After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Salem Witch Trials: Hysteria & Accusations

Episode Date: August 19, 2024

First of two episodes on the Salem Witch Trials. We begin the story as accusations are made throughout the town of Salem and a climate of fear is palpable. Maddy Pelling takes Anthony Delaney into the most famous witch trials of all time.Written by Maddy Pelling. Edited by Tomos Delargy. Produced by Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign here for up to 50% for 3 months using code AFTERDARKYou can take part in our listener survey here.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Canada may be known for its landscapes and friendly people, but beneath the surface lies a darker side of crime, history, and the paranormal. Since 2017, the award-winning Dark Poutine podcast has explored the shadowy corners of the Great White North and beyond, delivering chilling tales from a uniquely Canadian perspective. Hosted by Mike Brown and Matthew Stockton with over 300 episodes and fresh releases every Monday, Dark Poutine is your weekly ticket to the creepier side of Canada. Listen to Dark Poutine on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to After Dark. Now this is the first in a two-part series of one subject that has intrigued both myself and Maddie for a long time

for various different reasons. Welcome to the Salem Witch Trials. It's a deep freezing winter in Massachusetts. The year is 1691, and we're here in the settler community in Salem Village, a little way inland from the vast river that flows to the east coast of America and beyond. It's been a particularly hard season. The crops are sparse, and where they have grown, they're crooked, stunted and bent out of shape in the cold. But we're inside now, in the house of the preacher Reverend Samuel Parris. He's a difficult man, as hard as the winter outside his windows and just as stubborn. It's not him we've come to see, though. Instead, cast your attention upwards, to a bedroom on the upper floor of the house. In it, two young girls shiver as they play, their small limbs black against

a meagre fire and shadowed on the wall behind them. They're crouched, heads together, stifling giggles despite the freezing temperature. In front of them on the floorboards is a bowl of water inside of which an egg white floats. This is a Venus glass, a fortune-telling device. One of the girls thrusts her finger into the liquid, stirring so the egg begins to twist about. Both peer closer. Its shapes, they believe, will tell their futures. Is that the profile of a handsome man, a future husband, perhaps?

Is that a coffin lid? All is harmless fun, but in no time at all, a strange, sinister idea will take hold in this family. Magical thinking runs deep in this place, cut off from the world and governed by religion above all else. Over the course of the next few days, both girls will fall prey to an invisible force. They'll feel it pricking their skin, dulling their minds and distracting them from their prayers. When the preacher downstairs, father to one and uncle to the other, becomes angry, they will bark like dogs and throw his bible across the room. They will contort into terrible shapes, crawl under furniture, walk through fire and growl like wild animals. Soon, they will all

struggle to contain that which is haunting them, sparking instead one of the most infamous events in American history. Hello and welcome back to After Dark. Now, as I said at the opening, this is part one of a two-part series where we are exploring the Salem witch trials. My name is Anthony. And I'm Maddie. And this is one of my favourite topics, actually, for many different reasons. Maddie was describing some of the magical thinking there in the opening, and I think that's so relevant. And one of the ways in which I came to this subject first, and Maddy, I presume it's the same for you, but what has taken over for me as I've studied history more is the human element.

And we're going to get into all of that over the next two episodes. But I want to start because it is such an evocative image, the image of Salem Village. So Maddie, when you think of Salem Village, what do you think of? Who do you think of? What are the images that come to mind? Well, we're both smiling because you can see on the notes that I've written in big letters, Disney's Hocus Pocus. Oh my god, I love that movie so much. Iconic. Do you know what? That is probably one of the films that got me into history, the opening scene of that that is set in the 17th century, and there's the young girl who's magicked from her home by witches and then her brother has to rescue her and oh my gosh, I fancied him so much as a young girl, like, it's actually impossible to articulate.

that's probably the way in which this story has been most visible in my understanding of this. But you know, Talking Cats and Sarah Jessica Parker aside, it is obviously an incredibly famous case. It's the defining witch trial in America. It's surprisingly late in terms of the European witch trials, and we can talk about that in a little while. But how did you come to know about this? Have you been to Salem? No, and if you are from the Salem or Danvers tourist board and you're listening to this and you'd like After Dark to come, then please reach out. Because this is I think this is both of our dreams, right? Like we really, really, really want to get to Salem at some point. I'm actually leaving the podcast right now to go get my passport. Goodbye. Salem at some point. I'm actually leaving the podcast right now to go get my passport. Goodbye! Just to go.

