A closer look

You'd think the Age of Enlightenment would have stopped people from blaming their bad luck on old ladies, but rural paranoia dies hard. Over half a century after the major witch trials had cooled off, English locals in 1650 brutally murdered a woman named Margery Barton simply because she fit the local scapegoat profile. It was a stark reminder that deeply ingrained communal superstition outlasts logic every single time.