As seen in Rue Morgue September/October 2025 issue!
The motif of witches and witchcraft is a venerable one in weird fiction, chiefly because the witchcraft panic of the Middle Ages and Renaissance permanently embedded the theme into European society. In this new and expansive anthology, Katherine Kerestman and S. T. Joshi have not only unearthed great stories and poems, old and new, about witches, but also chronicled the witch-hunts that resulted in the unjust deaths of hundreds of thousands of suspected witches over many centuries.
Treatises by Nicolas Rémy, Henri Boguet, Matthew Hale, and others cruelly portrayed witches, both male and female (but mostly female), as having signed pacts with the Devil. The sexual obsession of these male witch-hunters is evident throughout their writings. Their work led to the chilling portrayal of witches as evil crones, evidenced in tales, plays, and poems by William Shakespeare, L. Frank Baum, Clark Ashton Smith, Frank Belknap Long, Ramsey Campbell, and others.
This volume features original stories and poems on witches and witchcraft by such leading contemporary writers as John Shirley, Darrell Schweitzer, Wade German, Stephen Mark Rainey, Debra K. Every, and many others who exhibit the continuing power of this motif. Also included are distinctive illustrations from witch-hunting manuals, which reveal the twisted mentalities of self-appointed witch-hunters as they targeted innocent people in their vicious crusade.
Contents
Introduction
Euripides, From Medea
Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger, From Malleus Maleficarum
Mary A. Turzillo, Dollhouse
L. Frank Baum, The Search for the Wicked Witch
Nicholas Rémy, From Demonolatry
Debra K. Every, Beautiful Baby Bianka
Robert Herrick, The Hag
Stephen Mark Rainey, Foragers
Lady Wilde, The Horned Women
William Bell Scott, A Lowland Witch Ballad
John Kachuba, Why We Don’t Dig Up Witches
Henri Boguet, From An Examen of Witches
Dmitri Akers, Song of Fae-Land
Ramsey Campbell, Dolls
Cotton Mather, From Wonders of the Invisible World
Donald Tyson, Cotton Mather and the Witches
William Shakespeare, From Macbeth
Simon MacCulloch, Burnt Ghost
Robert P. Ottone, Donna and the Yaga
Matthew Hopkins, From The Discoverie of Witches
Im Bang, A Visit from the Shades
Clark Ashton Smith, The Witch in the Graveyard
John Hale, A Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft
Helena P. Blavatsky, A Witch’s Den
Ann Putnam, Confession
Ambrose Bierce, A Fowl Witch
Adam Bolivar, Géacspell
Darrell Schweitzer, Seeing Them
Michael Potts, Musings of a Conjurer
Eleanor Scott, The Old Lady
Edmund Clarence Stedman, Witchcraft
John Shirley, The Children of Glimbly
Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Witch-Mother
Alice Elizabeth Dracott, The Old Witch Who Lived in a Forest
Tony LaMalfa, The Eye of the Cyclops
Herman George Scheffauer, Lilith of Eld
Robert E. Howard, Sea Curse
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, The Witch
Éliphas Lévi, From The History of Magic
Oliver Smith, Witch’s Death Song
Joel Chandler Harris, A Plantation Witch
James Weldon Johnson, The White Witch
Margaret Alice Murray, From The Witch-Cult in Western Europe
Leah Bodine Drake, Witches on the Heath
Frank Belknap Long, The White People
Maxwell I. Gold, The Witch of the Pit (Our Lady Endor)
Dorothy Quick, Witch’s Brew
Mary De Morgan, The Necklace of Princess Fiorimonde
Wade German, Hex House
Montague Summers, From The History of Witchcraft and Demonology
Katherine Kerestman, The Beldame
Anna Taborska, [Ir]reversible
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments
This product was added to our catalog on Monday 01 September, 2025.