I will be now improvising all of this episode because it's magic. It is such an evocative place. Place in historical study is so important and there are fewer places that can evoke such powerful imagery, thoughts, opinions, as Salem can. How I came to it first, do you know? I probably don't know. Probably Hocus Pocus as well, actually. Like I'm just thinking.

I love how it's not the crucible for either of us. We've lowered the intellectual bar. Although I absolutely loved the crucible later as well. And actually I think the crucible captures something more human than obviously Hocus Pocus does because Hocus Pocus is really focusing on that magic thing. But we'll get into those distinctions as we go through this. So yeah, I guess I guess it is Hocus Pocus. I guess that I never thought about that. But that seems to be yeah, where I would have encountered Salem for the first time. So let's talk a little bit there about why these trials are so famous because they do hold, as you said, that sort of front and centre space in our cultural imagination, but in terms of the history

of witch trials more generally across the world. And it's sort of surprising in some ways that they are so famous because they're nowhere near as deadly as the preceding witch trials that happen in Europe. So in thinking, for example, about the Trier trials that happen in what is now Germany in the 1500s, and nearly 400 people are killed in those trials compared to Salem where we have 19 people dying as a direct result, and one of them is tortured to death and there's at least five people that die in prison. So it's still obviously a terrible, terrible loss of life, but it's not on the scale of other trials. Again, just thinking about the date of it, almost exactly 100 years earlier, we've got King James VI of Scotland, 1st of England publishing demonology in the 1590s.

And there's that obsession with witchcraft in England specifically, as well as Scotland, thinking about the Pendle trials, the Biddeford trials, which we've covered on this podcast before. But Salem sits outside of that chronology a little bit, which I find really fascinating. I think what you say, Anthony, about the human interest element, and this is not to say that other witch trials don't have that, but I think there's something about it's such a great narrative, Salem, you can see why it's constantly being revisited, reinvented, whether that's nonfiction books, fiction books, TV plays, films, whatever it is. There's something about the sort of heroes and villains of this, that is quite easily cast. There's a cast of characters

and everyone's a very strong character. And we will get a little bit into the grey area and the ambiguity that actually inevitably exists in this case. But I do think there's something there about that it's just a really great story. ALICE Yeah, I think it is also one of the witch trials in which evil is present amongst the people of the community in a far more blatant way than they are in some of the other trials. Now, let me clarify that a little bit. When you're talking about top down imposition of the rule of law or the legal system on poor, unfortunate, marginalized women often. There is something so blatantly wrong about it and something to a modern viewpoint. There's something so bad and patriarchal and we can almost classify it far more easily than we can classify what happens in Salem.

Because actually what's happening in Salem is the call is coming from within the house. So obviously we have Reverend Samuel Parris, who is a man of standing, but we also then have these girls, these teenagers, who don't have a standing. And what they are able to do, I have always found this incredibly shocking. And I think sometimes we excuse their actions by trying to put this modern feminist lens on it. They wouldn't have experienced their femaleness in the same way that modern women experience femaleness. So I always find that a little bit jarring, that it's like, well, of course they would have felt like this

because of X, Y, and Z, but this is 1692. They don't have a concept of liberal feminism. So it makes it all the more evil, I think what's transpiring in Salem. So that's why it captures my my imagination so much. these trials aside is that actually, the people who claim innocence are the people who are going to go on to be killed, and the people who confess to witchcraft are pretty much all let off. And that seems like a strange inversion of the sort of routine blueprint of what we come to expect in witch trials. I think as well it's endured in the American psyche for so long because it feels like, and it's certainly narrativised in this way, there's a turning point in American history, this break from the old or the early modern age of superstition, of religious dogma, a break away from that and towards the so-called Enlightenment. We're about to enter the 18th

