40 Real People Executed for Witchcraft

40 Real People Executed for Witchcraft

Tim Flight - October 15, 2019

40 Real People Executed for Witchcraft
German woodcut of a werewolf by Lucas Cranach the Elder, c.1512. Wikimedia Commons

29. Giles Garnier was burned at the stake for witchcraft AND being a child-eating werewolf

When people kept finding the half-eaten remains of children in Dole, Eastern France, they first suspected wild animals. But one day, hunters surprised a wolf at its human dinner, and it turned into a man! Soon afterward, a man was caught eating a child, and arrested. This was Gilles Garnier, an impoverished local hermit. Under torture, he confessed that a specter in the woods gave him an unguent that transformed him into a wolf. As a wolf, Garnier could catch and eat children at will. Garnier was found guilty of lycanthropy and witchcraft, and burned at the stake in 1573.

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