Author and mudlark Kate Wiseman visits the atmospheric Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford to rediscover a special object that inspired her as a child: a witch in a silvered bottle! But why did so many people believe in witches? What kinds of spells were they believed to cast? And what methods did ordinary people use to try to overcome them?
Take a look at the weird and wonderful things people put into witch bottles to try to save their loved ones and possessions from evil magic. What would you put inside a witch bottle if you felt threatened by a witch? And ask yourself a question: if you were given a perfectly normal looking bottle and told that there was a witch inside it, would YOU open it to find to check if it was true?
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About the book
‘They do say there be a witch in it, and if you let ‘un out, there’ll be a peck of trouble’
Eleven-year-old Egg is having a rough year. Dad has a whole new family and she’s sure it’s all her fault. The last thing she wants is a mandatory school trip to the spooky Pitt Rivers Museum, but her strange, silver-haired teacher, Mr. Fellgrim, insists. When she’s paired with the popular Josh for a museum-wide treasure hunt, Egg thinks her luck might finally be changing.
She’s wrong.
As the hunt leads them deeper into the eerie, artefact-filled halls, the shadows begin to stretch. Why does Mr. Fellgrim look exactly like a man in a hundred-year-old portrait? And where did the rest of her classmates go?
When the museum lights flicker and die, a bone-chilling fog swallows everything. When Egg wakes up, she isn’t in the museum anymore. She’s staring through silver-tinted glass at a world that has grown impossibly large.
Egg is trapped inside the Witch Bottle, one of the museum’s prize exhibits. Now, she must find the courage to face Priscilla― a powerful, ancient witch with a wicked plan. If Egg can’t find a way out, she’ll become much more than just a student on a school trip. She’ll be the museum’s newest permanent exhibit…
About the author
Kate Wiseman is an author and mudlark who writes books for both children and adults. She grew up in Oxford and spent many hours exploring they city’s famous museums, imagining stories about the strange things on display. Her favourite was Pitt Rivers Museum, which,
she says, is like ‘stepping back into Victorian times.’
Kate writes the Gangster School series of fun adventures for kids, as well as the Mudlark Mysteries. Her third Mudlark Mystery, The Golden Skull, has just been published. The Witch Bottle, inspired by an exhibit in Pitt Rivers Museum that has fascinated her since childhood, will be published in October 2026.
Video transcript
Main video
Hi, my name is Kate Wisman and I write books for children and for grown-ups, too. I’ve come back to my hometown of Oxford to visit a place that absolutely fascinated me as a child. It’s the Pitt Rivers Museum.
The Pitt Rivers Museum was founded in 1884 and it holds about half a million objects and it reflects every possible facet of being a human being. I remember coming in here as a child and being just blown away by the cases filled with strange artifacts. I just couldn’t imagine what they were for. And there was one thing in particular that fascinated me and I’ve come back here to have a look at it.
A couple of years ago, I came back to Oxford, my hometown, and I made a point of coming straight to the Pitt Rivers Museum because I wanted to revisit some of the many amazing things that had inspired me as a child. And the thing that I particularly wanted to see is in this cabinet. And it’s this.
Can you see this bottle here? Quite small. Doesn’t look particularly exciting, but if you could read that tiny label on it, it says something pretty amazing. I’ve actually taken a copy of what that says, so I can read that to you.
And this is what it says: “Silvered and stoppered bottle said to contain a witch, obtained about 1915 from an old lady in a village near Hove in Sussex.” She remarked, “And they do say there’ll be a witch in it. And if you let her out, there’ll be a peck of trouble.” So, wow, there’s a witch in there.
That sounds pretty unlikely to me, and I’m sure it does to you as well. But you have to remember that in the days before mass communication and the internet, the world was a much more mysterious place and people put forward what to us seem quite weird ideas for things that we could explain with science.
So if your crops failed, if your cattle got sick, if your family got ill, you would very often think a witch did that. So people started to look for ways to ward off witchcraft. And one of the most usual ways of doing that was to get a bottle and fill it with things that witches wouldn’t like.
The bottle would very likely look something like this. This is a Bellarmine bottle from the 17th century. And someone actually X-rayed this bottle and look what they found inside it. There are nails, there are nail clippings, there are bits of hair, there are bits of cloth with hearts drawn on them.
And the best thing of all, or the worst thing of all, is they topped that up with human urine. And they would stopper it and put it in a building around the places where a witch might get access to your house. So by the doorway, through the windows, under the hearth if you had a fire—all those sort of vulnerable places were places where people would bury their witch bottles.
So that was normal witch bottles, but this witch bottle is extra special because it doesn’t contain the things to scare a witch away. The actual witch is in there. Or is she? So just think what that lady said. You open that, you let her out, there’s going to be a whole lot of trouble. Would you let her out? Would you have the courage to open that bottle?
And imagine you were the witch in that bottle. How would you survive? Would you be bored? Would you plan spells of revenge against the person or the family or the ancestors of the person who put you in that bottle?
These are the things that my book, The Witch Bottle, covers. And part of it is set in this amazing museum. And I think you should come down to Pitt Rivers and see it, and everything else here which would just blow your mind. There are a million stories here waiting to be told. Could be you who tells them.
Writing challenge
Hi again. I hope you enjoyed that look around the Pitt Rivers Museum and especially at the amazing Witch in a Bottle. It’s time now to set you a fun writing task.
And what I’ve come up with is this: I mentioned in the video that I’m really inspired by objects and that they sort of give me stories that I really want to write. I want you to have a look around you and find something that inspires you to write a story. It might be old, but it doesn’t matter if it’s not.
It could be as simple as an old family photo, a toy that you don’t want to get rid of, or a sentence in a book. Just think about whatever it is that inspires you, make a few notes, and just let your imagination fly and write that story. Have fun.
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