A Note about Witches
In fairy-tales, witches always wear silly black hats and black cloaks, and they ride on
broomsticks.
But this is not a fairy-tale. This is about REAL WITCHES.
The most important thing you should know about REAL WITCHES is this. Listen very
carefully. Never forget what is coming next.
REAL WITCHES dress in ordinary clothes and look very much like ordinary women. They
live in ordinary houses and they work in ORDINARY JOBS.
That is why they are so hard to catch.
A REAL WITCH hates children with a red-hot sizzling hatred¹ that is more sizzling and red-
hot than any hatred you could possibly imagine.
A REAL WITCH spends all her time plotting to get rid of the children in her particular
territory. Her passion is to do away with them, one by one. It is all she thinks about the whole day
long. Even if she is working as a cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman or
driving round in a fancy car (and she could be doing any of these things), her mind will always be
plotting and scheming and churning and burning and whizzing and phizzing with murderous
bloodthirsty thoughts.
"Which child," she says to herself all day long, "exactly which child shall I choose for my
next squelching²?"
A REAL WITCH gets the same pleasure from squelching a child as you get from eating a
plateful of strawberries and thick cream.
She reckons on doing away with one child a week. Anything less than that and she becomes
grumpy.
One child a week is fifty-two a year.
Squish them and squiggle them and make them disappear.
That is the motto of all witches.
Very carefully a victim is chosen. Then the witch stalks the wretched child like a hunter
stalking a little bird in the forest. She treads softly. She moves quietly. She gets closer and closer.
Then at last, when everything is ready... phwisst!... and she swoops³! Sparks fly. Flames leap. Oil
boils. Rats howl. Skin shrivels. And the child disappears.
A witch, you must understand, does not knock children on the head or stick knives into them
or shoot at them with a pistol. People who do those things get caught by the police.
A witch never gets caught. Don't forget that she has magic in her fingers and devilry dancing
in her blood. She can make stones jump about like frogs and she can make tongues of flame go

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