Moll Dyer was a legendary 17th Century resident of Leonardtown in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, who was accused of witchcraft and chased out of her home in the dead of winter. Her name is commemorated by a road, a stream, and a large rock, and her story has inspired ghost sightings and the plot of the 1999 film “The Blair Witch Project.” According to one popular legend, she was an Irish noblewoman who came to Maryland alone to escape a mysterious past and settled in a cottage outside of what was then Seymortown (later called Leonardtown). Her isolated way of life and shadowy past, combined with her reputation as a herbal healer, sparked suspicion among the locals, who labeled her as a witch and began blaming her for all the town’s misfortunes and hardships, despite her habit of giving cures to the townspeople.

The winter of 1697 was particularly harsh, with food in short supply and many people dying. When the local settlers encountered crop failures or severe weather, they blamed it on supernatural forces, either god or the Devil, as was customary at the time. In this case, there were rumors that an old witch had cursed the colony with an unusually cold winter in 1697. The townspeople’s whispers turned into angry accusations, and they devised a plan to permanently remove Moll Dyer.

Moll Dyer, who was thought to be a witch, was blamed for an influenza outbreak that killed many people in St. Mary’s County. “Burn the witch!” yelled a horde of villagers as they set fire to her small hut in the woods. She escaped both the fire and the mob and was discovered frozen to a large rock several days later. When her body was removed, an imprint of her right hand remained on the stone. The town’s residents saw this as a curse she had placed on the area. For generations, the legend of Moll Dyer and her claimed curse has endured. Touching the rock is said to bring misfortune ranging from dizziness to sickness.

The alleged boulder was moved to the front of the Leonardtown courthouse, and while the handprint is no longer visible, many have claimed to feel extremely uncomfortable or suffering from awful aches and pains surrounding it, and cameras have apparently malfunctioned. People have reported seeing a woman with long white hair and a white dress wandering through the fields and woods near the town on the coldest nights of the year, accompanied by a white dog.

There are other stories about her wicked spirit haunting the land around her woods cottage and tormenting anybody who comes too close as retaliation for those who harmed her. A creepy portion of town near Moll Dyer Road is densely wooded and divided by a tiny brook. Locals say this was Moll Dyer’s cottage, and it was close to where her body was discovered in the late 1600s. The fabled curse of Moll Dyer ensures that crops fail to grow and that thunderstorms afflict the citizens of the town.

Isobel Gowdie was a well-known witch in Scotland during the 17th century. She confessed to witchcraft while being tortured, and she is now widely regarded as one of history’s most important witches. The confessions were written down by Isobel’s interrogator, Father John Kelly, and are thought to be Scotland’s first recorded account of a witch trial. Isobel was well-known for her ability to cast spells and prophesy, as well as tell fortunes by looking into people’s teacups or reading their palms. Because of her long, white hair, she is sometimes referred to as ‘Isobel Long-beard.‘

Over the course of six weeks, Gowdie confessed to witchcraft four times. Her first confession, dated 13 April 1662 at Auldearn, described an encounter with the Devil after she arranged to meet him at night in the kirk at Auldearn. She said she renounced her baptism and the Devil put his mark on her shoulder and sucked blood from it, naming several others who attended, including Janet Breadhead and Margret Brodie. She mentioned having sexual relations with the Devil, whom she described as a very cold “meikle, blak, roch man.” He had forked and cloven feet, which were occasionally covered by shoes or boots. She explained that brooms were placed beside her husband’s bed to keep him from noticing she was absent. The coven ate and drank the best food in houses they arrived at by flying through the air on magical horses and entering through the windows. They were entertained at Downie Hill by the Queen of the Fairies, also known as the Queen of Elphame. She claimed to have transformed into a jackdaw, and that other members of the coven had transformed into cats and hares.

Gowdie’s second confession was transcribed a little more than two weeks later, on 3 May 1662. She filled in the blanks about the coven by naming the members’ nicknames and as many of the spirits who served them as she could remember; her own servant spirit, dressed in black, was known as the Read Reiver. The ability to transform into animals was claimed, with individual chants used to transform into a cat, horse, or various other animals supplied. Over the course of her confessions, she gave a total of twenty-seven benevolent or malevolent chants, more than in any other British witchcraft case.

