Camp Gagnon - What Really Happened in Salem: The Witch Trials Explained

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

Today, we take a closer look at the Salem Witch Trials. We’ll talk about the religious beliefs in Salem, the afflicted girls’ accusations, the first witches, the official Salem witch trial court, the executions, and other interesting topics... WELCOME TO CAMP! 🏕️Shoutout to our sponsor: Mars Men and BlueChewFor a limited time, our listeners get 60% off FOR LIFE AND 3 Free Gifts at Mars Men when you use code 'CAMP' at https://mengotomars.com👕🧢 Use CHRISTMASCAMP at checkout for 17% off when you shop at https://camp-rd.com/collections/christmas🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.com🎩👽 Daily Dose Of History Here: https://www.dailytodayinhistory.comTimestamps0:00 Intro1:37 Christos YAPPING2:34 The Religious Beliefs In Salem 7:11 The Afflicted Girls Accusations 12:58 The First Witches 16:12 Tituba’s Confession + Accusations Spread 24:30 Elizabeth & John Proctor 27:27 The Official Salem Witch Trial Court 37:37 The Executions 41:27 Giles Corey Crushed to Death 44:57 End of The Trials 47:52 Governor's Wife Is Accused of Witchcraft 49:39 Apologies to The Accused 56:39 The Scholarly Thoughts#podcast #foryou #mystery #horror #history #crime #foryoupage

Salem, Massachusetts, 1692. This was a tough town. Life wasn't easy, but it was about to get way harder. When two girls in a minister's house starts screaming, convulsing, and speaking in a language that no one can understand, immediately the whole town is terrified, but doctors go to investigate, but they find no illness and no injury. And then immediately, the doctor's words would spark a nightmare, the evil hand. And just like that, the town is exploded. Everyone is accusing each other of being witches.

children are accusing adults, family is turning on each other, and ministers are preaching of fire and brimstone. The devil has entered into our town. Immediately, three women are accused of witches. No attorneys present, no rule of law, just sentenced to death for fear of being witches. And from then, dozens more, even the governor's wife is accused of being a witch. Panic is the ruling law, and logic is out the window. This isn't just a fun history story. This is the story of how fear can grip a town, how logic can go out the window in the face of satanic panic, and how we are all susceptible when critical thinking is traded for mass hysteria. Today we are diving into the shocking, terrifying truth behind the Salem witch trials. This is a story of how fear can change the psychology

of an entire town, and how, with just a few rumors, gossip, and no rule of law, innocent people can be put to death. So let's get into it. Sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. What's up, people, and welcome back to camp. My name is Mark Gaggon, and thank you for joining me in my tent where every single week we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from around the world from all time forever. Yes, in this very campsite, we go through everything.

We have some of the most interesting conversations with experts from around the globe, and I get to explore my weird rabbit holes of interest. I dig into every single topic that, you know, catches my interest that week, and we try to explain it in a fun way. Now, if you're a fan of this channel, go check it. out history camp where we explore specifically historical concepts, religion camp, we'll explore the religious concepts, and make sure to subscribe to this channel as well. I really appreciate it. Also, I'm on the road, Mark Agnon Live. You can come see me, do my hour of stand-up comedy.

I'm stoked for you guys to come on out and check it. You can check it at Mark Agnon Live. I'm going to be on the road. Now, of course, this show is not possible without the help from, you know, view and viewers like you. As well as my good pal, Christos Pachadapodos, the, you know, Leonidas himself, the lion of Greece. How are you, Christos? Doing great, right? Chris does, we don't have time, okay? Because today we're jumping into, I would say, a pretty interesting ripple in American history.

All right, I don't know if everyone knows this. Americans absolutely do. But I don't know if you guys know all the details and how it actually happens, how fear can sweep through a colonial American town and basically cause them to murder their very own wives, grandmother's aunts and servants. It's pretty wild. It's an insane, insane story. and today we're getting to the bottom of it, all right? So where does it start?

Massachusetts Bay Colony. This was an old proto-American colony way back in the 1600s. And it was a tough time. I'll be honest. If you were one of the early colonists living in America, you know, not only did you have to try to kill Native Americans, you also had to try to survive the winter. And the winter was trying to kill you.

And it was brutal and it was awful. It was not like England or Scotland or wherever you came from. You were going there and you were trying to get through you know, some of the toughest, you know, environmental effects that America has to offer. I mean, your crops would fail, people would get sick with fevers and no one knew why. And in 1692, folks in Salem lived in a world where nothing just happened. You know what I mean? Everything had a reason.

