Witch is an ordinary woman, like all the others, but a woman who is credited with supernatural powers. Only married women or those who have been married can be witches. It was believed that the witch sucks people’s blood and eats their hearts and livers, especially small children. She is extremely cruel to her family, because “a witch runs on her own blood”, as well as to the people she gets close to. According to Vuk Karadžić , a witch is a woman who has some kind of devilish spirit inside her, which comes out of her in a dream and turns into a butterfly, a chicken or a turkey, then flies around houses and eats people, especially small children; when she finds a man sleeping, and she grabs him with some kind of rod over his left breast, and his chest opens while she takes out the heart and eats it, and then the chest grows back together. Some people who have been eaten in this way die immediately, and some live longer.
Once a witch confesses and gives up, she can no longer eat people, but becomes a doctor of some kind and gives herbs to those who have been eaten. When the witch flies at night, she glows like fire. When many children or people die in a village, villagers all shout at a certain woman that she is a witch and then they tie her up and throw her into the water to see if she can sink (because they say that a witch cannot sink); if the woman sinks, and they pull her out and let her go, if she cannot sink, and they kill her, because she is a witch. This is how they investigated witches even during Karađorđe’s time in Serbia. A certain peacock, according to Karađorđe’s command, was tied to a spit and roasted between two fires. In the village of Karanovac, the mining duke roasted a woman whom he heard was a witch .
One becomes a witch in two ways: by birth and voluntarily. If a female child was born with a placenta too bloody, it was believed that she was destined to be a witch. But this also had bad consequences for the mother, because it was considered that a witch gives birth to a witch. One became a witch voluntarily if a woman wished to become a witch and the witches accepted her into their circle, or if she surrendered to the devil of her own free will. Although a witch does not differ in appearance from other women, it was considered that pronounced sloppiness, drawn eyebrows, evil eyes and bigger nose were a sign of a witch.