The Witch Windows of Vermont
Drive around enough of Vermont’s picturesque streets,
and you’ll become puzzled over an architectural anomaly that even the locals
can’t explain. The anomaly is called a witch window.
Witch windows are cockeyed windows that have been a
staple of Vermont’s traditional farmhouse aesthetic ever since the 19th
century. “It’s the crooked window tucked up under the eaves in the gable
end — and it’s just tucked in there at a crazy angle,” explained State
Architectural Historian Devin Colman to VPR Radio in 2017. The local lore is
that this slant makes it difficult for witches to fly in on their broomsticks.
Being on the East Coast certainly comes with its fair
share of witchy baggage, with the culprit famously being the Salem Witch Trials
of 1692-1693. “For more than a century, tourists have been buying witch
souvenirs and visiting witch houses,” explained a representative from the New
England Historical Society, “In 1890, a Salem jeweler named Daniel Low [even]
began selling souvenir sterling “Witch” spoons to tourists.”
Vermont actually only had one witch trial, in the
little town of Pownal. The victim was woman they called “the widow Krieger,”
who was charged with the “possessing extraordinary powers.” She was thrown into
the icy winter waters in a test to see if she’d sink or float, with the latter
meaning she were possessed by black magic. Luckily, she began sinking and was
rescued.
So what’s the deal with the witchy windows? Seeing as
they started popping up centuries later, the likelihood of their being a
defence against broom riding sorceresses isn’t high. “They are very agile,” an
actual Wiccan in Vermont told Urbo magazine in 2017, “I don’t think you
could stop a witch from going through a slanted window unless they were
overweight like me.” Anyone whose watched those Quidditch scenes in Harry
Potter, she adds, would agree.
“You’ll also hear them referred to as coffin
windows,” explains the Historical Society rep, “The idea being that it’s
difficult to maneuver a coffin with a body from the second floor down to the
first floor in these narrow staircases, so slide it out through the window and
down the roof.” Then again, she says, that “does not seem any easier.” At
the end of the day, every conclusion drawn about the curious windows ends with
a question mark. Why on earth create a completely lopsided, and by all means
impractical, window?
Plenty
of cultures have created architectural styles that are supposed to fend off of
evil spirits. What else did you think those pointy roofs on Chinese temples are
for? Or the fact that in the Philippines, basements are traditionally seen
as a breeding ground for evil spirits (if you want to stay safe, you have to
have an exit to that basement that descends even lower).
Maybe
the legend isn’t so far-fetched after all. For now, we’ll let you draw your own
conclusions about the origins of the windows. Personally, until we find the
root of this fable’s strange and tangled storyline, we know we’d sleep a little
sounder with one in a Vermont farmhouse…
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