An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Hauntings Connected with Witchcraft

The late Elliott O’Donnell, who was responsible for many volumes of ghostly tales, recorded a number of hauntings attributed to witchcraft in one way or another. The most frequent cause of such weird happenings was believed to be the lingering presence of the witch’s familiar spirits.

This, it seems, was particularly likely to occur if the witch had met a violent death. O’Donnell himself was a witness to one such apparition, that of a large black bird which haunted a crossroads somewhere in the north of England.

Apparently the bird had been the pet of an old woman who lived in a cottage nearby, and was reputed to practise witchcraft. One night a mob had dragged her from her bed and subjected her to the notorious swimming test in a pond. In the course of the proceedings she died, and her friendless corpse had been buried at the crossroads. The bird, at first in material and then in phantom form, had haunted the spot ever afterwards. Its most frequent spectral appearances were in March and September, the months of the equinoxes—periods well known to occultists as being times of psychic stress.

O’Donnell also recorded several phantom cats, reputed to have been witches’ familiars. People may sneer at the possibility of the spirit of an animal surviving death; but why should it not? An animal that has been closely associated with humans develops as an individual. It has a personality, as any pet-lover can testify. It is no longer merely part of a group-soul.

Animals which do not develop as individuals may simply return to their own group-soul at death; but what of those who are distinct personalities? A witch’s familiar in particular would be likely to survive because it would be a creature selected for its intelligence, and closely attached to its owner.

However, another haunting recorded by O’Donnell scarcely seems to come into this category. It is simply one of those inexplicable and rather horrible things that one finds on the borderlands of occult lore. The story was told to him by a man in Ireland, whose parents once took an old house in which strange things occurred. On several occasions, the family had seen the apparition of a horde of mice, apparently dragging some large, shapeless object across the floor. The noise they made could be heard, but they were evidently phantom mice, because when pursued they and their mysterious burden simply disappeared. No dog or cat would stay in the house, and the family eventually left before their lease had ended.

Upon enquiry, it was discovered that a previous occupant of the house had been a woman reputed to be a witch, whose craft was of a dark and sinister kind.

Another haunting, which was described to Elliott O’Donnell’s mother by a Worcestershire farmer, concerned a strange spectral figure, something like an animal yet not an animal. It may have been an elemental spirit. Its abode was an old elm-tree by the side of a road, and it was locally believed to be the familiar of an old woman called Nancy Bell, a witch who had lived nearby many years ago.

The farmer declared that he had seen it one moonlight night, as it crossed the road and disappeared into the tree. He said it was something like a rabbit, but much larger, and with a strangely-shaped head. Elementals of certain other frightening types are often described as appearing in misshapen, semi-animal forms such as this.

Any place where magical rites have been performed is likely to have curious things occurring there, if the power that has built up there is not dispersed. The magic need not necessarily be black magic, either. The performance of magical ritual creates an atmosphere which attracts spirits and elementals. This is why experienced occultists never abandon a place of working without ceremonially clearing it first. Sometimes, however, circumstances prevent this being done, and odd phenomena often ensue.

A haunting directly connected with a famous witchcraft case in Scotland, was that which afflicted a grim old house at the Bow Head, Edinburgh. This house was once the residence of Major Thomas Weir and his sister Jean, who were both executed for witchcraft in 1670. Robert Chambers, in his Traditions of Edinburgh (Chambers, London and Edinburgh, 1896), tells how the house and its neighbourhood were believed to be haunted by the unquiet spirits of Weir and his sister: “His apparition was frequently seen at night, flitting, like a black and silent shadow about the street. His house, though known to be deserted by everything human, was sometimes observed at midnight to be full of lights, and heard to emit strange sounds as of dancing, howling, and, what is strangest of all, spinning.”

One of the accusations against Jean Weir at her trial was that her prowess in using a spinning-wheel had been aided by witchcraft. Presumably, this sound was thought to be the witch-woman still plying her ghostly wheel. Sometimes, too, there were sounds and apparitions of galloping horses, which the fear-stricken inhabitants of Edinburgh believed to be caused by the spirits riding abroad at night.

No one would venture to live in the house, until one bold sceptic, an ex-soldier named William Patullo, obtained the tenancy of it at a very low rent. But on the first—and only—night he spent in the old house, Patullo’s scepticism was turned to terror. Robert Chambers continues the story:

On the very first night after Patullo and his spouse had taken up their abode in the house, as the worthy couple were lying awake in their bed, not unconscious of a certain degree of fear—a dim uncertain light proceeding from the gathered embers of their fire, and all being silent around them—they suddenly saw a form like that of a calf, which came forward to the bed, and, setting its fore-feet upon the stock, looked steadfastly at the unfortunate pair. When it had contemplated them thus for a few minutes, to their great relief it at length took itself away, and slowly retiring, gradually vanished from their sight. As might be expected, they deserted the house next morning; and for another half-century no other attempt was made to embank this part of the world of light from the aggressions of the world of darkness.

(See also WITCH OF SCRAPFAGGOT GREEN AND TREES AND WITCHCRAFT.)