@Sheril It could be the case but as the editor of the article states:

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to acknowledge that it isn’t definitively known whether alewives inspired some of the popular iconography associated with witches today...

The history of witches in Europe is not homogeneous i.e. people in different counties had very different views negative and positive e.g. Germany, bad for those accused but Hungary had no witch trials.