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Witchcraft

Mysterious discovery in culvert sparks emergency search for 'body' at reported witchcraft site
By Ben_Falconer | Posted: March 17, 2017

Fears that a dead body or a person could be trapped in an underground stream sparked a police and fire service search this morning.
When worried staff at Stroud lighting firm Trainspotters spotted a pair of trainers next to a grid guarding a culvert, and a rope lashed to a tree leading down in to the underground waterway, they raised the alarm.
And when police came to investigate, a neighbour told them the area may be being used by people practising witchcraft. An effigy in plaster and wire hangs from a nearby tree but it is not known if it is linked to the other finds.
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http://www.gloucestershirelive.co.u...rch-for-body/story-30211098-detail/story.html
 
Funny place Gloucester...Fred West country. And there's plenty of occultism in that case- ignored by most.
 
Definitely a Fortean political story.

The count in Papua New Guinea's troubled general election has been delayed in one province following accusations of sorcery, it's been reported.

According to Radio New Zealand International, recounts have been ordered in two constituencies in the country's East Sepik province because more than one candidate has alleged that witchcraft has been used to remove their votes from ballot boxes.

The radio said that priests had been asked to pray over the boxes to "shield" them from "sinister forces".

It's not the first time superstition has affected this election - in April, officials had to reassure church leaders that the country was not being "signed up for the number of the beast", after it emerged that 666 writs had to be signed to initiate the poll.

"Such views are too shallow and are rejected outright," Electoral Commissioner Patilias Gamato said at the time. Mr Gamato recently took out a court injunctionto stop his critics from calling him Mr Tomato. ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-40680615
 
" . . . in a battle between witches and fairies, who would win? The answer, cheeringly, turns out to be the fairies, along with their cousins the elves, pixies and imps. During the early-modern period, these quaint little people were much in evidence in the folk traditions of the Celtic fringe. And crucially it was in these areas – Wales, Ireland, the Highlands – that witchhunting failed to catch fire."

From a review by Kathryn Hughes of The Witch: A History of Fear from Ancient Times to the Present , by Ronald Hutton.




I'm not quite sure where that will leave that Scottish Play* . . . :witch:


*They were only ever "weird sisters" in the text.
 
Ren scratches note to herself, "buy witch book", scrumbles it and throws it into the bubbling cauldron, taps the cauldron three times, "remember, remember, remember". Ren then takes off her magical, pointy hat, unhooks her cloak, and snuggles up next to her broomstick.

Upon waking, Ren travels, sans broomstick, into town and wanders curiously past Blackwell's, "????". Befuddled, she goes into Tesco's and buys an assortment of chocolate biscuits. But there is a nagging sensation in the back of her mind..."is there something I have to do?"

Ren returns home, clears the hearth, and throws the musty, ashy contents of the cauldron into the garden. "I'm sure I've forgotten something", she says to herself as she sits down to a cup of tea and a choccy biscuit.

Ren logs onto the Fortean Times website and notices a message on a thread about witchcraft. "Shit!"
 
Interview with Griffin Dunne:
http://www.vulture.com/2017/10/practical-magic-griffin-dunne-witch-curse.html

He made the witch comedy Practical Magic and hired an actual with to consult on it - then she went nuts and cursed him! The film flopped and his directing career nosedived!

I have seen this film and thought it was patronising, cutesy rubbish, but it seems it has a growing cult following, much like Mannequin before it. I'll never watch it again, even with this weird twist, but at least somebody enjoys it.
 
Hellish Nell - the Scottish “witch” jailed in 1944

Helen Duncan, a working-class medium from Edinburgh, became the last person in Great Britain to be jailed for witchcraft following her trial at the Old Bailey in 1944. Known as Hellish Nell from childhood given her bolshie character, Duncan’s seances became the stuff of sensation with her apparent ability to summon the dead in much demand during World War Two. Portrait of medium Helen Duncan, from Callander and Edinburgh, who was the last person in Britain to be jailed for witchcraft. PIC: Creative Commons. READ MORE: Calls for national memorial to victims of Scotland’s witch trials Her powers were highly regarded by some with the ghost of Sherlock Holmes’ creator Arthur Conan Doyle among those who reportedly appeared at one of Duncan’s seances in the capital, according to testimony given at the trial. However, Duncan was to suffer great humiliation after being exposed and derided by psychic investigators for regurgitating fake ectoplasm - made from cheesecloth or paper dipped in egg white - during meetings to indicate she had successfully summoned a spirit.
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www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/hellish-nell-the-scottish-witch-jailed-in-1944-1-4597509
 
Co-operate, fit in - or be accused of being a witch.

From medieval witch hunts in Europe to contemporary "witch doctors" in Tanzania, belief in witchcraft has existed across human societies throughout history. Anthropologists have long been fascinated by the phenomenon, but have struggled to study it with quantitative methods – our understanding of how and why it arises is therefore poor.

But a study we conducted of one Chinese region provided an opportunity to test the most common hypothesis – that witchcraft accusations act as punishment for those who do not cooperate with local norms. According to this theory, witch tags mark supposedly untrustworthy individuals and encourage others to conform out of fear of being labelled. However, some empirical studies have shown that witch labelling instead undermines trust and social cohesion in a society.

Our study is based on 800 households in five villages in south-western China. We examined the social behaviour of those who were labelled with a "witch" tag, and compared it with those who were not. The work, published in Nature Human Behaviour, was the basis of a long-term collaboration between scientists from University College London, the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and Lanzhou University.

To determine the social networks and cooperation between households, we conducted house-to-house surveys, asking who had children, marriages and partnerships with whom. We also collected data on gift-giving, and on working groups on farms during harvest and planting seasons to see who was helping other households with their farming. All these measures gave rise to four social networks between households based on kinship, reproductive partners, gifts exchanged or farm work. ...

https://phys.org/print434705012.html
 
About occult..My brother and I were watching the news, it was in the early 90's, I think. The story was about a traffic backup on a freeway in California. The reason for the traffic jam was because a lot of drivers were seeing a ghostly image on a white billboard. The face was apparently a young girl who had recently been kidnapped and murdered. There was a long shot of the billboard on the TV, all of the sudden my brother jumped off the couch backwards because he saw a face in the billboard, at this time I saw a face too. Moments later the news showed an image of the girl who it was believed to be. It was the same girl my brother and I had just seen. I guess you'd have to be there but it was creepy.
Homus
 
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violab said:
About occult..My brother and I were watching the news, it was in the early 90's, I think. The story was about a traffic backup on a freeway in California. The reason for the traffic jam was because a lot of drivers were seeing a ghostly image on a white billboard. The face was apparently a young girl who had recently been kidnapped and murdered. There was a long shot of the billboard on the TV, all of the sudden my brother jumped off the couch backwards because he saw a face in the billboard, at this time I saw a face too. Moments later the news showed an image of the girl who it was believed to be. It was the same girl my brother and I had just seen. I guess you'd have to be there but it was creepy.
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Her name was Laura Arroyo:

http://articles.latimes.com/1991-07-20/local/me-2014_1_chula-vista

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,157604,00.html
 
I just finished the satanic witch by Anton lavey it was fun. More materialistic view of witchcraft. A bit dated but kind of refreshing. He's been called "sexist" but as a woman I enjoyed it and found his frankness appealing in a grouchy old man who tells it how he sees it sort of way.
 
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