A scary Scottish witch legend

People in the north of Scotland are well aware that you should not enter the forests at any circumstances, not because they are protected, not because they are dangerous in any ordinary sense, but because something there remembers being older than people. They might laugh when they say it, but the laughter never lasts long. If you press them, if you ask exactly where, they will grow quiet and say only, “You would know it when you see it, and you must turn back before night.”Of course, some don’t.

There was a man who once told his friend he would go just to prove the stories wrong. “It’s just trees,” he said. “There’s no such thing as witches anymore.” His friend reportedly answered, “You shouldn’t joke about that place,” but the man only smiled. He was known for having a big ego, he never listened to anyone.

The path began like any other. Wind moving through branches. Light filtering down in pale strips. It might even felt inviting. For a while, nothing seemed out of place. He would later say that the forest “felt normal… until it didn’t.”

The change is subtle. The air grows heavier. The sounds thin out. Birds disappear first. Then insects. Then even the wind seems to hold itself still. You might not notice it immediately. You might just feel that something is missing. That’s when you should leave. But curiosity has a way of rooting people in place. 

He walked deeper.The trees grew closer together, their trunks dark and tall, like pillars in some forgotten cathedral. The path twisted in ways that didn’t make sense. He must have realized something was wrong, but it was too late to retrace his steps.He said he heard singing. At first, it was faint. Almost imagined.

 A soft melody drifting between the trees. It might have sounded beautiful, even comforting. Like voices raised in harmony somewhere far away. “I thought it was just the wind,” he told his friend later, his voice reportedly shaking. “I thought it would stop.”It didn’t. The closer he moved, the clearer it became. Not words exactly, but something shaped like language. A rhythm that repeated, over and over, as if the forest itself were breathing in time with it. He might have felt drawn to it. 

And then the trees opened. At its center burned a fire that gave off no smoke, its flames steady and unnatural. Around it stood figures women, at least in shape. Pale skin that seemed almost luminous in the darkness. Long black curls cascading down their backs. Lips red, strikingly so, as if painted or stained. “They were beautiful,” he whispered, gripping his friend’s arm so tightly it left marks. “They shouldn’t have been, but they were.”They stood in a circle, half naked, their bodies marked with symbols. Their voices rose and fell together, chanting now, the melody shifting into something heavier. It might have felt ritualistic, ancient, precise. He knew he should not stay. “You must not let them see you,” an old woman in a nearby village had once told him when he’d asked about the forest. He remembered her words then, too late.

  Because one of them stopped. The others followed. The silence that fell was immediate and complete, as if someone had cut the world in half. The fire continued to burn, but even its crackle seemed to vanish. “They knew,” he said. “I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. But they knew.” 

Slowly, as one, they turned. Their eyes found him in the darkness as though it offered no cover at all. The beauty he had noticed before began to shift. Their smiles were too wide now. One stepped forward. He tried to move but his body simply refused. “It was like the ground held me,” he said. “Like the forest wanted me to stay.” The figure came closer, her movements unhurried. Up close, the illusion faltered. Her skin was too smooth, too pale, like something carved rather than living. Her lips, that vivid red, glistened unnaturally. “You shouldn’t have come,” she said softly. Her voice was not loud, but it carried, wrapping around him like a cold wind. The others began to move again, circling slowly, their chanting resuming in a lower tone. It vibrated in his chest, in his bones, as though it were inside him now. “You must stay,” another voice murmured from somewhere behind him. Hands touched him then. Cold, impossibly cold. Gentle at first, almost reassuring. They guided him forward, step by step, toward the fire. He might have thought, in some distant part of his mind, that if he complied, if he did not resist, they might let him go. 

They didn’t.

The chanting grew louder. Faster. The air seemed to thicken with it, pressing in on all sides. He said he could feel something else there, something unseen but present, like a weight just beyond sight.

“They will offer you,” the old stories say. He screamed. Or at least he believed he did. He could no longer hear himself over the voices. The figures around him tightened their circle, their smiles widening, their eyes reflecting the fire in a way that did not belong to anything human. “You mustn’t fight,” one whispered, almost kindly.

The last thing he remembered clearly was being forced to his knees.
After that he spoke of shadows moving within the fire. Of something being called, something that answered. Of pain, sharp and sudden, and then nothing.

He was found days later at the edge of the forest, alone, his clothes torn, his skin marked with faint, unfamiliar patterns. He was alive, but barely. When they asked him what had happened, he would only repeat the same sentence over and over.
“They’re still there,” he said. “They’re always there.”

He didn’t survive the week…

By morning, the clearing was gone. Those who searched found nothing but undisturbed trees and silent ground. No fire. No footprints. No trace of anything unusual.
And yet, sometimes, when the wind is just right, people claim you might still hear it.
A faint melody drifting through the trees.

Soft.
Beautiful.
Waiting.

Locals will tell you the same thing they’ve always said.
“If you hear singing,” they warn, their voices low, “you must turn back.”
Because if you don’t, if you hesitate, if you listen too long they might already be watching.

And once they’ve seen you,
you don’t leave the forest.


This short story was inspired by the the aesthetic of the movie The VVITCH (2015)