The following podcast may not be for all listeners.
Listener discretion is advised. You've entered the unexplained
realms, where the line between fact and folklore blurs, and the
echoes of the past refuse to stay buried.
I'll be guiding you through the shadows that stay in history's
forgotten corners. In this episode, we travel back
to the rain soaked Moors of 17th century Scotland, a land haunted
by suspicion, fear, and secrets whispered in candlelit rooms.
Here, in the midst of a nation gripped by witch hunts and
paranoia, a woman named Isabel Goudy stepped forward and
confessed to deeds so bizarre and chilling that they still
unsettle historians centuries later.
Was she a victim, a witch, or something stranger?
It's the spring of 1662. Alder, in a small village in the
Scottish Highlands, lies silent under a low Gray sky, caught in
the grip of something colder than the highland winds.
The country is in turmoil, plagued by superstition,
religious strife and the ever present fear of witchcraft.
Historians now often refer to this period as the Great
Scottish Witch Hunt. The country was undergoing a
political and economic crisis, and many of the elite and
wealthy believed the witchcraft to be an urgent threat.
The answer was simple, for the rich and powerful witches must
be among them. They must be stopped, no matter
the cost. What followed was a parade of
misery, torture rooms filled, gallows raised and the air thick
with the cries of the accused. Trials multiplied, cruel and
feverish, sweeping up hundreds. Fear became a weapon, and death
followed close behind. From the panic, a grim new
profession emerged, Witch finders known as prickers.
They made a living rooting out supposed evil, turning suspicion
into a paycheck. Their hunts only fueled the
chaos. More arrests, more accusations,
and the arrested naming others just to survive.
In a stone cell, a woman named Isabel Goudy began to speak.
What she said would shock and fascinate Scotland for
centuries. But who was Isabel Goudy?
By most accounts, she was a farmer's wife, living on the
margins of society in a time when the line between reality
and folklore was then. But in April of 1662, Isabel was
accused of witchcraft, a crime that could lead to torture and
death. Isabel's case is so different
from most witch trials. There's no record of her being
tortured. Yet in her extraordinary
confessions, she spins a tale so intricate, fantastical and
compelling that it still captures our imaginations today.
Locked away, Isabel faced questioning 4 separate times
from April 13th to May 27th. The notary John Ines listened as
she confessed, writing down her words as she spoke them.
Later, he transcribed everything in the first person, letting her
voice echo from the page, raw and unfiltered.
She was questioned by local ministers Harry Forbes and Hugh
Rose, as well as at least a dozen witnesses.
Questions such as When did you make a pact with the devil were
asked. She insisted she'd come face to
face with the devil himself. The notary's notes capture her
words, a vivid, unsettling portrait of the figure who
haunted her confessions. She spoke in 17th century Scots,
which makes it difficult to understand, but this translation
describes how she described the devil.
The devil was a very big, dark, hairy man.
He will lay all heavy upon us like a malt sack.
He would come to my housetop in the shape of a crow now and then
I would know his voice at the first hearing of it and would go
forth to him. In another confession she
admitted to copulation with the devil.
The confession read. He was weary, cold, and I found
his nature also cold within me as spring well water.
She explained that she couldn't resist him, he was irresistible.
She confessed to making a pact with the devil, sealing it by
signing her name in his book, not with ink, but with her
blood. That act, she said, bound her to
him, body and soul. Isabel's confessions grew Wilder
from there. She described the Sabbats,
secret gatherings held deep in the night, where witches would
slip off their human skins and fly over the fields of corn.
Some would transform into hairs or cats to escape prying eyes or
to better serve the devil's will.
At these gatherings, she claimed, they feasted on foods
ordinary folk never tasted, danced in frenzied circles until
dawn, and whispered together, plotting curses and havoc for
those who'd wronged them. The line between reality and
nightmare seemed to vanish in her stories, every detail
calculated to chill the blood of her listeners.
Isabel Goudy's confessions spilled out in a torrent of
strange and vivid detail. She continued to speak of
elaborate spells, hexes meant to rot fields and wither crops,
dark charms whispered through gritted teeth to make a
neighbor's child fall ill or to bring ruin to anyone who crossed
her. Her words painted a world where
magic was woven into the fabric of everyday life.
She claimed she could call down storms or summit fairies from
beneath the mossy hills, and that she'd danced with the Fair
folk under moonless skies. She described rituals carried
out in secret, chance and offerings meant to topple the
laird's own house, as if the boundary between the ordinary
and supernatural was paper thin. In Isabel's world, the devil was
never far, always lurking at the firelight's edge, ready to lend
his power in exchange for a soul.
But perhaps most striking of all was her vivid imagination and
storytelling. Isabel's confessions are unlike
any others from this period, full of detail, color, and a
strange poetic beauty. She describes transforming
herself and her coven into animals by chanting.
Isabel claimed she stood in the presence of the Fairy Queen
herself, a vision of impossible beauty cloaked in white linen
that seemed to glow by its own night.
The queen, she said, ruled over a hidden world beneath the
earth, in vast, glittering halls carved out under the hills.
Isabel described how she'd slipped away from her own cell
of stone and straw, whisked through secret passages to join
the fairfolk. But her stories didn't end in
Fairy Land. Isabel told of bitter rivalries,
midnight clashes between witch covens, each fighting for power
and bringing old village grudges into their enchanted wars.
The battles she described weren't just fantasy.
They echoed over her community's tangled alliances and betrayals,
as if the feuds of Aldern had spilled over into the world of
spells and shadows. In her confessions, the magical
and mundane bled together, blurring the line between legend
and the heart, mean truth of life in a village at war with
itself. But what's the truth and what's
from her imagination? That's the heart of Isabel's
mystery. Some historians believe Isabel's
confessions are a window into Scottish folk beliefs of the
time, rich in myth and tradition, blending Christian
ideas of the devil with older Pagan beliefs in fairies and
nature spirits. Others wonder if her vivid
accounts were shaped by a mental illness or a desperate attempt
to weave meaning into a hard, uncertain situation.
There's even speculation that Isabelle's confessions were a
kind of performance, an act of storytelling so mesmerizing that
the authorities simply wrote it all down, unsure how to handle
what they were hearing. What we do know is Isabelle
Gowdy's fate is lost to history. There's no record of her
execution, though most accused witches of the time met grim
ends. Her legacy, though, is far more
lasting. Her words have inspired writers,
artists and folklorists for centuries.
She's become a symbol of fear, of imagination, and of the power
of a single voice to echo through the ages.
I always wonder why she did confess.
Was she a witch, a storyteller, A victim?
Or maybe all three? In the end, the truth may be as
elusive as the fairies she claimed to meet.
What remains are her words, haunting, strange, and
unforgettable in a world where the boundary between reality and
myth was as thin as the Highland mist.
Isabel Goudy's voice calls to us still, inviting us to question,
to wonder, and to listen for the whispers in the Heather.
Thanks for joining me if you enjoyed this journey.
Subscribe for more tales. Until we meet again.
Remember, fear ignites the spark of our creativity.