By Tim Binnall
In a weird story out of England, a woman dubbed the 'White Witch of Rye' is facing possible jail time after pleading guilty to harassing a renowned wizard. The strange story reportedly started several years ago when self-proclaimed sorceress Barbara Maura Lane connected with esteemed occult practitioner Alfred Douglas by way of a course on magic that he was teaching. Their relationship seemingly blossomed as she soon began visiting him at his home to peruse his collection of esoteric tomes and ultimately wound up moving into the residence in 2020. It was then, Douglas' family says, things took a troubling turn.
"They became inseparable," nephew Paul Wilson-Patterson said, lamenting that "she controlled what he ate, what he drank, the clothes he wore, who he saw and when he saw them." Their concerns about her influence over the elderly wizard were compounded when they discovered that he had changed his will to make her the sole beneficiary of his rather sizeable estate. As if all of this weren't worrisome enough, Wilson-Patterson asserts that the witch would fly into fits of rage wherein "she would go around smashing glassware, ceramics, and things in the house," leaving Edwards understandably terrified. "We thought we'd visit and find him dead at the bottom of the stairs," Wilson-Patterson's wife said, likening Lane to "a succubus."
The nightmarish situation reached its nadir last May when the white witch snapped at the sight of celebratory decorations for King Charles' coronation and allegedly destroyed Edwards' greenhouse before throwing him out of his own home. The arrival of Wilson-Patterson did little to calm matters as Lane is said to have attacked him as well and poured tea on his wife. The unhinged witch was subsequently arrested and charged with seven different crimes, including stalking and assault. Answering the allegations in court on Monday, Lane pleaded guilty to criminal damage as well as non-violent harassment and may wind up receiving jail time for the offenses.