Eric Maple

Eric Maple (1916–1994) was an English folklorist and author known for his studies of witchcraft and folk magic in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Essex, in particular his first-hand research into the folklore surrounding the cunning men James Murrell and George Pickingill. Born in Essex to a family of Kentish ancestry, his mother was a Spiritualist medium. Having little formal education, he has been described as a "self-made man". In the early 1950s, he discovered the scholarly field…