Here is a witch story: Around the 17th century, a kid went out to collect some vegetables as the spring arrived. Soon after that, she started to hallucinate, have incoherent rants and other crazy behaviour. Then, the problem began to spread to other people.

Villagers called in the doctor, who saw nothing wrong with them. So, the people declared the answer: “Witchcraft!”. Thus, the Salem Witch trials started.

If these people were indeed witches, they probably would have saved themselves with their powerful magic. Since that didn’t happen, here’s a more likely scenario: The villagers accidentally ate rye contaminated by a fungus called Ergot that is known to cause all the effects listed above.

Linnda Caporael came up with this very likely cause to the events and published it in the 1970ies.