In the spring of 1671, the legal machinery of Aberdeen turned its attention toward Geilles Burnett, a widow whose personal history had drawn significant suspicion from her community. On May 9, she appeared before the court to answer for charges of witchcraft. The gravity of the accusations against Geilles was compounded by the nature of her marital history; having been widowed twice, she stood accused of orchestrating the deaths of both husbands through malevolent supernatural means.
Despite the severity of the indictment, the judicial proceedings concluded with a verdict of not guilty. However, the acquittal did not entirely decouple Geilles from the discourse of the era’s witch trials. Her name surfaced again during the legal processes involving Margaret Abernethy and Issobell Spens, both of whom identified Geilles as an accomplice in their own accounts. This recurrence of her name in the testimony of others illustrates the complex, interconnected nature of accusations in seventeenth-century Aberdeen, where individuals were often woven into the wider narratives of their peers.