A local woman, Isobel Gowdie, was tried for witchcraft in 1662 along with others male and female. She made detailed confessions about the activities of her coven. She described her initiation by the devil in Auldearn Kirk as well as meetings with the King and Queen of Elfhane. Her account is fascinating for the evidence it provides of the mixing of folk beliefs with Christian ideas about witchcraft. She is assumed to have been executed but there is no record of the event.