Chapter Four - Witches and Scarecrows

CHAPTER FOUR

Witches and Scarecrows

FORGET THE CANDY. Forget the cobwebs.

If you had to distill Halloween into two silhouettes — two primal shapes flickering in the dark — it might just be these:

A woman on a broomstick.
And a figure stuffed with straw, arms outstretched in a field.

Two guardians.
Two warnings.
Two masks for everything society feared — and needed.

She wasn’t always a villain.
The word “witch” once meant wise woman.
A healer. A midwife. Someone who knew herbs and roots and when to plant by the moon.

But knowledge is dangerous when you’re not supposed to have any.

As patriarchal religions took root, especially in medieval Europe, female power became a problem. And the women who stood outside the system — who knew how to ease pain, help births, mix potions, and interpret dreams — suddenly looked suspicious.

“She lives alone.”
“She talks to animals.”
“She doesn’t go to church enough.”
“She knows things.”

And just like that, the witch became the other.
Not a healer. A heretic. A threat.
A scapegoat for every bad harvest, stillbirth, or strange illness.

They were hunted.
They were tried.
They were burned.

Between the 15th and 18th centuries, tens of thousands of people — mostly women — were executed as witches across Europe and colonial America. Many weren’t even accused of doing harm. Just being strange. Being loud. Being there.

And so the witch became folklore:
A woman with power was a woman to fear.
A woman alone was a danger to the village.

But Halloween loved her.

Because the witch fits the season perfectly — liminal, mysterious, ancient, vengeful, seductive, wise, terrifying. A woman cloaked in night who flies above the laws of man.

And the broomstick? That wasn’t random.
Brooms were tools of domestic labor.
Women used them to sweep floors — then took them in myth and made them fly.

The witch took the ordinary and made it magical.
She still does.

Then there’s the scarecrow.

The other Halloween shadow.
Rooted in the soil.
Standing watch over the dying field.

Scarecrows are older than Halloween. Older than the United States. Older than Christianity. Some version of them appears in nearly every farming culture — from ancient Egypt to feudal Japan — always designed to frighten away something.

At first, it was birds.
But somewhere along the line, it became us.

Because scarecrows are human-shaped, but not quite human. They’re uncanny. They don’t move — until they do. They’re still, but somehow always watching. They represent a line between life and death, person and effigy, harvest and decay.

And in Halloween, they mutated from helper to horror.

They started appearing in horror movies. In cornfields where you shouldn’t walk at night. In suburban decorations that look just a little too real.

Because deep down, scarecrows remind us of something we don’t like to think about:

We are fragile.
We are replaceable.
We are just meat on sticks.

And when the wind picks up…
We move, too.

Witches and scarecrows both ask the same question:

Who gets to hold power?
And what happens when the powerless fight back?

In Halloween, we don’t answer that question.
We just light a candle, put on a cloak, and nod to the shadows.

Because we know who still waits in the dark.
And we’re not entirely sure they’re gone.