Happy Samhain. In honour of today, I thought I’d share my lifetime fear of witches with you. And, when I say witch, I mean stereotypical, halloween witches with pointy hats and broomsticks. As the saying goes, ‘a problem shared is a problem solved’.
From a very early age, I always had recurring nightmares about being captured by a witch and I would wake up terrified, hide every part of my body under the covers and stay as still as I possibly could. I thought that by doing this, the witch wouldn’t know I was there. This absolute fear is something I (thankfully!) only experienced as a child, but it is in our formative years where our deepest fears are ingrained. This article from The Guardian culture pages sums this up beautifully in relation to the arts.
That said, there are 3 witches that, to this day, still scare the living shit out of me. They are the wicked witch of the west from The Wizard of Oz (undoubtedly no. 1 scariest witch of all time), the witch in the Lizzie Dripping stories and the witch in Hansel and Gretel. It makes me shudder just naming them. I was going to post a picture along with this entry but I couldn’t actually bring myself to Google one. There is currently a ‘light-hearted’ television commerical running in the UK where an actress is dressed as the wicked witch of the west and I have to turn over every time it is on. I really don’t think she is anything to laugh about.
I then sat and thought about witches (not a pleasant thing to do) and how many I had come across in literature & film and, apart from Lizzy Dripping and Hansel & Gretel above, I could only think of the witches in Macbeth and the witches in Snow White & Sleeping Beauty (the witch in that is quite scary too). It may be that throughout my life I have avoided reading books or watching films with witches in, but I’d be interested to know if anyone can think of anymore.
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Well it’s sort of the same witch but the Fables comic has the witch from the hansel and gretel stories in it. Also I don’t know if Baba Yaga is considered a witch or not. I hope for your sake that you don’t get them over there, but there’s a bunch of tween shows on over here (that V watches) that have witches and wizards in them probably based on the popularity of harry potter. They’re not scary though…just teenage girls with magic powers.
Teenage girls with magic powers sounds quite scary to me! and I looked up Baba Yaga – she definitely counts as a witch!