century in this story. We're right at the end of the 17th century and this idea of rationality coming in. The Salem trials sit in a strange and interesting place in between those two times, so I think that's kind of interesting. I want to talk a little bit more about the community and place because it's become such a tourist hotspot in the century since these trials happened. And we should say from the outset that there's Salem itself and then there's what was Salem village, which is now a village called Danvers. And so you can distinguish between the two and they're not far from each other, but they are sort of distinct places and interconnected but separate communities as well in the 17th century, which I think is interesting to bear in mind. But I think because of this idea of it being a turning

point in American history, because of the location still existing, and obviously we have not been and we're very open to going there, but thinking about the way it looks now and obviously you can go and Google Street View, you can walk through these places, and you can still see that late 17th, early 18th century world. It's still there in place to a certain extent. And I think those are the reasons why this has survived in people's imaginations. So let's talk a little bit about the context then because we're in 1692 at the beginning of these trials. In England, we've got William and Mary on the throne. They take over from Mary's father James in 1688 in the Glorious Revolution. But in America, we're still a

hundred years away from the Declaration of Independence. So we're still under British rule. This is a settler community that has come into the land, the cycloneal force, and one that is characterized by absolute religious fervor. There's a belief in the supernatural, but also this Puritanism that's not unique to Salem, but certainly a very hot centre for it, where there's a striving for spiritual purity at any cost and a belief in, I suppose, the literalism of the Bible. There's this interpretation that everything that you read in there is tangible in the real world and can have real effects. And of course, that is going to drive some of the accusations that we see.

And of course, there's tension in and around the landscape too. And there's fear arising from that tension between some of the physical violence, but also just growing mistrust between the New Englanders and the Native Americans. Yeah, absolutely. As we say, these are colonial settlers who've come into this space previously lived in exclusively by Native Americans. And by the time of the trials, around 10% of the male settler population has died in violent conflict with the Native American tribes in this area. There's a physical threat, physical tension and a sort of conflict over the land itself, but the land feels hostile

in other ways. There's been a series of bad harvests. There are dangerous animals. There's dangerous weather in this landscape. There's a sense that settlement here is precarious, that the community is, I suppose, under a literal and psychological siege from their point of view. And we have to, I think, hold that in our minds going into this story that there's already this baseline fear, paranoia, a feeling that things aren't right, a feeling that the world around these people is out to get them. And that is the foundation for what's going to happen next. So let's zoom in a little bit that we have the wider context of what actually starts to unfold in 1692 in the village of Salem?

Okay, so it starts in the Paris household and we'll go through who is in that house in just a moment. So we're looking at these events taking place between February 1692 and the end of the trials in April 1693. So it's a relatively short amount of time. As we say, they're spread across the town of Salem and Salem Village, which is now called Danvers, and about actually two dozen other towns in eastern Massachusetts Bay Colony. So whilst it's associated almost purely with Salem itself, this is a problem that spreads out to the surrounding settlements. Almost 50 people confess to witchcraft, which is pretty remarkable. I suppose one of the things that we're going to talk about in these episodes is just how those people come to confess and how they are induced to do so. But there are hundreds of people who are drawn into them, not just the accused themselves, but the accusers. We've got neighbours, we've got relatives accusing each other, but we've also got

jurors, magistrates, religious ministers of the church, all being drawn in. And so, once you start to plot the network of the people involved in these trials on either side of it, the accused and the accusers, it's absolutely vast. And it just shows for me that even in the late 17th century, we're still seeing fear of the supernatural and specifically accusations of witchcraft being interlinked, interwoven with other aspects of life, legal life, religious life, community life, that it's absolutely a valid tenet of existence and belief and the way that people operate in this period. Today, look, it's hard to access that idea, that understanding with our modern minds. We think of witches as being this separate fictional thing, even with its modern reinvention associated

with feminism today, there's a sort of separateness of it. We don't see it as being sort of interwoven with our own realities today. So let's go into the Paris household. We heard at the beginning the opening scene there, the seeds of these trials are going to be sown. Before I tell you a little bit about the people living under its roof, Anthony, I want you to describe, we've got a photograph of the house which was taken in what looks to be the late 90s, maybe even early 20th century, but it's not changed much since the 1690s. So give us a sense of the setting and what we're looking at? Well, I want to live there sadly for me, because I never will. But it is a wooden three story house, very typical of a well-to-do house in colonial New England. We have a door on the right hand side of the building, as you look at it, and then two windows on the lower

