Bridget Cleary was seriously ill when her husband decided the woman lying in their home was no longer his wife. It was March 1895 in rural Ireland, and Michael Cleary had become convinced that fairies had abducted Bridget and left a changeling in her place. Relatives subjected her to painful rituals, forced remedies into her mouth and demanded that she prove her identity. On March 15, Michael set her clothing on fire. Bridget died, and the woman they believed had been taken by fairies never returned.
There had been no changeling. Bridget was a sick woman whose husband killed her because he believed in one.
The idea that supernatural forces could cause illness, misfortune or death had already influenced criminal investigations for centuries. European courts prosecuted alleged werewolves for murdering children. Families accused their dead relatives of returning as vampires. People suspected of witchcraft faced accusations that could end in violence, imprisonment or execution. Even in the twentieth century, belief in demonic possession could take precedence over medical treatment, with fatal consequences.
Other cases followed a different course. Investigators encountered a genuine murder or unexplained death, only for supernatural explanations to emerge around the evidence. A woman found dead in Stockholm became associated with an alleged vampire. A body concealed inside a tree in wartime England inspired theories of ritual sacrifice. In Chicago, a murder investigation took an extraordinary turn when a woman claimed her dead colleague had identified the killer.
The resulting stories often proved more durable than the original investigations. Newspaper reports acquired sensational details. Unverified allegations became accepted parts of local folklore. Witness accounts changed through repeated retellings, while criminal evidence sometimes disappeared beneath decades of speculation.
These 15 cases span almost 460 years and several continents. Some involve documented murders and established convictions. Others concern disputed historical allegations, unexplained deaths or incidents that acquired criminal reputations without evidence of homicide. Together, they expose a disturbing history of what people believed, what they were prepared to do because of those beliefs and how difficult it became to separate the facts from the legends.
In 1521, authorities in the region of Poligny, in present-day France, investigated men accused of killing children while taking the form of wolves. Pierre Burgot and Michel Verdun appeared in accounts of confessions involving a pact with the Devil and a magical ointment supposedly allowing physical transformation. Later writers described attacks on children and executions for sorcery. Surviving versions of the story come through demonological literature rather than a complete, independently verifiable criminal file. Confessions produced under the threat of torture provide little reliable evidence about either the murders or the accused men’s responsibility.
Half a century later, Gilles Garnier stood trial in Dole for the murders of children in surrounding villages. A judgment printed in 1574 accused him of attacking and eating young victims after becoming a wolf. Authorities executed Garnier on January 18 of the same year. The case has a stronger documentary record than many werewolf stories, although official paperwork reflecting the beliefs of prosecutors and judges cannot establish an actual transformation. The children described in the charges were treated as victims of human violence and supernatural predation at the same time.
The best-known German prosecution involved Peter Stumpp, a farmer from Bedburg near Cologne. He was executed on October 31, 1589, following accusations of murder, cannibalism and sexual crimes. A pamphlet published in England the following year claimed Stumpp had confessed to killing 16 people, including children, after receiving a magical belt from the Devil. Accounts described an exceptionally brutal execution witnessed by a crowd. Original trial transcripts have not survived, and the sensational pamphlet provides no dependable way to separate real crimes from allegations extracted under torture or shaped for public consumption.
The prosecutions did not always end with execution. In 1598, Jacques Roulet was accused of attacking and killing children near Angers. A lower court sentenced him to death, but a higher court in Paris set aside the punishment and ordered confinement for treatment. In 1603, Jean Grenier, a boy accused of wolf attacks near Bordeaux, claimed supernatural powers and described acts of violence. Judges regarded him as mentally impaired and sent him to a monastery rather than the executioner. Both cases show authorities struggling to interpret alleged murders through competing ideas about sorcery, illness and criminal responsibility.
Between 1764 and 1767, attacks in the Gévaudan region of southern France killed scores of people, many of them women and children. Historical estimates commonly range from roughly 80 to 120 deaths. Survivors and witnesses described an unusually large animal, while frightened communities heard suggestions of a werewolf, divine punishment or a creature controlled by a human being. Hunters killed several wolves during the campaign, but uncertainty persists over the number and identity of the attacking animals. Unlike the earlier prosecutions, the Gévaudan deaths were overwhelmingly understood as animal attacks. The supernatural explanation developed around genuine fatalities, not proof of a human murderer changing shape.
