I'm Lauren Orton, and this is one strange thing,

the show where we search the nation's news archives,

for stories that can't quite be explained.

Thank you. Strangers, if there's a category of spooky season story that we've covered the least, it might well be witches.

If we are being honest, that's mostly because witch stories just aren't as timeless as, say, a possession or a haunting.

It's hard to find contemporary reports of a witch in this day and age.

Well, actually, we can find plenty of witches, whole Etsy shops even.

And just to get this out of the way, we are aware of the witches of TikTok.

Frankly, they frighten us.

We wish them very, very well.

But this isn't about them.

In this case, we're referring to a certain strain of the supernatural,

a witch in the legendary sense, with all the power of folklore and myth behind her.

So why has the witch's tail fallen out of fashion? Well, we can't say for sure.

Of course, there's the fact that in this part of the world,

the term has historically been used as a catch-all for women who society does not like.

See Salem, Massachusetts.

But there's also the fact that witches of legend have been thoroughly made a caricature,

the pointy hats, the brooms, the green skin, the striped stockings.

Without real-world tales of witchcraft, popping up like a Bigfoot story might,

it's easy to let that caricature take over the public

consciousness. So today's strangers, we're tackling the often-requested story of one of America's

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