ground floor. And I'm just talking at the front now, there are other windows at the side and back, but I'm just talking about the front of the house. And then on the first floor, we have three windows evenly spaced across. And then there is another level to the house that looks to be within the roof, as far as I can make out. It doesn't look very spacious, but does seem to be some space up there. It is in a very bucolic looking landscape. This I would imagine is somewhat tailored to a modern concept of what it would have been like in the 17th century, though I doubt it would have been quite so idyllic. But it is a very beautiful house, very beautiful setting. But at the same time, it's surrounded by trees trees and their branches encroaching on the outline of the house and you can imagine that as night begins to set that this which she atmospheric dark atmosphere might start to develop that house and of course we can almost imagine it with.

imagine it with a glow of a candle in the window while the girls are undertaking this divination spell that you described at the outset. LW. The other thing that I think you can see in this picture, which is really fascinating to me, is the rolling hills in the background. You can see this landscape. It's quite open and vast, but it is there on the horizon. And yeah, as you say, I think as the sun set, it would have felt perhaps a little bit vulnerable. In this photograph it's surrounded by quite newly planted trees but there's nothing old there to suggest that there were necessarily trees in the 1690s unless they were cut down for firewood. But I think there's almost a sparseness. It's bucolic but sparse.

ALICE Yeah and I think any bucolic-ness that we're seeing is relatively modern. It doesn't ring true to the 17th century from what I can see. The other thing to do is to go, right, we have that house, but let's talk about the people that are in the house, because that's where the real action starts to happen, isn't it? Okay, so in the house, we have the Reverend Samuel Parris. Now he is a Puritan minister. He is English through and through. He's born in London, but he comes to America. He's educated at Harvard. He's emigrated here in the early 1660s. Now he inherits a sugar plantation in

Barbados from his father and he spends a little bit of time there before a hurricane basically destroys the property and he is forced to return to the mainland and he comes to Boston. By 1689, we have him as a minister in Salem Village, so he's very much someone absolutely anchored in this colonial world. His wealth, his beliefs, his whole identity is based on the principles and values of imperialism, of colonialism essentially. We've then got his wife, Elizabeth Eldridge, who supposedly meets him at Boston, it's a little bit unclear. The only thing that we know about her is she has three children, at least three, and she's said to be one of the most beautiful women in Salem, which, given the story that we're going to talk about and the heavy patriarchal overtones of what's going to play out, I think that's maybe worth sort of examining in a little bit of detail. I

do think it's fascinating that that's sort of all we get of her. Then we have children. We've got their three children are Thomas Paris, Elizabeth Paris, who is nine and she's known as Betty and she is one of the girls doing the fortune telling magical exercise in the opening. So Betty who's nine and then there's Susanna Paris. There's also a young girl called Abigail Williams who is a cousin to Betty and niece of Samuel. She's living in the house in this moment and she is 12 years old and together with Betty she's been doing this magical practice upstairs. Now there's also at least two enslaved servants in the household. We've got Tituba, who is an enslaved Native American woman who has been purchased by Samuel

Paris, possibly in Barbados, possibly in Boston. I've read quite conflicting things there, but either way, she is in this context the property of Samuel Paris and has been brought into his household in Salem. Then there's a man called John Indian. I think it's safe to assume that is not his actual name. Again, in some counts, he is described as being Tituba's husband or her lover. And I think we need to be cautious here. There's no evidence that they were married. And the assumption that they were romantically together seems to have come from the accusers and from later descriptions of the trials. And so I just want to take that with a pinch of salt. Also, fascinating to think about who John was, his ethnicity is, there's a huge question mark over it. He might have

been from South America, he may have been a member of a more local Native American tribe. It's really unclear, but I think it tells us so much just the fact that these two enslaved people in the household don't come down to us with any solid information in the way that we have about the other people in the house. It's not surprising, but I think it's worth underlining here straight away. AC As a historian, I've always found this difficult, because the racial identity of both Titcheba and John, as recorded by contemporary observers of the trials and what's happening in Salem at the time, is constantly confusing. They don't know whether or not sometimes they are Native American, or whether Tichuba was Black, or whether John was also Native American, because this is what it was thought for a long time that Ticheba was a black woman and John was a Native American man.

