31 Days of Halloween | Day 23: The North Berwick Witch Trials — The Devil's Halloween Gathering
Haunted American HistoryShow Notes
In the winter of 1590, an elderly Scottish healer named Agnes Sampson was brought before King James VI of Scotland.
She had been accused of witchcraft, tortured, and forced to describe an extraordinary gathering that supposedly took place on Halloween night.
According to her confession, hundreds of witches had sailed across the sea in sieves, gathered at a church in North Berwick, and met the Devil himself.
Their purpose was to bring about the death of the king.
James initially dismissed the accusations. But then Agnes whispered something into his ear, repeating words he had supposedly spoken privately to his new wife on their wedding night.
The king was astonished.
What followed was one of the most notorious witch hunts in Scottish history.
Tonight, we're investigating the North Berwick witch trials, the accusations against Agnes Sampson, Geillis Duncan, and John Fian, the brutal interrogations that produced their confessions, and the extraordinary Halloween gathering described in the surviving accounts.
We'll also examine how these trials influenced King James's beliefs about witchcraft, helped shape the imagery of witches in Shakespeare's *Macbeth*, and left behind a mystery that has endured for more than four hundred years.
Because while the alleged meeting with the Devil may never have happened, the people who died because of it were very real.
Welcome to Day 23 of 31 Days of Halloween
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