RDAU_10-11_Oct_Nov Issue

cursing those they didn’t like, turn- ing people into animals and eating babies. These stories traveled to the New World along with the colonists who began to arrive there, sparking witch trials on both continents. 4 Historians say 100,000 people were prosecuted as witches in Europe and the Americas from the 1400s to the 1700s. Most were women, but in countries such as Ice- land, Estonia and Russia, men made up the majority of those charged. There’s little evidence that any of the accused actually practiced witch- craft, though they were often pres- sured (or tortured) into false confessions. 5 America’s most notorious witch trial was in Salem, Massachu- setts, in the 1690s. (Coinciden- tally, the final U.S. witchcraft trial was also in Salem, in 1878.) The town has embraced its history and is now a tourist destination that welcomed more than 1 million visitors last Oc- tober alone. If you go, you can wan- der through the Salem Witch Museum, pop into countless magic stores or participate n a make-your- own-broomstick workshop. 6 In L. Frank Baum’s 1900 classic, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , the Wicked Witch of the West carries an umbrella rather than a broomstick. There’s no mention of her skin being green in the book, but for the 1939 film adaptation, she was given her signature hue to showcase recent advances in Technicolor cine- matography. Actor Margaret Hamil- ton was coated in toxic copper-based paint daily, and her skin was still tinted green for weeks after filming ended. 7 Not all witches are wicked. Take Glinda the Good Witch, who graces Oz looking more like a princess in her sparkly dress and crown. Or Hermione Granger, main heroine of the Harry Potter series, who’s as smart as she is brave. And suburban housewife Samantha Ste- phens of the TV show Bewitched uses her powers for good—or, at least, to complete household chores. (Wouldn’t you?) 8 Halloween is a witchy holiday, but in Sweden, so is … Easter? An old legend there tells of witches flying away to consort with the devil on the Thursday before Eas- ter. Now Swedish children dress up as påskkärringar (“Easter witches”), wearing scarves on their heads and red paint on their cheeks, and visit neighbors’ houses with gifts in ex- change for candy. 9 The 1993 film Hocus Pocus , about a trio of 17th-century witches who run amok in mod- ern-day Salem, bombed at the box 42   OctOber/NOvember 2026