Blurry Creatures - EP: 370 The Salem Witch Trials: 19 Hangings, Spectral Evidence & The Death of Enchantment with Brian Dedmon

Episode Date: November 4, 2025

January 1692. Two girls wake up screaming with unexplained burns on their skin. Their bodies contort unnaturally. Doctors reach a chilling conclusion: they're "under an evil hand." What unfolds over the next nine months doesn't just claim 23 lives—it murders something far more profound: the Western world's faith in the supernatural itself.PhD candidate Brian Dedmon has discovered why Salem—out of hundreds of witch trials that killed far more people—became the one everyone remembers. The answer is chilling: Salem happened at the precise moment Western civilization was poised to abandon God. The timing was devastating. Nineteen souls hanged. One man crushed slowly beneath stacking stones, gasping his final words: "More weight."But here's the twist that changes everything: the guilty walked free while the innocent died. "Spectral evidence" allowed convictions based on dreams alone—no physical proof required. Wealthy families weaponized the hysteria to eliminate rivals. A minister quoted the Lord's Prayer perfectly at the gallows (something witches supposedly couldn't do) and was hanged anyway.By 1700, historians across every ideological spectrum agree: Western culture abandoned belief in the supernatural almost overnight. Salem became exhibit A that Christian faith breeds dangerous superstition. SThe real question facing us now: How do we reclaim biblical supernatural faith without triggering new witch hunts? How do we acknowledge spiritual warfare when most Christians treat it like embarrassing folklore? Salem's message echoes across three centuries: The church must remember what it lost after 1692—before what's coming makes us wish we had. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Luke's so often, people email us, and they have this story, they're out in their woods, and they're looking in the bushes, and they go, what's that? And when you are pouring your dog food and your dog's bowl, that's the last thing you want to say, what is that? What is this stuff coming out of this bag? You know, I don't think a lot of us think about maybe what we feed our dogs, and that's why we partner with rough greens. Most of us would love to have our dogs, you know, live as long as possible. I just lost my dog in December.

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Now available in Canada. You're in America's hat. You want the goods. You can get it now. Go to Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash blurry for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quinn's.com slash blurry. How do we worship a Christ who defeated the grave and ignore the supernatural? We're worshipping something supernatural while ignoring the supernatural. That doesn't make any sense. And that's the challenge that I give people all the time is going, hey, have you ever sung like Jesus paid at all? You're singing about supernatural things.

You can't deny the supernatural and believe in Jesus. He is supernatal. He's the definition of supernatural. He is God become man. I say it all the time, he's God in a man suit, right? Like, that's supernatural. That's God literally, literally breaking the rules of the universe that he made so that we could have a salvation.

That is supernatural. So I think it's absolutely detrimental that we've allowed the enlightenment and all these other things to infiltrate, you know, philosophy and everything has infiltrated the church to the point where we only believe in the things that we can explain. The history of our earth is so different from, what we can imagine. The Smithsonian, if they found out about a large skeleton somewhere, was to go get it.

I'm going to assume at least one person is right, because if one person's right, it's right to bust the paradigm. It all goes back to the fallen church. And the problem with the modern-day church, they have a very truncated view of the supernatural. This backdrop that's just pregnant with all kinds of meaning associated with this Mount Hermon event. And this guy defects from the kingdom. That's a big deal. Welcome back to Blurry Creatures.

I'm in the middle of a nerd sandwich. I got master's degrees on my right and left, and I got a degree in recreation. But welcome back to the podcast. We're excited today. This is the cool part about our show, as our show's gotten to a level where people just email us, random stuff and say, hey, I'm writing a, how do you say this? Prospectus. prospectus draft, which is my dissertation on the Salem witch trials, you know, and then you kind of talk about it. We're like, hey, you come into Nashville?

Let's talk about. Let's do an episode about this because I think it's fascinating. We like to talk about history here and like Luke's a big Americana guy. Thank you. I was going to read the intro to it. The study proposed in this paper is a historical review of the events surrounding the Salem Witch trials as a microcosm of the worldview shift that occurred in Western culture at the turn of the 18th century. Scholars such as Richie Robertson and Charlie's Taylor confirmed that a discernible change took place in the popular perception of the natural world around the year 1700. The most infamous witch trial in history occurred at the height of the change in perception.

This dissertation will assert that witchcraft hysteria in Salem reflects this observed change in Western worldview. So welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much. master Brian Deadman, soon to be doctor. Yeah. Here's hoping. Yeah. Thanks for coming.

I love this. We were talking pre-show. And what I think is so fascinating is this is an iconic piece of Americana. You have this legendary event in Salem, this is this witch trials. And I want to let you get into that at some point. But it kind of is this seminal point. And we talk a lot on the show about sort of the disenchantment of the Western world, right? Yeah.

Whether it be from Descartes or the Enlightenment. somewhat in the Renaissance, you have this movement into this Western worldview. Where as Dr. Michael Heiser and Dr. Joel Matamalia, guests of our show and also the sort of legends in the space have talked about how we end up in this line of thinking, this dissonance between the natural and the supernatural, whereas the ancient Near Eastern folks, the ancient Hebraics, those that the authors and readership of the Old Testament would have had no concept. And in fact, most of the developing world has no concept of how to separate these things. things, but we live in sort of this enigmatic bubble in the West where it's been disenchanted.

I guess it's the best way to do it. And I love that you're writing about this. So, as Nate said, welcome the show, Brian. Thank you. And you are at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Yeah. Working on your PhD. Writing about this. Right about this. Why did you start? Why here?

Oh, that's a great question. But what you just said is exactly the impetus for why I sent you the copy of my prospectus. One, I just finished it in February. and that's kind of the pitch for my dissertation. So the easy way for me to explain that to like my congregation at home, because I'm a full-time pastor as well, is to tell them like basically I pitch the book that I'm going to write. Like that helps people understand it a lot better. But that was the reason I sent it into you guys

is because I'm a listener to the podcast. And so I kept hearing that very topic come up all the time of like they're talking about the same thing that I'm writing about. And so I figured it would interest you. Never did I imagine that it would be ended up with me sitting here, but I'm excited that it did. Well, very topical show. Yeah. And so I think we've heard a lot of things over the years and sometimes it's hard after five years to not get in sort of a loop strong on a hogs day talking about the same thing over and over again. Everyone has a different

spin in perspective, but we've never really talked about the Salem witch trials. We had a lot of ex-witches on the show. Yeah. And they'll say they were. And then this is a whole historical cat where people are trying to say, you know, and there's a Monty Python joke in there. I'm about to say, yeah. But she's made of wood. Uh-huh. Which is actually based on an actual test that they did in medieval times for witches. Really?

Yeah. So let's get into it. If she floats. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Burner. Yeah.

So they would tie a rock to a person accused of witchcraft. They would throw them into a body of water. If they sank and died, they were innocent. But if they floated, they were a witch and they would need to be executed. When was this documented? This was in the 14th century, 13, 14th century. It's dark age of stuff. It's dark age.

It's medieval. And it was a legit test that they did for witchcraft, but it was like, you're dead either way. Yeah, like they didn't really think this went through. No, it's absolute nonsense. But the thing is, you look at it today and it seems like absolute nonsense. But in those days, somehow that made sense. And that's not my area of expertise. I just know that to be a fact.

What do you believe there are witches? Absolutely. Okay, good. Because I think sometimes, sometimes, bring on theologians and authors. And it's funny, like Lee Strobel, we were asking some of those questions. And I was like, oh, he's not as into the woo-woo, if he said, as I thought he was. But, yeah, I think that's a good place to start in sort of the history of what led up to the trials.

Because obviously you have this belief in the culture. Yeah. That kind of to the point where they would literally throw people in water with rocks. Right. But it doesn't just stay, you don't just wake up one day and like, oh, you're a witch. It's like something that you've learned over time and then get to the point where you're starting to accuse people of this. Yeah. So did you do a lot of history, like research of the history before this?

Absolutely. Yeah. The whole purpose of the dissertation is to not just view the Salem witch trials alone. That is, you know, the, like the paper says, kind of the microcosm of like here is where I'm focused on. But in order to understand what happened in Salem in the 17th century, you have to go back and look at what was happening in the 15th and. 16th century leading up to that. There were witch trials all over the Western world, particularly areas like Switzerland. Switzerland killed hundreds of people for witchcraft. There was even one particular witchcraft that killed dozens of people, I mean,

witchcraft trial that killed dozens of people that killed more than were killed in Salem. But we've never heard of that one. Why not? Like what is so special about what happened in Salem? And I believe that it's what I'm talking about, not that I figured it out. They got over the water test and moved to the court system. They did. Well, and which is not necessarily a better system, unfortunately, at least not a more reliable one as far as innocence is concerned. But it just became a, because of the religious tensions of the time. There are factors that lead in to the occurrence of a witch trial and then a witch trial going awry, I guess you could say. I can't imagine one going correctly in all honesty. But most of them, if you look into the details of them, most of them ended up with, very sorrowful consequences. So, like, big ones in Switzerland, like, and a lot of them? A lot of them. Yeah. If you go back and look at the history, there's actually a book

by man named Rodney Stark. It's called For the Glory of God. The title is a little bit snarky where he's saying, like, here's all the stuff that's been done for the glory of God, like in the name of God. And he's talking about, you know, witchcraft trials and the crusades and things like that. But the research is solid, where he has gone back and reviewed all of these witchcraft trials that took place before Salem in the 200 years before leading up to that and observing what happened in those situations. So that's how we arrive in Salem. Yeah. So take us there. That's what we have to start. Right. I mean, people that, I think nobody hasn't heard of the Salem witch trials. I would, I would guess, but I don't think a lot of people will actually know what

happened. Yeah. I mean, I think there's just sort of like, oh yeah, I know about that. Just like I know about whatever, Pearl Harbor. But what exactly, you know. And in most people, when you, when you, when you ask about the Salem Witch trials, they immediately jumped to burning at the stake. And there's actually no one was burned at the stake in Salem in 1692, which my mother was very shocked to learn that. And I was too. When I first realized it, there were 19 people who were hanged in one press to death. So there was no burnings. There's a lot of things that, one particular thing that I actually had in one of my papers at one point was that there was a dog who was accused of being a witchcraft like helper and that a dog was executed. And

that is actually completely false. That is an old wife's tale that has no, I had it in a paper as a historical event. And one of my professors was like, you need to look that up. And I did. And I was like, oh,

