Witch Windows in Vermont: Meaning, Legend and Why They Are Slanted
What Vermont's slanted witch windows are, what the witch and coffin legends say, and the plain carpentry reason builders give for the tilt.
Drive the back roads of northern Vermont and sooner or later a farmhouse looks back at you with one window cocked sideways, as if the carpenter had been drinking. This guide explains what these witch windows are, what the legend says, what builders and architectural historians say, and how to find one. It does not claim that Vermonters built them out of fear of witches, because there is no evidence that they did.
Contents
A witch window is a full-size window set at a slant, turned about 45 degrees, in the gable end of a house, squeezed into the narrow strip of wall between two roof lines. They are found almost only in Vermont, mostly on nineteenth-century farmhouses. Folklore says the tilt stops witches, who cannot fly a broomstick through a crooked opening; another story calls them coffin windows. The explanation builders give is practical: a tilted standard sash was the cheapest way to bring light and air into an upstairs room when an addition left no space for an upright window. No record shows that anyone built them against witches.
Witch windows are standard sash windows set diagonally in the gable end, found almost exclusively in Vermont on nineteenth-century farmhouses.
Source/tradition: Vermont Division for Historic Preservation, A Guide to Vermont Architecture, 1996; Nash 2003
Builders explain the tilt as the cheapest way to fit a full-size window into the wall left beside an addition.
Source/tradition: Nash, Renovating Old Houses, 2003; Noyes, Vermont Public Radio, 2017
The Salem witch trials took place in 1692, long before these farmhouses were built.
Source/tradition: Standard historical record
A witch cannot fly a broomstick through a tilted window.
Source/tradition: Vermont folklore; no early written source
Coffins were carried out of upstairs rooms through the slanted window.
Source/tradition: Local tradition; regarded as impractical by builders
People place stones, bells or glass on windowsills as a personal marker for the opening.
Source/tradition: Contemporary practice
A tilted window or an object on the sill keeps witches or harm out of a house.
Source/tradition: No evidence
VERIFIED = verifiable in scientific or official sources · TRADITIONAL = historically or culturally recorded · LIVED PRACTICE = widely practiced, experiential knowledge · NOT PROVEN = spiritual interpretation, not scientifically established.
Quick answer
A witch window is a full-size window set at a slant, turned about 45 degrees, in the gable end of a house, squeezed into the narrow strip of wall between two roof lines. They are found almost only in Vermont, mostly on nineteenth-century farmhouses. Folklore says the tilt stops witches, who cannot fly a broomstick through a crooked opening; another story calls them coffin windows. The explanation builders give is practical: a tilted standard sash was the cheapest way to bring light and air into an upstairs room when an addition left no space for an upright window. No record shows that anyone built them against witches.
What a witch window is
A witch window is an ordinary window in an unusual position. Take a standard double-hung sash, the tall rectangle with two sliding panes found on any old American house. Rotate it roughly 45 degrees so that its long side runs parallel to the slope of the roof. Set it into the gable-end wall of the upper floor. That is all.
The window is not specially made. It has the same frame, the same panes and the same hardware as its upright neighbors downstairs. Only the angle is odd, and the angle is enough to make people stop the car.
The same window goes by several names: Vermont window, coffin window, sideways window and lazy window. Each name carries its own explanation, and only one of the explanations is likely to be true.
Where you find them
Witch windows are a regional signature. They occur almost exclusively in Vermont, most densely in the central and northern parts of the state, with scattered examples just across the borders in New Hampshire and beyond. The houses that carry them are mainly farmhouses of the nineteenth century.
The typical setting is the classic New England connected farm: a main house with a lower wing or kitchen ell built on to one side. Where the roof of the wing meets the taller gable wall of the main house, a narrow, slanting strip of wall is left over. The witch window sits in that strip.
Vermonters are fond of them. The windows appear on postcards and in local reporting, and the state's historic preservation literature treats them as a characteristic vernacular detail.
The legend: witches cannot fly through a tilted window
The story that gave the window its best-known name is short: a witch cannot fly her broomstick through a tilted window. Build one crooked window into the upper story and the house is safe from that direction.
