When Suranne Jones’s husband first suggested they make a documentary about witch trials she felt uncomfortable. “What are people going to think?” she worried. After all, it would involve revealing her longstanding interest in “alternative medicines, shamanism and crystal work”. She grew up near Pendle, Lancashire, where the UK’s most famous witch trials took place, and where they would “all talk about the trials. My Auntie Jean especially.” Nonetheless, she’s rarely spoken publicly about her interest in witches. “Because it’s still taboo.”
Fortunately, that reluctance didn’t last and her two-part documentary, Suranne Jones: Investigating Witch Trials, airs on Channel 4 this week. In it, Jones visits famous sites of witch trials – Salem in Massachusetts, Bamberg in Germany and Pendle itself – to explore the horrifying burning of innocent women at the stake, and the underlying misogyny that still results in witch trial-esque online persecutions of women today. She meets modern witches who embrace the figure of the witch as an outsider and truth teller. She even participates in ritualistic ceremonies.
