People think that fanatical anti-witchcraft people were either ignorant religious zealots or cynical men in power, but you had all sorts of people believing in this.
This Joseph Glanvill was a very educated advocate of scientific method and was at some point accused of atheism.

He even wrote a book The Vanity of Dogmatizing where he advocated for religious freedom and freedom of thought. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society for his scientific contributions.
But when it came to witchcraft he turned into a total maniac hungry for blood.

The funny thing is most people in Europe didn't believe in witchcraft at the time and persecutions were limited in scope to specific places and times. Even most people who persecuted witches knew it was nonsense but went along with it. But then you had scientists believing it.

To make it more clear, by believing in witchcraft I meant this nonsense about making people levitate and other crazy imaginary malicious stuff that got innocent people persecuted. Of course people were superstitious but usually in much more mild way.