What follows is the first part of an account given by a late sixteenth-century cloth merchant who claimed to have witnessed a witches' sabbath in southern Germany:
While passing the night at a boarding house I was forced to take my evening meal in the tavern, where there worked a trio of most comely young serving wenches: one was blonde, one a brunette, and one a redhead. They were most immodestly dressed and lascivious in manner, and I took them at first for no more than common prostitutes. But then as I went to relieve myself behind the tavern, I saw them conversing with a beautiful young nun, with whom they exchanged certain cryptic hand signals and spoke several phrases in Latin, which seemed most strange.
I was restless that evening, and sat up in my room looking out at the town and the dark forest beyond from my window, when I saw the three wenches venturing forth from the tavern into the darkness. Seizing my cloak, I stealthily made my way downstairs and made to follow them. They took with them a candle lantern, and I followed their light as they took a narrow cattle path into the forest and up the hillside.
At length they came to a clearing, where they extinguished their lantern, and in the light of the moon I watched them cast aside their clothing until they stood naked and shameless as Eve in the Garden. I followed their pale, shapely forms as they climbed yet a little higher, and reached at length another clearing before a low cliff, where there awaited them the nun I had seen earlier, alongside a crackling fire.
The nun greeted the wenches in a strange tongue, and she stripped herself as well, shamelessly revealing her gorgeous, consecrated body, and her hair, which was black as the night around her. She produced a flask from among her things, from which she poured a greasy unguent, with which the nun and the wenches proceeded to smear one another's luscious young bodies, their hands roving freely over one another's juicy breasts and creamy thighs, until their lovely forms shone and glistened in the firelight.