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attempting to unknot the wanders around Somerset i found myself on. not knowing why. with ai AiD...

Rob, there's a genuinely rich vein here — Somerset was one of England's witchcraft hotspots, and your two home towns sit right at the centre of it. Here's what the digging turned up.

The Castle Cary witches — the heart of the story The biggest local case is the Mrs Brooks affair of 1657–58. A boy called Richard Jones became ill after, apparently unknowingly, eating something spoiled given to him by a Mrs Brooks. Records suggest Richard was always a troublesome child, and his claims may have been a vengeful hoax against Mrs Brooks. Whatever the motive, his stories were believed — and they cost two people their lives. Richard claimed supernatural experiences, and his sister corroborated them. Constables searched, evidence was gathered against Brooks and her sister before the Justices at Castle Cary in December 1657.

Matters climaxed on 25 February 1658, when the wife of Robert Iles testified that Richard was "lifted from the ground by an unseen force and transported a distance of three hundred yards, including over a stone wall" — and a boy in Yeovil allegedly flew 300 yards after biting a "magic apple" (more on that below). Based on this evidence, Mrs Brooks and her sister were convicted; two people were put to death.

The Yeovil connection — the magic apple This is almost certainly the same case seen from the Yeovil side: in 1657 an old woman allegedly offered a magic apple to a boy in Yeovil who, despite being warned, took a bite — whereupon, per trial evidence, "he rose in the air and flew about 300 yards." She was found guilty and hanged at Chard in 1658. The levitation-over-the-stone-wall testimony at Castle Cary is almost certainly the same flying-boy story told twice by different witnesses — a nice lesson in how witch trial evidence metastasised. (Source: Bob Osborn's Yeovil's Virtual Museum, yeovilhistory.info) The wider Somerset witch hunt Somerset didn't have Matthew Hopkins, but it did have its own zealot: Richard Hunt JP, who spent eight years hunting what he called "a hellish knot of witches" and presided over Assizes at Taunton Castle. Key cases:

Edmund Bull, hanged at Taunton in 1631. Julian Cox, a 70-year-old accused of bewitching the 18-year-old maidservant Mary Hill — hanged at Taunton in 1663, one of England's last witch executions. Bruton/Wincanton conspiracy (1664–66) — villages around Bruton, Wincanton and Brewham. Christian Green and Margaret Agar tried in 1665 over coven and sabbat allegations; Brewham featured as a "coven" setting. Catherine Green of Brewham was accused of convincing a neighbour to "give her soul to the devil." Anne Slade charged twice in 1670, acquitted both times; Margaret Stevens charged 1672.

The Witch of Wookey Hole — the famous cave legend of a witch turned to stone, still on tourist display. Belief outlived the law England hanged 400+ people for witchcraft, Scotland 2,000+, until the 1735 Witchcraft Act abolished prosecutions — but that merely reclassified the problem. After 1736, "witches" couldn't be hanged, but believers just attacked them directly. Mob attacks continued into the 19th century, with some reported as late as 1867. Right in your backyard: 1892 — a coroner at a Somerset village inquest had to caution parents repeatedly over "evasive answers", lamenting that witchcraft superstition still lingered. A local man consulted a "weird adviser" and sacrificed cats; a bus driver, Frederick Terrell, was bound over at Yeovil Petty Sessions for threatening Harriet Carew — whom he called an "old witch" — demanding she take a spell off his sister, and threatening to "beat her brains out and throw her over a wall". In 1810, Betty Townsend exploited lingering fear, extorting a frightened child near "the Castle door" repeatedly over five months — a reminder that post-1736, "witches" survived by exploiting the fear rather than being prosecuted for it.

Why here? Witch accusations flourished where disease was endemic among crops, cattle and people — and Somerset's rural economy was exactly that. A familiar (toad or cat), a squint, or a birthmark ("devil's mark") was enough. Accusations often stuck after torture-induced confessions. Something that might resonate with your sigil/collective-consciousness work: the witch was essentially a social sigil — a vessel onto which a community projected disease and misfortune to make it controllable. More than 400 people died in England because of that projection.