While you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d stumbled upon a ghost story, though, this tale has more feminist credentials than you might first think. Because, although Adie was accused by another woman, she did her best to keep her fellow females safe by refusing to give up the names of any more ‘witches’ under torture.

Historian Louise Yeoman says of Adie: “I think she was a very clever and inventive person. The point of the interrogation and its cruelties was to get names.

“Lilias said that she couldn’t give the names of other women at the witches’ gatherings as they were masked like gentlewomen. She only gave names which were already known and kept up coming up with good reasons for not identifying other women for this horrendous treatment – despite the fact it would probably mean there was no let-up for her.”

Now, 300 years after she was wronged, locals have asked for Adie’s remains to be recovered and given a proper burial, as a small way of apologising for the brutal treatment so many women received who suffered the same fate. Fife’s local government is behind it too, with West Fife and Coastal Villages councilor Kate Stewart commenting to The Courier: “Lilias is not forgotten, she has never been forgotten. We need to get her back. This has been a great injustice and we need to reverse that.

“It’s important to recognise that Lilias Adie and the thousands of other men and women accused of witchcraft in early modern Scotland were not the evil people history has portrayed them to be, but were the innocent victims of unenlightened times. It’s time we recognised the injustice served upon them,” she added.

Scottish villagers are hunting for the bones of a 17th century witch for this feminist reason