The legal proceedings against Issobell Simson commenced on May 7, 1662, as recorded in the judicial archives of the period. A resident of Dyke in Inverness, Issobell was formally identified within the administrative records of the Scottish witch trials under case reference C/EGD/1501. At this time, the judicial machinery of seventeenth-century Scotland was heavily engaged in the processing of such accusations, a process that saw individuals brought before local and national authorities to answer for charges brought against them under the Witchcraft Act of 1563.
While the primary case file establishes the date and location of the initial proceedings, the surviving documentation regarding her specific trial, referenced as T/JO/907, remains limited. Unlike cases where extensive depositions or witness testimonies have been preserved, the records for Issobell provide no further narrative detail concerning the specific allegations or the eventual outcome of her trial. Consequently, she remains a figure known to history primarily through the formal bureaucratic entries that marked her entry into the seventeenth-century legal system.