Gowdie was brought before her interrogators for the third time on May 15, 1662. The transcript, like her first and second confessions, and like many other Scottish witchcraft testimonies, begins by detailing her pact with the Devil after she met him and agreed to meet him at Auldearn Kirk. Her story continued to describe how, while in that form, she was pursued by a pack of dogs; she escaped by running from house to house until she had the opportunity to utter the chant to transform herself back into a human. She went on to say that when a witch assumed the form of a hare, the dogs could bite her; while the dogs couldn’t kill the shapeshifter, the bite marks and scars would remain visible once the human form was restored.

According to historian Robert Pitcairn, who first reproduced Gowdie’s testimonies in 1833, the fourth and final confession, dated 27 May 1662, is basically to confirm the three previous testimonies while also attempting to elicit more information about the members of the coven in order to bring charges against them. As a result of Breadhead and Gowdie’s statements, 41 people were arrested.

Isobel is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of witchcraft. According to academic Julian Goodare, Isobel is “one of the most famous of all Scottish witches,” with “extraordinary confessions” that include “some of the most remarkable [visionary activities] on record.” This modern-day description is similar to Pitcairn’s in 1833 and George F. Black’s in 1937, when they wrote in the Calendar of Witchcraft in Scotland, “This is the most remarkable witchcraft case on record… referred to, in more or less detail, in every work relating to witchcraft in Scotland.”

Dion Fortune was born on December 6, 1890, in Wales, United Kingdom. Her father practiced law, and her mother was a Christian Science healer. Violet’s mother was convinced that Violet’s soul was altered at birth. Violet began having visions and memories of an ancient civilization known as Atlantis when she was four years old. She thought she had been a temple priestess there in a previous life. Violet was a bright and intelligent child who began writing poetry when she was thirteen. She was also extremely imaginative and sensitive.

Violet was adamant about making it on her own. She enrolled at Studley College in Warwickshire, where she would learn to be a gardener when she was only twenty years old. This College’s warden was Dr. Lilias Hamilton, who was well-versed in occult knowledge and hypnosis. This warden was in charge of stealing money from students. Violet decided to leave, but the warden told her she couldn’t unless she admitted to being incompetent and lacking self-confidence. Violet had a nervous breakdown after the warden repeated these remarks for four hours. For several years, this affected her logic and weakened her physically and emotionally.

This experience piqued her interest in the mind’s abilities, and she enrolled in the psychology and psychoanalysis program at the University of London. She was one of London’s highest-paid lay-analysts at the age of 23. She quickly discovered that she was highly telepathic while working in a clinic, and she began to notice that psychology alone was frequently insufficient to help her clients. In 1929 and 1930, she wrote a book called Psychic Self Defense about this time in her life. With this book, she warned readers about the misuse of occult powers and gave them advice on how to defend themselves. Her best remark is that reactions to fear or longing always damage the aura from the inside out.

Violet met Dr. Theodore Moriarty, a Freemason, solo magician, and occultist with a special interest in psychology and healing, at the end of World War I, in 1917. He was convinced that diseases or mental illnesses could only be explained by looking into past lives. Moriarty had the ability to read auras, project his astral body, and summon objects from an unknown location into his room. He understood the workings of the universe and remembered previous lives as a priest in Egypt and Atlantis. He was an astrologer who knew how to deal with entities or thoughtforms by absorbing their energy into his own aura.

Moriarty tutored Violet until she was well-versed in the Western Mystery Tradition. In 1926, she published The Secrets of Doctor Taverner, a collection of short stories about him. In this book, she changed Moriarty’s name to Taverner, but she insists that the stories in the book are literally true, even if they have been toned down for print. “To ‘Dr. Taverner,’ I owe the greatest debt of my life, and without ‘Dr. Taverner,’ there would have been no ‘Dion Fortune,'” she writes in the introduction to this book.

Dion Fortune devoted her life to resurrecting the Western Mystery Tradition. “I want to know so that I can serve,” she said. According to Dion, magic is the art of causing changes in consciousness to occur in accordance with her will. She and her priests’ spiritual sex magic benefited the entire human race. Dion possessed extensive esoteric knowledge as well as a straightforward, no-nonsense demeanor. As a result, she became one of the twentieth century’s most approachable occultists and writers. Dion Fortune is a pen-name she adopted for her occult writing after being born Violet Mary Firth. It means “God, not luck.”