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Because if you want to go through the timeline, so in January of 1692, there were two young ladies. One of them was the daughter of the reverend, the pastor of the church in Salem Village, which that's a whole other detail that most people don't know, that what you now know is Salem, Massachusetts is actually what was formerly Salem Town, that is right on the Massachusetts Bay. Salem Village, where the original accusations took place, is actually about 20 miles northwest of Salem Town, and that was called Salem Village. They had actually applied to be a separate town from Salem Town in 1672.

Samuel Paris was the pastor of the church in Salem Village. There's lots of movies about it. The Crucible is probably one of the most famous, once. But that one is completely fiction. But Betty Paris, Samuel Paris's daughter and their niece, both started showing signs of possession. And when you say signs of possession, we're talking about burns and scratches that appear on their bodies that were unexplainable. They would have contortions and outbursts. And when they were observed by doctors of the time, one of the doctors said the only way that he could explain the symptoms that they were having was that they were

quote unquote under an evil hand. So they had no way to explain what was happening to these girls other than they're under the curse of a witch. So they started asking the girls, you know, pastors, doctors, they started asking them, who's cursing you? Well, one night in February of 1692 for our modern context, basically Samuel Paris and his wife went to a Bible study. That's, you know, that they went to a late night meeting at the church. While they were gone, their slave in the house, whose name was Tichiba and her son's, I mean, excuse me, her husband name was John. They were trying to help the girls because they were worried about the girls and their fits.

A neighbor came over and suggested that they try something called a witchcake. And that a witch cake would cause them to identify the person who had cursed them. So they went through the steps to make this witch cake. and I can't remember exactly what the concoction consists of, but I know it involved the girl's urine and an edible cake that they fed to the dog. And then after they fed it to the dog, they would be able to identify the person who had cursed them, and they pointed to this slave, Tichiba.

Is that where the dog lure came in? It's not. It's actually a completely separate dog. So the dogs are all over the place. The person? No, I think the dog eats it, and then somehow that enables the girls to have the power. or two. I don't know how the dog fits in. Science. What is it? You know, like you read,

you read things about witchcraft or like, you know, they're like, take chicken bones and go put them on an ant hill and pour lemon juice on it and then you'll have a love potion. Like, what? Like, a lot of these things, they make no sense. Especially- This isn't in the where the red fur and grows. Definitely not. But it makes no sense to our modern sensibilities for sure. But they identified Tichiba as this woman who was cursing them. So Samuel Paris and his wife get home that night. And, and all this stuff has happened. And Tichiba has been accused of witchcraft. So you fast forward a month later. The slave was the slave, Tichiba. And so as I mentioned earlier, she's actually the one that in May of 1693, she was released. She was never

executed. We don't know. She disappears from the historical record after that. So we don't know what happened to her after 1693. But that's the way her story ends for us as far as we know. So real quick, do you believe that the girls are just classic demon possessed and they're showing signs of that? Or is there something different between a curse from a witch and demonic possession? Something was happening to them that was unexplainable. And I don't have that answer. I wish I did. I believe that something supernatural was happening because you have multiple educated men who came to the house,

observe these children and said something weird that we can't explain to this. happening. Well, the stories we've, we've heard from Exorcists, it's, you could tell a lot of weird stuff goes on. Yeah. Like they're talking slithering like a snake or, right, or contorting body issues, different voices. Yeah. Speaking different languages, all kinds of things. So you can imagine there was signs, something was going on. They probably could pick up on it pretty quick. So what happens from there? Because you have these two girls. So this, this slave disappears. Right. Which is probably not. That was over a year later. Oh, yeah, probably not. So that's after the trials happened. So I fast forwarded a good bit.

Okay, okay. So that's in 1693. So this is the beginning. So what I was talking about was the beginning. I skipped to the end of saying that Tichiba, Tichiba kind of... Don't do that to us. I'm not going to say that Tichiba got away because she also spent a year and a half in prison in very bad, not circumstances, but conditions. So she's not like she got off Scott free, but was she guilty of witchcraft? Maybe. So while her parents are at the Bible study, the cake is fed to the dog.

They identify Tichiba. just because she made the cake. Or because they just, who knows? It could have been, we don't really know that because those are lost to history or lost to. So there's some sort of cake ceremony thing that had been passed down. How did you read? Sounds like which crap didn't know itself. So Tichiba, Tichiba was a slave that was bought by Samuel Paris when he was overseas.

He spent, he spent a couple of years. I can't remember exactly where, but I think it was somewhere. like Cuba, something like that, where she was from. I'm drawing a blank on where exactly it was. But he purchased her while he was overseas because he was a man of means. Okay. And he brought her to America with him. So she brought her culture with her.

Okay, yeah. So she had this culture from her past. But it was the neighbor of Samuel Paris that came over that suggested the witch cake. So it wasn't Tichiba that suggested it. It was the neighbor who came over and did it. And her name escapes me right now, but it was the neighbor who suggested that. that in the first place. So what happens? So the neighbor was in trouble too. So they lock up, they take her into custody, take Tichiba. So Tichiba is accused of witchcraft, but then there are

two other women who are also accused of witchcraft, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. And both of them were women who were known for being either homeless, like homeless at times, being cantankerous, like being people who were not seen well by the community. So they were easy targets. And that's one of the things that a lot of books you read on the Salem Witch Trials will focus on, is that they were women who were marginalized, who were accused of witchcraft because they were different. I made a joke when I first started studying all this. I looked at my wife one day. My wife is very opinionated and strong-willed. And I said, if you were alive in 1692, you probably would have been executed as a witch because you speak your mind and you don't care if people

don't like it. You know, and those type of women were seen as problematic. And if you were problematic and you didn't have money, you were ostracized by the society. If you were problematic and you had money, nobody could touch you, right? Or at least they thought, because we'll get to that in a minute. So Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne were both accused of witchcraft by these young ladies. At this point, by the time you get around to March of 1692, other girls have joined the accusations of saying, yes, these women have tormented us as witches. And so now you have a court that Governor Phipps, the current governor in Massachusetts, created the Court of Oyer Interminer, which is a weird name,

but actually it's just a fancy way of saying the Court of Judgment is kind of what that means. Really, the Court of Discernment and Judgment is what that would mean, and I think it was French is where Oyer Intermiter comes from. So they formed this court to meet and actually hold trials. And so, you know, fast forwarding just a little bit, on June 10th, you have the first execution, Bridget Bishop. So how much time went from the cake to the execution? So February 1692 is when the cake happened.

The court was formed in March of 1692, and the first execution was in June. That's quick. So June 10th was the first execution of one woman. And then on July 19th, after that, there were five people who were hanged at the same time. And Sarah Good was one of those. Are all these accusations coming from these girls? Is that what it's all stemming from? At this point.

At this point, yes. The interesting thing is that after Sarah Good, who was one of the first witches accused, after Sarah Good was executed, the symptoms of the original two girls stopped. They no longer had their tormenting. But there was another girl who was a servant in the household of a family called the Putnam's, that she continued to make accusations and she continued to have those symptoms. But when physicians observed her, they didn't think her symptoms were as severe or as supernatural as the original girls.

It's this one girl whose accusations continued after that. And the interesting thing is that there was a woman named Rebecca Nurse, who was one of the women that was executed on July 19th. and she was not an ostracized outsider. She was a wealthy, well-known church member in Massachusetts who everyone in the community was absolutely shocked. Not only that she was accused, but that the court of Oyer and Terminator actually convicted her and hanged her.

Wow. And these were people who maintained their innocence to the moment of their execution. Is there like a jury or? Absolutely, yeah. Now that's the, but that's the thing. That understanding what happens in Massachusetts at this time, the court of Oyer and Terminer was made up of local magistrates and pastors of the Puritan church. Massachusetts was founded as a Puritan colony.

They intended for Massachusetts to be a utopian society, a utopian Christian society. And as a pastor, I hold that forced religion is not faith. it's just not when you if you tell your kids you have to be Christians that's not real faith in my opinion but if you raise them and set that example for them and they find it on their own wonderful right if they're convicted for themselves so what the puritan church was trying to do was form of perfect Christian society but what they were actually doing was was causing the problems they were trying to avoid by having people who didn't come into their faith on their own they were really kind of being forced into it. But that's a rabbit I'm trying not to chase. So in Massachusetts, in a Puritan colony,

you were not allowed to own land unless you were a member of the Puritan church. So everybody's a member of the Puritan church. You had to join the church. So then you've got people who are saying, I don't really believe on all this, but I want to own land in Salem. So I'm going to join the church and I'm just going to fake it even if, you know, just so I can be a landowner and have a farm, provide for my family, all that. So you've got people. people who, I can't say that people did or did not, but that's likely, right? Yeah. Did you have a question?

