Also called gazing ball, friendship ball, spirit ball
A hollow glass sphere, often colored or silvered and sometimes filled with glass threads, hung in a window to catch, dazzle or trap evil spirits and ill wishes before they enter the house.
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Take care: A clear glass sphere can focus sunlight like a magnifying glass and has started fires; hang it away from curtains, paper and wood, or choose a colored or silvered ball. Use a hook rated for the weight so it cannot fall and shatter.
Silvered witch balls worked as convex mirrors, reflecting the whole room. One explanation was that a witch could not bear to see her own reflection, another that the ball drew off the evil eye. Garden gazing balls on pedestals descend from these silvered balls.
Uses: silvered glass ball
In the Ozarks the same name meant something very different: a small ball of hair said to be rolled by a witch and thrown to harm a victim. It is a name collision rather than a variant of the glass charm, and it is included only so readers do not confuse the two.
Hollow glass balls hung in English cottage windows from the 18th century onward. Their colors and shine were said to lure evil spirits, which were then caught in the glass strands inside, and some explanations held that witches could not bear their own reflection. Sussex is often named as a stronghold of the custom, and the balls later travelled to New England, where they remain popular in coastal towns. Glassworks such as those at Nailsea in Somerset made colored and striped glass in this period.
By the 19th century witch balls were as much decoration as charm, and silvered versions became the garden gazing balls of Victorian and American yards. Folklorists including Gerald Gardner, in 1942, and Roman Willey, in 1970, wrote about them. Some sources claim an earlier 17th-century origin, but the surviving balls themselves are mostly 18th and 19th century, so the earlier date is uncertain.
A pebble with a natural hole worn through it, hung by a cord over a bed, a door or a stable to keep away nightmares, witches and bad luck.
A tree or post hung with glass bottles, traditionally cobalt blue, set in a yard in the American South so that wandering or harmful spirits are drawn into the bottles, trapped, and burned away by morning sun.
A blue glass eye bead hung in the home or worn on the body so that envious or admiring looks are caught and reflected before they can do harm.
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