In the spring of 1584, something extraordinary appeared in the records of Riga. A woman named Elza Miezīte became connected with one of the most remarkable witchcraft accusations preserved from sixteenth-century Riga. The allegations were not simply that she had practiced magic. According to accounts associated with the Riga witch trials, Elza was accused of flying through the night, attending a witches' gathering and taking part in supernatural acts . The story sounds like folklore. But the important point is that the accusation belongs to a real historical context. Riga really did conduct witchcraft prosecutions during this period, and surviving court material from the city's so-called "Great Witch Trial" of 1584 has been studied by historians. What happened to Elza—and what can we actually know about her story? To answer that, we have to separate the surviving historical evidence from the dramatic stories that developed around it. Riga in the Age of Witch Trial...
Unsolved, unexplained strange and mysterious real stories