I feel like I want to interject. So many questions. So the court, but your original question was the court of Oyer and Terminator was made up of people who were church members. They were Puritans. They were confessing Christians. But they also, many believe, and I believe, were caught up in a hysteria and that there were people who were using the hysteria to their advantage, namely the Putnam family.

who Rebecca Nurse was somebody that their family had had altercations with previously. So the most likely scenario here when you look at it is that they convinced this young woman who was a servant in her household. And I'm going to look up her name in just a second because I'm blanking on it. In my opinion, they convinced her to fake these symptoms. And so she could point out their enemies and get them accused of witchcraft and then they would be executed. and but it gets worse from there. Yeah, it's taken, it's literally taking advantage of a crisis, right? We see this all the time now in modern times with like people will try to take these

for political or whatever kind of reasons to take advantage of crisis, but you have what looks like perhaps a legitimate supernatural event and then this thing just starts cascading. It's basically a perfect storm of something real happened to these girls, to Betty Paris and Abigail Williams. but then other people kind of caught on to, hey, we can use this. To eliminate our enemies. Yeah.

And so I'm looking at my list here, the people who were accusing. So Betty Paris was nine years old, and her cousin Abigail Williams were the first two. They were joined by Ann Putnam, Jr., who was obviously one of the Putnam's. And back then, it was a tradition to name your first daughter after the mother. So you had Ann Putnam, Sr., and Ann Putnam, Jr. They didn't refer them to that. We do so we can understand it. Then you had Elizabeth Hubbard.

who she was 17 years old and she was a girl who joined in and accused people probably Sarah Good or Sarah Osborne, one of those. But then it was Mary Warren, who was 20 years old, who was a servant in the Putnam household that came out. And she's the one that continued to make accusations long after the other girls stopped. But she was someone who was older than all the other girls

and whose symptoms were not as severe. So that's just interesting. This might be a dumb question. All females, right? All females, all female accusers. in the beginning. Eventually, eventually it turns into a game of finger pointing.

Eventually, because imagine this, imagine you're in a scenario where you get arrested because someone said they saw you in the woods at night consorting with the devil. Someone says they saw you do that. They have no physical evidence whatsoever other than I saw

Nate in the woods consorting with the devil. So then you get arrested and then the court of Oyer and Terminer is basically saying, you're a witch, we know you are, we won't kill you if you'll give up who you're consorting with. What do you do then? You just give them up. You start pointing at people, right?

You just say, well, yeah, Bob and Joe, like, you know, because you don't want to die. It's like a force confession. Because you've already seen people like Rebecca Nurse, who the community would see as obviously innocent, they've already been killed. You don't want the same thing to happen to you, so you're confessing under duress. But you're actually lying. And there were actually people, there's a number of people. who were executed who confessed under pressure but then recanted later but they were still executed.

I think there's a reason why people don't say anything. Yeah. Even to this day, you know, we've learned, don't say anything unless your lawyer's around. Because, you know, they try to force it out of you and they try to get you to say something that you didn't, and then you can't take that take that back. I mean, um, so the original, there was, there was some sort of demonic witchcraft event and then it just kind of became just this mass hysteria. Yes. And I think the modern view is there was never anything, there was never any witchcraft at all happening.

Right. And this is just another error, another black mark on the church's history. That's really what my dissertation is about. Yeah. Is that the Salem witch trials became a black eye on the face of Christianity. And the reason that we've heard of Salem,

but we haven't heard of all the previous witch trials who those witch trials killed more people than Salem did. They were, you know, in our minds, worse. But then why have we heard of Salem? Because Salem occurred in the latter part of the 17th century at the time in American culture and in world Western culture where news was starting to be able to be spread. The world was getting smaller, so to speak.

So all those other witch trials that happened in the 15th and 16th centuries, the word of those things were only going to get out, you know, maybe a hundred miles or more from where they happened. Those witch trials weren't being heard about around the world. Salem eventually was heard about all over the world. Massachusetts was a charter colony of England. Massachusetts didn't actually have its own government at the time. So they were technically under the rule of the crown. So they didn't have any actual authority to do the things that they were doing.

But the problem was England was at war at the time overseas. So when word got to the king of England that, hey, these weird things are happening, the king was like, I don't have time to deal with that. Like, I'll get to that when I can. I've got a war to deal with right now. So it really ended up kind of falling to the wayside as far as Britain was concerned. Do you think there was like a ring of witchcraft happening outside of in the woods, like something that was fueling this, like rumors and whispers of something kind of happening?

And then they just needed somebody to, take the blame. I think it's highly probable that there were people in the area, and I think that's even true to this day. Yeah. That there are people who are actually practicing witchcraft, but the people who are going down for it are not the ones who were actually guilty of it. Or the ones who, if anything else, they're the scapegoats for the people who were actually guilty of it. Maybe they did get involved, you know, because I even believe that in a lot of popular culture, there's people in this world who were so entirely famous.

Yeah. that I just think you had to, you know, for the lack of better word, sell your soul at some point. Oh, yeah. And it sounds kooky. You say that to people and they're just like, oh, you're insane. But I've seen enough of it at this point in my life that I'm like, I don't think there's some truth to that. Yeah. In my opinion, there has to be.

Oh, I mean. That there's some level of selling your soul to get popularity and influence and power in this world. Well, oftentimes, yeah. I mean, the people that, the SRA victims. who've come on our show, which is really like a can of worms. They often say it's powerful people, influence, you know, politicians, big names in the church. Right. It's not just random people who are orchestrating some of these events, but it's often happens outdoors in the woods, places you wouldn't, you know, off the beaten path kind of stuff that would, which kind of, I think, is sort of the, like, the historical lore of an event like this where, yeah, witchcraft is happening out in the woods, you know.

We've interviewed those people. And sure enough, that's the story they tell. I mean, this is kind of like the original making a murderer, you know. Yeah, they have evidence that something happened and they're just going to pin it on the one person they can pin it on. And perhaps he did it. That's the irony in this is the same thing. Perhaps it was Sarah Good. Was it.

I think it was Sarah Good, right? Perhaps she did have something over these girls because once she is eliminated, she's hanged, the allegedly the symptoms of suicide, right? Yeah. Take us to the end though, because this is less for a year. We look, 23 people die directly because of this 19 or hanged. One man's press to death. And you have two women that die in prison. And actually one was a child, an infant that was born in prison. Yeah. And yeah, she was born in prison and died due the conditions. But how does this, how does this sort of this, how is this chapter end for Salem?

How does it wrap up? Because what you're writing about now is like, not only did this, we know this happened and we're kind of reviewing that. But what happened out of this is what's, is what you're going to write about is. Like something shifted deeper after this chapter. But how does it wrap up and why does it end? Right. So. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right. So I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong.

Bro, Skycoin, way better than points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak. get your trip right. Kayak. Got that right. So after July 19th, you have six people have been executed. And the community is kind of saying, or not kind of, the community is saying this is getting out of

hand. And I personally believe if it had ended there, we never, we wouldn't be talking about it right now. It was a travesty, Rebecca Nurse and the other women who were executed on July 19th. That should not have happened. However, I think it, that has a lot of the same characteristics of so many of the other witch trials that happened previous to 1692, not just in New England, but in the Western world. If it had stopped there, I don't know we would even know about it. But it didn't stop there. It kept going.

Are these public executions? Yes, absolutely. So it's really burning itself into the... It's like back to the feature three, man. They just built their gallows out there. And if you visit Salem today, they don't actually know where the site was, where the hangman's hill was. They have suspicions.

and there's a place where you can go where they're like, we're pretty sure this is it. Kind of like Jesus's tomb and Israel, like, we're pretty sure this is the one, but they don't actually know. But yeah, it's public executions, the whole community is aware of it. They're not keeping it a secret because the Puritan culture was very much anti-witchcraft. There's a verse in the Bible of Exodus 2218 that says, do not allow a sorceress to live. Or depending on what translation you're using, it says, do not allow a witch to live. They took that very seriously. And so they were hunting witches.

and the execution of witches, people suspected and convicted of witchcraft, was meant to be public because it was kind of like, you know, if you've seen a movie, a pirate or a horse thief being hung from a tree and saying, this is what happens to horse thieves. They want to make examples of them. So, yes, it's very public and everybody's aware of it. So where it all starts to fall apart, but unfortunately it takes way too long for this to happen, is that after July 19th, you have six people who are executed, but then the court is still meaning and accusations are still being made. And one of the people who was accused is a man named George Burroughs. And George Burroughs

was a former minister of the church in Salem Village. Not only was he accused of witchcraft, he was accused of being the head of the witchcraft cult in Salem at the time. He was, he was said that he was seen in the woods with like consorting with animals that were walking on two legs and that, that he had, he had servants all over the place that he had curse and all this stuff. The interesting thing is that George absolutely was like, this is all false. Not one of this, that one bit of this is true. But of course, there were people who in the court of Orier and Terminator who were saying, hey, but remember, the devil lies. So don't listen to him saying he's innocent. He's not. Right. So then on August 19th, a number of people are

hanged. John Proctor, George Jacobs, John Willard, Martha Carrier, and George Burroughs were taken to Gallows Hill and hanged. That's numbers 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 people who were who were killed. But George Burroughs is the turning point for the trials, because George Burroughs was a former minister. When he was being hanged, the noose was being put around his neck. He said out loud that he forgave everybody who would condemn him. And then he recited the Lord's Prayer. And everybody who was attending said, wait a minute. Witches aren't supposed to be able to quote scripture. Witches aren't supposed to forgive the people who are killing them.

