Knowehead

The haunting of Ann Haltridge of Knowehead House, Islandmagee, began in September 1710. It ended with her death less than six months later. In this episode, I bring you the story of a haunting, a death, and the last witch trial in Ireland: the case of the Islandmagee witches. How does one girl's affliction shape a community's fear? 

Researched, written, and produced by Corinne Wieben, with original music by Purple Planet.

Episode sources 
The Islandmagee Project

For more on the first witch trial in Ireland, check out The Lovelorn Lady.
For more on the witches of Warboys, check out Warboys. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Pre-roll
• 0:08 Intro
• 1:47 The Boy in Black
• 7:35 The Haunting of Mary Dunbar
• 13:18 The Islandmagee Witches
• 17:53 Conclusion
• 21:00 Outro

Transcript

Pre-roll
You’re listening to Enchanted, a podcast on the history of magic, sorcery, and witchcraft. I’m Corinne Wieben.

Intro
The haunting of Ann Haltridge, widow of the late Reverend John Haltridge, the Presbyterian minister of Islandmagee in County Antrim, Ireland, began in September 1710. Ann had been living with her son, James, and his wife in Knowehead House for the thirteen years since her husband had died, but the younger couple was often away from home. One late summer evening, as she sat in the kitchen enjoying the glow of the fire, stones suddenly struck her back and shoulders. She thought someone must have thrown them through the open window and retreated to her bedroom, but more stones followed, striking her as she sat on the bed. Then, she felt an invisible presence crawl slowly from the foot of her bed over her body. She jumped up and attempted to search the room, but no one was there. A few nights later, an invisible hand pulled her pillow and blankets off the bed as she slept. Another search yielded nothing. By now, Ann was convinced a supernatural force was haunting her.

In this episode, I bring you the story of the Islandmagee witches and the last witch trial in Ireland.

The Boy in Black
A few months of peace followed these disturbances, and Ann thought all was well. One December night, she sat by the warmth of the kitchen fire, sharing the company of a household servant, Margaret Spears. Suddenly, a boy appeared in front of them. According to Margaret, the boy was dressed in ragged black clothes and looked to be around twelve years old. The two women guessed that the boy was there to beg for food. In the period following the wars and economic disasters that struck Ireland at the end of the seventeenth century, beggars were a common sight. However, this boy stood covering his face with his hand. Wondering if the boy was hurt or in distress, the women asked him to remove his hand and tell them his name, but the boy in black only stood there, silent, keeping his face well hidden.

When Ann finally demanded that he remove his hand, the boy jerked and danced around the kitchen before leaping out of the window and running away. Several servants went in search of the boy, but to no avail. The boy in black was gone. Gone, that is, until the servants returned to Knowehead House, where the boy stood waiting for them. They chased him away, lost him again, and found him on returning to the house some dozen times before Margaret finally scolded him, saying “now my master is coming; he will take a course with this troublesome creature.” The boy disappeared.

On a Sunday evening the following February, a large book of sermons that Ann had been reading went missing. Early the next morning, as Margaret sat by the kitchen fire, the window suddenly shattered. Shards of flying glass scattered on the floor, and when Margaret turned to look, the boy in black was standing outside the window, clutching her mistress’s book in his filthy hand. When the maid confronted the boy and demanded he return the book, he drew a sword and threatened to kill the house’s inhabitants. Margaret flew to the door, throwing the bolt and dashing into the parlor with her master’s eight-year-old son. The boy in black followed around the outside of the house, shouting through the parlor window, saying “I can come in by the least hole in the house, like a cat or a mouse, for the Devil can make me anything I please.” The terrified Margaret cried, “God bless me from thee, for thou art no earthly creature if you can do that.” At that, the boy vanished, taking a parting shot at the parlor window with yet another stone. The boy then reappeared in the yard, holding one of the family’s turkeys. Struggling, he dropped Ann’s book, and attempting to kill the turkey with his sword, missed. Ann and Margaret recovered both the book and the turkey. Having failed on both counts, the boy removed every pane of glass from the parlor window and began digging a hole in the garden with his sword. Asked what he was doing, he said he was digging a grave for James Haltridge. When he finished his work, he flew over the garden wall. Ann and Margaret alerted their neighbors, who searched the house and yard but found nothing out of order. Once the neighbors had left and Ann and Margaret were alone with the family’s children, a cacophony of stones and turf began raining down on the walls and windows. The terrified inhabitants of Knowehead House huddled together and listened to this attack for the next eight hours. Finally, the noise ceased.

A few days after this attack, Ann found her bed stripped and her bedclothes in a pile on the floor. The servants remade Ann’s bed but soon found the covers folded under a large table. The servants made the bed again, but when Ann retired for the night, she found a shocking sight. On her bed was a shape resembling a corpse in a winding sheet. This turned out to be her bolster, arranged vertically with the sheets pulled up over it. When the servants offered to make up another room for her to sleep in, Ann said she refused “to give place to the Devil.”

