechanism didn't disappear when the witch trials ended. Legal standards improved, courts grew more skeptical, and the specific hysteria faded. But the underlying pattern — the way fear can collapse an individual into a category, and how moral certainty can make ordinary people participants in extraordinary injustice — that's never really gone away. History keeps offering variations on it.
This episode of Pretty Evil isn't really about the occult. It's about perception, and what happens to it under pressure. Why did so many ordinary people come to believe their neighbors were working for the devil? That's almost the wrong question. The better question is: When did the story you've been told about someone become more real to you than the person standing in front of you?
Explore the history behind the myths — and the psychology that still echoes today — in the full episode today.