And it made everybody question. Well, there's a guy named Cotton Mather, and you probably heard the name. But Cotton Mather is known as the First American Evangelical. He's a great Puritan, a great preacher. Everything outside of that, we can go, I'm not sure about. Cotton Mather rode up on horseback as George Burroughs is being hanged. and reminded the people that Satan is a trickster and that Satan impersonates good people. And George Burroughs is hanged.

And even though Cotton tried to change it, even though Cotton tried to defend, don't listen to him, he's guilty. And I can't explain why Cotton did that. I've looked everywhere. I've read Cotton Mather's writings. He didn't talk about it. But I don't know what had him so convinced that George Burroughs was guilty. But the people at that point said, something's off. It's a bold strategy, cotton.

Yeah, it is. The people at that point, though, said something's wrong here. Like, something's not right. So then in September, there was a woman named Martha Corey, who was accused of witchcraft. And they called her husband, Giles Corey, in front of the court, and said, your wife has been accused of witchcraft. Do you think that's true? Giles is not a great guy. Jiles apparently didn't like his wife very much.

And Giles' response. In today's terms was, I could see it. And so she was arrested. She was convicted of witchcraft. Well, then someone turned around and accused him of witchcraft. He was a person who was known very, he was known for being very cantankerous as others had been. He also had different like squabbles with people and legal disputes. And he had also been accused of abusing his previous wives in the past.

Not a great stand-up guy, unfortunately. was he guilty of witchcraft, though? I don't think so. And did he deserve the death that he got? So in the Massachusetts court system, you could not have a trial without a plea. So in other words, so if I was accused of witchcraft,

I would have to plead guilty or not guilty. But if I refused to say either one, they could not hold a trial. So Giles was accused of witchcraft, and they brought him before the court and said, are you going to plead guilty or not guilty to this accusation? And he refused to say a word.

He would not open his case. mouth. So the sheriff and our local magistrate and others, they were like, well, we're going to get an answer out of him. So on September 19th, they took him out to the hangman's hill and they put a plank over his body and they started stacking heavy stones on top of his body. And that would slowly crush him. And every now and then they would come and ask him, well, now will you make a plea? And he would not speak a word. So it got to the point where he was clearly about to die. He was suffering. And he was, and this went on for hours. Keep in mind, people are watching this. People are walking by going, this isn't right. Like, he's refusing to, he's refusing to make a

plea and you're killing him. That's not how this works, right? That's not how it should work. So, Giles is getting to the point where he's about to die. And I believe it was, is the, the, whoever, like, whatever the equivalent of the sheriff was at this time, someone leaned down to him and said, do you have anything to say? And his last words were more weight. And they stacked more stones on him and he died. Wow. Here's the thing that Giles Corey did. Giles Corey saw what was happening and he said, and this is my conjecture a little bit,

but Giles basically said, it doesn't matter what I say, this is all gone so far out of control. I'm going to use my death to show everybody how out of control this has gotten. And that's exactly what he did. Now, unfortunately, he didn't do it in time to save the other eight people who were hanged on September 22nd, just three days later. But at that point, it had caused enough confusion and enough questioning for people to start really, you know, questioning everything that was going on. So fast forward to October of 1692, that was September. In October of 1692,

Governor Phipps goes to the local leadership and he says, we have to get rid of the court of ory and term. Now, it doesn't hurt that at this point, Governor Phipps' own wife had been accused of witchcraft. So at this point, Governor Phipps is like, okay, we've got to get it. We've got to get this under control. So at a meeting of legislature, Governor Phipps was asked, what will you do with the court of Oyer and Terminator? In other words, this is getting out of control. What are you going to do about it? And Governor Phipps said the court of Oyer and Terminator must fall. So at that point in October, he disbands the court of Oyer and terminer, and he gives all the trials that were left, because people had been arrested,

and those trials still had to take place. So he handed over those trials to another court. And this court did two things that were very important for how this all ended. One is they refused to allow confessions of witchcraft. They didn't consider them. Because so many people had confessed under duress that they didn't consider those legal, or not legal, but upstanding anymore. Like coerced confessions. Those were cursed confessions so we're not using them. The second thing was something that we haven't even mentioned yet, that throughout the court of Orier and Terminator, that's hard to say.

They use something called spectral evidence. And spectral evidence was non-physical evidence for witchcraft. So essentially, like I said earlier, that someone comes and says, I saw you in the woods consorting with the devil. And then the court would go, you're guilty. No evidence, nothing but one eye. You know, one person's supposed eyewitness, not multiple people, but one person. As a matter of fact, there was a moment that's recorded in the court where when Sarah Good was being tried that there were the girls over, you know, on the, in a booth or on a bench or whatever,

wherever they were in the courtroom. And they all started freaking out and screaming. And the prosecutor came over and said, what's wrong? Tell us what's happening. And they said, Sarah Goods, Spector is leaping out at us trying to get us. And Sarah Goods on the other side of the room going, No, I'm not. You know, like, I'm not doing anything.

But the girls are freaking out saying, and this is actually, that's one of the moments in the crucible that's that movie. If you've ever seen it, that's a titular moment of that movie. Sarah Good was actually doing nothing in the room that we could see. But the girl said her specter was attacking them and the prosecutor was like, see, she's a witch. Yeah. There was no physical evidence whatsoever. So when this new court took over the trials, they said no more confessions and no more spectral evidence.

if you want to convict someone of witchcraft, you have to have physical... We need the pointy shoes. Yeah, we need the hat and the broom and everything. Which is so funny if you think about it, so much of what we believe about witches today comes from Salem that it's actually pretty interesting when you really dig into it.

I mean, like the broomsticks, like flying on a broomstick, things like that, they believe that witches could use inanimate objects as powerful things for flight or for teleportation or for transformation. they believed in potions, all that kind of stuff. It's really interesting when you dig into it. So this court ends.

So once they have no physical evidence, then these all get tossed out? So the remainder of the people who were in prison, a number of them actually died in prison because of the terrible conditions. There was actually one woman who was an elderly woman, who she was released in January of 1693, and they couldn't get her out of prison in time. like she was she had been in prison for so long that you know she was just she was failing physically and so she died before they could get her out of prison a couple other people died just from the

terrible conditions a number of people were set free because they had no physical evidence against them tituba being one of those people i mentioned earlier i jumped ahead to this that in may may the third of 1693 that or excuse me may ninth 1693 a grand jury in ipswich tried titiba and they had no physical evidence and they let her go. She had been in prison since February or March of 1692, but they let her go at that point and she's the one that it all started

with, but she walked away. Probably back to Cuba. I'm out of here. Possibly. Or wherever she was from. The interesting thing about her, that she was a slave and unfortunately, this is just the way the culture was at the time. She was seen as property. So she

wasn't seen as a person. So actually when she was released from prison, she was sold from Samuel Paris's household to pay for her prison fees. If you were in prison in Massachusetts in those days, your family had to pay for your upkeep while you were in prison. So all those people, that's the reason that that lady couldn't get out of prison in time. Even though she was released and the charges were dropped, they had to pay her prison fees before they could get her out of prison and they couldn't get the money together in time to get her out before she died.

Jeez. Brutal. Yeah, absolutely. So this ends. And this is, and this is, is kind of where your dissertation begins because what you're contending is that there there's this whole worldview up until Salem which was this uh enchantment this supernatural worldview we talked about broomsticks and potions and there's this idea that if like your crops don't work you don't grow your neighbor is hexing you're right you know you have these this very very what you refer to in your dissertation or at least in the prospectus as an enchanted worldview so the point of this of your paper is taking all this accountant saying something deeper shifted changed because of this black eye on on on was pre-American but really American American American history right. Yeah, this was yeah. The steroids and baseball

moment. Kind of. Yeah. It's the cream and the clear. And the thing is where I started off was exactly kind of the way you're saying it. And then I had to reform my question because I, it would be very hard for me to argue that the, that the Salem witch trials was the cause. Obviously, it's not the cause. Right. But it is clearly a symptom. Or the tipping point. It's a tipping point for society that, and like the names that you mentioned when you read

my introduction of my prospectus, there are researchers and not just those two, but many, who identified that somewhere around the turn of the 17th century, the Western culture mind shifted. And like you said, if you had a baby that had colic prior to the 17th century, it was because your baby was demon possessed. People had supernatural explanations for why the sun rose and why the sun went down. But something happened around the industrial revolution, around the enlightenment leading up to the Great Awakening and the second great awakening, and then even into spiritualism, that you had this turn from the spiritual in the 16th and 17th centuries where people

said, and this is why I believe that the Salem Witch Charles is a black eye on the church, because it was such a well-known event that people looked at the Salem Witch Trials and said, see, I told you those Christians were fake. I told you that the church couldn't be trusted. So not only did you see people turning on the church, but you saw people turning on God and you saw people turning on government.

This is just my complete conjecture. I think the most significant event in human history in that regard, as far as people turning away from God and from trusting pastors and government leaders, the most significant event after 1692 in Salem is September 11th. Because you see the exact same thing happened after September 11th. See, I told you the government was corrupt. I told you that God doesn't love us.

