I wrote the first book in the series “Whispers of the Pendle Witches” because it always annoyed me how, even 400 years later, the people who died in those trials were being portrayed as villains. In our supposedly enlightened era, we were still besmirching these individuals as though they were evil. It annoyed me, especially growing up in Lancaster, where they died. I always felt a kinship with them and wanted to put out another narrative. One where they were real people. Ones who today would be considered alternative healers and maybe Wiccans (or the modern interpretation of the word witch), but not devil worshippers, making pacts with the devil and killing their neighbours through malicious magics.
After I completed the first book, I wanted to do more with the characters, but the only option for following the history was to cover the trials, and I just did not want to do that. After many months of deliberation, the idea of reincarnation came to mind. Then I remembered the spell Demdike and Chattox had done at the end of the first book and thought, “What if it went wrong or had unintended consequences?” And I went from there.
I initially wanted to set the book in 1812, exactly two hundred years later (and for the 3rd to be in 2012). However, whilst researching the 1800s, I realised just how much changed in the latter half of the century, and there was a huge potential to build on this. My books have a recurring theme of women’s issues—those which are still relevant today. The 19th century had a lot of advancements, but it also saw the rise of a rhetoric which we’re still impacted by today, even though it isn’t as old as people believe it to be; the notion that women are weak and dainty.
This ideal rose out of a belief that women could lose children doing strenuous work, which is true for the first trimester, but the initial idea went from “women shouldn’t be doing heavy lifting whilst pregnant” to “women's wombs will fall out if they do anything remotely strenuous, and these frail creatures need to be controlled and protected”. Ideals we’re still fighting even now.
From this, the character of Claire, a well-informed midwife, was born. A woman in a position of power in a man's world, something many men do not like—especially in the 1860s. She finds herself fighting against the standardisation of medical practices. Not because she opposes it in principle, but because she fears what men will do to women.
In contrast, Yana is a young woman who has grown up with this new mentality and doesn’t know to question many things, despite how she senses things aren’t quite right. Though she does have some wiles, taught to her by women who learnt to hide their strengths in plain sight. She’s in the process of going through marriage interviews, and is caught between wants, needs and the demands of society.
Things become even more chaotic when the two women start to remember who they once were, and the trappings and dangers of the spiritual world.
This is where Demdike and Chattox, the original Pendle Witches, come in. They’ve been watching over their family all this time and are now needed to protect them. But how much can earthbound spirits do? Especially against an ancient force.
The four women must come together, despite their limitations, to do what the cunning folk (the UK equivalent of shamanic healers) have always done: protect the physical world from the dangers lying in the ether.
Title: One Foot in the Ether: Whispers of the Pendle Witches
Author: Kayleigh Kavanagh
Publication Date: September 29, 2025
Pages: 400
Genre: Historical Paranormal Fantasy
Formats: Kindle
Demdike and Chattox, famed witches of Pendle Forest, might be dead, but they’re not gone. Bound to their bloodline, they’ve spent the past two and a half centuries watching over their descendants, waiting for when they’ll be needed.
When 14 year old Yana comes into her psychic abilities and inherits the ‘eyes of the Chattox family’, she can see the long-dead witches, as well as an encroaching evil. But even with this foreknowledge, she’s trapped by marriage interviews and being unable to see her own future, and more importantly, whoever her future husband will be.
Demdike’s healing gifts are alive and working in Claire, a mid-30s midwife well renowned for her skills and holding her tongue. The Secrets of Pendle are safe with her and her midwives. However, when surgeons looking to make standardisation the norm encroach on her territory, she soon realises how, even a respected woman is vulnerable in a patriarchal system.
The two descendants must come together to protect the ones they love from an ancient evil, all whilst balancing their lives and the cruelties of being a woman in a man’s world. Set in late 1800s NW England, this book has all the elements of the area: strong, hardy people, atmospheric horror and days as unpredictable as the weather.
One Foot in the Ether: Whispers of the Pendle Witches is available at Amazon.
Kayleigh Kavanagh is a disabled writer from the North-West of England. Growing up in the area, she learnt a lot about the Pendle Witches and launched her debut novel around their life story. Her main writing genres are fantasy and romance, but she loves stories in all formats and genres. Kayleigh hopes to one day be able to share the many ideas dancing around in her head with the world.
Her latest book is the historical fantasy, One Foot in the Ether: Whispers of the Pendle Witches.
You can visit her on Facebook, Instagram, Goodreads and Tiktok.
