Were the burning times as bad as they sound?

Everyone's heard about the times when 'Witches' could legally be executed, but was it actually as bad as it sounds? Some claims state that around 9 million! People were killed in the names of 'Witch Hunts' although the accuracy of this number some claim is not correct, some scholars estimate the executions to around 200,000.

It’s said that once the professional witch hunters emerged, people whose job was to actually seek out witches in communities, bumped up the execution numbers on their records. It’s claimed this was done to keep the population afraid of witches, it’s a much more frightening to number witches in a mass number, then maybe one or two harmless women in a small town. Because the records are only from witch hunters people can only guess to the correct number of people executed, missing document and records and the fact there is a lot of misinformation significantly lowers the number.

References
1. About.com (N/A) Were the Burning Times as Bad as They Sound? Retrieved from http://paganwiccan.about.com/od/wiccanpaganhistory/i/Burning_Times.htm