Witchcraft: Its Power in the World Today is a book by William Buehler Seabrook which was published in 1940. It details the author's views on psychology, parapsychology and the occult, and contains information about the author's meetings with a number of famous people. Throughout his writing career, Seabrook had been fascinated with the strange, from Dervish mystics (Adventures in Arabia) to Haitian zombies (Magic Island). Witchcraft contains Seabrook’s look back at his earlier first-hand experiences. He writes in the foreword that the book will be “a disappointment to all who believe in the supernatural.” He concludes that although he had searched the world for the supernatural, on reflection he had to infer that he had seen nothing inexplicable by science. Nevertheless, he remained fascinated by the possibilities of human psychology and parapsychology. The book is divided into four sections, including a long appendix. Part One: The Witch and the Doll This section contains anecdotes concerning the use of voodoo dolls (more properly, poppets) to cause illness and death, with examples taken from the Ivory Coast, France, and the UK. The author is of the opinion that the dolls work through the power of suggestion, and that even in cases of conscious scepticism unconscious belief might have an effect. The author also wrote that he had trained as a witchdoctor in a Malinke town near Bassam. The section also includes the claim that Seabrook's ancestor, Bishop Peter Boehler, had been a practitioner of black magic. Part Two: The Vampire and the Werewolf Section two reviews the case of Countess Elizabeth Bathory, a noblewoman accused of murder and sadistic practices. It also recounts the case of a woman known to Seabrook who felt an urge to drink blood due to pernicious anaemia, and a couple of incidents from Africa that showed a belief in humans turning into animals. He also recounts an incident involving his friend, an occultist named John Bannister, who helped a young Russian woman who had memories of being a wolf. Part Three: White Magic, Professor Rhine, the Supernormal, and Justine In this section, the author puts forward his theory that sense deprivation may encourage psychic abilities, and he criticises the work of parapsychologist J.B. Rhine for failing to consider this. While Seabrook was generally sceptical of such abilities, he was perplexed by some incidents he recorded, and suggests that the theories about time and space of Albert Einstein