Shaw's parents took her back to Dr Brisbane, and by the time they arrived back in Glasgow she had begun to pull out of her mouth balls of hair she claimed had been put there by those who were afflicting her.
With Brisbane unable to provide any rational explanation for Shaw's condition her family and their local parish minister concluded that she must be possessed and being tormented by witches, a common occurrence in England and Scotland and a central element in the Salem witch trials a few years earlier.