When news of this haunting reached the local Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Robert Sinclair, he took two of the Ruling Elders of the area along with some other pious neighbors and attempted to drive out the demonic presence in the house through prayer. However, nightfall saw Ann’s bedclothes once again rearranged to resemble a corpse. Not to be deterred, Ann slept that night in her own bed, but at midnight her screams woke the house. Sinclair found Ann moaning and saying it felt like she had been stabbed in the back with a knife. In this new agony, Ann informed those in the house that she was too afraid to remain in her room and moved into a spare room. It didn’t help. After spending seven days tormented by pain and sickness, Ann Haltridge died on February 2, 1711.

The Haunting of Mary Dunbar
The news from Knowehead House understandably unsettled the residents of Islandmagee, but this community was already accustomed to decades of upheaval. Following the English Parliament’s trial and execution of King Charles I in 1649, England and Ireland experienced a radical breakdown of the religious uniformity that had marked the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and her Stuart successors. The English Civil War and the long interregnum period before the restoration of the Stuart monarchy with the coronation of King Charles II in 1660 meant that the 1640s and 1650s saw an immense influx of English and Scottish Protestants in Northern Ireland, particularly in the province of Ulster. Tensions between Protestants and Catholics worsened in the 1680s when King James II of England raised an army of Catholic supporters to help him retain the throne on the eve of the Glorious Revolution. Even after James’s deposition and exile, Protestants in Ulster continued to worry about their minority status within Ireland. Even among Irish Protestants, there were tensions and disagreements. Those who belonged to the Anglican Church of Ireland worried about the influx of more radical Calvinist ideas from Scotland and the growing influence of Puritanical English doctrines. These tensions extended to belief in witchcraft, with Presbyterian officials confident that the Devil worked in the world through those who had made a pact with him and Anglican officials who generally doubted witchcraft’s veracity. Scotland saw widespread prosecution of witches in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and Scottish-born Presbyterian families in Ulster would have brought with them their firm beliefs in witchcraft. This view of witchcraft as widespread and dangerous differed from the beliefs of both Anglicans and Catholics, furthering Ulster’s political divides. Less than a week after the death of Ann Haltridge, the beliefs of the people of Islandmagee would be put to the ultimate test.

On February 27, 1711, Mary Dunbar, a cousin of James Haltridge, arrived alongside James’s sister to keep the family company while he was away on business. No sooner had Mary arrived than she began to experience supernatural attacks like those experienced by Ann Haltridge. On their first night, the two women discovered that their clothing had been scattered outside and was smeared with dirt. While she looked around for still-missing items of clothing, Mary Dunbar found an apron on the parlor floor, “rolled close together and tied hard with… string… with five strange knots… upon them.” The rest of the household refused to untie the knots in the apron strings, fearing that someone had tied a charm up to enchant anyone who loosed them. Mary, however, untied the string without fear, finding Ann Haltridge’s cap inside.

The next morning, the bedclothes were found stripped from Ann Haltridge’s former bed. Mary went to investigate the room herself, but on the stairs, she was “suddenly seized with a pain in the thigh which made her fall down and cry out very violently.” Even when she got back downstairs, she felt pain shoot through her head and body and began to convulse. She suffered these fits on and off for the next eight hours. When the fits passed, she told the household that while she was seized, she had seen a group of women gathered around her bed, threatening to kill her. According to Mary, as these women spoke to one another, she discerned two names: Janet Main and Janet Carson. Both women lived nearby. The family summoned Reverend Sinclair and asked him to test these accusations. He brought Janet Carson to Knowehead House, only to have Mary fall into an agonizing fit when Carson entered her room. Other names emerged, including Janet Liston and her daughter, Elizabeth Sellor, who were brought to the house to be identified by Mary and examined on their faith. Both women were asked to recite the Lord’s Prayer and answer questions on articles of faith. Both failed to satisfy the examiners.

In the following weeks, Mary Dunbar continued to show such dramatic convulsive and catatonic fits that the community, either hearing about her symptoms or having come by to see them for themselves, were sure she was bewitched. It wasn’t long before the Mayor of Carrickfergus, Edward Clements, began to take witness statements and collect evidence to bring a case against the women Mary accused. She began to identify more assailants, including Catherine McCalmond, whose house was searched. Investigators found nothing suspicious, though McCalmond herself wasn’t home at the time. Reverend Sinclair used this as evidence that she must have assumed some invisible spiritual shape to avoid detection. On March 5th Clements issued warrants for the arrests of Janet Carson, Janet Liston, Elizabeth Sellor, and Catherine McCalmond.

The Islandmagee Witches
With her fits, Mary Dunbar had turned a house in mourning into a carnivalesque spectacle. Officials and neighbors were present at Knowehead House at all hours, and her fits and cries constantly overturned the peace of the house. As the accused witches were arrested, a witness named Hugh Donaldson, who was said to be “lying on the bed” beside Mary Dunbar, felt something move beneath him. He picked Mary up out of the bed, and a creature a little larger than a mouse scuttled into the corner. Reverend Sinclair identified the creature as a witch’s familiar. No one asked what Hugh had been doing in bed with Mary.

