Witch hunt

A **witch hunt** is a search for witches. 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 common locations

Most witch hunts today happen in South America, Southeast Asia, and Africa, in societies that believe strongly in magic. Witch hunts are also regularly reported from Saudi Arabia, Papua New Guinea, and much of Sub-Saharan Africa.

In many cases, modern witch hunts involve lynching and burning the accused witch.

### Human rights violations

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says that modern witch hunts usually are a massive violation of human rights. Most of the accused are women and children.

Victims also include elderly people or marginalised groups of the community, such as albinos and HIV-infected people. These victims are often considered burdens to the community.  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.”

## 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). http://draeconin.com/database/witchhunt.htm . 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