Witches have been part of history for a very long time, but they have reached new heights
with The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.
While the show is fictional, a few of its concepts are based on real-world tales of
witchcraft and the occult.
Here are some real-life witches behind The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.
The Witch of Endor's appearance in the Book of Samuel is pretty troubling for many religious
leaders and Biblical scholars, precisely because she practices magic.
According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, she practices necromancy, a form of spirit-summoning
where she calls upon the dead, as requested by King Saul of Israel.
But Saul is actually the source of this awkwardness.
Having gotten rid of all the magical workers from Israel, he now finds himself in need
of help from God as an army is marching against him.
God's not speaking to him, though, so Saul seeks out the Witch of Endor in order to raise
the dead prophet, Samuel.
The witch is suspicious but Saul says he won't have her killed.
She raises the dead prophet, who goes on to excoriate Saul and tell him that the army
will overtake Israel.
Saul's days as a king are numbered.
Britannica reports that though her appearance is brief, the Witch of Endor has since become
a fascinating figure for many.
Medieval English poet Geoffrey Chaucer references her, while a later French writer colorfully
claimed that the Witch of Endor even used a candle made out of her own son's fat.
Most people who know the story of English queen Anne Boleyn and consider her tale to
be a tragic one.
She caught the eye of King Henry VIII, who ditched his first wife and the Catholic Church
in his quest to marry her.
The Guardian reports that Boleyn proved to be troublesome but she was witty and beautiful.
She also never gave Henry his longed-for male heir.
Boleyn was jailed on trumped-up charges of treason and eventually beheaded by order of
the king.
In the years after her 1536 execution, the legend of Anne Boleyn has grown to include
magic.
She was never charged with witchcraft, though The Anne Boleyn Files argue that she had a
bit of a witchy reputation.
Some contemporary rumors alleged that she had birthed a, quote, "monstrous" baby, which
was said to be evidence of a relationship with the Devil.
Some even claimed Boleyn was physically marked by eerie forces, sporting a sixth finger on
one hand, an ugly cyst on her neck, and a projecting tooth.
But History reports these claims about her supposedly evil witch body were all made in
the decades after her death.
Panic can grow deadly.
That's what Mary Bradbury surely understood by the end of the 1692 witch panic in Salem,
Mass.
According to Genealogy Magazine, she was related to some well-connected people and was known
to be, as Rev. James Allen testified,
"Full of works of charity and mercy to the sick and poor."
But her good reputation wasn't enough to save her from hysteria.
Bradbury's troubles began on May 26, 1692, according to the Salem Witch Museum.
She was accused of attacking people in her spectral form, while some of those who spoke
against her claimed to see Bradbury's uncle appear in his burial clothes, accusing his
niece of murdering him.
"We've heard reports of levitation, the slaughter of angels, the ressureations of dead witches."
Bradbury was sentenced to hang on September 9, despite the arguments of her family and
friends.
When their support didn't work in court, they helped her escape the jail, after which she
lived as a fugitive until the trials petered out.
Bradbury returned to her family in May 1693.
After her death, her family asked for a reversal of the charges, which was granted in 1710.
And like everyone else accused in the trials, of course, there's no real evidence supporting
the notion that Bradbury was actually a witch.
Though many parents have likely comforted a terrified child by telling them that Black
Annis is only a story, this folkloric British witch is surely still a bit too real for some
people.
The tales of her bloody exploits are utterly terrifying, not least because she reportedly
has a taste for human flesh.
She's said to live in a cave somewhere in the hills outside of Leicester, England, steals
children to eat and saves the skins for clothing and decoration.
Some say that she can still be heard howling amongst the hills, while that awful grinding
sound is the gnashing of her teeth.
According to the BBC, the legend of Black Annis is based on a real person.
The story goes that her tale might be connected to a medieval Dominican nun named Agnes Scott.
Scott reportedly helped the sick and homeless in Leicester but after her death in 1455,
she became a frightful figure used to scare naughty children.
Some also wonder if Scott became conflated with an older, darker set of tales focusing
on a harsh goddess, harkening back to a wilder pagan time.
Unlike other witches mentioned on The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Marie Laveau was a
real person living in 19th century New Orleans.
In fact, she was actually two people, a mother and daughter with the same name, who were
both well known as Voodoo practitioners and powerful magic workers.
Little about the occult side of their work is well-documented, but various accounts insist
that they were powerful magical workers.
Louisiana History reports that the elder Laveau was born in September 1801 and was a free
woman of color, generally believed to be of African, Native American, and white descent.
She ultimately became a widely recognized hairdresser, healer, and herbalist who also
practiced Louisiana Voodoo, a spiritual belief system strongly influenced by African beliefs
brought over by enslaved people.
Her daughter, known as Marie Laveau II, often held dramatic public rituals.
Both women exercised considerable influence and power, leading to the now famous image
of Marie Laveau as the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans.
The Magic of Marie Laveau states that the last person to see the two women together
before the elder Laveau's death said:
"One but had to look at [Marie Laveau II] and impute her brilliances ... to her mother,
and remember what New Orleans was long years ago, to understand how the name of Marie Laveau
should have driven herself inextricably into the traditions of the town and the times."
The invocation of Saint Hildegard of Bingen was a controversial move for some.
Hildegard was a Christian nun but she was also a boundary-pushing mystic whose indelible
voice echoes down throughout history, despite the sexism of her time.
