Possessed By the Devil - The Real History of the Islandmagee Witches and Ireland's Only Mass Witchcraft Trial (Paperback, New)

The first comprehensive book on Ireland's only witchcraft trial

In 1711, in County Antrim, eight women were put on trial accused of orchestrating the demonic possession of young Mary Dunbar, and the haunting and supernatural murder of a local clergyman's wife. Mary Dunbar was the star witness in this trial, and the women were, by the standards of the time, believable witches--they smoke, they drank, and they just did not look right. With echoes of Arthur Miller's "The Crucible," and in fact Mary Dunbar repeated many of the reports from the Salem witch trials word for word in court, this is a story murder, hysteria, and how the "witch craze" that claimed more than 400,000 lives in Europe played out on Irish shores.