Kevin James Anderson is an American science fiction author. He has written spin-off novels for Star Wars, StarCraft, Titan A.E. and The X-Files, and with Brian Herbert is the co-author of the Dune prequel series. His original works include the Saga of Seven Suns series and the Nebula Award–nominated Assemblers of Infinity. He has also written several comic books, including the Dark Horse Star Wars series Tales of the Jedi written in collaboration with Tom Veitch, Dark Horse Predator titles, and The X-Files titles for Topps. Some of Anderson's superhero novels include Enemies & Allies, about the first meeting of Batman and Superman, and The Last Days of Krypton, telling the story of how Superman's planet Krypton came to be destroyed.
A witch-hunt, or a witch purge, is a search for people who have been labeled witches or a search for evidence of witchcraft. Practicing evil spells or incantations was proscribed and punishable in early human civilizations in the Middle East. In medieval Europe, witch-hunts often arose in connection to charges of heresy from Christianity. An intensive period of witch-hunts occurring in Early Modern Europe and to a smaller extent Colonial America, took place about 1450 to 1750, spanning the upheavals of the Counter Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, resulting in an estimated 35,000 to 50,000 executions. The last executions of people convicted as witches in Europe took place in the 18th century. In other regions, like Africa and Asia, contemporary witch-hunts have been reported from sub-Saharan Africa and Papua New Guinea, and official legislation against witchcraft is still found in Saudi Arabia and Cameroon today.
Isobel Gowdie was a Scottish woman who confessed to witchcraft at Auldearn near Nairn during 1662. Scant information is available about her age or life and, although she was probably executed in line with the usual practice, it is uncertain whether this was the case or if she was allowed to return to the obscurity of her former life as a cottar’s wife. Her detailed testimony, apparently achieved without the use of violent torture, provides one of the most comprehensive insights into European witchcraft folklore at the end of the era of witch-hunts.
Matthew Hopkins was an English witch-hunter whose career flourished during the English Civil War. He was mainly active in East Anglia and claimed to hold the office of Witchfinder General, although that title was never bestowed by Parliament.
Charmed is an American fantasy drama television series created by Constance M. Burge and produced by Aaron Spelling and his production company Spelling Television, with Brad Kern serving as showrunner. The series was originally broadcast by The WB from October 7, 1998, until May 21, 2006. The series narrative follows a trio of sisters, known as The Charmed Ones, the most powerful good witches of all time, who use their combined "Power of Three" to protect innocent lives from evil beings such as demons and warlocks. Each sister possesses unique magical powers that grow and evolve, while they attempt to maintain normal lives in modern-day San Francisco. Keeping their supernatural identities separate and secret from their ordinary lives often becomes a challenge for them, with the exposure of magic having far-reaching consequences on their various relationships and resulting in a number of police and FBI investigations throughout the series. The series initially focuses on the three Halliwell sisters, Prue, Piper, and Phoebe. Following Prue's death in the third-season finale, their long-lost half sister Paige Matthews assumes her place within the "Power of Three" from season four onwards.
James Morrow is an American novelist and short-story writer known for filtering large philosophical and theological questions through his satiric sensibility.
The Witches of Eastwick is a 1987 American supernatural comedy film directed by George Miller and starring Jack Nicholson as Daryl Van Horne, alongside Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer and Susan Sarandon as the titular witches. The film is based on John Updike's 1984 novel of the same name, telling the story of three women who are unaware of the power of the words they speak; as they tell each other their deepest desires, a man arrives just in time and fulfills them, but has a dark side of his own.
Gallows Hill (1997) is a supernatural thriller novel for young adults by Lois Duncan. It was her first and only young adult novel written after the death of her daughter. It was written eight years after her previous young adult novel, Don't Look Behind You. It is about a girl who moves to a small town with a secret.
Theodora Goss is a Hungarian-American fiction writer and poet. Her writing has been nominated for major awards, including the Nebula, Locus, Mythopoeic, World Fantasy, and Seiun Awards. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Year's Best volumes.
The Bury St Edmunds witch trials were a series of trials conducted intermittently between the years 1599 and 1694 in the town of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, England.
Alice Nutter was an English woman accused and hanged as a result of the Pendle witch hunt. Her life and death are commemorated by a statue in the village of Roughlee in the Pendle district of Lancashire.
The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American supernatural horror film written, directed and edited by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. It is a fictional story of three student filmmakers—Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard—who hike into the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Maryland, in 1994 to film a documentary about a local myth known as the Blair Witch. The three disappear, but their equipment and footage are discovered a year later. The purportedly "found footage" is the movie the viewer sees.
The trials of the Pendle witches in 1612 are among the most famous witch trials in English history, and some of the best recorded of the 17th century. The twelve accused lived in the area surrounding Pendle Hill in Lancashire, and were charged with the murders of ten people by the use of witchcraft. All but two were tried at Lancaster Assizes on 18–19 August 1612, along with the Samlesbury witches and others, in a series of trials that have become known as the Lancashire witch trials. One was tried at York Assizes on 27 July 1612, and another died in prison. Of the eleven who went to trial – nine women and two men – ten were found guilty and executed by hanging; one was found not guilty.
The Samlesbury witches were three women from the Lancashire village of Samlesbury – Jane Southworth, Jennet Bierley, and Ellen Bierley – accused by a 14-year-old girl, Grace Sowerbutts, of practising witchcraft. Their trial at Lancaster Assizes in England on 19 August 1612 was one in a series of witch trials held there over two days, among the most infamous in English history. The trials were unusual for England at that time in two respects: Thomas Potts, the clerk to the court, published the proceedings in his The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster; and the number of the accused found guilty and hanged was unusually high, ten at Lancaster and another at York. All three of the Samlesbury women were acquitted.
Matthew Hopkins was an English witchhunter whose career flourished during the time of the English Civil War. Between 1644 and 1645, Hopkins and his associates were responsible for the deaths of more accused witches than had been executed in the previous 100 years.
Grace White Sherwood (1660–1740), called the Witch of Pungo, is the last person known to have been convicted of witchcraft in Virginia.
Rachel Rising is a 42-issue American comic book series created by Terry Moore and published through Abstract Studio. The first issue was released on August 3, 2011, to positive reviews. Reviewers sometimes criticized the pace later in the run, but the series won industry awards throughout its publication. Since its conclusion in 2016, members of the cast have reappeared in other works by Moore. Plans for a television adaptation were announced in April 2013, but was still in the scripting stage in 2015.
"The Witchfinders" is the eighth episode of the eleventh series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. It was written by Joy Wilkinson and directed by Sallie Aprahamian, and was first broadcast on BBC One on 25 November 2018.
Witch trials and witch related accusations were at a high during the early modern period in Britain, a time that spanned from the beginning of the 16th century to the end of the 18th century.
Malcolm John Gaskill FRHistS is an English academic historian and writer on crime, magic, witchcraft, spiritualism, and the supernatural. Gaskill was a professor in the history department of the University of East Anglia from 2011 until 2020, when he retired from teaching to give more time to writing.