According to the Ancient History Encyclopedia, Hildegard was a Benedictine abbess who lived
in 11th and 12th century Germany.
She was a brilliant woman who not only experienced visions of God but was also an accomplished
writer, musician, herbalist, philosopher, and early scientist.
She often wrote of the importance of nature, which she believed revealed God's presence,
a shocking feminine divine force to people of her time.
Though few would argue that Hildegard was a pagan witch, her story has a transgressive
witchiness about it.
Author Mary Sharrat argues that Hildegard has certain similarities with later women
accused in England's 1612 Pendle witch trials.
Both the nun and one of the British women, "Mother Demdike," were guided by visions and
a deep, spiritual connection to nature.
The Greek gods and goddesses were a group of complicated and often misbehaving deities
whose stories still resonate with modern people and the tale of the goddess Hecate is arguably
a far sight more intricate than those of her fellow gods.
And today she's still a very real goddess who's worthy of worship.
"It was she who led me back to the material world.
We call you, Hecate."
According to the Ancient History Encyclopedia, Hecate is a dark goddess associated with crossroads,
thresholds, nocturnal animals, the moon, and, of course, magic.
Because of her connections to the underworld and nighttime, she was an unusual goddess
who was awarded offerings that were forbidden to other worshippers, like certain meats.
She's often depicted carrying torches and keys and sometimes strikingly appears with
three heads.
According to The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft, and Wicca, Hecate is still venerated
by modern witches, thanks to her association with magic and the moon.
She's often invoked in specific moon phase and for matters like introspection, banishment,
and justice.
Some may doubt the existence of Moll Dyer but a particular stone near her supposed home
of Leonardtown, Maryland makes things a bit tricky for skeptics.
Could it be that Moll Dyer was once a real person?
According to Weird Maryland, some say she was a woman who lived in Maryland in the late
17th and early 18th centuries.
Dyer was already something of a castout, so if someone's livestock grew ill or their butter
didn't churn, it was said that Dyer was to blame.
When an epidemic hit town, a mob chased after her, she placed her hand on a rock and prayed
for help that never came.
After her death, people saw the indelible print of her hand in the stone.
You can still see the stone today, which does still have an imprint of a hand.
Those who touch it sometimes report feeling nauseous, as if they were briefly in Dyer's
place.
The Washington Times reported that there are indeed reports of witchcraft in Maryland's
colonial past.
At least 12 people have been officially accused of witchcraft in the state's history, with
one woman, Rebecca Fowler, hanged for the charge in 1685.
The last recorded trial for this supposed crime took place in 1712, but there's no record
of anyone named Moll Dyer.
If she existed, Dyer managed to escape the official accounts.
"I feel I must warn you, do you really want to open that lid?"
The account of Lilith is very, very old.
According to Jewish folklore, she's so incredibly old that Lilith was around at the very beginning
of things, even before Eve — of Adam and Eve fame — made her debut.
According to Britannica, tradition holds that Lilith was Adam's first wife, made from the
same soil as he.
When she refused to submit to him, Lilith vacated the Garden of Eden and became a demonic
figure.
Many versions of the tale maintain that she's the mother to many, many demons; some legends
claiming the demons are Adam's children, while others say that Lilith mated with a wayward
archangel.
Though many have come to believe that Lilith is an evil figure, others have venerated her.
As the Biblical Archaeology Society reports, she's been adopted by many feminists as a
symbol of rebellion and independence.
She's also a part of some real life witches' magical practice, with modern witches using
magic signs to connect to Lilith.
It's no wonder that her name is called upon in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, in
a scene where a group of magical women seek to fight an ancient demon known as Apophis.
Many accounts of the Salem witch panic of 1692 begins with Tituba.
As ThoughtCo reports, Tituba was enslaved under Rev. Samuel Parris, Salem's resident
minister.
Not much is known of her background, though it appears that Tituba was born in the Caribbean,
as she accompanied Parris from his previous home in Barbados.
When three young girls in the village, including Parris' own daughter Elizabeth, began to show
signs of a mysterious and spiritually induced affliction, Tituba quickly became embroiled
in the controversy.
She was arrested and questioned, perhaps violently, and confessed that she was a witch who had
consorted with the Devil.
When she recanted, Parris refused to pay the fine that would have freed Tituba from jail.
She was eventually released, apparently by someone else, and then promptly disappears
from the historical record.
Why did Tituba confess and only draw herself deeper into the deadly crisis?
According to Smithsonian Magazine, her testimony, which included tales of night flights, menacing
animals, and a relationship with Satan himself, must have held the terrified townsfolk in
a horrified rapture.
And perhaps this was a moment of power for a woman who must not have had much at all
in her lifetime.
While some of the witches mentioned in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina are legendary,
Sybil Leek was very definitely real.
She was a fixture of the occult world in the 20th century, to the point where she wrote
numerous books and appeared on television in her quest to bring the practice of witchcraft
to wider recognition.
As the BBC reports, Leek was once known as, quote, "Britain's most famous witch" for her
championing of modern witchcraft.
The United Kingdom repealed the Witchcraft Act, which criminalized the practice of witchcraft,
in 1951.
Just a few years later, Leek announced that she was a witch.
According to The New York Times, though she was one of an emerging group of public witches,
Leek claimed that her family had been practicing magic since the 12th century.
When her landlord declined to renew her lease, Leek moved to the United States and continued
promoting her work, soon becoming well known worldwide for her practice as a well-intentioned,
quote, "white witch."
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