Historical Laws Against Things That Don’t Actually Exist

It’s easy to assume laws are always based on real-world problems, but history tells a different story. Across centuries, people have passed legislation against things that turned out not to be real at all. Whether it was down to fear, misunderstanding, superstition, or simply a desire to control the unknown, lawmakers have occasionally gone to great lengths to outlaw things that never actually existed. These laws, while strange to us now, offer a fascinating glimpse into the fears and beliefs of earlier times.

Witchcraft was criminalised for centuries.

One of the most infamous examples is Britain’s long history of anti-witchcraft laws. The Witchcraft Act of 1542, passed during the reign of Henry VIII, made it a capital offence to use witchcraft to harm people or property. Later laws under Elizabeth I and James I expanded the definitions, allowing for trials and executions based on little more than suspicion or rumour. But there was no evidence that the witches being targeted had any actual powers. The laws were based on a belief in supernatural forces, not observable facts.

Even as late as 1735, the Witchcraft Act of that year still made it illegal to claim magical powers or to accuse someone else of witchcraft. Ironically, by then the law had changed. Rather than punishing people for being witches, it punished them for pretending to be. Either way, the entire premise was built on the assumption that such powers existed, even when there was no proof.

Laws against werewolves and shape-shifters appeared in Europe.

In parts of Europe during the Middle Ages, belief in werewolves was taken seriously enough to be written into law. In 16th-century France, people were actually put on trial for being werewolves. The most famous case, that of Gilles Garnier, saw a man executed for allegedly transforming into a wolf and killing children. The court proceedings treated the accusation as plausible, even though no evidence was ever presented that he could shape-shift.

These laws reflected widespread folklore, where tales of men turning into beasts were passed down as fact. They weren’t based on any real sightings or scientific understanding, just fear and myth. Still, courts handed out sentences based on these stories, and lives were lost because of it.

Blasphemy laws targeted imaginary threats to religion.

Blasphemy laws have existed in many countries, including Britain, and often targeted ideas or speech deemed offensive to religious sensibilities. While they were framed as protecting public morality or divine order, they were essentially used to criminalise something that couldn’t be physically harmed: God’s reputation or divine authority.

In Britain, blasphemy laws were enforced for centuries, with prosecutions well into the 19th century. The last successful blasphemy prosecution in the UK was in 1977. The offence was finally abolished in England and Wales in 2008. These laws were often vague, open to interpretation, and grounded in a belief system rather than any measurable harm.

Early anti-vampire laws appeared in Eastern Europe.

During outbreaks of plague and unexplained deaths, some Eastern European communities passed informal laws or ordinances against vampires. In 18th-century Serbia, local officials sanctioned the staking of corpses and the exhumation of graves to stop vampire attacks. One case in 1725 even prompted a visit from Austrian officials, who documented the rituals and supported the actions.

None of the “vampires” targeted had ever risen from their graves. These actions were based on folklore, fear, and a lack of medical knowledge. But for those who believed in it, the threat felt real enough to justify legal responses, even when the enemy didn’t exist.

Anti-sedition laws were used against invisible conspiracies.

While sedition laws are real and often involve actual political dissent, they’ve also been used to chase after nonexistent conspiracies. In the 18th and 19th centuries, British authorities sometimes passed sweeping laws against imagined revolutionary plots or panics about unrest that never materialised. This was especially true during times of social upheaval, when the government feared uprisings inspired by the French or American revolutions.

In many cases, the targets of these laws weren’t involved in any concrete plans—they were just suspected of sympathies or spreading ideas. The laws were used to silence imagined threats, and history has shown that many of these fears were wildly overstated.

The Popish Plot triggered laws against a fabricated conspiracy.

In the late 1670s, Titus Oates claimed there was a Catholic plot to assassinate King Charles II and install a Catholic monarch. This entirely fabricated story sparked widespread panic. Parliament responded with new laws restricting Catholics from holding public office and practising openly. Dozens of innocent people were arrested, and at least 15 were executed.

Oates was eventually discredited, but not before the fake conspiracy had changed laws and stoked fear throughout the country. It’s one of the clearest examples in British history of a set of laws being introduced in response to something that wasn’t remotely true.

The 19th-century panic over mesmerism led to proposed restrictions.

Mesmerism, the belief that people could be put into trances and controlled through a mysterious magnetic force, caused considerable alarm in Victorian Britain. Though mesmerists had their defenders, many saw it as dangerous pseudoscience. Some local authorities attempted to pass bylaws limiting public demonstrations of mesmerism, particularly involving women, citing fears of moral corruption or manipulation.

Scientific studies eventually dismissed mesmerism as having no measurable basis, and the panic died down. But for a brief time, lawmakers genuinely considered banning something that didn’t work in the way people feared it did, if it worked at all.

Seances and spiritual fraud were treated like supernatural crime.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the rise of spiritualism led to laws targeting fraudulent mediums. The Witchcraft Act of 1735, oddly enough, was still being used to prosecute spiritualists well into the 20th century. In 1944, medium Helen Duncan was famously tried under this act for allegedly revealing classified information from a dead sailor’s spirit during a seance.

Though she was clearly performing a kind of theatre, the legal system treated her claims as potentially dangerous. Rather than accepting that she had no real powers, the court focused on the possibility that she did. The line between theatrical fraud and actual belief was blurred in the eyes of the law.

Laws against moral contamination blurred fiction and fact.

Throughout history, there have been periodic panics about fictional works “corrupting” people, particularly young people. In 19th-century Britain, there were moral campaigns against “penny dreadfuls,” sensational stories often involving crime or the supernatural. Though not officially banned, publishers and authors were targeted under obscenity laws.

These stories didn’t cause crime, but they were accused of promoting it. Lawmakers acted as though fiction itself had the power to warp minds. Similar fears resurfaced with films, music, and eventually video games, but the earliest examples show how quickly laws can respond to imagined dangers when emotions run high.

Imaginary threats still shape legal thinking.

These examples might seem distant and bizarre, but they show a pattern that still crops up today. Laws aren’t always written with hard evidence in mind. Sometimes, they’re created to calm public fears, respond to rumours, or uphold ideas that can’t actually be measured. When people feel scared or uncertain, imaginary threats can feel real enough to legislate.

Understanding the laws of the past, even the strangest ones, can tell us a lot about the cultural anxieties of the time. Plus, they remind us to be cautious when fear starts driving the rules.