But we now think that that's not necessarily the case at all. And it's just interesting to see how, quote unquote, the other is just lumped together in these 17th century documents. Yeah, absolutely. Even though there is the ambiguity, the fact that they are not white is the crucial thing in terms of how they're perceived in their own moment and how they've been perceived in the accounts written in centuries since. The thing to say about this household as well is that there's already family tension. Now Samuel himself, the reverend, is known as something of a confrontational figure in the community in Salem Village, he is quite unpopular. A good example of this is that part of his wage is paid in money as a church minister, but part of it is paid by the locals in Firewood. We know that we're in an incredibly cold

winter in 1692, and a lot of the Firewood has not been delivered, whether that's because people are so desperate they are keeping it been delivered, whether that's because people are so desperate they are keeping it for themselves, whether it's because they hate him or they don't get on with him or he's ruffled people's feathers and rubbed people up the wrong way, it's unclear. But we're in this freezing house and I sort of love that the starting point is these two young girls imagining a future beyond this, that they're using folkloric magical processes, a little bit of fortune telling that seems harmless enough. It's fascinating that that is happening within a preacher's household and okay, he's not the one doing

it but they still know about it and feel safe enough to do that in that household. That they're imagining a life away from their father's house, their uncle's house, where there might be a husband to take them away, there might be death just around the corner. Trying to sort of give flesh and warmth to the world beyond this freezing bedroom that they're in, I think is fascinating. Let's talk as well about the frustrations of Reverend Samuel Paris. Paris is a man who should have, by his own estimation, been far more financially stable than he is. Remember that sugar plantation you mentioned in Barbados? That should have

been the makings of him in his own mind. And the fact that it's destroyed by a weather event, right? Like it just feels to him that there is evil tangibly at work in the world and that he's somehow being victimised by that evil, whether it's the devil at play or the devil's servants, that he's being targeted in some way. And here he is now in Salem with no money. I mean the status of him as reverend is actually seen as an inconvenience to many people in the community. They have to, as far as they're concerned, they have to financially support this man. And in their own turbulent times, this feels like an inconvenience and that's why they don't want to be overly forthcoming with this money and this firewood and this what they're supposed to be contributing to his position so he's elevated position is supposed elevated position has disintegrated both from his sugar plantation and now when he's in Salem village and he will be voicing these tensions and these disappointments and this this rage often i suppose within his household in house, amongst the enslaved people, his children, his wife. This is an unhappy house in many ways. Have you ever wondered if the hanginganging Gardens of Babylon were actually real? Or what made

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on the Ancients from History hit wherever you get your podcasts. week every week on the Ancients from History hit wherever you get your podcasts. Canada may be known for its landscapes and friendly people, but beneath the surface lies a darker side of crime, history and the paranormal. Since 2017, the award-winning Dark Poutine podcast has explored the shadowy corners of the Great White North and beyond, delivering chilling tales from a uniquely Canadian perspective. Hosted by Mike Brown and Matthew Stockton with over 300 episodes and fresh releases every Monday, Dark Poutine is your weekly ticket to the creepier side of Canada.

Listen to Dark Poutine on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. cast. Just as quickly as the Paris household began to exhibit the symptoms of witchcraft, a doctor was called. To everyone's horror he could find nothing physically wrong with either Betty or Abigail. It was as if the cousins had been afflicted by something beyond the realms of reality. They had, he concluded, been cursed. The Reverend Paris knew just the medicine needed. Prayer and religious devotion would surely rid the children under his roof of the magic that bound them. Others though disagreed.

