The Weekly Murder of Grace Sherwood: Witch Trial Tourism at Colonial Williamsburg

*Cry Witch!* is one of Colonial Williamsburg’s (the living history museum) most popular programs. It depicts Virginia’s best-known witch trial, the 1706 trial of Grace Sherwood. In the show, reenactors portray key characters including Sherwood and witnesses, and audience members play the jury. At the end of the hour-long performance (which includes outlandish testimonies and a woman dragged out screaming), tourists take Sherwood’s fate into their hands, and they almost always vote to condemn her of the crime of witchcraft. To better understand how self-identified witches receive this play, I interviewed 10 in the Williamsburg area to hear their opinions. In this work, I show that fantastical representations of witch trials affect present-day witches by reinforcing negative stereotypes of how women deemed evil should be punished. I also find that witch trials are not taken as seriously as other American wrongs because of how absurd they sound to modern audiences.