Alison Pearson

Disclaimer

This is NOT a page about Wiccans or neo-pagans, and I do not advocate the belief that Wiccans are Satan-worshippers and/or baby-killers. I am well aware that they are not. This is a starting point for historical research into the great witch craze of 1100-1700 AD. And please, don't ask me for spells.

Alison Pearson

In 1588, Alison Pearson of Byrehill was accused of invoking demonic spirits. She was also accused of having a faerie familiar. This faerie familiar was deceased physician cousin William Sympson who had been kidnapped by a Gypsy. Pearson had met her cousin in his faerie form when she was sick. He came to her as a green man and told her he would help her if she would be faithful to him. Then he vanished and reappeared with a group of faeries, who got Pearson to take part in their merrymaking.

Sympson would tell her when the faeries were coming, and that they usually arrived in a whirlwind. He also told her how to use herbal remedies, and that the Devil tithed one-tenth of the faeries away to hell every year. However, although Pearson was now comfortable in the company of faeries, whenever she spoke about their doings to others, "she was tormented with blows that left insensitive spots on her skin" (Guiley 1989 119).

Pearson was convicted of witchcraft and burned at the stake.

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Alison Pearson is copyrighted 1997-1998 to Shantell Powell.