A Witch A Day

Illustration by Elise Primavera from  Best Witches: Poems for Halloween (1989) , by Jane Yolen.   Alone on a Broom The sky surrounds me, Jupiter crowns me, The moon rides on my back. The wind sings to me, The night rings through me As I fly down the track. The trees zip past me, The stars all cast me In silver shadows and light. I’ll never do better, Whatever the weather, Than riding on Halloween night.                         — by Jane Yolen

So much depends on a red pickle dish. Really. In Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton’s famous 1911 novella, what happens to Zeena’s prized glass pickle dish literally becomes a matter of life and death. When the dish gets broken, we know Zeena will find out. It’s inevitable in so bleak a tale. How  she finds out—and so soon after the catastrophe—is what’s strange. Could it be that the cat, privy to the occasion of the crash (in fact instrumental to it), is the source of witch-like Zeena’s knowledge? Is the cat Zeena’s familiar animal? Wharton—a dab hand with overtly (for her) supernatural tales—supplies ample ammunition for the Zeena-as-witch proposition. For one thing, there’s the physiognomical evidence: ... she stood up tall and angular, one hand drawing a quilted counterpane to her flat breast, while the other held a lamp. The light, on a level with her chin, drew out of the darkness her puckered throat and the projecting wrist of the hand that clutched the quilt, and dee...

Witch, please. There was no one near us. The only movement was the quiver of a breeze gently blowing against the cedar and fir boughs. “Do you see what I see?” I whispered to my friend. She nodded and I could tell she was afraid. “I think so,” she said. “What do you see?” “It looks like a unicorn,” I answered. “I think so, too,” she said. This “encounter,” was 19-year-old Yasmine Galenorn’s first brush with the world of magick-with-a-k, as reported in Embracing the Moon: A Witch’s Guide to Ritual Spellcraft and Shadow Work (1998). It supposedly happened in 1980. I’m reminded of a child’s game of make-believe; in fact, the exchange is strikingly like those of the story-conjuring girls in Eleanor Estes’s The Witch Family (see Oct. 16). The fact that Galenorn told the witness what to see (whatever it was; it was nighttime) seems to have escaped her. The friend later denied the incident ever happened. I’ll say this for Galenorn (that name! ): she’s a smart writer. She makes no outr...

You know “neverending” isn’t really a word, right? It’s not in the Oxford English Dictionary, anyway. Not yet. The adjective is “never-ending.” I’ve been annoyed many times over the years when Word highlights it as misspelled. Because I just know it’s one word. Wrong! Let me tell you who ( whom ) we have to thank for this common misunderstanding: the American publishers of German author Michael Ende’s 1979 fantasy epic Die unendliche Geschichte, issued in the U.S. in 1983 as The Neverending Story. The title suffered the further indignity of a midword capitalization the following year , when The NeverEnding Story came out in theaters. Ende sued the filmmakers—that’s how much he hated The NeverEnding Story (the movie; I don’t suppose he cared about English grammar). He lost his case, thus failing to prevent the making of the generally reviled 1990 sequel, The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter. Get it? Story? Chapter? I read somewhere that NeverEnding I covers the first h...

If ever there’s an occasion for movie magic, it’s Halloween. On film the holiday always looks so right. Not true to life, mind you. Right . The moon is always full, the autumn weather perfect. Lights and decorations are old-fashioned and plentiful. Ditto the trick-or-treaters—and just look at their costumes: quality. Even in a Disney movie there’s nary an acetate princess in sight. Yeah, it may all be a bit Stepford-y, but how I love it. I want to be in it! “Wow, check out this   house!”   Consider Hocus Pocus, a piece of semi-amusing silliness from 1993. Presumably because it’s Salem, Mass., everybody in this town is into Halloween, starting with the witch-hatted schoolteacher (Kathleen Freeman) who introduces our so- not -into-it protagonist (Omri Katz) to the legend of the Sanderson witches. If folks aren’t giving out candy in this version of Salem, they’re throwing parties, or heading to one. So naturally when the newly reconstituted Sandersons drop into the fe...

