A witch hunt is a search for witches to capture. Witch hunts often involve moral panics or mass hysteria. They were much more common in the past than they are today. Many different groups participated in witch hunts, including Christians.

History 
Witch hunts were most common in Europe from about 1480 AD to 1700 AD, during the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years' War. Tens of thousands of “witches” were executed during this period. Around the same time, there were many witch hunts in America, such as the Salem Witch Trials.

Witch hunts today 
Today, there are fewer witch hunts. Most countries no longer have laws against witches. 

Most which hunts today happen in South America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Societies where witch hunts happen have a stong belief in magic. In many cases, these are instances of lynching, and burning a person.  Witch hunts are reularly reported from much of Sub-Saharan Africa, from Saudi Arabia and from Papua New Guinea. 

The  UNHCR say that such which hunts usually are a massive violation of human rights. Most of the accused are women and children but can also be elderly people or marginalised groups of the community such as albinos and the HIV-infected. These victims are often considered burdens to the community.  As as a result they are often driven out, starved to death, or killed violently, sometimes by their own families in acts of social cleansing. The causes of witch-hunts include poverty, epidemics, social crises and lack of education. The leader of the witch-hunt, often a prominent figure in the community or a "witch doctor", may also gain economic benefit by charging for an exorcism or by selling body parts of the murdered.

In metaphor 
The term "witch hunt" is also used as a metaphor to describe a search for enemies in which people are accused without any real evidence. For example, during the Cold War, United States Senator Joseph McCarthy led a hunt for communists in American government and society. He accused many people, but eventually found no communist spies. McCarthyism is often called an example of a modern “witch hunt.”

References

Further reading 
Behringer, Wolfgang. Witches and Witch Hunts: A Global History. Malden Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2004.
Briggs, Robin. 'Many reasons why': witchcraft and the problem of multiple explanation, in Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe.  Studies in Culture and Belief, ed. Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Levack, Brian P. The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1661-1662, The Journal of British Studies, Vol.20, No, 1. (Autumn, 1980), pp. 90–108.
Levack, Brian P. The witch hunt in early modern Europe, Second Edition. London and New York:  Longman, 1995.
Macfarlane, Alan. Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A regional and Comparative Study. New York and Evanston: Harper & Row Publishers, 1970.
Midlefort, Erick H.C. Witch Hunting in Southeastern Germany 1562-1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundation. California: Stanford University Press, 1972.  
Oberman, H. A., J. D. Tracy, Thomas A. Brady (eds.), Handbook of European History, 1400-1600: Visions, Programs, Outcomes (1995)  
Oldridge, Darren (ed.), The Witchcraft Reader (2002)  
Poole, Robert. The Lancashire Witches: Histories and Stories (2002)  
Purkiss, Diane.  "A Holocaust of One's Own: The Myth of the Burning Times." Chapter in The Witch and History: Early Modern and Twentieth Century Representatives New York, NY: Routledge, 1996, pp. 7–29. 
Sagan, Carl. The Demon-Haunted World, Random House, 1996. 
Thurston, Robert.  The Witch Hunts:  A History of the Witch Persecutions in Europe and North America.  Pearson/Longman, 2007.
Purkiss, Diane. The Bottom of the Garden, Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, and Other Troublesome Things. Chapter 3 Brith and Death: Fairies in Scottish Witch-trials New York, NY: New York University Press, 2000, pp. 85–115.
West, Robert H. Reginald Scot and Renaissance Writings. Boston: Twayne Publishers,1984.
Briggs, K.M. Pale Hecate’s Team, an Examination of the Beliefs on Witchcraft and Magic among Shakespeare’s Contemporaries and His Immediate Successors. New York: The Humanities Press, 1962.

Other websites
The Stages of a Witch Trial — a series of articles by Jenny Gibbons.
1913 Catholic Encyclopedia entry on "Witchcraft"
The Burning Times A Wiccan discusses what she considers the three myths of "The Burning Times"
Jenny Gibbons (1998).  . Retrieved 21 November 2006.
Crises: Witch hunt 
 The Decline and End of Witch Trials in Europe by James Hannam
 Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project
Cornish witch-trials 
 Witch Trials 
 Dame Alice le Kyteler, convicted of witchcraft in Kilkenny, Ireland, 1324 
Elizabethan Superstitions in the Elizabethan Period by Linda Alchin

Witchcraft