Witches have been a prominent and enduring figure in popular culture across multiple media, including literature, film, television, music, and video games.
As a child, Rachel Christ-Doane, AG21, loved dressing up as Hermione Granger for Halloween. Wearing a black robe and wielding a wand like the character from Harry Potter, Christ-Doane thought of witches as smart, brave girls who used their magical powers for good.
Today’s ideas about witches are a far cry from 1692. When we see the word “witch” coming into popular use, it's being used to describe a criminal offense. It's a person who’s believed to have sold their soul to the devil in exchange for supernatural powers. They're believed to practice magic to hurt people around them.
At that time, there is no version of a witch that's good and kind and beautiful. Witches are evil and they are the enemy hiding in your community.
Now the education director at the Salem Witch Museum, Christ-Doane researches and teaches about a much darker chapter in the history of witches: the period between 1692 and 1693 when about 200 people were accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts. Twenty were killed and five died in jail, making it the deadliest witch hunt in colonial North America.
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While those horrors may seem distant today, the underlying urge to scapegoat other people in fearful times is still with us, according to Christ-Doane, who earned a master’s degree in history and museum studies at Tufts.
“Witch trials have a lot to tell us about human behavior and about the way that we treat people, particularly people who aren't like us,” she says.
Christ-Doane spoke with Tufts Now about witch trials, what they can teach us, and how to balance serious history with pop culture fun.
Карта показывает количество процессов над ведьмами в Европе.
The Historical Context of Witchcraft
Drawing from historical folklore, religious traditions, and literary archetypes, popular representations of witches have evolved significantly over time, ranging from malevolent antagonists in fairy tales and horror stories to sympathetic protagonists in modern fantasy and supernatural fiction, particularly in works aimed at young adult audiences.
Read also: Understanding Witchcraft in Scripture
The Criminalization of Witchcraft
While there were people practicing folk magic for centuries, this criminal designation began in about 1400. That’s when witch hunts started in earnest in Europe, as the Christian church had by that time decreed that all magic is demonically derived and that the devil’s waging a war against Christian society.
About 45,000 to 50,000 people were killed in the European witch trials, which lasted from about 1400 to about 1750. In most witch trials, about 75% of victims were women.
In the Salem witch trials, we see innocent people being executed based on evidence that we wouldn't consider admissible in a court. Things spiraled out of control in Salem primarily because the Massachusetts Bay government was in a moment of transition. The colonial charter had been revoked, so the judicial system was at an odd standstill right when this witchcraft panic was erupting.
When they finally got the new charter in May of 1692, the jails were overflowing with people accused of being witches. So we see some unusual procedural decisions being made in the haste to get people's cases seen before a court quickly.
They set up an emergency court, and they allow something called spectral evidence [testimony based on dreams or visions], which is a controversial form of evidence that had not been enough to warrant a guilty verdict in the colonies before. That’s what leads to such a high conviction rate in Salem.
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Who Was Accused?
Normally, people accused during a witch panic were social outsiders. You often see people who are poor, particularly impoverished women; women who are very argumentative, who fight with their husbands, fight with their neighbors; widows who are living alone, without a man in their household; people who have done something socially transgressive like have a child out of wedlock. These people could be vulnerable.
The first three people accused in 1692 fit this pattern. Sarah Good was a beggar known to be argumentative, Sarah Osborne was a woman with scandal in her past who had long been absent from church due to illness, and Tituba was an enslaved woman living in the same house as the first afflicted girls.
It makes sense in a way, because if you are looking for someone in your community you think has done the worst thing imaginable and sold their soul to the devil, you are going to look for someone that you already dislike or distrust. That scapegoating is a key element of witch trials.
Since Salem gets out of control to a very unusual degree, you start to see them break from the pattern. More respected members of the community, people who are wealthier, people who have a lot of neighbors and family members who are willing to sign petitions attesting to their good character, they get swept up in the panic and are accused. Still, roughly 76% of the accused in Salem were women.
