Winifred Sanderson

"Well, younger ... But it's a start!"

- Winfred, while celebrating with her sisters in their renewed youth.

Winifred "Winnie" Sanderson is the eldest of The Sanderson Sisters, consisting of her, Mary, and Sarah Sanderson. She appears in the 1993 Disney film Hocus Pocus as the primary antagonist.

Assisted by her sisters, in 1693 she stole the life force of a young girl to become young again, and turned her brother Thackery into an immortal cat when he attempted to save her.

Soon later, the people of Salem (where the story takes place) mob and hang the sisters, and before they die, Winifred lays a curse so that in 300 years, a virgin will return them to the living, and then, the lives of every child in Salem will be imperiled.

Curiously, only half of that dark prophecy comes true. Exactly 300 years later, on Halloween night, Max Dennison fulfills that half by sneaking into the old cottage and lighting the Black Flame Candle -- made from the fat of a hangman, able to raise the dead till sunfise the next day -- and Winnie and her sisters appear at the door of the cottage.

Long story short, with the help of his sister Dani, his crush, Allison, Winnie's former lover William, and Thackery, Max stalls the witches from taking the lives of children until sunrise, when the Black Flame Candle runs down, and Winnie and her sisters turn to dust.

Homely yet vain, it is likely that the root of her evil was her insecurities from being so ugly. When she discovered that her lover "Billie" was cheating on her with her sister, Sarah, she poisoned him and sewed his mouth shut. It is therefore implied that she turned to the black arts in order to acheive beauty. Witchcraft, however, was also hereditary; when her sisters go to pieces at their confusion at modern Halloween, Winnie scolds them with "if Mother could see us now", and when they 'think soothing thoughts' in order to collect themselves, Mary mentions 'Mummy's scorpion pie'.

Though psychotic, Winnie also has a noticeable motherly side, apparent mainly in her loving attitude towards her spell book (a gift from the Devil himself, and bound with human skin).