In January 1705, a woman from the Scottish fishing burgh of Pittenweem in Fife, Janet Cornfoot, was brutally murdered by a crowd of people who were convinced that she was a witch. The early modern Calvinist culture of possession not only gave unity to the afflictions experienced by the young people but it also linked those afflictions to witchcraft. The concern of the residents of Pittenweem with the war against France, which began in 1700, might also have contributed to a mood that encouraged witch-hunting. Witch-hunting was dead by 1780, but not the theological and philosophical campaign to prove the existence of the spirits from whom witches had allegedly received their powers. If differences between English and Scottish criminal justice account for the greater role of Scottish ministers in the prosecution of witches, the greater difficulty the Scottish government had exercising control over criminal justice in the localities explains the failure to bring Janet Cornfoot’s murderers to justice.