Look who our “warlock” is on A Hornbook for Witches : none other than the ruthless namesake of the 1968 film Witchfinder General (aka The Conqueror Worm , after Poe). Cover illustration by Leo and Diane Dillon.   Released in 1976 on both LP and cassette (it’s now available on CD), this recording of Vincent Price reading “stories and poems for Halloween” is a real curiosity. The title—a pun on a word for “primer”—comes from an ultrarare collection of poems by Leah Bodine Drake published in 1950 by Arkham House, specialists in “weird fiction.” Along with samples from Drake’s Hornbook , we have verses by Poe, Maria Leech, and Charles Kingsley, plus short stories by John Collier and John Kendrick Bangs. There are also a few sound effects at the end. Price is no slouch, even on a throwaway project like this. His reading of Bangs’s “The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall” is a particular standout. I wish I’d been in the studio to see how he simulated the ghost’s watery voice. (I su...

I know little girls love them, but sweet or “sassy,” Disney heroines bore me silly. Disney villainesses are another story. Those broads kick ass—none more so than evil, oozy Ursula in The Little Mermaid (1989). Making the sea witch an octopus instead of another merperson was inspired (and bringing in Pat Carroll to provide her voice was a masterstroke). I can’t imagine the impression this cartoon makes on the young misses. It is dark, though light years less so than Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale. Nor is it as preachy, blessedly. In the original, the little mermaid wants a human—i.e., eternal—soul as much as she wants a human body to woo her human prince. The merfolk, she has learned, merely dissolve into foam when they die, and that’s that: oblivion. I have to say, Andersen, surely a closet sadist, throws some nasty stuff at his heroine. Yes, she gets the soul if not the man in the end, but it’s hard to feel happy for her, especially when we’re told further conditions apply....

In 1933 Agatha Christie famously wrote, “The supernatural is only the natural of which the laws are not yet understood.” Interestingly, this observation appeared in a collection of stories, The Hound of Death (1933), of which many have a supernatural element. Being at odds with rational deduction—a rule breaker—the paranormal simply has no place in Christie’s detective novels, save to inject a spooky frisson now and then —Murder is Easy  (1939) is one well-known example. Only The Pale Horse (1961) actively presents black magic as the possible cause of death. It would be a pity to give away too much about this great book. Suffice to say, the writer set herself a transcendent challenge with the premise, one that she proceeded to work out brilliantly. There is much atmosphere to savor along the way, thanks to the presence of three modern witches led by Thyrza Grey—denizens of the titular Pale Horse, a former coaching inn located in the curiously named village of Much...

I wouldn’t say this counts as a “convention” of the witch canon by any means, but ... Did you ever notice how often anagrams feature as plot points in supernatural works, including witch tales? In Rosemary’s Baby we have Roman Castevet/Steven Marcato (see Oct. 22). In The Witch Returns (1992), book six of Phyliss Reynold Naylor’s witch saga, Elnora Tuggle, the villainess of preceding installments, returns as her own younger sister Greta Gullone. Similarly, in the movie Horror Hotel (see Oct. 11), witch Elizabeth Selwyn lives on as Mrs. Newless—an anagram in intent, so to speak, “Newless” being a sort of backward spelling. The revelation can make for a jolt in the protagonist caught unaware, as well as the reader/viewer along for the ride. But mostly the device comes off as “kid stuff,” and kind of lame even at that. “Elnora Tuggle’ and “Greta Gullone” at least are good witch names. But Levin’s Rosemary puzzle? Forced and awkward, if you ask me. Besides, what’s the point? W...

You reader of a Certain Age: Reminisce with me about a long-ago time when the first TV airing of a popular motion picture was a Big Deal. Huge. I can remember the TV spots in September 1973 for the premier broadcast of Rosemary’s Baby (1968) on ABC—the snippets of that creepy lullaby theme: “La la la la la la ”—Lordy, what excitement! Finally, the Big Night came: Calls of “It’s starting!” My brothers and me lined up on our stomachs in front of the tube—not too close (radiation!)—soaking up every image; later tearing to the kitchen for snacks and bevvies during the commercials, then having to “hold it” for fear we’d miss something if we were too long in the bathroom. It’s funny, the little things that stick with you. There’s a moment toward the end of the film when Rosemary (Mia Farrow), clutching a knife, is making her way through the Castevets’ apartment to find the baby the coven has taken from her, the one she believes they intend to sacrifice. Roman Castevet (Sidney Blackmer), ...