And those reasons were typically pretty deviant, right? If a cow suddenly stopped giving milk or like a child died or a man was sick, you know, something like that. It wasn't bad luck. it was a sign. Everything had a reason. And these people were so puritanical that the reason was typically the devil. Now, the people of Salem, Massachusetts were Puritans. This was a very specific sect of English Protestants who had left their homeland to build what they believed would be a pure, godly society. You know, the new Israelites, you know, the new chosen people of God to go west to the new world and, you know, do what they believed God wanted them to do, which was,

conquer land, fire, right? But they wanted to strip away the excesses of, you know, the Church of England and live by the Bible alone. For them, faith wasn't, you know, personal comfort, right? It wasn't like, oh, yeah, this is like a nice thing to do. It was order and discipline and constant guilt and self-examination. They believed the world was a battlefield between God and Satan and that everything that happened, everything that could ever happen, every illness, misfortune, death, And their eyes was the devil chipping away at this godly society. So the Massachusetts Bay colony was still pretty young. It wasn't even 70 years old by, you know, the 1690s.

And these settlers had survived all sorts of stuff, you know, wars with the native people, outbreaks of smallpox and, you know, the constant fear that England might just come through and revoke their charter and, you know, take away their autonomy and haul them all back to England. The land is hard, you know, the winters are even worse. And as a result, these people got even more fortified in their faith. And, you know, in the church, ministers didn't talk about, you know, comfort and, you know, having a personal relationship of Jesus. They talked about warning. And every sermon reminded them that salvation wasn't guaranteed and you had to do the right things in order to get into heaven.

It was very scrupulous. So they didn't really have newspapers. Books were few and far between. And the voices of authority in this place, you know, was obviously the governor of the colony. but even more so the minister. The minister was kind of, it was almost like the priestly class had sort of taken over.

And one single sin, one thing wrong, you can almost think like Scarlet Letter, right? Shout out to Hester Print. Like if you did something wrong, it would mark you forever. And in this small colony, everyone knew everything. But in that world, witchcraft and sorcery and black magic,

it wasn't like superstition or even kind of like a funny thing that people sort of believed, but they never really saw. It was fact, right? the Bible said the witches are real. Like literally, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. It was in the Bible, and they talked about it a lot. So if Scripture said it, it was true. And if the devil is real and everyone believed that he was, then the demons and witches and warlocks and, you know, the servants of the devil were also real. So this little town in Massachusetts is known as Salem sat a few miles inland from the busier port of Salem town, which was, again, small, rural, and, you know, everything you would think of a colony in the late 1600s. Everyone knew what everyone was up to.

Families would fight over land and money and who should lead the church. And, you know, it was a whole political sort of hodgepodge that you can imagine from, you know, these people in England coming over to have a better life. So they hired a minister, this guy named Samuel Paris. And not everyone liked him. Some people backed him, but other people want him gone. Just like any type of, you know, political faction, you have people on both sides. And this tension had been building for a long time. By early 1692, everyone in Salem Village was exhausted.

Winter was dragging on extremely long. This particular winter was particularly bad. Food is low, and people are just at their end. They're just trying to survive. It's literally survival. Like, we've done similar videos on like Jamestown and some of these earlier American colonies. It is brutal, okay? They don't know how to live off the land.

They don't know how to really. They're trying to take like English farming practices and apply it to the new world and it's not really working. and literally winter is like, all right, let's just hunker down and try to make it through. Now, inside of the home of Reverend Samuel Paris, the minister of this town, something strange was happening. You see, Paris lived in a parsonage with his wife and his 9-year-old daughter, Betty, his 11-year-old niece, Abigail Williams, and two slaves, a couple named John and Tatuba. Now, during the cold months, everyone was indoors, right? for the two girls, the days were filled with praying and chores and just long stretches of boredom. And sometimes Tatuba would tell them stories, bits of folklore from her homeland in South America,

where she had lived before being enslaved and then brought to Barbados and then to this colony in Massachusetts. There weren't stories that Puritan children had ever heard or, matter of fact, that they were even supposed to hear, but because of that, they listened closely. Now, the girls had been, like, casually experimenting with, like, fortune-telling, okay, dropping egg whites into water and then, you know, seeing the shape of the egg whites and trying to predict their future. Kind of like tea leaf reading, you could imagine. And, you know, these were some, like, old, like, English tricks whispered among, like, young girls that, you know, they would do for fun when, you know, winters were boring. And obviously, the Puritan elite and their parents would forbid this completely. But, you know, kids try to find trouble, and this was one of the troubles that they were finding. Now, some would like, later claimed that Tatuba had taught them this practice, but no one could prove it. Now, in a place where faith was the ruling sort of, you know, the ruling doctrine, the rumor was enough to plant some suspicion. Now, Reverend Paris himself was a stern, sort of like troubled man. His sermons were like the exact type of things that, you know, you would imagine from like this fire and brimstone sort

