The Last Witch Hunt

In 1751, a troubled wind swept through the parish of Tring. The calendar had been rewritten, the harvests were failing, and old fears were stirring. For Ruth Osborne, a poor, elderly woman living on the margins, this shift would prove fatal. Accused of witchcraft after a bitter quarrel, she became the target of a community's simmering rage.

What followed was not a trial, but a ritual. Dragged from her hiding place, she was subjected to a brutal "ducking" in a village pond, a spectacle of mob justice that ended in her murder. But the story did not end there. In the aftermath, as the Crown sought to reassert its authority, the hunt began for a killer—or a scapegoat.

The Last Witch Hunt is a powerful work of speculative history that meticulously reconstructs this haunting true story, giving voice to the forgotten and asking a chilling question: where does belief end and brutality begin?