Hello, Jen here to tell you about this week's Sunday chops. It's nearly Halloween and in the spirit of this see what I did there.

This week I had a bloody lovely natter with Melanie Robinson, project manager of the British Museum of Folklore about wicked spirits.

Witchcraft and Magic at Colchester Castle, an exhibition at you guessed it, Colchester Castle, which she co-curated.

The exhibition is a collaboration between the castle, the British Museum of Folklore and the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boss Castle.

About the infamous English witch trials between the 15th and 1800s and tells the stories of the people, predominantly women, who were the victims of these.

We chatted about the historical context, the women who were accused of witchcraft, and why the witch trials remain worryingly relevant to contemporary society.

And more is dancing because, you know, who doesn't want a chat about more is dancing.

I loved talking to Melanie and I hope you enjoy listening to our chats.

I am joined by Melanie Robinson, project manager at the Museum of British Folklore and co-curator of the Wicked Spirits exhibition at Colchester Castle.

Hello Melanie, thank you for joining me.

Hi Jen, good to speak to you.

Now I should clarify before we start that the title of the exhibition isn't Wicked Spirits, it's like Wicked Spirits with a question mark.

And it is about one of my weird historic pet subjects, witches, or rather the 16th and 17th century witch trials.

I'm going to come back to this because obviously that is the crux of what we'll be talking about today.

But first of all, can you tell me a little bit about the Museum of British Folklore, which is where you, you know, who you are actually employed by.

Because this exhibition is at Colchester Castle, but it's a collaborative work, isn't it?

Yeah, that's right. So the Museum of British Folklore was set up in 2009 by Simon Costin, who realized that there was no national museum that looked at the folk culture of the UK.

So he went off on a little caravan tour, he converted to caravan and made a miniature museum with a few sort of folk artifacts, including actually a mummified cat, which I think we've got one in the exhibition, which was interesting actually because the fact that he even included that, you know, there is this really close link between magic, which craft and folklore and beliefs.

So anyway, he set off on his trip. I found out about it, thought it sounded like a brilliant idea, and we've been working together ever since.

But during that time in 2013, Simon became the director of the Museum of Witchpart and Magic in both Scarswell and Cornwall.

So hence, there's this, you know, connection and how we ended up working together on this particular exhibition.

It kind of sounds quite niche to me when I think of folklore, I guess, I think of like myths and more instances, weirdly, I don't know if I can tell.

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