When Ryan Murphy, the creator of "American Horror Story," announced that the third season of the American TV series would focus on witches, he was riding the crest of a growing wave. Not since the 1990s — the era of Buffy's geek goddess, Willow Rosenberg, and a scowling Fairuza Balk in The Craft — have witches been so much in demand.
In the young-adult section of bookshops, shelves that recently groaned under the weight of tales of tormented vampires and lovelorn werewolves are now stuffed with stories of witchcraft and magic, from Ruth Warburton's much-praised "Winter Trilogy" to Jessica Spotswood's Cahill "Witch Chronicles." Lower down the age range is the most recent in Jill Murphy's long-running "Worst Witch" series, while for adults, next year will mark the climax of Deborah Harkness' "All Souls Trilogy," centering on the relationship between a vampire and a feisty American witch.
In film, highlights of the British Film Institute's (BFI) gothic season, in central London, included "Burn Baby Burn!" a festival of witchcraft on film, now heading to Belfast's Queens Film Theatre, and the once-banned 1922 Danish witch movie "Haxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages," which showed at Filmhouse Edinburgh and at the Glasgow Film Theatre and Dundee Contemporary Arts. Even Meryl Streep is getting in on the act — recent stills from the forthcoming film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's "Into The Woods" showed the actress transformed into an old hag complete with wild gray hair and long nails.