Oldham's Suranne Jones is in search of supernatural stories about witches and witch trials in a spine-tingling show to air for the first time on Sunday.

The Oldham Theatre Workshop alumna is to appear in Suranne Jones: Investigating Witch Trials on Channel 4 this weekend and next weekend.

In the first episode this weekend the actor, who is famous for roles including Anne Lister in Gentleman Jack and Gemma Foster in Doctor Foster, starts the search for supernatural stories in Pendle, Lancashire, the scene of the Pendle Witch Trials of 1612.

Then she switches the North of England for the South of Germany and the scene of the Bamberg Witch Trials a few years later.

Ever since she spent her childhood summers at the Headland Hotel in Cornwall – the location for 1990 film The Witches which was based on Roald Dahl’s classic children’s book – she has become obsessed with all things supernatural.

Viewers see her striding along the lonely path down which these dirt-poor souls would have been shoved, dragged and chivvied to detention in an unlit underground cell, and then to their deaths, by hanging.

In the second episode next weekend she is taken to the site of the most famous, or infamous, witch trial in all of history in Salem, Massachusetts.

(Image: PA)

All the while she asks why there were accusations of witchcraft and what is the significance of these accusations of witchcraft in the present day.

Recently, in an interview with The Telegraph, she said: "The Pendle Witch Trials are a part of my history. They are a part of women's history, and I want people to think of something else when they hear the word ‘witch hunt’ applied to a politician, or the word ‘witch’ applied to a woman in the public eye who fails to conform."

Suranne Jones: Investigating Witch Trials is on Channel 4 this Sunday and next Sunday.

This article was written by Jack Tooth. To contact him, email jack.tooth@newsquest.co.uk or follow @JTRTooth on Twitter.