Within Renfrewshire Hauntings
Was Paisley Cursed After the Witch Trials?
The 1697 witch executions are Renfrewshire's darkest supernatural history, where folklore grows from legal violence and public guilt.
On this page
- Christian Shaw and the accusations
- Execution places and moving memory
- Agnes Naismith's curse in folklore
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Introduction
Paisley’s witch-trial memory is not a simple ghost story. It is Renfrewshire’s darkest supernatural inheritance: a tale in which a child’s alleged possession, a servant’s angry curse, courtroom belief, public execution and later civic guilt hardened into folklore. In 1697, seven people accused in the Bargarran or Paisley witch case were found guilty and executed at Gallow Green; their ashes were later associated with Maxwellton Cross, where a horseshoe memorial became the town’s most visible reminder of the affair.[paisleysenchantedthreads.co.uk]paisleysenchantedthreads.co.ukAbout | Paisley Witch Hunt of 1697In 1697, seven people were tried and executed in Paisley after being found guilty of the crime of witch…
The haunting here is therefore less about a single apparition than about a cursed civic memory. Agnes Naismith’s reported dying curse, Katherine Campbell’s earlier words against Christian Shaw, and the belief that Paisley’s misfortunes were tied to the executions have kept the case alive in local folklore. The modern memorial’s inscription — “Pain Inflicted, Suffering Endured, Injustice Done” — shows how the story has shifted from fear of witches to remembrance of victims.[Paisley Tours]paisleytours.org.ukwitches walking tourPaisley ToursWitches Walking TourThe Maxwellton Cross horseshoe. In 1697, the ashes of those executed were buried at Maxwellton Cross. Ac…
Christian Shaw and the Accusations
The Paisley case began at Bargarran, near Erskine, within historic Renfrewshire rather than in the centre of Paisley itself. Christian Shaw, the young daughter of John Shaw of Bargarran, was about eleven when she accused Katherine Campbell, a household servant, after an argument said to have followed Campbell’s theft of milk. Local and historical accounts describe Campbell as having cursed the girl, wishing that the Devil would drag her soul through hell; soon afterwards, Christian was said to suffer alarming fits and visions.[paisleysenchantedthreads.co.uk]paisleysenchantedthreads.co.ukkatherine campbellkatherine campbell
What made the case so powerful was the way ordinary domestic conflict turned into a supernatural prosecution. Christian’s symptoms were described as possession-like: seizures, trances, claims that invisible tormentors were attacking her, and the production of strange material from her mouth. A later medical reassessment summarises the historical record as seven months of bizarre seizures, pica, and claims that foreign matter had been forced into her mouth by invisible assailants.[PubMed]pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.govOpen source on nih.gov.
The accusations widened from Campbell and Agnes Naismith to a larger circle. The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft records the Agnes Naismith trial as beginning on 13 April 1697, continuing on 12 May, and lasting until 19 May, with a guilty verdict and a recorded defence. That database also notes the scale of witness involvement, with male and female accusers recorded in the trial details.[Witches]witches.hca.ed.ac.ukOpen source on ed.ac.uk.
For a modern reader, the important point is not whether Christian was “really” bewitched. It is that her claims were heard inside a culture where witchcraft could still be treated as a legal reality. The Paisley Enchanted Threads project describes the commission as interviewing witnesses and suspects, overseeing the pricking of suspected witches, and using tests in which suspects were forced to approach or touch Christian to see whether she would fall into a fit.[paisleysenchantedthreads.co.uk]paisleysenchantedthreads.co.ukthe commissionthe commission
That makes the Paisley witches case especially unsettling. The supernatural element did not remain as rumour around a fireside; it entered official procedure. Fear, theology, medicine and law all converged on the bodies of the accused.
Why the Case Became Renfrewshire’s Witch Memory
The Paisley witch trials stand out because they came late, were unusually dramatic, and left a local place-memory that can still be visited. Paisley Enchanted Threads calls the 1697 events the last major witch hunt and mass execution of witches in Western Europe, while Glasgow Libraries describes its Bargarran Witches Collection as material relating to the 1696–97 case in which Christian Shaw alleged she had been bewitched.[paisleysenchantedthreads.co.uk]paisleysenchantedthreads.co.ukAbout | Paisley Witch Hunt of 1697In 1697, seven people were tried and executed in Paisley after being found guilty of the crime of witch…
The case also sat at the edge of changing belief. By the late seventeenth century, witchcraft prosecutions were increasingly controversial, yet Renfrewshire’s authorities still treated the accusations with deadly seriousness. The result is a story that feels historically transitional: old enough to belong to a world of devils, fasting and witch-pricking, but late enough for later generations to look back with embarrassment, anger or disbelief.