Without his knowledge, a local woman, Mary Sibley, came to the house to offer an alternate solution. Witchcraft could, she proposed, only be countered with other magical practices. The girls would need to bake a witch cake. The cake, made with rye flour and urine collected from Betty and Abigail, should be fed to the dog. Dogs were, after all, typically recruited as witches' familiars and could be tricked into identifying them. The dog would, she promised, become ill itself, taking on that which ailed the human girls, and would soon indicate the person or persons who had cursed them.

and would soon indicate the person or persons who had cursed them. Reverend Paris was furious, but there would be little time to admonish his daughter and niece. Accusations came tumbling out of them. They first named Tituba, the enslaved woman living among them, as a witch. Other names followed. Sarah Good, a penniless woman in the village, and Sarah Osborne, a controversial widow, recently remarried to a servant far beneath her. Details accompanied the pointing fingers. There were nighttime flights, potion-making and misbehaviour. Tituba had ridden on a broom the other two

women clinging to her as they rose above the rooftops and set off into the night, presumably heading out to meet their master, the devil himself. Two fascinating things that I pick up on in that passage, Maddy, is the first being the natural position of belief. And you and I have talked about this before in terms of witchcraft trials, not necessarily Salem, but here it is so blatantly obvious that belief is widespread, that witchcraft is amongst them, that it is a tangible thing within their world. That's the first thing. And the second thing, which starts to boil my blood a little bit, is that, but of course, it's not coming from within the house. Somebody must have infiltrated the Paris household because we are too good, we are too godly, we are too elevated for this to

be the origin site of this evil, as I keep calling it. And so they start to look outward as opposed to what's happening within the home. And of course it is happening within the home. This is the kernel, this is the beginning. And what's about to unfold is horrendous, but needs somebody to blame and the fire, so they're freezing cold and it's because of his own stubbornness and unpopularity that that's the case, that they're in this situation. And you can see on the one hand that they're almost pushing back against him. When we think about the early signs of so-called witchcraft that they manifest, it's things like heading to the

fireplace, taking the burning logs from the fire, throwing their father's Bible across the room. These are all things that really speak to the tensions that exist in that relationship. But then, alternatively, we have these two girls who are white, they're the daughter of a preacher, and they are in a privileged position so that when they name the most vulnerable in their household, the most marginalised and the person with the least power, Tituba, everyone instantly accepts that. And not only that, but they then name other women in the community without power, someone who has slipped so low because of her financial position that she's virtually homeless.

And then also a woman who has standing in the community has lost the first husband and has remarried and remarried a servant no less and therefore transgressed the hierarchies of the settlement that they're in. It's so complex. And on top of that, that's our sort of modern perspective, putting the witchcraft element aside. But on top of that, these people really believe that there is witchcraft coming, as you say, at least initially from outside the house, it's an outside threat. And it's a threat, not only from a witch, but we have to remember that witches are understood to have made a pact with the devil, that they are the servants doing his work on Earth. And here we've got

the devil using his various pawns in this town to attack the home of a minister. It seems to me that Samuel Parris is quite happy to set himself up as God's representative here and to elevate himself in the community in that way and be like, of course the devil's come to my house, of course he would, because we're all saying our prayers here and we're all living according to Puritan ideologies. And the witch cake is so fascinating to me, this idea that in terms of folkloric belief and interestingly belief amongst what seems to be primarily women aside from this patriarchal, puritanical, religious order of the community, that it's a woman who comes to the household and says, I know how to get rid of witchcraft. And it's not by evoking God and saying prayers, it's to meet that curse with other magical practices. That is fascinating. So you have all these layers going on.

So you have all these layers going on. Yeah. And I think it's one of those situations where this will be one of my first, and you pointed it out as well, one of my first kind of contemporary insight red flags here, where there is so much literature written on that this nine and 12 year old were acting out against their father or the failures of their father and uncle rather. And I'm not so convinced about that particular angle simply because I think maybe the throwing of the Bible, let's take that as an example, the throwing of the Bible I think is relevant because it's a Bible rather than the fact that it's their father and uncle's Bible,

if you understand what I mean there. Because in many ways, they go outward. So these are possibly names, probably names that are being mentioned in the house as a way to explain why Paris has not received his dues and why he has not been given the elevated position in society. So actually there's always this talk about the girls trying to break down patriarchal rules, but I'm wondering if they're not trying to uphold them by naming these women mostly who have denied their father and uncle his rightful position. LWIPE I see what you're saying. I think it might be even more complex than that because I think we have to remember that the family Bible in anyone's household, any literate household in this period, would have contained the patriarchal family records of births,