I found this snapshot on eBay. Witch Ron is looking rather pleased with himself, wouldn’t you say? Do you suppose he made his pointed hat? I wonder if his frock was pinched from the church sacristy. I would almost have guessed Ron was a wizard—I don’t see a broom. But then I don’t see a wand either, and there’s that long, lank, black witch hair to take into account. Somebody seems to have approved of the get-up, to have taken the picture. Dad? Was Dad the reverend? If Ron went trick-or-treating, I hope he got lots of candy. And if there was a party and a costume contest, I hope he got a prize.

I guess Truman Capote was unavailable (read, deceased). That’s how we got wee Leslie Jordan in the part of Quentin Fleming in American Horror Story: Coven , season three (2013–14) of the acclaimed FX series. Jordan reprises his pint-sized pone-queen shtick for the gazillionth time as the lone warlock on the Council of Witchcraft, convened to investigate the manifold sins and wickedness of the coven’s supreme witch, Fiona Goode (Jessica Lange, she of the seen-it-all little laugh). I don’t know, how can we make him look  even smaller?   AHS: Coven is to series television what gumbo is to cooking: a delicious hot mess. And yes, I gobbled it all up ... until Stevie Nicks was wheeled in to squander precious minutes with a couple of “classic” tunes, rendered even more unrecognizable than usual by her nanny-goat contralto and nonexistent keyboard skills. I laughed when Fiona, scotch in hand, sighed “I’ve always loved that song.” I thought Stevie was hunting for a fals...

In The Witch Family (see Oct. 16), Eleanor Estes writes, “Witches do not like to be good. They hate it.” The white witch Belladonna in Which Witch? (see Oct. 17) would surely agree: her intractable goodness is a source of constant embarrassment and frustration for her. In contrast, the sisters Halliwell of the WB series Charmed (1998–2006) are hellbent on using their respective powers—whenever they permit themselves to use them—only for good. Thankfully, “goodness” in the Charmed universe doesn’t demand chastity, or all three would be pitchfork fodder—with kid sister Phoebe, the “wild” one, getting the lion’s share of the pokes. Wink. The Charmed Ones: Piper (Holly Marie Combs), Prue (Shannon Doherty), and Phoebe (Alyssa Milano).     Much like the crime-fighting lovelies of Charlie’s Angels (1976–81), to which Charmed is often compared, the witches three (see Oct. 14) expend a good deal of supernatural energy neutralizing baddies. This “monster of the week” formula...

Some ideas never get old. Our first “Sand Witch” comes from the July 22, 1909, issue of Life magazine. The cover artist, Coles Phillips, was famous for his “fadeaway girl,” whose costume merged with the background. Here Phillips cleverly optimized the pun by sandwiching his enchantress between two toasted swains. Our second “Sand Witch,” a die-cast toy dune buggy, dates to 1973. One of 24 Hot Wheels cars Mattel issued that year, it would have cost less than a dollar when new. Today you can expect to pay more than $50 for one in decent condition. Bon appetit.

Let’s turn to a completely different kind of children’s book, the funny Which Witch? (1979), by Eva Ibbotson. According to School Librarian, Ibbotson “has assumed the mantle of Roald Dahl.” I wouldn’t go that far, but the writer certainly has her points. A number of Ibbotson’s fans dismiss Which Witch as a lesser effort. Having never read another of her books (yet), I can only say that lines like “But sailors had never been doomed by her, partly because she looked like the back of a bus ... ” positively guarantee my admiration. The unfortunately bus-faced female is Mabel Wrack, one of the witches of Todcaster vying for the hand of handsome Arriman the Awful, Wizard of the North, Loather of Light, Blighter of the Beautiful. Arriman, you see, has been advised to produce an heir to assume his mantle, and to do that he needs to take a wife—a witch, naturally, one with powers of the requisite magnitude. But how to tease out the very best (worst) candidate from the local coven? Why, wi...

“Oh, to glory be!” Nobby’s signature oath in The Witch Family puts me in mind of Samantha’s “My stars!” in the old Bewitched television series (see Oct. 4). Exclamations like this present a small but thorny problem in the popular witch oeuvres. We can’t really have “Heavens!” for instance, since that’s where the Lord lives. And so far we’ve mostly managed to sweep the whole un-Christian aspect of witchcraft under the rug. I for one am happy to leave it there. Though Nobby is her actual name, the character is mostly referred to as “Old Witch” in Eleanor Estes’s lovely 1960 children’s novel (illustrated by Edward Ardizzone). It’s one of those books that I stumbled on at just the right moment in childhood to be utterly carried away. The story in a nutshell: Amy and Clarissa, two little girls who love to draw together, spin a tale through their pictures about mean old wicked Old Witch, whom Amy has “banquished” to a lonely glass hill to learn to be good. If she complies, Old Witch...

