Witchcraft didn’t start with Christianity. The witch most people picture, an old woman burned at the stake after her village turned on her, gets more wrong than right. Historians put the death toll of Europe’s witch trials at 40,000 to 60,000 people between about 1400 and 1775. They died by burning, hanging or beheading. Roughly three in four of the accused were women, but not all. Here are eight of the most common myths about witchcraft, checked against the historical record.
Updated October 30, 2026.
The idea of witchcraft goes back much further than most people think. In Homer’s Odyssey, the sorceress Circe turns men into animals. Archaeologists have found hundreds of ancient Greek curse tablets, known as katadesmoi, all over modern-day Greece, and Roman laws also banned “illicit magic.” Most of us picture a witch in a pointy hat before anyone has taught us a single fact. That is the crone you see in Halloween costumes. She came much later. The real history behind her is stranger than the costume.
The same claims come back every October, usually stated as fact right next to the real record. Today witches mostly live on screen, in shows like Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Bewitched and Agatha All Along. Some people today also follow Wicca, a modern faith built around the seasons. Samhain on October 31 is one of its most important holidays. In that spirit, here are the myths that turn up most often, and what really happened.
Myth #1: Witches Were Burned at the Stake
Burning did happen in parts of continental Europe. In England and its American colonies, though, witchcraft was a serious crime. People convicted of it were hanged. All 19 people executed in the Salem trials of 1692 were hanged, starting with Bridget Bishop on June 10. Giles Corey, 81, was pressed to death under stones after he refused to enter a plea. That was a punishment for refusing trial, not a witchcraft sentence.
Myth #2: The Catholic Church Ran the Witchcraft Trials
In England, church courts handled most witchcraft cases before 1542, and their sentences leaned toward penance rather than death. After that, local and non-church courts took over, and it was local courts, not the Vatican, that convicted most accused witches across Europe. The Spanish Inquisition mostly went after people suspected of secretly keeping Judaism or Islam, not witches. In Italy, the Roman Inquisition actually kept the local courts it influenced from using too much torture and too many executions. Every major Christian group of the era prosecuted witchcraft at some point: Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist and Anglican. Orthodox Eastern Europe carried out comparatively few prosecutions.
Myth #3: Witchcraft Victims Were All Women
Roughly 75% to 85% of those accused across Europe were women. That leaves a real minority who were not, and in a few places men were the majority. At the edges of Europe, in Iceland, Finland, Estonia and Russia, most of the accused were male. So the picture of an all-female witch hunt is a bit too tidy.
Myth #4: Millions Were Executed for Witchcraft
The scholarly consensus is 40,000 to 60,000 executions, out of about 100,000 people prosecuted in Europe and British America. Executions peaked between 1560 and 1630. That is a horrifying number on its own. It is also a small fraction of the “millions” figure that circulated in 20th-century popular writing and still turns up online without a source. Most of us have heard a big number so many times we never stopped to check it. It is easy to picture this era as one where everyone believed anything. The truth is more mixed. Plenty of judges doubted the charges in front of them. And many accusations grew out of plain old feuds between neighbors.
Myth #5: Witches Belonged to an Ancient Pagan Cult
This idea, known as the witch-cult hypothesis, got its biggest push from Egyptologist Margaret Murray. In her 1921 book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, she argued that accused witches secretly followed a pre-Christian fertility religion that worshipped a Horned God. In 1929 she wrote the “Witchcraft” entry for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and it stayed there until 1968. Then, in the 1960s and 1970s, scholars dug into the old trial records and rejected the theory. Murray had picked only the evidence she liked. She also treated confessions as true, even though many were taken under torture or pressure. Most people accused of witchcraft were ordinary Christians whose neighbors turned on them. Anyone who has seen a rumor race through a school or an office knows how fast a bad story about one person can grow.
Myth #6: Wiccans Follow a “Dark Bible”
Wiccans do keep a book, called a Book of Shadows. It is a working notebook of rituals, spells and their results. Often it belongs to just one witch, though traditional covens also keep a shared core text that new members copy. Nothing about it is a “dark bible.” That idea comes more from pop culture. One example is the Scarlet Witch’s Darkhold in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and that is pure Marvel invention. Anyone who has watched a superhero movie knows the filmmakers will happily bend the facts to make a better story.
Myth #7: Witchcraft Accusations Were Always About Evil
In colonial North America, European settlers often called Indigenous spiritual practices witchcraft or devil worship simply because they didn’t match Christian norms. Magic is often just a word for things people can’t explain yet. That may be why unfamiliar practices made settlers so uneasy. Many of those same traditions have since been borrowed into “New Age” spirituality and become hugely popular. That flip says more about who got to decide what counted as “evil” back then than about the practices themselves.
Myth #8: Salem Tested Witches by Dunking Them in Water
The float test was real: bind the accused and put them in the water, and if they floated, they were guilty. If they sank, they drowned, so it was a no-win test. It just wasn’t used at Salem. It was used in colonial Virginia, where Grace Sherwood floated on July 10, 1706. She was jailed, possibly for as long as seven years and nine months, but never executed. Salem’s trials ran on spectral evidence, which was testimony that the accused’s spirit had appeared to a victim. They also used the touch test, confessions starting with Tituba’s, and searches of the body for “witch’s marks.” Most of us hear “witch trials” and think of Salem right away. That is why details from other places get mixed into it. Witches were also believed unable to recite the Lord’s Prayer. George Burroughs recited it perfectly on the gallows and was hanged anyway.
What Is a Witch Coven, Really?
Despite the sinister reputation, a coven is simply a small group of witches, at least three and often no more than thirteen. Wiccan covens are usually led by a High Priestess and a High Priest together. They meet to mark the sabbats, the seasonal holidays of the Wiccan calendar, along with big life moments like births, weddings and deaths. It’s actually quite quaint.
Witchcraft Myths FAQ
Were witches really burned at the stake?
Burning happened in parts of continental Europe, but in England and its American colonies, witchcraft was a felony and felons were hanged. Every execution in the 1692 Salem trials was by hanging.
How many people were executed for witchcraft in Europe?
Historians estimate 40,000 to 60,000 executions across Europe between the 15th and 18th centuries, not counting unrecorded deaths. That is far below the unsourced “millions” figure that still circulates.
Was the water-dunking test used at Salem?
No. The float test was used in colonial Virginia, notably on Grace Sherwood in 1706. Salem’s trials relied on spectral evidence, accusers’ courtroom fits, confessions and physical searches for body markings instead.
Is the witch-cult hypothesis true?
No. Egyptologist Margaret Murray popularized the idea that witches followed a secret pre-Christian fertility religion, including in a 1929 Encyclopaedia Britannica entry, but historians discredited the theory in the 1970s for relying on coerced trial testimony with no corroborating evidence.
For more Halloween reading, see 7 Essential Halloween Traditions and 10 Creepy Vintage Halloween Costumes.