A SCOTTISH town is to mark Halloween by granting official legal pardons to 81 supposed witches executed during a frenzy of religious fervour about 400 years ago.

Descendants of some of the women put to death in Prestonpans, just east of Edinburgh, will attend a ceremony to mark the witch hunts in the town during the late 16th and 17th centuries.

"It's too late to apologise, but it's a sort of symbolic recognition that these people were put to death by hysterical ignorance and paranoia."