EEEEK! Scary Website Found

Well it didn't take long for me to find lots of misinformation.  Check out Haunted Happenings (Pendle Witch Hunts/A Haunting Experience), a website rendered truly terrifying in its lack of grammatical and historical knowledge.  I was particularly haunted by the indiscriminate use of the capital letter and mystified by the horrific disappearence of the full stop.

Most horrible of all, however, is the blatant lack of knowledge about the Pendle witches manifesting itself throughout this frightening website. Let's have a look at some examples.  Don't get too scared now.

1. Malkin Tower, where some of the witches lived, was a huge limestone tower.  WOW!  New information! No, wait, that's how Malkin Tower is described in Harrison Ainsworth's nineteenth century novel The Lancashire Witches - a work of FICTION.  We do not know what the real Malkin Tower was like - most probably it was a little cottage, possibly attached to a peel tower.  Alizon Device refers to 'our firehouse', which was a contemporary term for a small cottage.

2. The witches made clay effigies using human hair and teeth.  Euuuwwgh!  But wait.  While the witches were certainly accused of making clay effigies, (according to Thomas Potts' Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster, 1613), nowhere does he (or anyone else) say that the Pendle witches incorporated human hair and teeth in their 'pictures of clay'.  Stop making things up. Read the original source material rather than watching 'Most Haunted'.

Me and the late Cecil Williamson during 'voodoo doll' research at his Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle, Cornwall
in January, 1991

A wax figure in the museum designed to cause the victim a hernia

Another 'poppet' or 'picture' from Cecil's collection

3. On one of the tours by this 'Pendle Hill Expert' you will actually walk on the hill in the exact footsteps of Demdike, Devise (sic) Chattox etc.  Oh no you won't.  Or at least it is most unlikely.  In the whole of The Wonderfull Discoverie (our only substantial historical source of information) Pendle Hill ISN'T MENTIONED ONCE!

Plenty more, but bored now.  Don't think I'll bother shelling out £65.00 for one of these 'journeys of facts', however.

Jennie, exasperated

Lancashire Witches - 400th Anniversary

1. 2012 - 400th Anniversary of the Lancashire Witch Trials

So it's finally here - the year Lancashire witchcraft scholars and self-styled experts alike have been awaiting with bated breath!  Hopefully the world has begun to forget the ridiculous 'mummified cat' in Pendle cottage story which recently infested our TV sets, newspapers and PCs.  How very embarrassing it was to be made  to look globally stupid by a certain local tour guide in a top hat, who described the find to an agog world as of similar importance to the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb.  The find of the cat's body (actually a skeleton, not a dried specimen) was indeed a fab find in the annals of Lancashire's archaeology of ritual and magic, but let's not go overboard with the hype!

Unfortunately, I fear we are in for a lot more of the same ill-informed garbage this year.  In the course of 2012 I am intending to comment here on any particularly ridiculous, precious, pretentious or just plain wrong information about the witches circulating the web and appearing in the media generally.  I will also be taking the opportunity to publish small articles on various aspects of the Lancashire witch case.  In preparation is a small piece on the Samlesbury witches who tend to be ignored, but it's a great anti-Catholic propaganda story, probably grafted onto a genuine complaint made by yet another adolescent witness who had been pestered by pesky 'witches'. Let's not forget that it's their anniversary too...

In the meantime, check out my new book, The Lure of the Lancashire Witches (Carnegie Publishing), which examines the execution and burial of the witches, their role in popular culture to the present day, and how people protected their homes and farm buildings against their maleficia.  And finally, if you want to know anything about Lancashire witchcraft through the ages, (and want ACCURATE information, not fairy tales) feel free to ask - if I don't know the answer I will almost certainly know someone who does. (I am a graduate archaeologist and historian, and have been researching witchcraft and the archaeology of ritual and magic for the past 25 years or so in case you're wondering about my own credentials!) And do  let me know what you think of the anniversary celebrations as they unfold throughout the year.

Have an excellent 2012
Jennie.