Most People Don’t Know A Witch Trial Took Place Right Here In Arizona

On the north side of town, at Flowing Wells High School, to be exact.

According to the lecturer, Dr. Byrd Granger, witches had physical attributes that looked more like Samantha from Bewitched than the Wicked Witch of the West. It was also especially similar to one particular teacher at Flowing Wells.

It was something that embarrassed her for a moment and that her students teased her about for. While Stewart didn’t deny she was a witch, she also didn’t admit if she was, stating that, "I like to get the kids involved…we delve into early American folklore and witchcraft. It was good fun and it stimulated them."

At the end of the school year, Stewart gave a folklore presentation to future freshman while dressed as a witch. When those students returned as freshmen in the fall, many of them continued the playful witch-teasing but it soon grew out of hand as it grew into rumors that Stewart was indeed a member of the occult and even encouraging students to learn about witchcraft. It's possible that parents also became concerned but newspapers of the time make no mention of this.

There were a handful of other charges related to her teaching topics and influence on students and fellow teachers but the witchcraft charge is the one that really stuck. This made national news and even led to Stewart becoming isolated from the community; friends and neighbors dropped their associations and she even started receiving anonymous letters accusing her of being a witch.

Stewart, however, filed a lawsuit against the school board and the judge sided in her case. She was ordered to be re-hired by the district at the end of the year. It seems like the school board did not get the memo, though; by February 1972 Stewart still had yet to be re-hired by the district and the witch label started to follow her into a new profession as a real estate agent.

Unfortunately, her story ends there. There are no other papers that report updates if Stewart was ever able to regain a teaching position, how her real estate career worked out, or how long it took for the community to forget her supposed witchy ways.