In the autumn of 1707, the judicial machinery of the Kirkcudbright presbytery turned its attention toward Janet McKeoner, a resident of the parish of Penninghame. On the 9th of November, Janet was formally brought into the legal record under case reference C/EGD/2455, marking the commencement of proceedings against her. At this stage of the early modern period, the legal structures governing witchcraft investigations were heavily influenced by the scrutiny of both local ecclesiastical courts and the central authorities, and Janet’s appearance in these rolls indicates that her conduct had reached a threshold that local officials deemed worthy of formal inquiry.
Despite the procedural rigour of the Scottish justice system at the time, the surviving archival trail for Janet remains notably succinct. The record provides the fundamental administrative details of her residence and the date of her case, yet it leaves the specific nature of the allegations—whether they involved harmful magic, healing practices, or spectral encounters—to the silence of the lost testimony. As a figure within the landscape of the 1563–1736 witch trials, Janet serves as a representative of the many individuals whose lives were caught in the intersection of local community discord and the rigorous judicial, religious, and social anxieties of eighteenth-century Scotland.