The Witches of Forfar

Forfar, Angus, Scotland

In 1661, nine women and one man were burned at Forfar after confessing to dancing with the Devil in the churchyard, shape-shifting, and gathering at midnight to dig up the bodies of unbaptised children.

The Forfar witch trials of 1661 were among the most extensively documented of the Scottish witch panics of the later 17th century. They produced detailed, internally consistent confessions that reveal both the specific character of Angus folk beliefs and the systematic nature of the torture that produced them. The central accused was Helen Guthrie, a woman from Forfar who became the primary witness against her co-accused after her own confession was extracted. Her accounts described sabbath meetings in the local churchyard, presided over by a figure described variously as the Devil, a dark man, and a 'master' in a black hat. The gatherings involved dancing, the distribution of food and drink, and the physical marking of new members. The most specific detail in Guthrie's testimony concerned the use of unbaptised children's bodies — taken from graves — to make candles and render into fat for specific purposes. This detail recurs across multiple Scottish witch trials of the period and appears to have been a standard accusation. Nine women — including Guthrie herself after her testimony failed to fully exonerate her — and one man were strangled and burned at the stake at Forfar's execution site. Local tradition places the execution site at the north end of Castle Street. The confessions survive in the Forfar presbytery records. They are extremely detailed. Whether they record actual practices, shared delusions, or the systematic production of whatever the interrogators wished to hear is a question Scottish historians have not resolved.