A long time ago, women were burned, hung, drowned and tortured for even just being suspected of being a witch because at the time, that meant that she had made a deal with the devil. The women were often depicted as gross horrors who no longer even resembled humans, but only when talked about later on. In essence, even when paintings were made about such things, the women still looked entirely normal, not at all like they were described. What this indicated was that the horrors of such people were often embellished to add a sense of disgust to the poor woman and make her killing seemed justified.