It is a charming piece of logic and it falls apart at once, as Vermonters cheerfully point out. The upright windows on the same wall remain perfectly flyable. So does the chimney. Authors who have looked into the matter, such as the builder George Nash in Renovating Old Houses (2003), conclude that the tale was probably never taken seriously. It has the tone of a joke told to summer visitors.
There is also a problem of dates. New England's witch trials belong to the seventeenth century, with Salem in 1692. The farmhouses with slanted windows were built a century and a half later, in a state that never held a witch trial of that kind. By then witchcraft was a subject for stories, not for building codes.
The coffin window story
The second name, coffin window, comes with a different story. Old farmhouse stairs are steep and narrow, with tight turns. If someone died in an upstairs bedroom, the tale goes, it was easier to slide the coffin out through the slanted window and down the roof of the wing than to wrestle it around the staircase.
This sounds more practical than witches, and it is still doubtful. Carrying a loaded coffin through a tilted window onto a pitched roof is harder and more dangerous than carrying a body downstairs and placing it in a coffin there, which is what families did. A competing version says the name simply comes from the look of the thing: a long box lying at an angle on the wall.
Either way, the coffin story tells us something true about these houses. Death happened at home, the dead were laid out in the parlor, and people were used to thinking about how to get a body through a building.
The carpenter's answer: why they are really slanted
Ask a carpenter and the mystery lasts about a minute. The slanted window is a cheap, sensible solution to a space problem.
When a wing is added to a story-and-a-half house, its roof covers most of the gable wall. The upstairs room behind that wall loses its window, or never had room for one. What remains is a strip of wall too narrow for an upright sash but long enough, measured on the diagonal, for a full-size one.
The alternatives were worse. A dormer cut into the roof costs far more in labor and material and is a classic source of leaks under Vermont snow. A custom window made to fit the odd space was expensive when a standard sash could be bought or reused from another part of the house. A small fixed pane gave little light and no ventilation.
Turning a standard window on its side solved all of it: maximum glass, a sash that still opens, no special order, no hole in the roof. On a farm that counted every dollar, that settled the matter. A further suggestion, that the high corner lets hot air escape in summer, is sometimes added and is less convincing.
Three explanations compared
| Explanation | What it says | How well it holds |
|---|---|---|
| Witch window | Witches cannot fly a broom through a tilted opening | Folklore; the other windows stay open, and the houses postdate the witch trials |
| Coffin window | Coffins were passed out through it over the wing roof | Unlikely; harder than using the stairs. The name may describe the shape |
| Practical window | A standard sash turned to fit the leftover wall next to an addition | Supported by builders and preservation writers; fits where the windows actually occur |
Temple Tip
The carpenter's answer does not make the legend worthless. Thresholds and windows are where people have always placed their small protections. A house can have a sensible reason for its crooked window and a good story about it at the same time; just keep track of which is which.
How old is the name?
Nobody knows who first said witch window. The term is not found in the standard older surveys of Vermont building, and people who grew up in the state in the mid-twentieth century often remember other names, such as coffin window or simply the crooked window.
When Vermont Public Radio's listener-question program Brave Little State looked into the windows in 2017, reporter Amy Kolb Noyes found the same pattern that turns up in most local coverage: plenty of affection, a firm practical explanation from builders and preservationists, and no document tying the windows to any belief about witches.
The likeliest reading is that the witch name is recent, spread by newspapers, tourism and the internet because it is the most fun to repeat. Folklorists have a term for explanations invented after the fact for something whose real reason has been forgotten: an etiological legend. The witch window is a good small example.
Other ways houses were said to stop witches
The legend borrows from customs that really existed. In early modern England and in colonial America, people did protect the openings of houses against witchcraft, and some of the evidence survives in the walls.
Concealed objects. Old shoes hidden near chimneys and in walls, and stoneware “witch bottles” filled with pins and buried under hearths or thresholds, have been recovered from houses on both sides of the Atlantic.
Scratched and scorched marks. Daisy-wheel patterns and deliberate burn marks appear near doors, windows and fireplaces in old timber buildings.
Iron and noise. Horseshoes over doors and bells on the door belong to the same family.
Glass. The witch ball, a glass sphere hung in a window, is said to catch or dazzle whatever tries to enter.
What these have in common is that they are small, cheap and added to a house. None involves rebuilding a wall. That is one more reason to doubt that anyone framed a window at an angle for magical purposes. Homely seasonal charms such as hedge apples on the windowsill show how the instinct continues.
