The motif of witches and witchcraft is a venerable one in weird fiction, chiefly because the witchcraft panic of the Middle Ages and Renaissance permanently embedded the theme into European society. In this new and expansive anthology, Katherine Kerestman and S. T. Joshi have not only unearthed great stories and poems, old and new, about witches, but also chronicled the witch-hunts that resulted in the unjust deaths of hundreds of thousands of suspected witches over many centuries.
Treatises by Nicolas Rémy, Henri Boguet, Matthew Hale, and others cruelly portrayed witches, both male and female (but mostly female), as having signed pacts with the Devil. The sexual obsession of these male witch-hunters is evident throughout their writings. Their work led to the chilling portrayal of witches as evil crones, evidenced in tales, plays, and poems by William Shakespeare, L. Frank Baum, Clark Ashton Smith, Frank Belknap Long, Ramsey Campbell, and others.
This volume features original stories and poems on witches and witchcraft by such leading contemporary writers as John Shirley, Darrell Schweitzer, Wade German, Stephen Mark Rainey, Debra K. Every, and many others who exhibit the continuing power of this motif. Also included are distinctive illustrations from witch-hunting manuals, which reveal the twisted mentalities of self-appointed witch-hunters as they targeted innocent people in their vicious crusade.