deaths, and marriages. People would write in the front of these books, they were not just the Word of God, but they were documents of family life as well. Any children who died, any strange events, any important moments in that family's history would be recorded in that way. I do see it as a rejection of that to a certain extent, but I wonder if the girls simply fall short of then accusing their father of witchcraft, for example, or their mother or anyone else in the household other than Tituba, because that is crossing a patriarchal line. If, they act out, but then in order to save themselves and to disguise their behavior as something else, they play into those patriarchal ideas, and they name the most marginal in their community because that they're covering their own misbehavior in that way. But I think it

can be both at the same time. Yeah, I think let's take that conversation to social media on our episode post that we'll do with this episode. Let us know what you think about this, because this is an ongoing conversation. And I'd be really interested to know what you guys think. But let's bring it back to Titchaba then, because you mentioned her there with the actual accusation that comes towards her. So whatever anger there may have existed against the father and the uncle is gone out the window now, and suddenly all eyes are on Tichuba. So why do we think, well, I suppose it's obvious in some ways, but let's go into it nonetheless. Why is Tichuba accused?

Well, the accusation is actually quite surprising. It is unusual. Well, the accusation is actually quite surprising. It is unusual. It is mostly white people, not people of colour, that are accused of witchcraft in these communities and certainly in the witch trials that we see in Europe. So that's a strange departure from that framework, if you like. Also, she would have, through no decision of her own, of course, have held would have, through no decision of her own, of course, have held a particular intimacy with this family. She would have cooked and eaten with the girls. We know that she took their meals with them and the parents ate separately. At night time, she probably slept, if not in their room, certainly nearer to them than their parents would have been. And she would have known at least Betty, Samuel

Paris' daughter, all her life. So there's a familiarity there that is also quite unusual compared to the other women who are accused who are outside the house, they live in their own households, they are already ostracised by the wider community in Salem and Salem Village. Tidjubut doesn't seem to have any enemies outside the household, she doesn't seem to have been a particularly controversial figure unlike Paris himself. And what we do know is that when she is accused by the girls initially, Paris beats her to get her to admit to witchcraft practices, which again is obviously horrendous, but it's not unusual. We see that in other witch trials as well, where torture is used to elicit a confession. But I suspect

in Tituba's case, and this doesn't make it in any way less shocking, but I suspect within this household that level of violence was probably not unfamiliar to her. without seeing them as less than you are. And that, I think, for a contemporary audience especially, makes it all the more vicious what happens here, and all the more insipid, and all the more evil, I'll say the word again, because there's actually something very weak about turning to Tichuba and pointing the finger at Tichuba. Because they know what she will endure to a certain extent by pointing the finger at her. In the sense that it's not usual for people of colour to be accused of witchcraft in Western witch trials at this time, which is absolutely true. She nonetheless occupies that space of the other, doesn't she? Which does feed into often figures that are included in these witch trial cases.

But you mentioned the witch cake there. And I think that is fascinating because it points to this absolute belief, because you're fighting magic with magic. And this leads us on to something which is known as spectral evidence. And this becomes important in the trials, which we'll cover in part two of this special. But tell us a little bit about what spectral evidence actually involves. CK The spectral evidence comes into play in most, if not all, of the witch trials in Europe. And by the time we see it being used in terms of a legal accusation, legal evidence in court, in these trials. It's a really old hat. Now I'm going to read you the description of it that I've taken from the Library of Congress website because I think this spells out really helpfully what this is. The Library of Congress says, spectral evidence is a form of legal evidence based upon the testimony of those

who claim to have experienced visions. Such testimonies were frequently given during the witch trials of the 16th and 17th centuries. The alleged victims of witchcraft would claim to have been tortured by the spectral images of certain named members of the community, and this was taken as evidence that those named were witches and that the devil had given permission to assume their appearance. So essentially, if I wanted to accuse you of witchcraft, it would stand up in a trial if I said, I saw Antony flying around on a broomstick with his two little dogs, as his familiars, and was going over the treetops, then he was dancing naked in a forest, worshipping the devil. And everyone in that courtroom would be like, yep, of course you did, sure, let's write that down.

