A Brief History of Witches — And How We’ve Made Them Ours

She is haggard and grizzled. Ugly and scary and sexually suspect. She has a hooked, warty nose and moles on her pallid — or sometimes green-tinged — skin. She’s definitely single and certainly has no children. Her cat is her only constant companion. Indeed, she might well be the original cat lady: odd, eccentric, but also a threat to the social order; dangerous enough to be burned at the stake.

Behold the witch: an image so familiar and so deeply embedded in our cultural imagination (especially in October), that we rarely stop to consider who she is, what she represents, or where she came from.

But the witch is far more than a Halloween caricature. She is an archetype loaded with symbolism, one whose image has been used for centuries to inspire suspicion, fear and hostility toward any woman who defies social expectations. 

The witch has a long and complicated history, stretching back to the sorceresses of ancient mythology. But it was in Europe, starting around the 15th century, that the witch acquired her most sinister significance. 

Over nearly 200 years, tens of thousands of people were executed for witchcraft, the majority of them women. The persecutions swept across much of Europe, but were particularly common in the German-speaking territories of the Holy Roman Empire.

Witch trials also took place in colonial North America, most famously in Salem, Mass., where at least 25 people accused of being witches died or were killed in 1692 and 1693. According to documentary archives, 19 were executed by hanging, one was tortured to death, and at least five perished in jail due to the squalid conditions. More than 160 were accused of witchcraft, of which many were jailed, or deprived of property and legal rights.

The accusations were frequently fantastical. Witches were said to have made deals with the devil. They were accused of spells, causing illness, destroying crops and bringing misfortune upon their neighbors. They were the ultimate scapegoats. When in doubt, blame the witch! Behind these allegations, though, lay distinctly earthly anxieties about women, their bodies, their knowledge and their place in society.

The women accused were not necessarily powerful or rebellious. Many were poor, elderly, widowed or otherwise marginalized, lacking the social standing or protection of a father or husband, for example, that might have shielded them from suspicion. Others became targets after falling out with neighbors, becoming embroiled in a local rivalry or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In 1486, the persecution of those thought to be witches was given intellectual and religious legitimacy by the publication of “Malleus Maleficarum,” or “Hammer of Witches,” a book by the German friar Heinrich Kramer. Published just decades after the invention of the European printing press, it became a handbook for witch-hunters, helping to spread the idea that women were particularly susceptible to witchcraft, drawing on deeply misogynistic assumptions about their supposedly weaker intellects, insatiable sexuality and moral frailty. About 30 editions were printed over the following two centuries and it was widely circulated, across the European continent and beyond. 

Those on trial might protest their innocence, but their words generally carried little weight against accusations of witchcraft. Torture was sometimes used to extract confessions. One particularly notorious practice was “witch swimming,” in which the accused was bound and dunked in a body of water to determine whether she would sink or float. Sinking — and drowning — was taken as a sign of innocence, while floating was considered evidence of guilt.

The witch, once merely a creepy abstract notion, had — as laid out by Kramer — become an embodiment of everything that patriarchal society feared, distrusted or sought to control in women.

Eventually, the witch trials ended. One of the last people executed in connection with witchcraft in Europe was Anna Göldi, who was killed in Switzerland, on June 13, 1782.  Göldi was a domestic maid who was accused of bewitching her employer’s daughter after the girl vomited metal objects. At age 48, Göldi was beheaded with a sword. Although she was formally convicted of poisoning rather than witchcraft, the accusations against her were steeped in superstition and fears of the supernatural. She was formally exonerated in 2008.

The image of the witch proved remarkably resilient throughout the remaining 18th century and into the 19th century; and while executions like Göldi’s would eventually be condemned as barbaric, the suspicion of women who stepped outside the boundaries of acceptable femininity prevailed. Outspoken women became “hysterical.” The ambitious woman became “ruthless” or “a bitch.” The sexually independent woman was “immoral” or “slutty.”  In all these contexts, the underlying message was much the same: women who refused to conform were not merely different, but dangerous.

Even today, the imagery of the witch remains a convenient shorthand for female transgression. Powerful women are routinely caricatured as cold, calculating or monstrous. Rush Limbaugh, the late conservative commentator, in 2016 described Hillary Clinton as a “witch with a capital ‘B.’”

And let’s not forget JD Vance trotting out the cat lady stereotype: In 2021, when he was an Ohio Senate candidate, he criticized prominent Democrats as "a bunch of childless cat ladies” who “are miserable” and “want to make the rest of the country miserable, too”. In doing so, the solitary, childless woman whose apparent failure to secure a husband or family was held up as evidence of some fundamental deficiency. 

Setting aside the snarky, politicized commentary, I am happy to say that in recent decades, there’s been a shift. Women have started to reclaim the witch as an emblem of independence, female solidarity, and resistance to authority. In literature, popular culture and feminist movements, the witch is celebrated precisely for the qualities that once rendered her so threatening. Consider the roaring success of the 2024 film “Wicked,” which grossed more than $750 million worldwide and recast the supposedly wicked witch as a misunderstood heroine who dares to challenge authority. I have friends who describe their social gatherings as “covens.” I’ve long pined for a T-shirt printed with the phrase “They Can’t Burn Us All.” (Ed’s note: It’s true, they can’t.)

If this all feels like poetic justice, that’s good! The figure once used to scare women into submission, has become a symbol of women’s refusal to be scared into submission. We've reclaimed the witch, “cat lady” trope and all.

So this Halloween, as I wander through Manhattan with my daughter, watching her eyes light up at the prospect of yet more candy from strangers, I'll be looking at the witches a little differently. Beneath the pointy hats and crooked noses lies a centuries-old history of women punished for failing to conform. They may never have set out to challenge the status quo, but their stories have helped shape our understanding of female independence, defiance and power. Unlikely trailblazers? Sure. But they left a legacy too potent to ignore.