Possessed By the Devil

Possessed By the Devil examines the Islandmagee witch trials in County Antrim in 1711, when eight women were accused of bewitching and demonically possessing Mary Dunbar. Her testimony helped drive a prosecution shaped by local fears, religious belief and claims of spiritual attack, while the accused were judged against contemporary ideas about what a witch might be.

Dr Andrew Sneddon reconstructs the trial alongside the alleged haunting and the reported supernatural death of a clergyman’s wife. He also follows a second prosecution against a male accused witch, presented as head of the Sellor family. The case becomes a study of community crisis and Irish witch-hunting, placed within the wider 18th-century history of Britain and Europe.