During the 17th century many women were tried and executed as witches. The 1660's saw the last great witch hunts. 300 people were executed as witches during that time. In Forfar 9 women were executed as witches between 1661 and 1663. All of them were accused by Helen Guthrie.

Helen Guthrie was, in her own words, a very wicked and drunken woman. She had killed her own half sister when they were children. Helen learned her craft as a witch from Janet Galloway in Kirriemuir. In Forfar she and her friends soon gained a sinister reputation for dancing drunkenly in the churchyard at midnight. The coven boasted of evil deeds: Helen admitted to wrecking ships with the devil in Barry Bay; Isobel Shyrie claimed she caused the death of Baillie George Wood by supernatural means and John Tailyeour was believed to have ruined the miller's field of corn by transforming himself into a pig and running amok.

Helen's 13 year old daughter Janet was also accused of witchcraft. Helen assisted the witch hunters in their campaign by giving evidence against her friends. She became a "supergrass".

Helen spent 2 years in Forfar's tollbooth with her daughter Janet and other suspected witches. By 1663 the Council's will to execute witches was spent. Helen was a self-confessed murderer and witch, and as such she was tried and executed. She was strangled and her body was burned to ashes in a barrel of tar, in the Scottish tradition. The fate of Helen's daughter Janet is not known. Janet was still imprisoned in the tolbooth in 1666 without a trial.

Angus Archives F1/5/35