I told you that the church isn't trustworthy. September 11th, in that way, has a kinship with Salem in that it was a moment that people turned away even further from God. But the interesting thing is that you have people turning away from God in the church and government in the late 17th century, but then at the turn of the 19th century, spiritualism happens. And everybody's like, I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious. And that's where we come into a really dangerous place where we want to be spiritual,

but we're not religious. If you're practicing spiritualism and you don't believe in God, then what spirits are you interacting with? Sure. That's the problem. And that comes up. The new age, right? Because this is the whole movement now where I'm not affiliated with a religion or the church.

I'm just spiritual, right? You see it's everywhere, all these online people on social platforms. I'm just, I'm spiritual. I'm spiritual. Right. It's funny because it's like you have a lot of people who are superstitious and sort of like leading up to the Salem Witch trials. And like you said, they're just overly superstitious about every single thing that goes on in

their life. But it's almost like they're playing with a religious gun. But nobody taught them how to do it and proper. there's no holy spirit involved in the process. That's a great way to put it. You know what I'm saying? And so I think all religions turn into the Salem witch trials eventually. It gets there, right?

They all go super cult. Somebody dies and there's just a whole like, you know, horror story of what happens. It's like human beings can't play with fire for very long. But I think that you take Christianity, you neuter it. This is what you're going to get. But then we have this whole, like you say, New Age movement, where it's all the spirits, all the woo-woo, with none of the laws and none of the, like, nothing to hold it together.

Oh, God, reals. Yeah. No, Jesus Christ at the top saying, I am the one who can help you understand all this. Right. They're just playing with fire and shooting guns, but they don't really understand that it is real. Yeah. Very real. Yeah.

So I'm embarrassed that. I'm not superstitious. I'm just a little stitious. Sure. But you have these, like, dichotomies, and then somewhere in the middle is always the truth. Somewhere in the middle is where, you know, in this whole phenomena is like, okay, there was, obviously, there's always been witchcraft going on. We know that. Yeah.

But it's not like we can go around and start pointing the finger at everyone and just killing people and say, you're a witch, you know, and which is damaging. But I would say that that is kind of how Satan would, I would think, would want sort of this all to go down. So we become apathetic. Exactly. You see the perspectives, Brian, that like Satan's real victory here was not the deaths and not the witch hunt, but the fallout. Right. And can you unpack that a little bit? Yeah.

So what would you say is the modern equivalent of a witch hunt today? Well, I mean, we had the Red Scare, right? You had McCarthy. Yeah. Everyone was turned on each other saying they were communist, right? And then you had all these people that were. Russia hoax. What about more recently?

Like Me Too movement? Yeah. Things like that. 100%. Like you. have modern day witch hunts that they're called that for a reason this is where we get the term right that's why we call them witch hunts or even COVID or even COVID neighbors yeah neighbors uh that'll cancel any any kind of momentum this this episode could have got a guy but yeah you should say maybe

how about 2020 we have call it the vid neighbors turning on neighbors reporting on their neighbors saying their neighbors were leaving their homes or not not being masked or whatever you want filmed you have this other which is a a witch hunt right got this accus position of, you know, if you're just, if you would just comply, if you would just, you know, and they're reporting on people that did not. Right. Yeah. So, so talking about that turn of the 17th century of turning away from, from God and from the spiritual, historians agree across the board. I cannot find one that disagrees. Whether they believe in God or not, they agree with this point. That prior to 1700, prior to the turn of the 18th century, that,

if you walked up to any random person on the street and said, are there dark and light forces? Not is there God and Satan, but is there dark and light? 100%. They would, almost everybody would say yes. It was a almost universal belief that there is a spiritual world that we are in conflict with. Not only that, but most cultures prior to Western civilization believe not only that there is a supernatural realm, but that it interweaves with ours. Not that it's something that there's like a portal that we can go into it randomly,

that we actually intersect with it on a daily basis and we don't even know it. That's how common it is. Nowadays, we're looking for crop circles. We're looking for Bigfoot. We're looking for portals. We're looking for these little points in our world where they exist. But prior to the 17th century, people believed it existed everywhere. at all times. And so, when you see this shift happen, where after the industrial revolution,

after the Enlightenment and all of that, not only did people stop believing that, but they stop believing in Satan altogether. They stop believing that evil is a thing. How many movies have you seen where somebody in the movie says there's no such thing as evil? There's no such thing as good. The usual suspects. It is, I mean, it's everywhere. I was watching something with my kids the other day. And I think it was, I think it was Thanos in an end game or or if anywhere. My kids just watched it for the first time. It was so fun.

And I think it was Thanos that said something to that exists. Like, there is no good or evil. There's just this. You know, like someone in the movie said it. And I remember thinking, God, it's just everywhere, right? Well, people after the 17th century not only stopped believing in good and evil, they stopped believing in Satan altogether. That is Satan's greatest tool.

Is for us not only to disregard him, but to treat him as a joke. right? And to treat him like he doesn't exist and to treat him like he doesn't actually have any power. That's what he wants because then we're the most vulnerable. And so I believe that the most dangerous thing that happened in Salem,

even though I am very sad for the people who were killed, I think that's just a symptom of the greater problem. The problem is that there was neighbor turning against neighbor. There were people who were taking advantage of a situation to make a certain deal happen or to get their inheritance faster, or something like that, people were using it to their advantage and people turned on each other.

And that's the greater evil that happened beyond the wrongful deaths. But even worse than that is that Satan used this in order to convince people to not believe not only in God, but not in him. And I think that's even more dangerous. It's one thing to say I don't believe in God. It's another thing to say, like, good and evil doesn't exist and I'm just going to live outside of that realm.

we just, that's just not how our world is made. And we can't do that. From this point though, you think that that's when we see that sort of the rise in naturalism as we, as opposed to supernaturalism, you sort of have this, like the pendulum swings hard back, right?

Yeah. Like it, it, to me, it's a lot like, kind of has to. Well, the scandals,

it does. It does. Well, even the scandals in the Catholic Church where everybody's like, oh, that's all bad. We're, we're moving away from all of this.

Every, everything is bad there, right? You have this sort of knee-jerk reaction like, like, oh, they were on a witch hunt, of course, we'll just come from there. So we've got to swing all the way to the opposite. Like all this stuff is contrived, all of its manipulation.

I mean, do you believe, I mean, the more we've talked to people on the show, it seems like every major split and faction of the church revolves around some sort of discussion like this. People go one way and they go the other way. You know, like the Reformation, a lot of guys say, that's what happened then, about exorcism and other things like that. And is there like a supernatural precursor to? of the church going right and left?

I think somewhat, I think that could be, that could definitely be a factor. A lot of it is more of, you know, the Reformation happened a lot because the Catholic Church was the selling of indulgences and things like that. That was more of like things that were being done

that were being treated like the traditions of the church that were not biblical at all. That was, you know, to me, that has more to do with biblical, you know, biblical reformation and theological reformation rather than that. But there's definitely aspects

accept it to that, that you look at, if you look at exorcism, the Catholic Church has the monopoly on that. They're the experts on it. And that's actually how I found you guys. I listened to the exorcist files. And I heard you guys on the exorcist files. I was listening to that. And I was like, okay, this is right up my alley. And I started listening to blurred creatures. But if you want to talk about exorcism, you're going to go to a Catholic. Like, they're the ones that have the most experience with that. And I personally don't ever want to do an exorcism. As a pastor? Yeah, as a pastor, I don't want to.

Do I believe that I could? I do. I believe that it's the Holy Spirit that does it, not me. But I don't ever want the opportunity. No, thank you. But there was definitely differences there between, like, Catholicism and Protestantism. Yeah. There's a lot of differences there of beliefs of how that works and everything else.

Yeah, I mean, there's like a source of the argument begins with, like, I mean, humans are naive, right? Yeah. We were kind of built with this naivity. And from the very first temptation, it's this duality. Does God say this or did he not say this? And we have to wrestle with our human brain to process the infinite God. Yeah.

And we often get the answer wrong. But there is like a spiritual implication to which truth do I believe here. And then we go, I just think there's this story as an oldest time. Yeah. Like the witch trials like you said are reinventing themselves in modern eras of, you know, you did this to her. like 20 years ago, you know, it's like, oh, okay, you know, you, you see it sort of, that part of being a human is not going anywhere. Yeah. It's been there since the dawn of time. Right. And it literally has because what you just said was Satan's first trick and it's been his only trick for all of

humankind. In Genesis 3, he asked Eve, did God really say that? That's essentially what, that's a paraphrase, but that's essentially what Satan asked Eve. Yeah. Is, is that really what God said? Did he really say you would die? don't you want to be like God? Don't you want wisdom? And that's what Satan is doing to this day. All Satan wants us to do is convince us that God's word isn't true and convince us that he's not real.

And when I say he, I could mean God or Satan because he wants both. If we don't believe in God, we don't believe in him either, and then he has us. Right. All right? So this is where my whole, this is where all this research started of kind of like what you guys are talking about. I've been a Christian in my whole life. I mean, I got saved when I was seven.

I surrendered a ministry when I was 21. My dad's a Baptist minister, and I've been in church my whole life, I guess is what I mean. But I've always had this curiosity of where does the supernatural fit into this? Because when I would talk about supernatural things in my home church growing up, people would shush me. Right? They'd go, we don't want to talk about that. Like, well, why not?