The accused were not an abstract group. Accounts identify the executed as Katherine Campbell, Margaret Lang, John Lindsay, James Lindsay, John Reid, Margaret Fulton and Agnes Naismith; another accused man died in prison before the executions.[The Bell]glasgowbell.co.ukThe Bell Renfrewshire's murdered witches refuse to restThe Bell Renfrewshire's murdered witches refuse to rest Their names matter because folklore often flattens them into “the witches”, while modern remembrance tries to restore them as local people caught in a machinery of accusation.
This is where the Paisley story differs from many haunted Renfrewshire legends. A ruined tower or abbey may gather vague reports of monks, lights or footsteps. The Paisley witches story is attached to documented legal violence. Its supernatural reputation grew from something that undeniably happened: people were accused, tried, condemned and killed.
Execution Places and Moving Memory
The execution is usually associated with Gallow Green or Gallowgreen in Paisley, near Maxwellton. Local heritage accounts state that the seven convicted people were executed by hanging at Gallow Hill or Gallow Green on 10 June 1697, in front of a large crowd.[discoverrenfrewshireheritage.com]discoverrenfrewshireheritage.comdark deeds in bargarran erskine paisley in 1697dark deeds in bargarran erskine paisley in 1697
The geography of remembrance then shifts. The killing place and the burial or ash-deposit place are not always treated as the same site in local memory. Maxwellton Cross became the best-known visible marker, with accounts describing the ashes or remains as buried there and later sealed or marked by a horseshoe.[paisleysenchantedthreads.co.uk]paisleysenchantedthreads.co.ukmaxwellton crossIt is said that this was done in order to offer extra protection to the local community, given the curses…
That movement matters for a haunted-history reading. The exact scaffold is less present in the everyday townscape than the road junction memorial. A place of execution became a place of circulation: traffic, pedestrians, local directions, tour stops and brief moments of recognition. The horror is not hidden in a remote ruin; it lies under ordinary urban movement.
Paisley Tours notes that a granite marker was later replaced by a bronze memorial designed by sculptor Alexander Stoddart in 2008. The same account preserves the tradition that an iron horseshoe was hammered into the ground to stop the curse from rising again.[Paisley Tours]paisleytours.org.ukwitches walking tourPaisley ToursWitches Walking TourThe Maxwellton Cross horseshoe. In 1697, the ashes of those executed were buried at Maxwellton Cross. Ac… Renfrewshire24 reported in 2025 that a lost memorial stone associated with the site had been returned to the town, showing that the material memory of the executions is still active rather than merely antiquarian.[renfrewshire24.co.uk]renfrewshire24.co.uklost paisley witch trials memorial stone returned to the townlost paisley witch trials memorial stone returned to the town
The modern inscription is crucial. “Pain Inflicted, Suffering Endured, Injustice Done” does not ask passers-by to fear witches. It asks them to recognise harm. The memorial therefore reverses the old magical logic: the people once imagined as dangerous are now publicly remembered as victims of injustice.[Paisley.org.uk]paisley.org.ukpaisley witchespaisley witches
Agnes Naismith’s Curse in Folklore
Agnes Naismith is central to the curse tradition because she is remembered as refusing the role assigned to her. Paisley Enchanted Threads states that she never confessed, even at the end, and that just before she was hanged she is said to have laid a curse on those who stood witness to her execution.[paisleysenchantedthreads.co.uk]paisleysenchantedthreads.co.ukagnes naismithagnes naismith
The power of the story lies in its moral inversion. In 1697, the authorities treated Naismith as a threat to Christian Shaw and the community. In later folklore, her curse becomes the voice of the condemned woman speaking back to the town that killed her. That does not make the curse historically provable, but it explains why it endured: it gave later Paisley a way to imagine that injustice had consequences.
Some versions broaden the curse from the witnesses to the whole town and their descendants. Accounts of the Paisley witches repeatedly state that misfortunes in Paisley were later blamed on “the witches’ curse” or on Naismith’s dying words.[Wikipedia]WikipediaPaisley witchesPaisley witches This is classic local curse folklore: vague enough to attach to many later troubles, specific enough to keep pointing back to one traumatic event.
Katherine Campbell also belongs in this curse tradition. She is remembered both for the earlier curse against Christian Shaw and, in some accounts, for fierce resistance at the execution. Paisley Enchanted Threads calls Campbell one of the most iconic figures in the Renfrewshire witch hunt and preserves the wording of her curse against Christian as a key trigger in the case.[paisleysenchantedthreads.co.uk]paisleysenchantedthreads.co.ukkatherine campbellkatherine campbell
The two curse moments frame the whole story. Campbell’s angry words are treated as the spark that helped launch the accusations. Naismith’s dying curse is treated as the aftershock that made the execution memory feel dangerous for generations.
The Horseshoe: Protection, Guilt or Both?