Just guess the witch’s name—that’s all! The rules and entry form for the Name the Witch Contest appear on the back cover of this vintage Children’s Play Mate magazine. The artwork is by Fern Bisel Peat, a noted children’s illustrator of the day and art director of Children’s Play Mate from 1935 until well into the 1950s. Peat had an idiosyncratic style, and the dozens of Halloween covers, cut-outs, games, and illustrations she created for the magazine still make a vivid impression today. Her pert cover witches in particular are unique. So, can you guess the witch’s name? You get three chances. Here’s a hint: “It’s an ordinary first name ... but not used as much nowadays as in days gone by.” The answer, as you might have guessed, is in the picture, hidden rather ingeniously in plain sight. (To be honest, I’m not sure I would have spied it if both my grandmothers hadn’t had the same name.)

Blame it on Shakespeare, but:   Have you ever noticed how often witches come in threes? From Best Witches (1960), by Robert Heitmann.   Consider for starters: Charmed: Prue, Piper, and Phoebe Halliwell   Hocus Pocus: Winifred, Sarah, and Mary Sanderson   Stardust: Lamia, Mormo, and Empusa   The Witches of Eastwick: Alexandra Medford, Jane Spofford, and Sukie Ridgemont Wizards of Disney, “Team Jinx”: Neraja, Garma, and Magica de Spell I’m sure you can think of others. It’s like when you buy a car and suddenly start seeing yours everywhere. From Children’s Playmate, October 1955. Artwork by Frans Kirn. So why three? I can only think of one instance of terrible twos: the sister and aunt pairings in Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic (1995). Two witches is interesting, I guess. But three is a situation.

When I came to reread Lolly Willowes  recently, I found a bookmark for A Common Reader, Pleasantville, N.Y., inside. A quick googling revealed that, no, the mail-order company was no longer in business and in fact went bankrupt more than a decade ago. A sad discovery, for it was their catalog which first acquainted me with this memorable novel. Sylvia Townsend Warner published Lolly Willowes, or The Loving Huntsman in 1926. It is not a long book; you can read it in an afternoon. Which is what I did one exquisite fall day, a day made perfect for being a work day, only I wasn’t at work . The book begins with a history of the Willoweses of Lady Place, most especially Laura Willowes, called “Lolly” by the family. Petted, docile, Lolly drifts through her sunny Somerset girlhood without ambition even to marry, ultimately going like so much Willowes furniture to her oldest brother and his family in London. Dear, unexceptional Aunt Lolly. Who would guess this mild presence is at r...

I’ve tried to get behind anime, really I have. There’s so much to admire. And so much that works my last nerve. Such as central characters who look like this: That stupid bow .   And this: That stupid face .   Then there’s the English dubbing—Lord, how those chirping voices grate. And the constant laughing! Sorry, but watching characters laugh just makes me want to smash something. PUT A CORK IN IT!   Based on the 1985 novel by Eiko Kadano, Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), directed by Hayao Miyazaki, is beloved by many—millions, I daresay. The book/movie certainly has an offbeat concept: At age 13, witch girls leave home to live for a year on their own as they transition to adulthood. In the movie’s “universe,” this witch rumspringa is an accepted part of the world’s workings. Which makes somewhat baffling (and not a little irritating) the ordinary citizens’ gasping and gaping whenever our Kiki (voice of Kirsten Dunst) goes airborne....

I’ve never quite decided about the nomenclature for the fellas. Should it be “witch” or “warlock”? The former seems to demand a gender clarification, though to my mind “male witch,” like “male model,” connotes a slight raising of the eyebrows, as in, You’re a man and you’re doing this? Yet the convention persists. On the other hand, “warlock” strikes me as a tad pretentious. Do you ever see a warlock riding a broom? True, there’s “practitioner of the black arts,” if one really means to neutralize the gender, though that sounds like a line from an obituary. Meanwhile “wizard” (“sorcerer”) to me means “magician,” i.e., not someone you’re likely to come across in a coven. Author Roald Dahl (see Oct. 5) stated unequivocally, “There is no such thing as a male witch.” I suspect Horror Hotel ’s Jethrow Keane would beg to differ. Titled The City of the Dead in Britain, where it was filmed, this 1960 horror classic, an early outing in the genre from the future founders of Amicus Producti...

