The Spook's Bestiary - By Joseph Delaney Page 0,36

witch starts to change. If she is then killed, she will become wick– not only able to move her body great distances, but soft and pliable, with the ability to squeeze into a tiny space. Entering a human body through the nose or ears, the witch can possess it and use it for her own purposes.

The difficulty then is to identify the witch, but there are two ways: A body that is newly possessed has poor balance and may stagger as if dizzy or even completely lose its balance and fall over. There are often personality changes, too. Someone who was formerly kind, calm, and happy may suddenly become excitable and bad tempered.23

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1Testing a witch? Just never trust a woman. And never trust a woman who wears pointy shoes.—John Gregory

2The principle behind the swimming test is right—it’s just the practice that is wrong. Most witches cannot cross running water, so a stream or river would be a better place to test them. Witches also find seawater toxic because of its high salt content.—Bill Arkwright

3Agnes Sowerbutts of Pendle could fall into the category of a benign witch, but her status is not certain. She is a healer but uses a mirror for magical purposes, something usually considered a tool of the dark.—Tom Ward

4Witches (with the exception of water witches) cannot cross running water. As the Pendle district has numerous streams, some means had to be found to enable witches to move about relatively freely. Thus witch dams were developed. A system of pulleys and a handle are used to lower a big wooden board into a stream to block its flow. The heavy board slides down between two grooved posts into a trench in the bottom of the stream, which is lined with wood to make a good seal. Water quickly builds and flows around the dam, but before it does so, several witches are able to cross safely.—John Gregory

5Now I know better. Time has shown that I was wrong to allow Bony Lizzie to escape, and I also should have killed Tusk while I had the chance. Years later, both returned to Chipenden in another attempt to free Mother Malkin. It almost cost me the life of my apprentice, Tom Ward. (How we finally dealt with Mother Malkin is chronicled in Tom Ward’s own notebooks.) I have always had a tendency to be merciful. Sometimes it has cost both me and others dearly.—John Gregory

6From what has been learned since the return of the Fiend to this world, it is highly probable that Tusk was an abhuman, the result of a union between a witch and the Fiend.—John Gregory

7Inside the Ord there were hundreds of vaengir summoned by the Fiend to swell the ranks of the Ordeen’s servants. This accounts for them rarely being seen elsewhere.—Tom Ward

8This is the account of my dealings with the lamia witch Meg Skelton. She has now returned to her homeland, Greece, and I do not expect to see her again. I include it now as a warning to my apprentices. —John Gregory

9Seawater, with its high levels of salt, is toxic for witches. They avoid the seashore and cannot safely walk on sand even when the tide is at its lowest ebb. Even water witches die if immersed in seawater for too long. However, witches can and do make successful sea voyages. To do so, they must stay in the boat’s hold as much as possible and dress to shield their skin from the wind and spray. —John Gregory

Bill Arkwright uses a salt solution in the pits he uses to bind water witches. This makes them docile. He also has a salt moat around his garden to keep others at bay.—apprentice Graham Cain

10The current leader of the Mouldheels is Mab. She’s a very young but powerful witch and an extremely skilled scryer. Beware—she will use fascination against a spook if she can!—Tom Ward

11The powerful witch Wurmalde journeyed from Greece to Pendle and succeeded in briefly uniting the three main clans to bring the Fiend through a portal to this world. That witch is dead now, and the clans are in conflict once more. We must be watchful lest another outsider comes to bring the Malkins, Deanes, and Mouldheels together again.—John Gregory

12These former appearances of the Fiend often lasted just a minute or so. Now, of course, he dwells in our world and threatens it with a new age of darkness.—John Gregory

13The witch Bony Lizzie had me trapped in a pit and was ready to