In May 1671, the legal machinery of the Scottish witch trials turned toward Helen George, a married woman residing in the parish of Kintore, near Aberdeen. The proceedings, documented under case file C/EGD/801, brought her into the sphere of the regional judicial authorities during a period when concerns regarding witchcraft remained a significant element of the Scottish social and legal landscape. On the 30th of March 1671, Helen appeared in Aberdeen to face the inquiries of the court, a process that placed her at the center of a formal investigation into allegations of maleficium.
The official records regarding the conclusion of her case are sparse, providing no explicit detail on the testimony presented or the specific nature of the charges levied against her. However, the Aberdeen judicial roll contains a crucial notation for Helen: she is marked as 'Abs', a shorthand typically denoting that the accused was absent or, more likely in this context, that the case did not proceed to a conviction. This abbreviation suggests that the proceedings concluded without a guilty verdict, marking a point of resolution that allowed Helen to return from the scrutiny of the Aberdeen court to her life in Kintore.