Witch Stories

Helga is taught that witches are supposed to be scary, but Helga does not want to be scary. As her sisters set out into the night on Halloween to scare people, Helga has her own plan. Helga learns new lessons in life and learns that sometimes there is a difference between doing "good" and joining in with the crowd. Join Helga the witch on her adventure in this instant Halloween classic.

The witches who populate these 100 delightfully scary stories include practitioners of white witchcraft and devotees of black magic.

The witches who populate these 100 delightfully scary stories include practitioners of white witchcraft and devotees of black magic. Most are female, some are male, and a few are thoroughly unclassifiable. They can be born witches or made witches, and may mix simple love potions or volatile concoctions that threaten all we hold dear. Some resent not receiving the treatment they feel they deserve from lesser mortals; yet other witches don't even realize that they wield any special influence at all. The many writers who take on this ever-fascinating character (so fundamentally human unlike her more paranormal, ghostly brethren) include Juleen Brantingham ("Burning in the Light"), Joe R. Landsdale ("By the Hair of the Head"), Simon McCaffery ("Blood Mary"), Terry Campbell ("Retrocurses"), Lawrence Shimel ("Coming Out of the Broom Closet"), and a coven of others.

"Then with the agility of a cat she sprang on his shoulders, struck him in the side with a broom, and he began to run like a race-horse, carrying her on his shoulders." Nikolai Gogol, Viy The cradle of modern witch short stories began in the first half of the 19th century. This anthology unearths the very best of these stories. Andrew Barger (www.AndrewBarger.com), a leading voice in the Gothic literature space, searched forgotten magazines, newspapers, journals and scholarly articles, to uncover the best witch stories written in the English language over one hundred years after the horrific events of the Salem Witch Trials. They had a lasting effect in both the U.S. and Europe, as these publications reflect from the many authors who penned witch stories in this genre. Andrew even includes in his introduction to the collection, actual text from the Salem Witch Trials. The classic witch stories he has uncovered are unmatched. One is a humorous tale that stands, in the grand Irish tradition of great storytelling, shoulder to shoulder with Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1819) and Charles Dickens’s “The Goblins Who Stole a Sexton” (1836), as that rare combination of humor and horror that is so difficult to find. It is published for the first time in over a century and a half. What Andrew calls America's "first great witch short story" is also published for the first time in nearly two hundred years. As readers have come to expect from Andrew, he includes his scholarly touch to the anthology by providing introductions to each story and a foreword titled "Hags! Hags! Hags!" There are also illustrations for each story. Last, Andrew provides a list of stories considered at the end of the anthology. Read these witchcraft classics tonight! Hags! Hags! Hags! (2023) by Andrew Barger The Hollow of the Three Hills (1830) by Nathaniel Hawthorne The Marvelous Legend of Tom Connor’s Cat (1847) by Samuel Lover The Witch Caprusche (1845) by Elizabeth Ellet The Brownie of the Black Haggs (1827) by James Hogg Lydia Ashbaugh, the Witch (1836) by William Darby Young Goodman Brown (1835) by Nathaniel Hawthorne Viy (1835) by Nikolai Gogol Witch Short Stories Considered

Reprint of the original, first published in 1861.

Eight short stories about witches are selected from several books of fairy tales by Andrew Lang and others. These tales are designed to be fascinating reading for young children. The tales are: (1) The Dead Witch, (2) The Witch, (3) The Witch and the Sun's Sister, (4) The Witch and Her Servants, (5) The Witch, (6) The Witch in the Stone Boat, (7) Esben and the Witch, and (8) The Witch's Granddaughter. Children have enjoyed reading these fairy tales for years and it is good to find them in one single volume.