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It seems incredible now that women were executed for witchcraft but, as new podcast series Witch Trials reveals, the moral panic whipped up by James VI of Scotland in the late 1500s shares similarities with 21st Century society.

In 1590 East Lothian servant girl Geillis Duncan confessed to witchcraft. She admitted to meeting with the devil and other witches, to dancing and feasting with them, and to summoning North Sea storms aimed at preventing King James VI and Queen Anne returning from their recent marriage in Denmark.

Geillis admitted to these impossible crimes under the duress of brutal torture. She also implicated others, who were then themselves tried and, like Geillis, executed in what became known as the North Berwick witch trial.

Christian, conservative society become convulsed by panics and purges that ultimately led to the murder of thousands of people – mainly women. Leading the charge was King James VI of Scotland — not yet James I of England — who took great interest in the witches, even interrogating them himself.

Dr Louise Yeoman explains: “He thinks he’s taking on Satan, and he really wants the English, his prospective subjects, to know that if he gets their throne […] they’re not just getting any old monarch, they’re getting the mighty enemy of the devil.

"And just to make sure they get the message he has a propaganda pamphlet printed in England called Newes from Scotland, so he’s making sure they can read all about it.”

We might think we're too sophisticated to be sucked in to a mass hysteria. That we couldn't possibly fall for the lies that led to the North Berwick witch trial and the many others that followed.

Historian Dr Michelle Brock isn’t so sure.

“I think we like to look back on the pre-modern past and think, 'None of this made sense, what’s going on?'. But in reality we are replicating some of these same things. For example, society has anxieties about the future and we look for scapegoats."

Dr Brock continues: “People in positions of power stoke those fears and that is precisely what happened during this period. People were genuinely fearful, but they were being fed certain ideas about who to blame [...] and being told that if you are a true member of this godly society you will get on board with the project.

"If you think about all these works of demonological literature, things like Newes from Scotland, the very salacious and at times pornographic pamphlet from the North Berwick hunt, [...] these things are circulating and people are coming up with the idea of who or what a witch does and sometimes spreading, dare I say it, fake news."