Her victims claimed that her evil incantations had left them, “very much the worse, consumed, pined & lamed.” (3) The exact nature of the harm Fowler caused was not included in the court documents, but any manner of bodily weakness, injury, or illness could fall into those categories and was common in describing symptoms brought about by witchcraft. In 1685, Fowler was found guilty of bewitching Francis Sandsbury and several others in Calvert County. Rebecca Fowler holds the dubious honor of being the only person executed for witchcraft in Maryland.
#Blair witch witch trial
Sources vary on the exact number of prosecutions, but only about 12 people were brought to trial over a hundred year period, compared to 19 executed in Salem in 1692 alone. Maryland never saw witch hunts on the scale of Salem, Massachusetts, but men and women alike were accused and convicted of witchcraft. Witchcraft left an indelible mark on Maryland’s early court cases and became embedded in local folklore. (Reference photo)These old world superstitions and religious convictions immigrated with the colonists. Notice that she was “seduced by the devill wickedly & diabolically….” “Witchcraft, trials for, in Maryland. The Devil and black magic were real and present dangers in everyday life, and witches could summon that dark power with the mere mumbling of a curse. An anti-witch hysteria had recently swept across Europe, and the English crown enacted several statutes criminalizing sorcery. Mary’s City, Maryland worse for wear but in one piece and without a witch.Īccounts of witchcraft, such as the story of Mary Lee, were common in the 17th century. She was subsequently hanged and her corpse and belongings dumped overboard. They found a damning mark-a protruding teat from which the Devil and his familiars could supposedly feed-a well-known sign of witchcraft at the time. They seized Lee and searched her body for the Devil’s markings. The storms delayed the proceedings, so two seamen decided to take matters into their own hands. The sailors decided that Mary Lee was that witch and petitioned the captain to put the woman on trial. Father Francis Fitzherbert, a Jesuit traveling to Maryland aboard the Charity, recalled the sailors reasoning that the foul weather “was not on account of the violence of the ship or atmosphere, but the malevolence of witches.”(2) Rumor took hold amongst the crew that a witch had conjured the storms. An attempt to make land in Bermuda had failed due to crosswinds, “and the Ship grew daily more leaky almost to desperation and the Chiefe Seamen often declared their Resolution of Leaving her if an opportunity offered it Self….”(1) The passengers and crew grew more agitated as the ship weakened and the weather refused to yield. Choppy seas and violent winds plagued the Charity of London’s journey from the start.
Travelers knew that the trip across the ocean was a dangerous endeavor, but this crossing proved particularly hazardous. Mary Lee was one such passenger, but she never set foot on Maryland’s shores. The Charity of London set sail for the New World in 1654 from England with her crew and small group of passengers looking to settle the new colony. The perilous waters of the Atlantic Ocean condemned Maryland’s first witch. Learn more about the Blair Witch’s connection to the Maryland Historical Society and Maryland’s other fabled witches in this reblog of a 2013 post, “Double, Double Toil and Trouble: Witchcraft in Maryland:”
#Blair witch witch movie
This time around, James Donahue, the brother of one of the missing documentarians, and his friends return to the dark and dangerous forest to find his long lost sister. The original movie briefly brought the Maryland Historical Society’s library collections into the Hollywood limelight when its faux documentary style convinced viewers of the veracity of the Blair Witch, as well as the existence of a rare book in the MdHS library that told the story of Kedward’s evil deeds. Maryland’s most famous witch, Elly Kedward, also known as the Blair Witch, returns to the big screen this Friday, September 16, in “Blair Witch,” the direct sequel to 1999’s “The Blair Witch Project.” “The Blair Witch Project” supposedly featured the footage left behind by three student filmmakers who disappeared after venturing into the Black Hills, a forest surrounding the tiny town of Burkittsville, formerly Blair, Maryland, to track down the murderous Blair Witch. Maryland’s most famous witch: The Blair Witch.
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