Witches Are Having a Cultural Moment. Some States Are Taking Up Their Cause.

It was February 1698, and disease was sweeping through Leonardtown, a small village in southern Maryland. Locals knew whom to blame: They set fire to the hut of Moll Dyer, a single woman living alone on the edge of town who had been deemed a witch.

She escaped the enraged citizens, only to die in the frozen wilderness. Her body was found clinging to a rock, on which her knees and hands supposedly left impressions.

Ms. Dyer, arguably, inspired one of the most famous fictional witches in American pop culture: the one at the center of the 1999 horror film “The Blair Witch Project.” Although the film never explicitly mentioned Ms. Dyer’s fate, it is widely believed to have been based on her story. Ingeniously marketed as found footage, the hit film also endowed Maryland with a haunted reputation.

Ms. Dyer is one of seven people who were tried and convicted of witchcraft in Maryland in the 17th and 18th centuries. Only one was executed: Rebecca Fowler, a widow who was hanged in 1685 after a servant accused her of witchcraft. But all had their reputations sullied for centuries.

Now, the Maryland delegate Heather A. Bagnall, who represents a patch of the state north of Annapolis, has introduced a resolution in the general assembly to exonerate them all. The proposed resolution, which had an initial committee hearing on March 10, has been criticized as out of step with Marylanders’ priorities, but Ms. Bagnall bristled at any suggestion that the measure was frivolous. In an interview, she said she was partly motivated by the demise of Roe v. Wade, which was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2022, and by the anti-abortion measures passed in states like Texas.

“I’ve got a real appetite for it, and the more I talk about it, the more people realize, ‘No, this is serious,’” Ms. Bagnall said. “This is not just like a flight of fancy. It’s relevant today.”