Witches



The Witches are humanoid Monsters kept in the Facility. They are listed on the Whiteboard and the Operations department bets on them. Only one Witch can be seen throughout the System Purge.

Physical Descriptions and Attributes
Only a single Witch can be seen during the film. She appears as an ugly, hag-like woman with long white hair, pale skin, and black eyes and lips. She wears a long, tattered black dress and cloak, and has long black fingernails. Witches have taken on numerous appearances, depending on stories, folklore, media, etc. This witch in particular resembles the stereotypical old hag appearance. Since we only see the Witch very briefly throughout the film, we only know little about her behavior and powers. As her name implies, she possesses magical abilities and dark magic, able to cast spells and manifest her magic into the physical world however she pleases. The Witch might also use magic to make herself immortal to a degree, as telling by her elderly appearance and old, tattered clothes, she could be from a different time, but this is not confirmed.

The origins of this Witch and her life before being captured by the Facility are unknown. Based on the scene where she is released during the Purge, we know that she has the ability to steal the souls of living humans. This is proven when, her elevator door is opened. The Witch flies out (another ability) and latches on to a security guard. As he attempts to break free of her, a neon blue, glowing aura of the guard is extracted from his body, resembling himself. The Witch flies away with it as the guard's body falls to the floor.

Even though the Witches is plural, only one Witch appears during the entire film. Its possible that more witches were created and filmed to have screen time, but were scrapped due to time or budget.

The item that summons the Witches to the Cabin is unknown. However, it could be something obvious, such as a book of shadows, a broomstick, cauldron, etc.

Appearances
The first appearance of the Witch is in her cube prison; where she floats around awaiting to be released. The Witch is then released during the first wave of the Purge. As mentioned above, she attacks a security guard, and steals his soul which appears as a bright blue aura and then flies away out of the Elevator Lobby. The Witch is not seen at any other time during the film after this. She is also seen in the visual companion.



Inspiration
Witches have been a staple character in horror stories and Halloween folklore for several years with the main iconic image going back as far as the Grimm's Fairy Tales of the 1800s, such as "Hansel and Gretel," a fairy tale loosely based on the Slavic tale of Baba Yaga. The origins of witches actually date back to pagan folk magic of from Ancient Europe, later distorted and corrupted by the later Christian Church erroneously distorting it into a form of devil worship. Witchcraft is still an active religion today under the New Age movement.



The stereotypical witch of legend is generally depicted as an ugly old woman having long white, green or blue hair and wearing long black dresses or cloaks and a conical hat with a brim, a holdover from the witch persecution of the Middle Ages. Among their powers, witches were believed to cast spells and curses, turn themselves and others into animals and to fly through the air on a magic broomstick. They were also accompanied by animal familiars such as cats or ravens.



The witch seen on the movie was very likely based on Haggis from Pumpkinhead, or the Evil Queen's hag form from the Disney animated movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.