Late in “The Magician’s Nephew,” episode 64 (2008) of the U.K.’s long-running Midsomer Murders series, DCI Tom Barnaby (John Nettles) laments to his wife Joyce (Jane Wymark), who is busily planning an American-style Halloween party, “You know, in my day, Joyce, Halloween hardly existed. What’s it all for? Selling a load of flaming tosh!” Joyce suggests Tom should lighten up, but he’s finding it hard just then, being in the middle of a case involving real-life witches. “I’ve got two very unpleasant murders here,” he muses, “and I don’t know why, but they both have to do with people who actually believe in all this magic, this voodoo.” Joyce, as is her wont, then makes a very interesting offhand remark. “Well, that’s adults. Children have more sense. They only pretend to believe in Halloween, for the fun.” A key feature of the story,  belief , misguided, sincere, and unsuspended, is depicted in scenes of solemn occult rites, church services, and an elaborate children’s magi...

Drive about 13 miles north of Salem, Massachusetts, America’s world-famous “Witch City,” and you come to the town of Ipswich, incorporated in 1634. At one time, Ipswich Hosiery, established in 1868, was the largest stocking producer in the country, and the limb-riding “Ipswich Witch” was known throughout the land. Pointed hats off to the marketer who seized on the homophone, no doubt with an eye to the witch fancy which the bicentennial of the famous trials in nearby Salem had lately kick-started. Knit pick: kindly crone (1919) or leggy seductress (1929). Note the logo.   Socks and proximity aren’t Ipswich’s only claims to witch fame. In 1878, a lawsuit filed by Ipswich resident Lucretia Brown culminated in a second Salem Witch Trial. That’s how the newspapers spun it, anyhow. Also called the Ipswich Witchcraft Trial, the May 14 proceeding was held in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Salem. Brown, an invalid spinster and Christian Scientist, claimed that D...

Wikipedia, the last word in—well, pretty much everything, anymore—defines haggis as a “savory” pudding made of sheep’s heart, liver, and lungs minced together with onions, oatmeal, suet, and spices; blended with stock; and encased in a sheep’s stomach. “Haggis” is also the name of the witch (portrayed by Florence Schauffler) in the atmospheric group-of-friends slaughterfest Pumpkinhead (1988). Nuff said. Separated at birth?

Spiteful, spiteful, spiteful. I guess I would be, too, if I’d been dealt the face of La Regina Gaia in The Giants of Thessaly (1960), a sword-and-sandal chestnut based more or less on the classic tale of Jason and the Argonauts. In traditional Greek mythology, Gaia is the Mother Earth goddess. In Giants , she’s queen of an island of witches who seduce men and turn them into sheep. Talking sheep. Seems Zeus promised Gaia that if she could ever rope in a certain Jason of Thessaly, she’d be granted eternal beauty. As it is, she’s only allowed to be a stunner during daylight hours; the minute the sun goes down it’s hagtime. Alas, that reversion happens just as Gaia (Nadia Sanders, billed as Nadine Duca) is putting the moves on Jason (Roland Carey) in her palace. (Her sisters in spite meanwhile are making mutton of Jason’s crew elsewhere.) Gaia flees to get an assist from Zeus while her ticket to perpetual pulchritude wanders away in bafflement. As fortune would have it, the haple...

A familiar trope in horror movies and books is the “modern” person—educated, often a scientist—confronted with evidence of the supernatural that upsets everything he or she knows about the world. Frequently, a paranoia angle is developed as a possible explanation for the weird occurrences. It’s all in their heads! It’s also all a bit of a cliché by now. One of the earliest and best tales of this kind is Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife (1943), which first appeared in Unknown Worlds magazine and which Leiber later expanded to novel form. Leiber’s story was the basis of the movies Weird Woman (1944), an “Inner Sanctum” mystery; Witches’ Brew (1980), a comedy, and just terrible; and Night of the Eagle , aka Burn, Witch, Burn (1962), the nearest to the source and quite effective, if uneven. In Leiber’s book, Norman Saylor, an up-and-coming sociology professor at a small college, discovers that his wife, Tansy, has been using witchcraft to protect him from the hostile magic of rival pro...

