# Do people still hunt witches?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [August 6, 2003, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335 "2003-08-06T14:56:07Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@mammock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mammock)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2003, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335/1 "2003-08-06T14:56:07Z")
Does any society still do that, official governments, unofficial ones in remote areas, minor sects within a society, like Druids? Or the ones in remote islands like in that “Burning Man” movie?
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### Author:  [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2003, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335/2 "2003-08-06T15:24:16Z")
India has some problems with witch hunts coming up from time to time.
> [@](#):
>
> Witch-hunting is still prevalent in some Indian states. FLAC runs a campaign against this appalling practice and supports women accused of practising witchcraft.
>
> In the interiors of states like Bihar and West Bengal, ‘witches’ or ‘dains’ and their children are still hunted and killed. Witch-hunting is one of the least talked-about acts of violence. The murder of individuals and entire families accused of witchcraft is common in other states too, such as Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. From 1991 to 2000, over 522 cases of witch-hunting have been registered in Bihar alone.
[http://www.infochangeindia.org/WomenIstory.jsp?recordno=74§ion\_idv=1](http://www.infochangeindia.org/WomenIstory.jsp?recordno=74§ion_idv=1)
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### Author:  [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2003, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335/3 "2003-08-06T15:34:35Z")
Yes, people are still condememd and killed here for practicing magic and fourtune-telling.
The police sometimes raid places for it.
“Freeze! Drop the tarot cards punk!”
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### Author:  [@xcheopis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xcheopis)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2003, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335/4 "2003-08-06T17:39:22Z")
[Dangerous Ideas](http://fox.phpwebhosting.com/~dideas/index.php) carries stories about withcraft hunts around the world, e.g., the third article from the top.
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### Author:  [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2003, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335/5 "2003-08-06T18:38:28Z")
Around here, we hunt sand witches, and take them out to lunch.
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### Author:  [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2003, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335/6 "2003-08-06T20:02:15Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by AskNott \*
> \*\*Around here, we hunt sand witches, and take them out to lunch. \*\*
“Take them out to lunch,” indeed! THEY EAT THEM! You sick bastards!
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### Author:  [@vasyachkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vasyachkin)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2003, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335/7 "2003-08-07T02:06:44Z")
of course they do, only now the witches are druggies. they are spooky to the common joe so they’re being put in jails.
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### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2003, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335/8 "2003-08-07T02:12:20Z")
Seriously, though, when I went to New Mexico I made a friend from the Navajo Nation who told me that witchcraft is a major problem threatening Navajo society these days. He said it gets to where people are afraid to shake anyone’s hand. Not that everyone is a witch, but that suspicion is rife that anyone you meet might be a witch.
It isn’t the witchcraft per se that spooks them, but the cultural perception of it making people unable to trust one another. The fabric of society itself could unravel if that gets too out of hand. I hope they find rational ways to defuse the tension instead of an outbreak of persecution.
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### Author:  [@Bongmaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bongmaster)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2003, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335/9 "2003-08-07T15:03:27Z")
I long for the day when everyone in the world gets an education…things like this shouldn’t happen in 2003.
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### Author:  [@WeRSauron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WeRSauron)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2003, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335/10 "2003-08-07T15:38:12Z")
I’ve heard that witch-hunting is rampant in various areas of Africa.
WRS
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### Author:  [@Ponder\_Stibbons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponder_Stibbons)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2003, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335/11 "2003-08-07T17:51:10Z")
Good points, all, but one thing that might bear adding: “Witch” does not mean the same thing to all people. In general usage it means a person in league with supenatural (and usually evil) forces. _However_, in modern western civilization, the Wiccan religion uses the term as well, but I don’t know much about it. Would a practitioner care to elaborate?
The word “witch” has been used to translate concepts from other cultures that aren’t precisely the same as the heritage of the word “witch” in our own culture. For example, any avid reader of Tony Hillerman novels will recognize that the Navajo “witch”, also known as a “skinwalker” could be thought of as being a cross between a witch and a demon and is nothing like the “witch” of English heritage. A skinwalker is very much a concept of Navajo culture and may well be a strictly a phenomenon of legend and belief, without any “real” skinwalkers ever having existed, much in the way “demons” (or, for that matter “angels”) are a phenomenon of western civilization without ever “really” existing.