We believe in a God who was born of a virgin, a God who became man, who died on a cross and then came back to life. that's supernatural. That's not something that happens. So do you believe in Noah's Ark? Do you believe in the Red Sea? Like that the Red Sea was split? Do you believe in all these things? These are all supernatural things.

If we don't talk about those things, then how are we believing the Bible? How are we preaching the Bible if we're not claiming the supernatural aspects of the Bible? So then the part that really started to rub me the wrong way later as I became a pastor myself is you would have a situation like, say you had a person run in the back doors of my church on a Sunday morning and they were speaking in tongues and they claimed that God had given them a revelation. What would people do? Throw them out. Throw them out. They'd be like, that person's nuts. Get rid of them. Is that what we

should do? Or should we sit down with that person and say, hey, calm down. Let's talk. Let's take what you're saying and compare it to scripture. And if what you're saying matches up with scripture, what if God did speak to them? Yeah. We would have immediately dismissed that. Now, if it doesn't match up with Scripture, then you have some church discipline to lend out, right? Like we're saying, hey, let's look at this, let's pray through this. You don't have to ostracize the person. You don't have to make the person feel bad, but should we consider that?

Absolutely. And so that's something that the more I thought about that, the more it bothered me, that, you know, that Ephesians 612 says, our struggle is not against flesh and blood. And you guys mention that all the time. That it's against the principalities. It's against powers. We're not just, we're not just battling

against the people of this world. We're battling against the spiritual world, against the forces of evil. So if we as the church are not taking that side of it seriously, and if we're not addressing it and thinking about it, then that means,

that's basically the same thing as a boxer who doesn't go to the gym. Like when you step into the ring, you're going to get beat. Right. Because you're not keeping up that side of your strength. He might be playing jeopardy all the time

and keeping his mental, you know, faculties up, But he's not go out there and hit in the bag, so he's not going to be able to stand in the ring. So we have to not just exercise one side of our faith. We have to exercise both sides of our faith. And that's what keeps us able to defend. Well, I mean, a couple days ago, we had Lee Strobel talking about his new book

and Supernatural. And it's kind of funny in 2025, you know, like, that's the book that's being written. I mean, you know what I'm saying? Like, because the church is slow and maybe because it started with the Salem Witch Trials, where we've, we swung so far back, then now we're still writing books like, hey, this stuff exists. I think the problem is, is Satan's so great at the red herring? He creates so many fake spiritual movements that nobody trusts the real one.

Yes, that's in, I would say that is the goal. Like, that's what he is trying to do. Yeah. Absolutely. That's what I was going to ask too, is like, do you think that that, that paradigm, you just, you could sort of answer some of the question, though, that paradigm of someone coming to church saying had a vision from God speaking in tongues where our knee jerk is to toss them out.

Are we seeing a lot of this rotten fruit from Salem? Is the rise of secularism? Is the removal of the supernatural? Is this? And I know it's multifaceted. We have the work of Descartes. You have Nietzsche. You have all these philosophers that were humanist and secular that also wove itself into.

But we arrive here, as we sit here in 2025, you and your dissertation and you being a pastor and the things that we talk about on our show is trying to re-enchant. the world in some ways is to re-spiritualize you know we talk we talk about he's always blurry we talk about he's not clear right i mean we talk about mike on the show and mike being an impetus for this mike's whole thing was just like yeah there's a very supernatural worldview that we've lost that was that was present in the ancient ancient near east it was present in even the puritan theology and sort of the theologies of christianity up until this seminal turning point in in american history but now we sort of have to pick up and put pieces back together because this whole thing

created a massive mess. Well, yeah. Let me just put this in perspective kind of how we do things here. At first, when we started the show, getting all this email, it's like, bring them on the show, let's go. And then now it's kind of like we have to use

a little more discernment of, we're almost a little more skeptical now, even though the wildest stuff. Really, because you let me on. Like, okay. You know what I'm saying? Snuck in, Brian. Like you hear so much crazy.

I can only imagine. That you're like, okay. I mean, we could bring on a lot more sensationalized material to up the ratings and the views and the clicks and the likes and all that. I mean, we would lose a lot of the people like you who are like, look, I'm going to get my, you know, doctorate. And if you guys get all woo-woo and weird and strange just for the clicks, I'm not listening anymore. And I think we have this, what I'm saying is this wild in between going back and forth of like, is this

legit or is this not legit? I don't know. And then we talk about it back and forth. And we almost like the people that don't want anything out of it are the ones we sort of pursue. do and the ones who just hammer us all the time. I wrote a book on this and come on. It's like, okay, yeah, sure. But that doesn't mean their story's not true. Right. But it's just that you hear so much wacky, wacky, wacky.

It's like, okay, what is actually legit or not? But I think that's the, you know, paralysis from analysis the church goes through. Well, because so many people walk in the door on Sunday and yell, wow, it's up. We're just going to make a blanket policy. Yeah. No one's coming in here, say anything, woo-woo. And we're going to boot you out. I think that works to keep the church from like going nuts and everything having a platform

and a megaphone to say whatever. Yeah. Potentially false stuff. Yeah. But it also kills a spiritual movement in your church as well. So you kind of like, you just take sort of lukewarm and dead. Yeah. And there's different, there's different spiritual levels of growing as a Christian.

I mean, sanctification is a thing for a reason. God invented it. God wants it. We go through stages of growth. And we're supposed to grow from the day we come to know Christ until the day we die. There is no perfection on this side of heaven. Sure. We're never going to be fully knowledgeable about God and know everything.

And the truth is some young Christians could not handle that type of thing. So should we, so like my children, for instance, am I going to guard my children from some of these conversations? Absolutely, because they can't handle that spiritually yet. For instance, I had a woman come up to me a couple of years ago. and she was dealing with some things in her household where her husband was being unfaithful to her. She had told me this, you know, months before. And she'd come to me a couple of times of saying, you know, I really don't know how to deal with this.

Like he's, he's belligerent about it. Like, and he's doing it. And I know about it now, but he won't quit. And then I didn't hear from her for a couple of months. And then she came up to me one random Sunday. And she said, I need to ask you a serious question. I said, what? She said, do you believe someone can be demon possessed?

Is that a real thing? And I just went, oh, can we sit down? You know, like, and I sat her down and I said, just, just to be blunt with you 100%, I believe that's possible. And she said, I'm not saying that he is, but are you saying that it could be? And I said, yeah. I honestly believe that it could be that he's given himself over to that sin in such a way that Satan has got a hold on him that, yeah, that's actually 100% possible in my mind. Unfortunately, the story ends there. I haven't heard anything about it since.

but I know that she said, and she said, what do I do? And I said, you just pray. You pray your heart out. And I'm going to pray for him too. Like, that's all we can do other than, because if he's not going to come

and submit himself to the authority of Christ, there's really not much I can do outside of him making that decision for himself. So I know she's working on him. I know she's praying for him. But I think that's maybe, maybe that's the safety we're talking about is we can't skirt it.

Yeah. We can't say, no, we're not talking about that. No, it's not a possibility. That's where we get into the real danger zone. But I do I think we need to protect the congregation as a whole? Absolutely. I mean, just like if something happens and there's an argument between two church members,

we're not going to go talk about it in front of everybody. Like, you know, like Sondra and, you know, and Bill hate each other and they're fighting. So we need to, you know, no, we're going to handle that outside of Sunday morning, you know, and help that reconciliation happen and move on. So there's, you know, there's levels of protecting the church from them. Brian, do you think that we're, like we're swinging back towards a more supernatural worldview and culture. I absolutely do. And I think I'm so interested. I want to be alive long enough to see what

really happens from it. But I 100% believe that we are that started with spiritualism in the 19th century and it has led us to where we are now. The interesting thing that happens now in this, you know, I live in New Orleans right outside of New Orleans. Very supernaturally charged. Yeah, the most haunted city in America. Yeah, that's right. If you go up to a random person and if walked around the French quarter in New Orleans and said, do you believe in Bigfoot? Most of your answers are going to be, yeah. Like, a lot of people are going to say yes. Do you believe in ghosts?

The answer is going to be yes. I mean, almost unequivocally, everybody believes in ghosts. A lot of, you know, handful of people don't. But if you go up to people and say, do you believe in God? And by God, I mean Yahweh. Yeah. You're going to get so many knows. Our world is open to spiritualism, but they're not open to God.

and Satan is like, that's where I, that's my sweet spot. Right. Right. Like you're opening yourself up to this spiritual side of things, but you're resistant to the one thing about spiritualism that is beneficial. So I think we're swinging back the other way and I'm seeing more and more people come to the church on their own than I've seen. That's like no rules spirituality.

Yeah. Like we can be spiritual and no rules. And I mean, we see that in a lot of the ancient alien kind of stuff that gets people. People listen to our show that don't have faith in Christ, there is a supreme being. They believe in a lot of it. Yeah. The Nephilim, the, you know, Anunnaki and this alternate history. They're all about that.

And I think they're right about a lot of those things. But then when you start actually putting some rails down, they're like, oh, no, no, no. Yeah. Can't do that. Or they just run with some wacky, sort of wacky sitchin stuff that, you know, Heiser was spent a lot of time taking down. Yeah. This is all kind of made up, but they still don't want to believe that it was made up.

