Why did people believe witches existed in the late 1800s?
Look at this board. There are people here today who believe in witches. But to start with you need to define “witch”. If you mean people who use folk remedies in attempts to heal, they’ve always existed. Holdout practitioners of pagan religions that went underground after Christianity became dominant, when discovered, were called “witches.” Why does the devil have horns? Because the old pagan hunting Gods had horns. In most cultures, the god of the old religion becomes the devil of the new religion. Other reasons were economic, “the people over there have land we want. Let’s accuse them of being witches and take the land.” And the biggest reason was shear ignorance. Some people actually believed they had malevalent powers. Many of the allegations made in the famous Pendle witch trials resulted from members of the Demdike and Chattox families making accusations against each other. The records demonstrate the extent to which people could make a living either by posing as a witch, or by a
