The Most Famous Witches In History

Witches
have been a big part of folklore and fantasy stories since the dawn
of man. We’ve seen quite a few of these pop up in stories old and
new, and some of them have really managed to get a solid place in
history.

Let’s
take a look at some witches of ancient and/or modern history that
everyone should know. And while these witches (probably?) didn’t
have any magical powers, they sure did exist at some point in time.
Spooky!

Isobel
Gowdie

What
makes this Scottish witch so special is that she gave a confession of
her witchcraft without being tortured. I mean, considering what they
did to witches at the time, confessing to it willingly might not be
the cleverest idea. Her confession included detailed stories of her
ability to – for example – transform into animals. We now know
that ol’ Isobel was probably a few cards short of a deck, if you
know what I mean.

Moll
Dyer

The
infamous Blair Witch. This witch is probably nothing more than
superstition, but it’s said she was chased from her cabin into the
woods where she froze to death. She now haunts people near her cabin
by letting them run in circles with a video camera to make an average
horror movie, I guess.

Dion
Fortune

While
Dion seemed like nothing more than a writer who wrote a lot about the
occult, she actually founded a Fraternity of Inner Light which gained
a massive following. She was probably the most important figure in
early 1900s British Occultism. Which probably isn’t too hard a
title to grab since I can think of exactly 0 other British occultist
trendsetters.

La
Voisin

Yes,
she was French. She mostly dealt in poison, abortions, fortune
telling and conferring with the Devil. Naturally, she was burnt
shortly after being caught in the late 1670s.

Marie
Laveau

A
voodoo priestess known from American Horror Story: Coven. It was once
claimed that drawing an “X” on her gravestone would grant boons,
and this explains the ridiculous amount of X’es drawn on her
gravestone. Sadly, fortune doesn’t quite work that way.

Tituba

While
Tituba is a fictional character from the Arthur Miller novel The
Crucible, she was actually inspired by a real person. She was one of
the first South American people to be accused of witchcraft and at
the end of her life was bought from jail by an unknown individual.

Mother
Shipton

Probably one of the ugliest witches in history, Mother Shipton was the witch that’s responsible for the existence of a “hag face”. In fact, this was her nickname! Because of the fact that she was born in the 1500s instead of the 1600s, she was regarded more as a prophetess than a witch. That also means that she wasn’t burnt or drowned, but lived a full and happy life.