The University of Southampton has released more information about “cunning folk,” witches and wizards in the 16th and 17th Century who were historically hired to solve crimes.
It sounds like the premise of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer spin-off, except the investigators could end up being prosecuted for witchcraft themselves.
Professor Mark Stoyle of the university told the BBC:
“There were no private investigators back then, but if you suspected someone, or a group had stolen your purse or made off with your silver spoons, you could go to a local service magician and give them the name of the suspects,”
However, an act of witchcraft sleuthing could land the investigator in hot water, depending on where it took place.
Stoyle says Exeter, a city in Devon in southwest England, was a hotbed of witchcraft in the 17th century. While authorities elsewhere in England were becoming more lenient towards those accused of the craft, Exeter continued to take a hard line.
Stoyle said:
“In the early 1600s the Crown and senior judges were becoming increasingly sceptical and lenient towards cases of witchcraft, and by 1630 prosecutions were generally very rare in most of England.
“In Exeter, however, this was a different story. It was the last place in England to execute people for witchcraft and local Justices of the Peace took a hard line against accused individuals, including the relatively benign service magicians.”
In 2017, Stoyle published Witchcraft in Exeter, examining historical witchcraft prosecutions in the city. In October 2026, he published a revised edition of the book that incorporates new discoveries he made while researching Exeter’s city archives following the book’s original publication.
On Friday, the university issued a new announcement highlighting three cases involving people who claimed to use witchcraft or wizardry to investigate crimes.
One case involved John Blachett, who was hired by a shoemaker named Peter Pitts in 1666 to locate a missing hood. After incorrectly identifying its location, he was accused of using sorcery to find lost or stolen goods. However, a trial jury was unconvinced by the evidence, and he apparently escaped punishment.
Another case involved Christabel Robyns, who was accused in 1629 of using witchcraft to locate missing silver spoons and a pewter jug. The case was effectively quashed when the Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench intervened and referred it to a higher court.
In 1642, Anne King was accused of using a sieve balanced on shears to identify who had stolen her purse. According to court records, the sieve turned when King spoke the name of a suspected thief, leading her to believe she had identified the culprit. She was arrested for witchcraft but later released on bail.
Further details of the cases are included in Stoyle’s updated research into Exeter’s history of witchcraft prosecutions.
Finally, Stoyle tells the BBC that he sees a change in attitudes towards witchcraft and wizardry. Up until World War II, Stoyle says, witches were seen as “absolutely evil and bad,” but modern images of witches are starting to tell another story.
“In the media, if you think of Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Hermione Grainger from Harry Potter, these are very much witches as heroines and I think that’s the modern imagining of the witch.”