The Witch of Hasselt

Klaas was a quiet man, the miller of Hasselt, and he knew the stories. Everyone knew them. About his neighbor’s wife, the wife of Jozef behind the canal, whispers circulated in the village — dark whispers, full of fear and uncertainty. The woman had afflictions, they said. Severe ones, causing her body to tremble like a leaf in the wind. Her face swelled without warning, red blotches appearing on her skin. She could not eat, could not sleep, and sometimes she cried out for no reason.

Klaas had seen this before in the village — women seized by invisible forces. The priest spoke of demons, the wise women of spells and remedies. But Klaas was a man who liked to observe, who wanted to understand. He noticed that Jozef’s wife’s afflictions came more frequently when certain plants bloomed, or when rain fell.

The neighbors became convinced that Jozef’s wife was bewitched. A woman in the village claimed to know the culprits — widows with malevolent gazes, old women said to wander in animal forms at night. People brought amulets to the house, spoke prayers, muttered spells against the evil eye. But nothing worked. The woman continued to suffer.

Klaas heard the story from Jozef himself, one day when he came to the mill. "She is with child," Jozef said with a hollow voice. "The fear — the constant fear that something terrible will happen to her — it makes her body react. The doctor from the city says it is in her mind, in her nerves, but how can I understand such things?" Klaas listened, deep in thought.

Years later, a physician from the city would arrive, someone with medical knowledge who believed in more than spells. He spoke of ’allergies,’ of the body overreacting to invisible substances in the air. A pregnant woman, he explained, with nerves taut with anxiety, could experience such reactions even more intensely. What had been taken for sorcery was merely the natural response of a human body defending itself.

Klaas remembered those words as he lay on his deathbed. In his long life, he had watched many mysteries dissolve when knowledge came — not a harsh banishment of superstition, but a slow fading, like a candle held up to daylight. The witch of Hasselt, who had never truly been a witch at all, had lived in a world where science and mystery still intertwined.