This dataset was collected from accounts of witchcraft accusations that took place in 44 Bantu societies from sub-Saharan Africa. The accusations are historic. Source materials were originally identified from societies listed in the Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock 1967), a large cross-cultural database. These were acquired from the website d-place.org (Kirby et al. 2016).The dataset includes information on the sex of the accused witch and their relationship to their accusers and purported victims. There are also variables taken from the Ethnographic Atlas that were amended for the analysis by combining categories. These include information on post-marital residence patterns (where couples live after marriage) and levels of polygamous marriage.