Жертвы Салемских процессов над ведьмами.
The Youngest Accused
I'm currently writing a book about the youngest person accused in the Salem witch trials, Dorothy Good, who’s just 4 years old when she is jailed. Dorothy’s mother, Sarah, is executed for witchcraft, and Dorothy is in jail for about seven or eight months.
Through my research, I've traced her through the town records and found a lot of information that was not previously known about her. I learned that when she was an adult, she couldn’t care for herself, so the government paid for her care. She was not able to assimilate back into Puritan society and marry and have a family. It’s become a story of what happened to women in the 18th century who struggled to function in society.
Lessons from the Past
Witch trials have a lot to tell us about human behavior and about the way that we treat people, particularly people who aren't like us-people who make us uncomfortable, who are socially different. Whenever I talk to groups, I try to underscore that we tend to think about Puritans as caricatures, with the black hats and the buckles on their shoes, but it’s important to remind ourselves that they have a lot of similarities to us in the modern day.
Understanding how we scapegoat people is such a key lesson that we can't seem to learn as human beings.
The museum here ends with a display that shows this formula of human behavior: There's a fear present, that fear is triggered, and it results in scapegoating.
The exhibit places that formula in the context of three 20th-century American events: the internment of Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the McCarthy blacklists, which are very famously associated with the Salem witch trials because of [the 1953 Arthur Miller play] The Crucible, and the treatment of the gay community after the AIDS epidemic began in the ’80s.
The Evolution of the "Good Witch" in Pop Culture
Today we focus more on good witches. By the late 19th century, you see pop culture portrayals like Halloween postcards and advertisements where witches are beautiful, sexy women.
The Evolution of Glinda the Good Witch: From 1900 to Wicked (2025)
L. Frank Baum introduced two good witches in his 1900 children’s book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In 1900, L. Frank Baum publishes the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which has two good witches: Glinda and the Good Witch of the North. He is the first to introduce on a major scale good witches, witches who are heroines, in a story.
L. Frank Baum has this interesting connection to the women's movement. His mother-in-law is Matilda Joslyn Gage, an important first-wave feminist and abolitionist. In her book Women, Church and State in the early 1890s, she’s the first person to articulate the idea that the witch trials were a way for the state to strip women of their rights. A couple of years later, L. Frank Baum wrote his book. One can’t help but wonder if Baum was inspired by Gage’s writing.
That idea of the good witch explodes and transforms in popular culture as the century goes on. You have Bewitched in the ’60s and ’70s, where witches are not only beautiful, but they're America's sweetheart, literally the girl next door.
Witches also become important figures in religious movements in the ’60s and ’70s, Wicca and neo-paganism, and in the women's movement. In the ’90s, witches are coming-of-age figures in a lot of stories, like Harry Potter, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
The concept of witches has a deep association with witchcraft and has historically been viewed as the epitome of evil across most cultures. This negative perception largely originated in Europe through Christian beliefs, where witches were accused of causing chaos through "vile behavior and demonic rituals". While often visualized as hideous females, male witches also existed, and in France, there were even believed to be more male witches than female.
Witch representation in Western popular culture has evolved significantly, reflecting societal changes, particularly in feminist politics and views on women's agency. Historically, the witch served as a "controlling image," designed to warn women against defying patriarchal norms by embodying evil and isolation.
Могущественные ведьмы на телевидении.
Witches on TV: A Reflection of Societal Change
TV witches have always captivated me. As a child, I would sit cross-legged in front of the screen, completely spellbound by reruns of Samantha Stephens from Bewitched on Nick-at-Nite. I remember watching her effortlessly clean the house with a twitch of her nose, never realizing that there was something deeper going on in these portrayals of witches. At the time, they seemed like fun, harmless characters.
They weren’t just whimsical characters; they were symbols of deeper transformations in how we understand power, gender, and the supernatural. It’s interesting to look back and see how witches on TV have been portrayed over the decades-first as playful, domestic figures and later as rebellious, complex beings.
