Powerful bloodlines tied by Fate,
who can’t be free even in death...
One Foot in the Ether: Whispers of the Pendle Witches by Kayleigh Kavanagh
Published September 29, 2025 by Oriana Neomar
Historical/Paranormal/Fantasy
Format: Kindle, 400 pages
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.
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Excerpt
She hadn’t known what to expect from death. No one did. Still, none of her previous thoughts could have come close. This, and she was definitely having an atypical experience. For most souls, death was a release from the mortal coil. Complete separation from the life they’d once lived. She hadn't been so lucky.
Some parts of the system had been the same. Her soul had been scooped up. Taken somewhere. She vaguely recalled going over her life and having events explained. Gaining an understanding of the why; to the point she was no longer angry about things which had once made her furious. However, the entire encounter was now a blur.
The powers that be had done this on purpose, but the awareness lingered instinctively. Either way, she knew she'd died, gone to the other place, and then thrown back. Before they could send her along to wherever she should have gone next. There'd been an issue. A snag. One which stopped her from moving along to the happy, bliss-filled world of the nether realm. Said snag bore one name: Chattox. Even in death, her frenemy was still causing her bloody issues.
“Hey, Demdike, how’s non-life treating you?”
Demdike didn’t answer, suddenly filled with the desire to bludgeon the other woman. However, she knew from experience it would be pointless. They weren’t physical beings any longer—even if they were still tied to the physical world. Unless she was willing to destroy the other's soul, the spirit could reform. A tempting idea some days; this non-life was enough to make even the most patient saint a little homicidal. However, even in her worse moments, she wasn't willing to land the final blow.
“The same way it’s been treating me for the past two and a half hundred years,” she eventually returned. Still not looking at the other, less she finally indulged her violent impulses.
“They’re having a bake sale soon, at the local church. Gods, I miss cake.”
Demdike sighed. The sad part was she couldn’t even get rid of the other. Without Chattox, she would be entirely alone in this exhausting existence.
“Their cake isn’t anything like the one we used to have. They have more access to sugar, for starters.”
Demdike wasn’t even going to comment on the reasons why. King James I's and his ilk had done more than destroy her life. Stretching his greedy grip across the world. From the supposed lands of gold to the continent of darkness, James I's influence had impacted many. She couldn't help but feel for the poor souls stolen from these other countries. Their plights differed from the witch trials, but suffering was a universal language.
She would've liked to aid them, but she couldn't even help herself. There was no one to hear her, anyway. Well, other than Chattox, but as she was in the exact same situation. It was no different than voicing her words to the void. Except the void didn’t reply.
“Aye, I know, but it doesn’t mean I don’t miss the little pleasures. Few and far between, though they were.”
Demdike hummed. This was a conversation they’d had many times. When their new existence was mostly just the two of them, they often spoke of their past. Their past life, to be specific. A lot of it seemed funny now. Maybe it was their time in the decompression zone post life—or maybe it was simply the effect of being so removed from what they’d once been—but matters of life and death were suddenly much less dramatic and far funnier when you were already dead. Fighting over coin, linens, and food were memories they could now look back on and find humour in.
Though she also missed cake, death was a lot simpler. Mostly. There was no fighting for survival when you simply just were. No hunger to push you forward or pain to keep you still. As much as she’d once lived with one foot in the ether, having both on death's side was much simpler. If you ignored the limited company. Or how she feared her own mind and sense of self were slowly eroding over time. As though, without a physical body, she was slowly dispersing into nothingness; it was just taking a little longer.
– Excerpted from One Foot in the Ether: Whispers of the Pendle Witches by Kayleigh Kavanagh, Kayleigh Kavanagh, 2025. Reprinted with permission.
Guest Post
The Inspiration Behind One Foot in the Ether: Whispers of the Pendle Witches
By Kayleigh Kavanagh
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.
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About the author
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
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