All of which is really just a nitpick. Regardless of what “witch” signifies in a given culture, “witch hunting” is an evil and barbarous practice that should be stamped out.
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### Author:  [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2003, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335/12 "2003-08-08T18:59:13Z")
Well, I’m at least pseudo-Wiccan (not that one can get particularly “official” or “card-carrying” about it, the informality and looseness of definition is part of what makes it what it is) – and in all honesty the reason we use terms like “witch” here is not because we think we are in league with evil supernatural forces and also not because we think we are being hunted down in western culture for being (actually _or_ supposedly) in league with evil supernatural forces. Instead, it is a way of saying “You know that tendency to brand people ‘witches’ or whatever based on thinking them weird and unorthodox, and then persecuting them? Well, morally and spiritually, we are on the other side and we’d like to be thought of as the antithesis of those witch-burning folks (not to mention enjoying the idea of being what they fear)”.
There is, as is probably obvious, no meaningful degree of actual literanl witch-hunting taking place in western civ (the possible activities of weird-ass Bibilical fundamentalists harassing tarot card readers & whatnot beside the point – they are no less marginal than those that they harass). There are other activities that by metaphorical extension constitute much of the same thing, though (the “red baiting” under Joseph McCarthy in the 50s in the US being a famous semi-recent example).
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### Author:  [@Ponder\_Stibbons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponder_Stibbons)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2003, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335/13 "2003-08-08T19:28:47Z")
Cool! I’m with you guys! 🆒
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### Author:  [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2003, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335/14 "2003-08-08T19:52:34Z")
Nowadays it’s more catch-and-release.
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### Author:  [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2003, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335/15 "2003-08-08T22:12:07Z")
Let’s not forget the Satanic Panic of the '90’s when many Americans believed there was a huge underground organization of Satanists who were performing thousands of human sacrifices. Part of this mythology was that the Satanists had women who bred babies specifically for use in human sacrifice. Some (including at least two members of my family) still believe this. Those of you who are familiar with Jack Chick’s bizarre comic book religious tracts can think of several of those tracts which still perpetuate this myth. So let’s not get too smug when we’re talking about other cultures, m’kay? 😃
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### Author:  [@SnoopyFan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SnoopyFan)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2003, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335/16 "2003-08-08T22:23:13Z")
The only witch hunt I personally have seen was at my old college (forgive me if I use the wrong terminology here):
A group of pagans I knew had reason to believe that someone on the other side of campus was well, doing stuff that witches shouldn’t do. (I wasn’t clear on what she was supposedly doing but best I can tell she was opening doors that should have remained closed.)
So anyhow they gathered together one night and tracked her down. Followed their noses, so to speak, right to her dorm room and paid her a little visit and told her to knock it the hell off.
And apparently she was kinda creeped out that they knew what she was doing and was able to trace it to her room.
Thing is, I believe them. The pagans on campus at the time were more aware of the spirit realm than the Christian groups.
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### Author:  [@Moo\_the\_Magic\_Cow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moo_the_Magic_Cow)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2003, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335/17 "2003-08-08T22:38:56Z")
Of course. We just call them terrorists now.
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### Author:  [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2003, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335/18 "2003-08-08T22:46:38Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Moo the Magic Cow \*
> \*\*Of course. We just call them terrorists now. \*\*
Oh, yeah. Everybody knows there’s no such thing as \* terrorists … \* :rolleyes:
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### Author:  [@vasyachkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vasyachkin)
#### Post date: [August 9, 2003, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335/19 "2003-08-09T05:31:32Z")
terrorists are quite different from witches or druggies. witches/druggies want nothing else but to be left alone.
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### Author:  [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)
#### Post date: [August 9, 2003, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-hunt-witches/193335/20 "2003-08-09T14:15:52Z")
Oh, absolutely. I know a church group that hunts witches all the time.
Admittedly, under the law, they aren’t allowed to DO much of anything to them, but they still HUNT them.
More out of tradition than anything else, I guess…