Let's see if you can follow the bizarre logic used to link an animal mutilation in rural England to witchcraft. A local stag was found mutilated and headless, a t-shirt stretched over its body. Common sense would seem to point to the usual suspects, but the village of Burley has a unique history: it was once home to Sybil Leek, one of the "Founding Mothers" of Wicca. Therefore...

This is of course, chckenfeed compared to the witchcraft panics in Jharkhand, India, where women accused of witchcraft are routinely slaughtered. I'm not sure that putting the head of a recent victim on display is going to stem the violence- when facing this level of superstition, the only cure is education.

Not surprisingly, the witches are also to blame for..enviromentalism, according to the Aspen Times. Reporters are Druids, too. I learn something new every day.

For balance, a story where the witches really are to blame: Tanzania's epidemic killings of Albinos, whose bodies are rumored to have supernatural powers. It's a little bit funny until you read how many people have been murdered for their "magical' body parts, then it's downright horrifying. Tanzanians also have a bad habit of blaming elderly 'witches' for natural disasters.

For a chaser to wash away all this depressing dreck, see Daniel Pinchbeck's excellent musings on the mythology of the occult conspiracy: Enlightenment Reason or Occult Conspiracy?