INTRODUCTION

Anna Wood's case arose in the small seaport town of Carriden. It involved elaborate fantasy, and fears of witches aboard ships.

Wood's initial accuser was a young seaman, Robert Nimmo. He reported a terrifying hallucinatory experience: he was coming home one night when he was followed by uncanny cats that threatened to kill him, carried him into the air, and then changed into birds and finally into women – one of whom was Wood. He feared her because, two years before, he had refused to carry out a ‘commission’ for her ‘to Holland’ – presumably to buy or sell some goods for her there – whereupon she had threatened him.

Once he had the session's attention, Nimmo added to his story, telling of further detailed visions of Wood, including one aboard his ship that may have arisen from an episode of sleep paralysis. This vision was seconded by another seaman, James Linlithgow. The session ‘admonished’ Linlithgow ‘to take heed quhat he said’, although they do not seem to have said this to Robert Nimmo. Perhaps they suspected that Nimmo was deluded, but that Linlithgow was backing him up with deliberate deception. Nevertheless, a third witness, the skipper James Steedman, contributed a further story: he had seen a vision of Wood in the cabin of his ship in port in the Netherlands in the previous year.

The kirk session elders may have been cautious, but they clearly thought that they might be onto something. They investigated Wood's whereabouts at the time of Nimmo's visions. They also asked Wood herself about her dreams, evidently hoping that she would come up with a dream or visionary experience that matched those of the accusers. However, she denied everything. She admitted that she had visited the Netherlands, but not, she said, for the last twelve years.