I don't know. It's interesting. And that's what spiritualism is, is what you just said. It's, I can be spiritual without accountability. Yeah. And that's actually, I preached yesterday in my church before we drove up here. And that was actually one of my points was that we tend to follow a Jesus that looks more like us than like the biblical Jesus that supports the things that we want to support and

agrees with us and enables us to do the things that are actually sinful. and a lot of people say, you know, well, my Jesus loves always and doesn't judge. And I'm like, okay, yeah, but here's the thing. You can come to Jesus just as you are and he loves you exactly the way you are, but you can't stay that way. When Jesus encountered the woman at the well, when he encountered the woman who was accused of adultery, both those examples just happened to be women, he told both of them, he identified their sin and then said, don't do it anymore. He didn't say, you're okay, you can be an adulterer and still follow.

with me. No, he said, you're an adulterer. Go and sin no more. Right? Like, and so people want to say, I can come to Jesus and I can continue living my sinful lifestyle. And you can come to Jesus as a sinner. But if you're not growing, then did you really come to Jesus? And that's what people want, is they want spirituality with no accountability. Yeah, they don't want any consequence. So no, yeah, no, yeah. So we have the Salem Witch trials. We go, everything's weird and strange. Everything, you know, like, if my tea doesn't taste good, there's a demon in my tea, you know, to swing it all, the way. I grew up Southern Baptist, so I can understand where they end up on the other side of like, we're singing old rugged cross, and that's as weird as it gets on Sunday morning.

And we don't really, and people are kind of lulled to sleep every Sunday, and then rumbling, someone has a paranormal story in the church of like, oh, I was driving, picked up a hitchhiker, told me Jesus was coming back, and then I looked over and he's gone. You know, those kinds of stories, like rumble in the in the in the in the pews of like yeah so and so had a supernatural experience and but we can't talk about it on sunday we can't talk about it on church so and then you have a lot of like like like Luke and I would run into it's kind of like this modern fundamentalism movement of some of these conspiracy theories that if you challenge them at all they kind of come at you with you know with everything and like want to stone you like you how dare you not read this verse

literally right yeah and a lot of the more reformed theology doesn't want to touch any of the supernatural stuff. We have some of those listeners and they get mad at us. And we kind of see the sort of the fallout when people like burn us on the way out. Some of the things they'll say, it's almost like, oh, wow, this is going too far for you. Yeah. Like you don't have any guide rails. So what are the guide rails?

How do we not swing? Where do we hit the fence? Where do we hit the wall? Sorry, it was a long question, but I had to kind of set it up. What are we aiming for? And how do we balance these things? we're aiming for honesty. We're aiming for people to actually consider their answer

and to actually give it some thought. The hardest thing for people to get over is their past. Living in a place like New Orleans, that is staunchly Catholic, the number one thing that is hard for people to get over if you're trying to proselytize a Catholic. Now, let me preface that by saying, I believe they're Catholic Christians. I believe there are people who practice the Catholic faith,

who believe in Jesus Christ, who are 100% saved, going to heaven, I'll see you there, welcome brother and sister. But just like there are non-saved Catholics, they're also unsaved Baptists. They're unsaved Baptists. There are people who it's a ritual for you and you just go and do these things.

The hardest thing to get someone, though, who is a ritualistic Catholic or even a ritualistic, whatever. But Catholic is where, you know, the Catholic community is where I exist and do ministry. This is the hardest part. If I were to speak to a man

who says, I believe what you're saying, I believe that Jesus Christ is the only way, and the way that I've been doing my faith has been a game that I've been playing and I've never really believed. In order for him to actually come to that belief, I don't care if he comes to my church or not. I just want him to get saved. You keep being a Catholic. That's fine. I'm not trying to bring you to my particular church to make my membership grow.

I want to know, are you going to heaven with me? That's all I care about. But when I ask him that question, the hardest part for him to get past is if I accept this, then I have to admit that my dad. was wrong. I have to admit that my grandma did it wrong and my grandma's in hell. And they're not willing to entertain to entertain that thought. Not only that, but what you also just said is that there are people who say, well, I, you know, I have always interpreted this verse this way. The nine times out of ten when somebody says that to me, it's not just I interpret it this way. It's this is how my granddaddy told me this is supposed to say. Like this, my granddaddy was a preacher and this is

how he preached it. And I have to say, I'm sorry that your granddaddy was wrong. I've been wrong too. There are sermons I can go back that I preached five years ago that I can say, I feel differently about that now. I understand that verse better than I did back then. And I can say, oh, I have a better understanding of that now. We have to come to a point where we're willing to question how we've always done it. We can't let tradition decide what's biblical.

We have to let what's biblical decide what's biblical. It's so hard, though, because... Absolutely, it is. When you said earlier in the episode, like some people thought it was like magic that made the sun go up in the morning. I think we're almost back to that. Some people do believe a lot of that stuff. And we kind of see it in our channels and we're trying to be like, okay, whoa, like we're going backwards here. Like we're swinging way back the other direction. Yeah. Because they'll always end with just read the Bible man. And it's like, okay, well, we wouldn't have thousands of denominations and all the issues we have. If we just read the Bible. I don't know. I think that sometimes that's difficult to, I mean, it's blurry.

But where is their focus? Where is their clarity? Sorry, Lucas. I don't say from macro point of view, though, how, like, I mean, do you, we've talked about Heiser and we talked about the idea of something going hyper supernatural to almost like the cessationist idea where things are just no more miracles, nothing supernatural anymore. We just sort of read the text, right?

Like, do you think that how important do you think it is to reclaim the supernatural worldview? Like, like Heiser would said, for the church in order to bring. bring people back into the folds of faith or just even acknowledge that from a macro point of view. Like the fact that we have, we talked about, you said it. We say on the show all the time. Like we have a very supernatural faith. And we have a, you know, we have a virgin birth. We have a resurrected Jesus. Nobody talks about the fish and the key. Okay. The fish in the key? Remember the key that came out of the fish's mouth? You don't know that one? I guess not.

Yeah. Yeah. Balaam's donkey too. I mean, that's one I know that. I know that. It's a key that came out of a fish's mouth. How important do you think it is that the pendulum swings back for the church? that we re-embrace, we sort of re-enchant our faith, if you will. I love that idea of re-enchantment. I've never heard that, and I want to steal it. Okay, you can't. 10% of blur. I think it's absolutely necessary, and I think that's part of the problem is that we've,

how do we worship a Christ who defeated the grave and ignore the supernatural? We're worshiping something supernatural while ignoring the supernatural. That doesn't make any sense. And that's the challenge that I give people all the time is going, Hey, have you ever sung like Jesus paid at all? You're singing about supernatural things. You can't deny the supernatural and believe in Jesus. He is supernatal.

He's the definition of supernatural. He is God become man. I say it all the time. He's God in a man suit. Right? Like, that's supernatural. That's God literally breaking the rules of the universe that he made so that we could have salvation. That is supernatural.

So I think it's absolutely detrimental that we've, we've allowed the enlightenment and all these other things to infiltrate, you know, philosophy and everything has infiltrated the church to the point where we say, we only believe in the things that we can explain. That's when you marginalize Christ, too. Like he was just an enlightened teacher. It's just Christ consciousness. You have these alternatives now that just say, ah, we don't want to go there with that.

Let's just make it like good moralistic teachers. These are good morals. Right. He was just a really moral man. Yeah. Not Yahweh incarnate. He was a really moral man. And that's the problem is that we ignore the deity when we do that.

Yes. It's really interesting to think about like blips in historical like years that like this is when things started to shift. This is when things went this way and that way. Because I think we're on the dawn of one right now where in our lifetime, disclosure is going to be a thing. And like we talk about this a lot recently. And I think guys like Tim Albarino, like he was just on Sean Ryan talking about Christians

have no idea how weird. strange it really gets when it comes to like the data around UFOs and aliens. And the fact is, it's like, we get met with a lot of that skepticism. This is all a spiritual reception. You guys are being deceived. And it's a lot of this, it feels like the witch trials again, like people going, they're deceived, you know? And it's like, just look at the data. You just have to look into the data. And you got guys like Tim who were willing to take a thousand arrows to. to try to convince the church, this isn't just a made-up story. These abductions aren't not happening.

And I think in a way, I see him taking a lot of arrows and bullets that he would be burned in the church because he's willing to talk about the phenomenon that's happening. And now Congress is catching up. So people are like, well, maybe there is some, you know, maybe there is something to this. And it's not like Congress is getting the information. The information is being hidden from Congress. They can't get the info because it's in. private hands. And they're trying to tell the public, but they can't. And so it's even deeper than

the government lies. So anyway, all I have to say is, I think we deal with a lot of micro versions of this in our spaces. And it's really fascinating. And I think that's why it's so important to look at it from that perspective. How long do you think this book's going to be? Chapter wise? I don't know. Probably not too bad because I'm not the greatest writer, but I don't know at this point. Right now my dissertation should be six chapters is what I've proposed, but each chapter should be 30 to 50 pages probably. And what's the weirdest thing you discovered doing all this? So you were like, I didn't know that. I had no idea. Probably the thing about the burning. I always thought that burning, which is was the thing. Or the dog. Or the dog. Yeah, that was always, that was a new one.

