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A student used imaging technology to peek inside without popping the cork. The bottle appears to have been made between 1790 and 1840. Image courtesy of Josephine McKenzie The mystery of a 200-year-old bottle has been solved. It turns out, it wasn’t a vessel for booze, but a “witch bottle” filled with pee and a bunch of botanicals to ward off malevolent spirits. The bottle, still intact with its original cork and filled with liquid, was unearthed at a building site in the seaside town of Cleethorpes in Lincolnshire, UK. The owner of the property passed it on to the...

To history experts, the scenario goes something like this: A Union officer stationed on enemy Southern soil drops a handful of iron nails into a bottle, adds some personal effects — clippings of his hair or fingernails, maybe some urine — corks it up and buries it near his hearth. He likely offers up a fervent prayer that he’ll survive the Civil War and return home to Pennsylvania. And the bottle of nails was his good luck charm. A century and a half later, in 2016, archaeologists excavating the remains of a Civil War outpost on a broad highway median...

A glass jug found under the median of Interstate 64 in York County is believed to be a "witch bottle" left by Union soldiers during the Civil War, according to researchers.

During the 17th century in England, someone urinated in a jar, added nail clippings, hair and pins, and buried it upside-down in Greenwich, where it was recently unearthed and identified by scientists as being the world's most complete known "witch bottle." This spell device, often meant to attract and trap negative energy, was particularly common from the 16th to the 17th centuries, so the discovery provides a unique insight into witchcraft beliefs of that period, according to a report published in the latest British Archaeology.