The horseshoe at Maxwellton Cross is one of the most striking pieces of witch-trial folklore in Scotland because it turns belief into street furniture. According to Paisley Enchanted Threads, a horseshoe was placed over the site some time after the executions, supposedly to offer extra protection to the local community because of the curses thrown on the town by two of the condemned. The same source cautions that the Church would probably not have approved of such a superstitious practice.[paisleysenchantedthreads.co.uk]paisleysenchantedthreads.co.ukmaxwellton crossIt is said that this was done in order to offer extra protection to the local community, given the curses…
That tension is revealing. A community that had accepted witchcraft accusations through legal and religious channels later reached for a folk-protective object: iron, a horseshoe, a charm against ill luck. The memorial therefore preserves two kinds of belief at once. First, the old fear that the dead witches’ curse might still rise. Second, the modern recognition that the “witches” were people wronged by their society.
There is a practical reason the horseshoe became famous too: it gives the story a visible anchor. Many witch-trial sites are hard to locate or have vanished beneath later development. Paisley’s memorial, by contrast, sits in a busy road junction at Maxwellton Cross. Atlas Obscura describes it as a modest marker in the middle of an intersection, easily missed by those who do not know its meaning.[Atlas Obscura]atlasobscura.comAtlas Obscura Paisley Witches MemorialAtlas Obscura Paisley Witches Memorial
That ordinariness is part of the atmosphere. The memorial is not a grand monument in a quiet graveyard. It is something a local might pass repeatedly before learning what it marks. In haunted-history terms, that makes it a “thin place” of public memory rather than a conventional ghost site: the past is not hidden, but it is easy to overlook.
How Credible Is the Curse Story?
The executions are historical; the curse is folklore attached to them. The distinction matters. There is strong evidence for the trial, the convictions, the named accused and the execution memory. The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft gives trial data for Agnes Naismith, while Glasgow Libraries identifies a Bargarran Witches Collection and lists major works on the case.[Witches]witches.hca.ed.ac.ukOpen source on ed.ac.uk.
The curse, by contrast, survives as tradition. It may preserve something said at the scaffold, or it may be a later moral story shaped by the horror of what happened. Paisley Enchanted Threads uses cautious phrasing — Naismith “is said” to have laid a curse — which is the right level of certainty for a public haunted-history page.[paisleysenchantedthreads.co.uk]paisleysenchantedthreads.co.ukagnes naismithagnes naismith
The same caution applies to later claims that every civic misfortune flowed from the curse. Those claims are best read as folklore, not as evidence that supernatural punishment operated in Paisley. They show how communities explain bad luck after a shameful event. A curse can become a narrative container for economic decline, disaster, unease or inherited guilt.
Modern reinterpretations also complicate the older story. A psychiatric reassessment of the Bargarran trial treated Christian Shaw’s symptoms in medical rather than supernatural terms, describing seizures, pica and invisible-assailant claims as part of the historical presentation.[PubMed]pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.govOpen source on nih.gov. Other heritage accounts emphasise the legal and social injustice done to the accused rather than the reality of witchcraft.[Scottish Parliament]parliament.scotS6M 04958S6M 04958
So the credible answer is layered: the Paisley executions are a documented historical atrocity; the curse is a powerful local tradition; the haunting is the continuing emotional charge of a place where law, fear and belief killed real people.
Why Paisley Still Remembers
Paisley remembers the witches because the story is unusually complete as local memory. It has named people, a young accuser, a domestic beginning, a public trial, an execution site, a burial tradition, a protective charm, a modern memorial and an unresolved moral discomfort. That is why it remains one of Renfrewshire’s most important supernatural-history subjects.
It also connects eerily with Paisley’s later identity. Christian Shaw did not disappear from history after the trial. She was later associated with the development of fine thread production in Renfrewshire, and accounts of her life link her to the beginnings of the area’s thread industry.[paisleysenchantedthreads.co.uk]paisleysenchantedthreads.co.ukOpen source on paisleysenchantedthreads.co.uk. This creates a disturbing contrast: the child at the centre of a fatal witch hunt later becomes part of Paisley’s industrial story.
For visitors, the key places are Bargarran, where the accusations began; Gallow Green, where the executions are remembered; and Maxwellton Cross, where the horseshoe memorial keeps the curse tradition visible. The story sits naturally beside other Renfrewshire haunted-history material, but it should not be treated as just another spooky tale. It is darker than that.
The most haunting thing about the Paisley witches is not proof of a ghost, nor even proof of a curse. It is the survival of a question the town has never quite put down: how did fear become justice, and why did it take a memorial centuries later to say plainly that the suffering was real and the verdict was wrong?
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The Mammoth Book of Celtic Myths and Legends
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First published 2010. Subjects: Witchcraft, History, Shamanism, Witchcraft, great britain, Magic, history.
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Endnotes
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