John Bell died at his farm in Robertson County, Tennessee, on December 20, 1820. A story later circulated about an invisible presence tormenting his household for years. Family members supposedly heard unexplained knocking, endured attacks and conversed with a voice claiming to be a supernatural entity. The presence acquired the name Bell Witch and, according to the legend, expressed particular hostility toward Bell himself.
The best-known account claims relatives found a mysterious liquid near Bell’s bed after his death. The entity allegedly boasted of poisoning him, turning an ordinary death into a supposed confession from a ghost. The earliest known printed reference to the haunting dates to 1886, and newspaper publisher Martin Van Buren Ingram supplied the first full narrative in 1894. No contemporary medical record establishes poisoning, and the family diary cited as a source has never been located. Bell’s death was real, but the alleged murder rests on stories recorded decades afterward.
Teenager Jane Alsop answered the door of her family’s house in the Old Ford district of London on February 20, 1838. The visitor claimed to be a police officer and asked her to bring a light because officers had caught Spring-Heeled Jack. When Alsop approached, the stranger reportedly seized her, tore at her clothes and attacked her with claw-like hands. She described an alarming face and flames coming from his mouth. Her sisters intervened, and the attacker fled before police arrived.
Reports of a mysterious assailant had already circulated around London in 1837. On February 28, Lucy Scales reported another encounter, describing a figure who directed a burst of flame toward her. Newspaper coverage and police testimony brought the incidents into public view, while subsequent accounts credited Spring-Heeled Jack with glowing eyes and extraordinary leaps over high walls. No suspect was conclusively identified. The surviving reports support allegations of assaults and intimidation, but the more elaborate powers attributed to the attacker developed through rumors, popular entertainment and repeated retellings.
Tuberculosis had already killed Mary Brown and her daughter Mary Olive when another daughter, Mercy, died in Exeter, Rhode Island, in January 1892. Mercy was 19. Her brother Edwin was also seriously ill, and neighbors began blaming the family’s losses on a dead relative supposedly feeding upon the living. Edwin’s father, George Brown, reportedly doubted the claim but allowed the graves to be examined as pressure mounted around the family.
On March 17, residents exhumed the bodies of the three women. Mary and Mary Olive had largely decomposed, while Mercy’s more recent death and cold storage left her remains better preserved. Those present interpreted blood in her body as evidence of vampirism. They removed and burned her heart and lungs, then mixed ashes into a drink intended to cure Edwin. He died less than two months after the exhumation. The exhumation and treatment were documented, but Mercy had died of tuberculosis and no homicide was established.
Bridget Cleary became ill in March 1895 at her home in Ballyvadlea, County Tipperary. A dressmaker in her twenties, she lived with her husband, Michael, and had been suffering from a fever and respiratory symptoms. Relatives and neighbors increasingly accepted a claim of fairy abduction. According to the belief, the real Bridget had been taken away and a changeling placed in her bed. Her illness and behavior were treated as proof of substitution instead of signs of a woman needing medical care.
Family members subjected Bridget to forced remedies and painful rituals, including holding her near a fire and demanding she identify herself. On March 15, Michael attacked her during another confrontation and set her clothing alight. He later concealed her body with help from a relative. Witnesses described his belief in the return of the real Bridget and his visits to a nearby fairy fort, where he expected her to appear. Police found her remains a week later. Michael was convicted of manslaughter, while others received convictions for their participation in the abuse.
An Egyptian aristocrat, Prince Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey, was shot at London’s Savoy Hotel in the early hours of July 10, 1923. His French wife, Marguerite Alibert, fired the shots and was arrested and charged with murder. Their marriage had been marked by arguments and accusations of abuse. At her trial, Alibert described threats and violence by her husband and maintained she had feared for her safety. A jury acquitted her in September 1923.
The shooting occurred months after the opening of Tutankhamun’s burial chamber and the death of Lord Carnarvon, whose financial support had made the excavation possible. Reports later placed Fahmy Bey among visitors to the tomb and added his death to lists of victims of an alleged pharaoh’s curse. The connection depended upon the coincidence of his death and his reported visit, not evidence presented during the criminal proceedings. Police investigated a shooting at a London hotel. The ancient curse entered the account through the expanding mythology surrounding the discovery in Egypt.