We take it at face value. Again, it's so hard in our own moment to access these mindsets and to understand that people really did feel this way and that they would take it at face value. Of course, this would not stand up now, but it absolutely was valid evidence in the 17th and indeed the 16th centuries. There is even a book to come out of these trials. It's written by a man called Cotton Mather. The book is called The Wonders of the Invisible World. Mathur, like Paris, was a Puritan clergyman and he became involved in the Salem case. He, I think, was relatively local but he certainly knew personally, I think, three of the five judges in the trials

that are about to unfold and worked as a witch consultant for them. He was friends with many of the other people who sat in positions of authority and got dragged into these trials. But his book asserts this idea that the devil can affect the real physical world using people as a vessel so that he can make these deals and people will give over their soul to him as a sort of inversion of Christianity. You're expected to give your soul over to God and to dedicate your life to him. It's this inversion of that idea and that as a result, those people can then do his bidding in the real world and that it has real effect. But it is important actually to say that even in this moment, so the book, I believe, comes out

just after the trials, it was already controversial. And it's just thinking about the timing of the trials we will go on to hear about in huge detail. Because they're so late on and because they represent to us now this turning point between the old and new America, this idea of superstition and religion on the one hand and so-called rationality and enlightenment on the other. They were considered in even the years immediately afterwards to have been quite backward and quite controversial in lots of ways. We know that Mathur is actually spat on in the street for the remainder of his life because of this book that he wrote, because of course people know in these years afterwards the effect that his words and his beliefs will have.

But we're not quite there yet. We're still in the lead up to this, and this idea that spectral evidence can be taken at face value is very much the norm, particularly in this Puritan community, and it is going to have devastating effects. And it is the key to what happens next. And that is that the accusations start to spread and envelop this community, and it goes far, far beyond the Paris household. So, Maddie, I believe you're going to take us to that part of the story next. It was not long before the accusations that Salem would get out of hand. Everywhere, the villagers thought they spied evidence of magical corruption.

It was in the flesh of a rotten apple, in the scum of milk turned in the heat, in the sparks of fire and in the very night air itself. The devil was among the people of this tiny corner of America, and they knew it. He walked between them, touching their shoulders as he passed, inviting them to his side, seducing them at night. They must be vigilant. In church, young girls fainted in unison, Elf screamed and cried out together, evidence of an evil hand at work, surely. Paris did all he could to bolster their defences, riling

up the already unnerved as he spat from the pulpit. The Devil's prevalence in this age is most clear in the marvellous number of witchers abounding in all places. Now hundreds are discovered in one Shire, and now the civilist and religious parts are frequently pestered with them. Here too for some silly, ignorant old woman, etc. And but now we have known those of both sexes, who professed much knowledge, holiness, and devotion, drawn into this damnable practice." His words did little to quell the panic that was spreading.

From church pews to private parlours, out on the dirt-dusted streets and in the fields among the failing crops, whispers of witchcraft were growing to a clamour. Rumour was catching, and the authorities increasingly anxious. The resulting trials would go down in American history, not only for their deadliness, but as a warning about fanaticism, isolation and flimsy systems of justice. For many, they would come to represent the dangers of superstition and the structuring of government around religious belief. Such would the fallout be that even those who took part would, in some quarters, later denounce events and reflect

on their own role in stoking the flames, but were not there yet. Instead, as the inhabitants of Salem scrabbled around in 1692 for a way to rid themselves of the devil and halt his apparent attack, there seemed only one way forward. They must root him out, cutting off his power by hunting down and destroying his servants on Earth. The witches, their accusers now proposed, must go. Join us next time when we delve into the documents from the times themselves. 1692, where we look at confessions, denials and accusations and get right to the heart of the justice or lack thereof in the Salem witch trials.

Canada may be known for its landscapes and friendly people, but beneath the surface lies a darker side of crime, history and the paranormal. surface lies a darker side of crime, history, and the paranormal. Since 2017, the award-winning Dark Poutine podcast has explored the shadowy corners of the Great White North and beyond, delivering chilling tales from a uniquely Canadian perspective. Hosted by Mike Brown and Matthew Stockton with over 300 episodes and fresh releases every Monday, Dark Poutine is your weekly ticket to the creepier side of Canada. Listen to Dark Poutine on Apple, on the internet.