Witchmark Haunted History

Jack Fiddler was a respected Anishinaabe leader, healer, and one of the most famous Wendigo hunters in recorded history. In 1907, after decades of protecting his community from what he believed were Wendigos, Canadian authorities arrested him and his brother Joseph for murder.

Their trial would become a collision between Indigenous belief, Canadian law, and two radically different understandings of what it meant to protect a community.

Witchmark: Haunted Histories tells the true story behind the legend.

Jack Fiddler was known as a man who could kill Wendigos. When the police came for him in 1907, they called him a murderer.

I’m Ash Westcott, and this is Witchmark: Haunted Histories. To understand what happened to Jack Fiddler, we have to return to the forests of northern Ontario, and to the presence that haunted them.