How to spot one on a Vermont trip
Finding a witch window is a pleasant excuse for a slow drive.
Go north and central. The Northeast Kingdom and the hill towns of central Vermont have the most. Craftsbury is often named as a place where several can be seen within a short distance.
Look at the joins. Scan the upper wall of the main house just above where a lower wing or shed roof meets it. That is the only place a witch window makes sense.
Choose your season. After the leaves fall, from late October, farmhouses stand clear of their trees and the windows are easy to pick out.
Stay on the road. These are private homes. Photograph from the public way, do not walk onto the property, and do not point a long lens into a bedroom window, tilted or not.
Quiz: what belongs on your windowsill?
You probably cannot rebuild your gable. Four questions about the windows you have and what you would put there.
Voices from practice
Vermonters quoted in local reporting commonly describe the windows with amusement and pride, and people who live behind one tend to mention the practical side first: the room would be dark without it.
Practitioners who keep objects on their windowsills often report that the value lies in the habit. Opening the window, dusting the sill and setting the piece back is described as a small weekly check on the state of the house.
What we don't promise
We don't promise that a tilted window, a stone on a sill or any object keeps anything out of a house. The witch explanation is a legend, and we have found no record of a Vermont builder who meant it.
We also don't claim special powers for selenite. It is a soft, attractive form of gypsum that many people like to keep near a window. What it does there is look good and remind you of an intention you set yourself.
Practically: how to work with this
The useful part of the legend is the attention it pays to openings. That part can be kept without believing in broomsticks.
- Start with the real window. Clean the glass and the sill and check that it opens and locks. A window that works is the first protection.
- Pick one object. A stone, a bell, a small jar. One piece per window keeps the idea clear.
- Mind the material. Selenite must stay dry, so keep it away from condensation and open sashes in rain. Some colored crystals fade in direct sun.
- Give it a sentence. Decide what the marker stands for, such as rest in a bedroom or welcome at the front.
- Tend it. Dust and reset it when you clean. A neglected charm is clutter.
- Go and see the original. If you travel through Vermont, look for a witch window and enjoy both the story and the joinery.
From our shelf
Selenite Stick, 3 in.
You cannot tilt your windows, but you can do what people have always done with them: put something on the sill. A small stick of white selenite catches the daylight and is a common choice for windowsills among practitioners who like a visible marker at each opening. It is a piece of gypsum; keep it dry, since selenite dissolves in water. Currently $4.95.
More in selenite and entryway and front door.
Frequently asked questions
What is a witch window?
A full-size window installed at an angle of about 45 degrees in the gable end of a house, in the narrow wall space between two roof lines. They are typical of nineteenth-century Vermont farmhouses.
Why are witch windows slanted?
Because a standard window turned on the diagonal fits into a strip of wall that is too narrow for an upright one. It was cheaper than building a dormer or ordering a custom window.
Do witch windows really keep witches out?
No. The saying that witches cannot fly a broomstick through a tilted window is folklore, and there is no evidence that the windows were built for that purpose.
Why are they also called coffin windows?
One story says coffins were passed out through them from upstairs rooms; another says the slanted frame looks like a coffin. Neither is documented, and the first is impractical.
Are witch windows only found in Vermont?
Almost. The great majority are in central and northern Vermont, with a few in neighboring parts of New England.
Where can I see a witch window?
On back roads in central Vermont and the Northeast Kingdom; the Craftsbury area is often recommended. View them from the public road, since the houses are private homes.
Sources & further reading
- Nash, George. Renovating Old Houses: Bringing New Life to Vintage Homes. Taunton Press, 2003.
- Noyes, Amy Kolb. What's the history of Vermont's ‘witch windows’? Brave Little State, Vermont Public Radio, July 2017.
- Vermont Division for Historic Preservation. A Guide to Vermont Architecture. 1996.
- Hubka, Thomas C. Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England. University Press of New England, 1984.
- Congdon, Herbert Wheaton. Old Vermont Houses: 1763–1850. 1940.
- Eddy, Kathryn. Building Blocks: Exploring Witch Windows. Barre Montpelier Times Argus, July 2012.
- Atlas Obscura. Witch Windows, Craftsbury, Vermont (place entry).
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