Year after year, the witch costume tops the popularity charts for Halloween. The National Retail Federation estimated 5.8 million people planned to dress as a witch in 2023.
There was once a time, however, when being identified as a witch meant life or death.
Prospect Heights' Karen Dutil said she knows that tragic tale all too well. Genealogy testing showed Dutil is directly related to Rebecca Nurse, born Rebecca Towne, one of the most well-known cases in the Salem Witch Trials in 1692.
"She's my seventh great-grandmother," Dutil told NBC Chicago. "She was a 71-year-old grandmother, and she had 27 grandchildren, and the family tried to get her off."
Dutil is linked through Nurse's son Benjamin. She had eight living children.
Nurse was the oldest of the accused and convicted, and was hung to death after her trials.
"In 1692, people were really shocked by the accusation of Rebecca Nurse," said Rachel Christ-Doane, a director of education at the Salem Witch Museum in Massachusetts. "Her story is one of the most tragic I think in some ways, and it's very well known because it's an important moment in the context of 1692."
Local
Dutil agrees.
"I think the unfairness of it all and the lack of controls people had over being accused," she said. "You really didn't have to do anything to be accused."
Feeling out of the loop? We'll catch you up on the Chicago news you need to know. Sign up for the weekly Chicago Catch-Up newsletter.
Women who confessed to witchcraft, even though they were not guilty, could avoid execution, but lying was not something Nurse was willing to do.
"A brave woman ... she refused to lie. She told the truth even if it killed her," said Dutil. "I think in modern day she would have been a feminist."
In 1711, the government declared the trials unlawful and passed a bill restoring the rights and good names to those accused, including Nurse.
"This is the government saying we made a mistake and we recognize the legal innocence of these people," Christ-Doane said. "They were the largest and deadliest [witch trials] in North American history."
Nurse's Homestead is still in nearby Danvers, Massachusetts. Dutil also visited the Salem Witch Museum years ago to walk in her family member's footsteps.
The Museum educators believe Nurse has the most descendants out of all the accused witches. They offer descendant resource packets online.