The Gorgeous and Thoughtful One has had enough! What does the Grand High Witch of All the World find when she comes to England to chair the secret Annual Meeting of that country’s witches? Children—hundreds, thousands of the revolting beggars. It seems the witches of England have been coasting, each offing only one child a week, maybe. Not good enough! Her Grandness demands maximum results. Fortunately, she’s brought a potion ... and a plan. In the 1990 film version of The Witches , Roald Dahl’s mind-blowing 1983 novel (pictures by Quentin Blake), Formula 86 Delayed-Action Mouse-Maker is bottled and ready for distribution to every witch in attendance. A drop in a “choc” is enough to rid the country of one dirty, stinky child by turning it into a brown mouse. And one bottle contains 500 doses. And there are lots and lots of witches in England .... In the novel, the prebottled formula is provided only to the Ancient Ones, too decrepit to rustle up some of the more exotic ingredi...

Counterculture pi ñ ata, that’s Darrin in “To Trick-or-Treat or Not to Trick-or-Treat,” the season six (1969–70) Halloween episode of Bewitched. By this time, the fondly remembered sitcom was running out of steam, surviving largely on the irresistible appeal of star Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha. I was already pretty much fed up with Darrin’s and Endora’s refusal to just get along— and I was only ten years old. Cute rather than consistently funny, the episode is interesting to see now for how it transmuted the mess  in which the world beyond fictitious Morning Glory Circle was embroiled. The installment opens with Samantha and Tabitha (Erin Murphy) working on Halloween costumes. Endora (Agnes Moorehead) arrives, then Darrin (Dick Sargent). Toes are stepped on, Darrin provokes Endora, yada-yada, she turns him into an ugly witch. But it isn’t a hag that a traffic cop sees in a subsequent scene. Scraggly, long-haired, long-nailed Darrin is clearly a hippie ... and a gay o...

Evil queens and witches—same species? Consider Snow White in its numerous non-Disney incarnations. Does the queen have supernatural powers herself, or is she just a psychopath with a magic mirror and a flair for poisoning (and disguises)? As I was about to write this post, I started to wonder. Maybe I’d been wrong all these years to conflate witches and evil queens. I consulted my copy of The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (Bantam, 1987; Jack Zipes, trans.). Here’s the smoking gun I found: “This time I’m going to think of something that will destroy her,” she [Snow White’s stepmother]  said, and by using all the witchcraft at her command, she made a poison comb. Hagsome is as hagsome does, as far as I’m concerned. On with the post ... In the 1997 film Snow White: A Tale of Terror the queen is demoted to lady, and it’s unclear at first if she’s evil at all. The mirror is there, shielded from prying eyes in a spooky carved cabinet. There are also a pet rav...

Now that Hollywood has discovered Alpine Europe’s Krampus, horned henchman of Saint Nick, it seems inevitable we’ll be served up a fang-gnashing reimagination of Befana, Italy’s Christmas witch. I first learned of Befana on Conan O’Brien’s old NBC talk show, when he asked guest Isabella Rossellini about her Christmas plans. Inevitably, Rossellini’s mention of the Befana custom, i.e., something unusual and interesting, merely served as a springboard for silly Conanisms, in this instance mocking the notion of witches at Christmastime. Ever gracious, La Rossellini just chuckled good-naturedly. Befana, I have since learned, is a crone said to fly through the air on Epiphany Eve, January 5, bringing toys and treats to all the good children of Italy—as well as lumps of coal (colored hard candy), because no child is that good. “Befana” in fact is thought to come from “Epifania.” She typically is depicted covered in soot from riding her broom in and out of chimneys. She tends to favor a s...

What is it about a good witch? And make no mistake, by “good” I mean unapologetically wicked. With The Lancashire Witches ’ Alice Nutter, Victorian author William Harrison Ainsworth gives us a humdinger. Commanding? Check. Demon-conjuring? Check and check. Powerful? Through the roof.     What a letdown, then, when Alice capitulates and spends the drawn-out conclusion of this long, long novel praying and repenting her wickedness. Yawn. I was vaguely aware when I read Ainsworth’s 1849 novel that the story had an historical basis—the 1612 Pendle witch trials in Lancashire, England. But I only recently learned how many characters were, in name at least, actual people. Turns out there was in fact an Alice Nutter among the nine hanged for witchcraft at Gallows Hill outside Lancaster. Unlike her fictional counterpart, however, the real Alice professed innocence. Meanwhile, Alizon Device, a tiresome goody-good in the book, in real life seems to have believed she truly was a wi...