One of the things that, I mean, I hadn't even mentioned the halfway covenant. So have you ever had anybody mentioned, do you familiar with the halfway covenant? So, man, I could go another 30 minutes just on that. So the halfway covenant was a agreement that was in the Puritan church that they basically were trying to boost their membership. So they said that people who had not yet

accepted Jesus Christ's Lord and Savior, but were born into a church member's family, could be half members of the church. And then once they became Christians, they could become full members of the church. What they ended up doing was shooting themselves in the foot because they said, what happened is these people

who were born of church members, were half church members. They had voting rights once they became adults, but they never became full-fetched Christians. So they never were baptized in the church, but they had voting rights in the church. So now you have people who are voting rights, and they have voting rights,

they can own land, but they're not Christians, but they have, you know, they are influencers in your church. So you're corrupting the church by your own hand. I thought when I first started this research that that was the reason that this happened in Salem Village because they were letting unsaved people into the church and they corrupted the church.

And that's why they were, that's why the Salem witch trials happened. I actually found out through my research that Samuel Parris, the pastor of that church and his leadership in the church were staunchly against the halfway covenant. And they were one of the few churches in Massachusetts that refused to enact it. So I said, oh no, that throws my whole thesis apart. Like I thought that the halfway covenant was the reason they were corrupted. But then I actually found it actually worked in favor of my research because Rodney Stark, the author I mentioned a minute ago, he identified that one of the things that

works into the formula of a witch trial is religious conflict. So the church in Salem Village refused to enact to use the halfway covenant and every other church within their vicinity was doing it. And all their members were mad at the leadership for not doing it. But the leadership in Salem Village saw the halfway covenant as two lax. It let unsaved people into the church. So they were actually, in my opinion, they were right. They shouldn't have done it. but it caused them to be in conflict with the churches around them and the members of that church. So that actually caused them to, that actually caused the religious conflict that was happening that fed into the hysteria of the trials.

Wow. Yeah, I can't believe I made it this far without mentioning the half-week-down-in. I love it. It's just so complicated. It is. The more you dig into it, the worse it gets, honestly. And I love this too, Brian, because I think, like, this old adage, like, if you don't know your history, you're doomed to repeat it.

Yeah. I think it's so important that we revisit these things and say, this is a turning point, a seminal turning point in our history, pre-history of America. This is pre-1776, right? Where we saw people abandon their faith in the church because of this crazy thing, right? And I just, I think we don't understand this and talk about these things and understand how this affected all of us downstream and the rotten fruit from Salem and also the agendas of the darkness in this.

then we're setting ourselves up here in this time when things are becoming more spiritual again for another event that can cause people to fall away. Right. I'll mention two other people just for the sake of what you're saying. There was a guy named John Willard who was executed along with George Burroughs on August 19th. He was a former constable in Salem, Massachusetts. He was the one that was arresting people who were accused of witchcraft. And after the five women, Rebecca Nurse and those were executed,

he started to have second thoughts about what was going on. So in August of 1692, he was ordered to arrest someone and he refused to do it. He's like, I'm not arresting any more accused witches. This is getting out of hand. They identified him as a consortist with the witches and they hanged him on August 19th. He was just one who said, this is getting out of hand and I will no longer play a part in it. And they were like, all right, you're going to the hill. And so that's insane.

another one because I'm a, because I'm a staunch, I'm a Baptist, so I love to point out the good Baptist in the story. There was a guy named William Milburn, who was a Baptist minister in Boston at the time. And Baptist at those time by the Puritans were seen as a dangerous sect, like separatist sect. And he wrote a letter to the court of Oyer and Terminer and told he condemned the use of spectral evidence. He's like, what you're doing is completely wrong. And this madness has to stop. And in July of 1692, they called him before the court and basically slapped him on the wrist and said, if you say another word in opposition to what we're doing, you're going to jail. Wow. Like, so there were people like him and even Cotton Mather's father, Increased Mather, who was the president of Harvard University at the time, which Harvard University started as a Puritan seminary.

He was the president of Harvard at the time wrote a book, not just more of a pamphlet, but he published a work. that was condemning the trials and condemning spectral evidence. But it just, Governor Phipps used it as a support for his argument when he got rid of the court of Oyer and Terminer. But you had people who were coming out and were saying, this is out of control and what you're doing is not good. But unfortunately, nothing changed until it really got to where,

you know, what happened with Giles Corey and George Burroughs happened. So it got, yeah, it got terribly out of control. And the more you dig, and I've only mentioned details of like five people who were executed. There's 20, you know, 19 people that were executed in one that was pressed to death.

Every one of them has a different story. Some of them had been accused of witchcraft in the past, and that's why they were accused again. Some of them, one of them was even the sister of Rebecca Nurse who came to defend her sister. And they were like, well, obviously you're a witch too. And they killed her. Like, it just got completely out of control. But what you're saying, we do the same thing today. We have witch hunts today where it just becomes a game of.

of pointing fingers. And the people who are actually doing the evil things are really under the radar. Last question, do you think this influenced the way we drew up like the Constitution and legal representation? Do you think this changed the legal system? I'm not sure about the American legal system. I'm sure it had, it definitely had an effect on what could be used as evidence. Yeah. I think I haven't looked into the legal side nearly as much of it. But I definitely think it had an impact on what could be used as evidence in a trial. However, you know, what they were doing at that time was based on the British court system. Right. Because they were a charter. They were a charter of the British colonies. So I think that had more of the influence on than anything else.

But of course, our legal system is very much influenced by Britons as well. But I'm, I guess the short answer is I'm not sure. So Brian, we can expect a book late 2026, sometime in 2027, perhaps. I'm thinking the dissertation should be finished in 2026. So as far as publishing is concerned that's at once my dissertation is published then I'm free to seek publication at my leisure so that has nothing to do with the seminary so excited excited my hope is that in December of 2026 I'll be walking with a PhD and I'll be done with school yeah from master to doctor yeah that's that's the idea and my wife says what are you going to do with yourself when you're not in school anymore I've been in school I was

finished my first master's degree in 2009 and then I came back in 2018 and I've been school been in school again for seven years and pastoring full time during that so I'm not I know to do with all this free time. Finish my first masters in the only one. Yeah. But yeah, no one. In order to pass Luke's dissertation, you have to know movie quotes very well. Okay.

Well, I do know quite a few. What else floats, Brian? What else floats? A duck. So she weighs as much as a duck. Very small rocks. Churches. I would quote meaning of life and life of Brian.

Oh, life of Brian. I only watched Life of Brian because it had my name on the cover. Yeah. And it said, honk if you love Brian. I was like, I have to watch this movie. Got to. And then I loved it. A lot of people hate it, but I love it.

I'm really bummed. I didn't get asked the Bigfoot question. No, but we did. We skipped over. Save it for last. Save it for last. Brian, before we leave, what is your thoughts on Bigfoot? So I'm a hopeful skeptic.

Like, that's the best. You would do. I would love it if it's true. I just have no evidence of it, but I do have a story to go along with it. And I'm sorry, it's not like I can say, I met the guy or anything. My wife told me my answer should have been. He's really nice. He seems thoughtful.

I served as an intern at a church in southern Mississippi when I was in college and when I was starting seminary. And I had a youth minister named Philip Wood. And one night we were to camp. And Philip was a great storyteller. He could really, you know, spin a yarn. And he was just telling stories to make all of us laugh. And it was a bunch of kids sitting around. And he was telling stories about how he and his family and his dad used to go when he was a kid, they would go camping.

And they still did it to that day. When they go camping, they go Bigfoot hunting. They go look for evidence. I like Philip Wood. We found hair, you know, and they found a footprint, and they supposedly had seen a body at some point. And he's telling all these stories, and he's such a good storyteller. He just loves making people laugh.

Everybody's dying. Like, we're loving this story. Well, it's time for the campers go to bed. Everybody leaves, and it's just me and a couple of people sitting there with Philip. I looked over at Philip, and I said, you don't believe any of that stuff, do you? And he just looked at me, and he said, why not? And it was that moment. I was like 21, 22.

to like, I had never had somebody that I respected that was in a position of authority, look at me and say Bigfoot might be real. Yeah. And he did. And then my brain just went, click. Like, I went, oh, why not? You know, like, and from that moment on, I've been a hopeful skeptic. Like, I've been one that when I'm just praying that I see him.

You know, like, I'm just like, I just want to see him so I can be one of those that says, I've seen him. Yeah. Unfortunately, I don't have that story yet. So here's hoping. Not yet. Not yet. It's wacky. He sort of comes out at the weirdest times.

But yeah, I like that. I think that's a similar thing happening to me. And I think that that was a big part of the show. And I think that a lot of the things you've touched on today was sort of trying to reach and build a little bit of a bridge in this chasm between skeptics and believers. And it makes some sense of this space. Yeah.

And obviously it's difficult. I think every day we have a harder time figuring out what to do and what's legit. But I love it. These are some of the best conversations. that I've ever had in my life and thankful for this space, thankful for you emailing us, thankful that the community has grown to a place where people feel comfortable. Like, hey, I wrote this is a wild event in history.

Let's talk about it. You shared it too. It wasn't like, I want to come on the show, which is like, I love that as well. I was hoping you'd find that interesting. This is the best case scenario. immensely interesting. And like, we're grateful. So, hey, man, best of luck, New Orleans theological seminary.

Thank you. this done with your dissertation. It's a ton of work, man. And next time, I'm out of your family vacation to be here with us. Absolutely. They're, they were, they've been, they've been so proud of me. They're like, oh, this is going to be so fun. Let's go. When that book comes out, we've got to, we got to, yeah, let us know. Yeah, I'm coming up with the titles right now. Let's do it. We need a really bad ones to ask us. We can always come up with something good for you. Or bad. Yeah, Brian. Thanks, Brian. Thanks, thanks so much.