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Scotland, 1696.

In the small community of Bargarran, near Paisley, an eleven-year-old girl named Christian Shaw began suffering from terrifying and unexplained episodes.

She claimed she was being tormented by witches.

What followed would become one of the most notorious witchcraft cases in Scottish history.

Christian named people she believed were responsible for her suffering, and accusations began to spread. Reports described violent fits, strange behaviour and disturbing things supposedly emerging from the girl's mouth. Ministers, doctors and local authorities became involved, and what might once have been dismissed as illness or hysteria developed into a full-scale investigation into witchcraft.

Eventually, seven people were put on trial in Paisley.

All seven were found guilty.

On 10 June 1697, they were executed on Gallow Green.

But the story doesn't end there.

There were accusations of meetings with the Devil, claims of supernatural torment, questions about the reliability of the evidence and, hanging over everything, the disturbing possibility that fear, belief and human behaviour had created a tragedy that could never be undone.

In this episode of The Eclectic, we travel back to Paisley in 1696 and 1697 to uncover what happened during the Bargarran witch hunt, examine the evidence surrounding Christian Shaw, and look at the people whose lives ended because a community believed that witches were among them.

Were they witches?

Were they victims of fear and superstition?

Or was something else happening to Christian Shaw?

The truth may be impossible to recover.

But the consequences were very real.

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