Nelson Rehmeyer lived in rural York County, Pennsylvania, and practiced traditions associated with Pennsylvania Dutch folk healing. In November 1928, three young men arrived at his farmhouse believing he had placed a hex upon them. Their leader, John Blymire, blamed sickness and personal misfortune on supernatural interference. Advice from local folk healers had convinced him the curse originated with Rehmeyer, who denied responsibility for the men’s troubles.
Blymire, John Curry and Wilbert Hess sought a lock of Rehmeyer’s hair or his copy of The Long Lost Friend, a widely circulated book of traditional prayers and remedies. They believed taking either object would end the supposed spell. A confrontation turned violent, and the three beat Rehmeyer to death before trying to burn the body. Investigators arrested the suspects, and their beliefs emerged in detailed courtroom testimony. Blymire and Curry received life sentences, while Hess received a prison term of 10 to 20 years. The murder became known as the Hex Hollow case. Pennsylvania Dutch powwow traditions supplied the language of the curse, but Rehmeyer’s killing was the deliberate act of three men.
Lilly Lindeström was 32 and worked as a sex worker in Stockholm. On April 30, 1932, she received a visit from a man and briefly went to a neighbor to borrow condoms. The neighbor never saw her alive again. After several days without contact, the woman contacted police. Four days later, officers entered Lindeström’s apartment and found her dead on a couch, with severe injuries to her head and pillows covering her body.
Investigators recovered a bloodstained towel and a bent soup ladle bearing traces of blood. Some police officers speculated the killer had used the ladle to drink Lindeström’s blood, leading to the nickname Atlas Vampire. Authorities questioned numerous men, including individuals whose calling cards were found in her apartment, without establishing a suspect’s guilt. Swedish historian Dick Harrison has questioned the central vampire claim, noting a bloodstained ladle offers no proof of anyone drinking blood. The cause of Lindeström’s death was violence inflicted by an unidentified attacker. The alleged blood-drinking was never established, and the murder remains unsolved.
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Four boys exploring Hagley Wood in Worcestershire found a human skull inside a hollow tree in April 1943. Police recovered further remains and established the victim was a woman who had died well before the discovery. Investigators believed someone had concealed her body inside the tree, but they failed to establish her identity or the circumstances leading to her death. Subsequent graffiti asking who had put Bella in the wych elm gave the unidentified woman the name still associated with the case.
The discovery eventually attracted competing theories involving wartime spies, clandestine relationships and witchcraft. Anthropologist Margaret Murray promoted a ritual explanation, referring to the unusual placement of the body and reports of a hand found away from the main remains. Later examinations of the historical record have questioned claims of deliberate severing. Animal activity offers an explanation for scattered bones, and police never established evidence of a ritual killing. No suspect was convicted. Decades of speculation have left the woman’s identity and the circumstances of her death unresolved.
Charles Walton, 74, went to work on February 14, 1945, cutting hedges near Lower Quinton, Warwickshire. When he failed to return home, his niece joined a search and found him dead near Meon Hill. He had suffered severe injuries to his head and neck, and a pitchfork had been driven through his body. Scotland Yard sent Chief Inspector Robert Fabian to assist local officers. Investigators questioned residents and pursued leads but never secured a conviction.
Later accounts presented Walton as a man with supernatural abilities and tied his death to witchcraft or a supposed ritual connected with the harvest. Another local legend described a phantom black dog associated with Meon Hill. Those claims received attention in retrospective writings and popular histories, but the original police investigation did not establish a ritual motive. Author Simon Read examined the growing mythology in a 2014 study of the murder, separating reported evidence from later claims. Walton’s killer was never identified, and the purpose behind the attack remains unknown.
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On August 20, 1966, two electronics technicians were found dead on Morro do Vintém, a hill overlooking Niterói in Brazil. Miguel José Viana and Manoel Pereira da Cruz lay near one another in suits and raincoats, with homemade lead masks designed to cover their eyes. Investigators recovered written instructions referring to arriving at a designated location, swallowing capsules, protecting the face after their effects began and waiting for a signal. Neither body showed an obvious fatal injury.
Police traced the men’s journey from Campos dos Goytacazes on August 17, including purchases made before their trip to the hill. The men had sh…