As an anthropologist, I’ve come to see witches through a broader, more nuanced lens. Early Western ethnographers, while studying the practices of other cultures, often brought with them their own ethnocentric biases about magic and religion. Their interpretations were shaped by centuries of European history, particularly the witch persecutions during the Inquisition and Reformation, which cast a long shadow over public perceptions of witchcraft.
Ronald Hutton once described witches as individuals who upset the natural order, reflecting society’s fears of “transgression and otherness.” That statement has always stuck with me. Witches have historically occupied the margins of society, embodying our collective anxieties about those who break the rules. On TV, these characters often serve as a mirror for how we feel about rebellion and the unknown.
Bewitched: Domesticity and Hidden Power
Take Bewitched, for instance. When I first watched it as a child, I didn’t understand the broader cultural implications. It was only later, studying the show as an adult, that I realized how significant Samantha’s character really was.
Bewitched premiered in 1964, during a time when women were expected to conform to very specific domestic roles. Samantha, a suburban housewife with magical powers, was expected to hide her abilities to keep the peace in her marriage. Anthropologist Mary Douglas explored how societies manage dangerous or deviant powers, particularly in women, and Bewitched fits this pattern perfectly.
Samantha’s powers-while central to her identity-had to be contained within the home. It was a perfect metaphor for the simmering tension of the 1960s, as women began to push back against restrictive gender roles.
But what really fascinated me was how Bewitched seemed to tap into the broader cultural anxiety surrounding women’s liberation. Heather Greene notes that the show subtly reflected societal discomfort with powerful women, portraying Samantha’s magic as something to be “contained.”
As I grew older and started to analyze these portrayals more critically, I realized that Bewitched was more than just a fun show-it was a reflection of how we were grappling with the changing roles of women in society.
Sabrina the Teenage Witch: Empowerment and Self-Discovery
Fast forward to the 1990s, and witches took on a different role in shows like Sabrina the Teenage Witch. I remember watching Sabrina as a teenager, and it felt like a totally different vibe from Samantha’s world. Sabrina, played by Melissa Joan Hart, wasn’t hiding her powers for the sake of a man - she was learning to manage them in the midst of teenage life. Her powers weren’t dangerous; they were fun, playful, and tied to the challenges of growing up.
Watching Sabrina juggle her magic and her life as a high school student felt incredibly relatable, even though I didn’t have spells at my disposal!
Greene mentions that Sabrina the Teenage Witch reflected the 1990s’ cultural fascination with self-discovery and empowerment, and that really resonates with me. As an anthropologist, I see Sabrina’s journey as a metaphor for the liminal space of adolescence, a concept explored by Victor Turner. In Turner’s work, the “liminal” refers to those transitional periods of life, like adolescence, when we’re neither here nor there. For Sabrina, magic was a tool to navigate that uncertainty.
Instead of representing something to be feared, her powers were an extension of her identity, and the show celebrated that.
Charmed: Sisterhood and Collective Strength
And then came Charmed, which overlapped with my own first entries into magic and Paganism. What fascinated me about this show was how it tied magic to ideas of sisterhood and collective strength. The Halliwell sisters weren’t just witches-they were “The Charmed Ones,” destined to protect the world from evil. Watching them navigate their powers, which were tied to their familial bond, felt deeply feminist.
Greene describes the Halliwells as “warrior witches,” and I think that perfectly captures their role in the cultural landscape of the late 1990s and early 2000s. What struck me about Charmed was how it embraced the idea of witches as empowered figures. Unlike Samantha or even Sabrina, the Halliwell sisters didn’t need to hide their powers-they used them openly to fight the forces of evil. This shift reflects broader changes in how we view women and power.
Instead of fearing magic, Charmed celebrated it as a tool for good, tying it to feminist ideals of autonomy and strength.
Academically I see Charmed as reflecting the rise of spiritual feminism and the reclaiming of witchcraft as a source of empowerment for women, much like the contemporary Wiccan and modern Pagan movements, which has also been noted by Helen A.
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