The next day, March 6th, Mayor Clements issued warrants for the arrest of two more women: Janet Main and Janet Latimer. With her tormentors in custody, Mary Dunbar ate some breakfast, but the demonic presence at Knowehead House persisted. On March 8th, Mary had more fits, saying she had a vision of two more women, one of whom was called “Mistress Ann.” Stones were thrown at the house, multiple knots were found tied in strings on the children’s clothing, possessions disappeared, and young Mrs. Haltridge claimed to have been attacked with a pot lid while she slept. Mary said the witches had told her they would attack them all until they abandoned Knowehead House. After a few more days of violent disturbances, Mary was moved on March 13th to a house in nearby Larne. When her violent fits continued, authorities decided to renew the search for the mysterious “Mistress Ann.” After Mary described one assailant as “blind in one eye,” one investigator confronted Janet Millar, whom he said fell “into a great rage” and “cursed and swore horribly.” When officials brought Millar into Mary’s room, she fell into a fit and screamed that they should “take the Devil out of the roome.” They immediately arrested Millar and searched her house, finding “a ball of hair, made up… with roots of herbs, and some combustible matter, with a needle five inches long through it.”

Day after day, Mary’s fits continued. Now she coughed up horsehair, wool, feathers, and pins. While searching for a woman who matched Mary’s description of “Mistress Ann,” two officials found Margaret Mitchell, who reluctantly agreed to go to Larne. On March 20th, Mitchell entered the house, but observers noted that Mary’s reaction was subdued compared to the fits that had come on her with the others. Sensing doubt, Mary told the officials to let Mitchell go and see whether a fit came on her. Sure enough, as soon as the two men let Mitchell go, Mary fell into convulsions, saying Mitchell stood at the foot of her bed. For good measure, Mary said that Mitchell threatened to make wax images of the two men and “roast them like larks before a fire.” Less willing to gamble with their lives than with Mary’s, the men brought Margaret Mitchell back to Mary the next day. Mary fell into convulsions upon seeing the woman, but as soon as she left, the girl fell quiet.

As the trial of the accused approached, a new affliction struck Mary: she found herself periodically unable to speak. The condition came and went, but on the morning of the trial, she signaled that she could not speak and fell into a fit, meaning the court would have to take the unusual step of having someone other than the victim make the case against the accused. The court heard witnesses and examined physical evidence, which mainly consisted of objects Mary was said to have coughed up during her attacks. While a judge expressed some skepticism, urging the jury that they “could not bring [the defendants] in guilty upon the sole testimony of the afflicted person’s visionary images.” Despite this, the jury returned with a guilty verdict, convicting all eight accused women of practicing witchcraft on Mary Dunbar.

Conclusion
You might assume that after the eight women Mary Dunbar accused of witchcraft were successfully prosecuted, her symptoms would have subsided. However, on April 8th, she reported another attacker to the authorities, claiming a man had threatened her life if she exposed him. Her description of the man matched William Sellor, who was the husband of Janet Liston and father of Elizabeth Sellor, both recently convicted of witchcraft. William was arrested a few days later, tried, and also found guilty of bewitching Mary Dunbar.

Understanding the complexities of early modern witch trials is difficult at the best of times. They often involved intersecting political, religious, social, and cultural factors. Mary Dunbar herself may have been dealing with a medical or psychological condition that she and her community could only explain through witchcraft. Alternatively, she could have fabricated her symptoms for attention and influence over her community. It’s worth noting that there were cases of faked possessions during the 16th and 17th centuries. In two of the better-known cases, the supposed victims had read pamphlets documenting the trial of the witches of Warboys and the possessions of the Throckmorton children before developing similar symptoms.

The Islandmagee trials ended witch trials in Ireland, which had started with the trials of Alice Kyteler and Petronilla de Meath in 1324. Today, The Islandmagee Project, led by Andrew Sneddon and Victoria McCollum, is focused on researching these trials. This collaborative multimedia initiative aims to understand the significance of these events, how they have been portrayed, and what lessons they can teach us about the human experience, community, and fear of the unknown.

Efforts to spotlight this overlooked chapter of history have been largely successful. Thanks to Sneddon, McCollum, and their colleagues at the Islandmagee Project as well as novelist Martina Devlin, a commemorative plaque was unveiled in Antrim in March of this year. The plaque lists the names of the accused but stops short of declaring their innocence.

Outro
If you enjoyed this episode, you can subscribe to Enchanted wherever you listen. This episode was produced by me with original music by Purple Planet. You can find them at purple dash planet dot com. If you want to learn more about the Islandmagee witch trials, be sure to check out the sources link and the link to the Islandmagee Project in the show notes. Special thanks to Enchanted’s Patreon patrons for supporting the production of this and every episode. If you want to support Enchanted, please visit patreon dot com slash enchantedpodcast. If you’re looking for a way to support the show that won’t cost you anything, you can always give Enchanted: The History of Magic & Witchcraft a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, Audible, or wherever you listen and recommend it to your friends. You can get in touch with me via email at enchantedpodcast at gmail dot com or follow on Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr at enchantedpodcast. As always, for more information and special features, visit enchantedpodcast dot net. I’m Corinne Wieben. Thank you for listening and stay enchanted.