March 15, 2020

This Day in Halloween: The infamous murder of Bridget Cleary occurs in Ireland.

Bridget Cleary is murdered and burned at the stake by her husband in Ballyvadlea, Ireland in 1895. The man claims she was a “changeling” put in place by fairies, in a country that still believes in fairies at the time. The murder trial that follows is one of the most bizarre and infamous in British and Irish legal history and leads to multiple books, plays and TV shows about the case.