of era, you know, the devil is at the door and there's enemies within the village and, you know, God's wrath is going to come down upon us if we're not following the scriptures. And his house was extremely strict, as you can imagine, you know, a preacher's house would be. And, of course, all of the children and, you know, everyone else living in the house in the whole, you know, town, basically was living in sort of a state of, like, fear. Then in January, Betty and Abigail started to act a little bit weird. And they're acting different. And they're starting to have, like, you know, like night terrors and they're screaming for no reason. And they're having these moments of, like, panic and hysterical.

area and they're hiding under furniture and they're almost like speaking and like gibberish. This is again what is claimed by the people of the town and their bodies are kind of like twisting in weird ways and they said that they're getting like stabbed or like choked by these invisible hands. So Paris, the minister, calls in Dr. William Griggs. But the doctor, after, you know, examining the young girls, finds no illness, no wounds, nothing that would explain their behavior. But he knew what the village expected him to say. And in a world where, you know, things that are unexplained have a spiritual cause, there's only one answer left. And if you could guess what that answer is, you're probably right. He said that the girls were on their period. No, that's not what he said.

Christos, don't laugh at that, okay? That is completely sexist, okay? He said that the girls had the evil hand. Now, everyone in the town knew what this meant, okay? Those words just, you know, lit a fuse inside this powder keg of spiritual paranoia. And if a doctor, right, a man whose words obviously carried a lot of weight and the minister whose, you know, word is basically the law of the town are blaming the devil. Who's going to dispute that, right? And again, all these people are god-faring people. They're afraid of the devil.

So immediately everyone's like, well, yeah, it sounds like it. So to doubt him would be to doubt, you know, the natural order of the place that they were living. And soon, more girls started showing the same symptoms. Anne Putnam Jr., Elizabeth Hubbard, Mary Walcott, Mercy Lewis. They are all sort of doing the same thing. They're screaming. They're saying that they're seeing shapes and shadows and that these spirits are tormenting them. And, of course, what do the adults do?

They gather and pray. But their fear only grows. The ministers start fasting. The neighbors are sharing rumors. And if witchcraft is loose in Salem, then the witches had to be found, right? Something is possessing these girls and someone is to be. blame. So the girls were pressed to name who was tormenting them. Where did this all start? And at first, they just stayed quiet. But on February 29th, cornered by questioning and fatigue and expectation,

they finally spoke. And these are the names that they said, Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tatuba. And with that, the accusations started to flow. Slow at first and then completely unstoppable. The wheels were fully in motion, and they would not stop until justice was so. served. So the three women that were named were then questioned on March 1st, 6092, and they never stood a chance, right? They're easy targets. They were poor, isolated, and they didn't have anyone to defend them, right? This is a society that's built on status and reputation and what family you came from in England and all of the type of like patrilineal things you would expect from, you know, like a very masculine culture that's taking over this, you know, colonial space. So let's start

with Sarah Good. She's a beggar. She drifted from house to house, was asking for food, a place to sleep, it was doing like some, you know, chores here and there for people, just anything she could do to just keep a roof over her head. And people thought that she was pretty unpleasant, right? She was bitter. And when someone turned her away, she would, you know, you'll yell at them or she would be frustrated. And later, when a cow died or a child got sick, those muttered words would come back to haunt her, you know, in Salem, this reputation could be very dangerous. And then Sarah Osborne. She's an older woman. She's frail and similarly unpopular by all accounts. She was fairly curmudgeony, right?

Which I would be, too, if people were trying to kill me for being a witch. You know what I mean? I kind of get her point. Years later, she lived with a man before marrying him, which was a massive scandal that never went away. People saw her as a harlot and ultimately just as a, you know, social pariah. And she hadn't been to church in a long time. And she was fighting her own sons over property ownership. So people saw her as greedy, immoral, and ultimately someone that turned their back on God.

And then, of course, there's Tatuba. the woman that we talked about. She is an indigenous woman who had come through Barbados, originally from South America, and these places to the Puritans were far off distant lands of barbarians and savages. So she spoke differently. She, you know, would have, like, her small folk rituals from her original culture. And that alone made her extremely dangerous, as you can imagine, within this rigid puritanical, you know, Massachusetts Bay colony. So because she was a slave, she had no rights. So if she was accused, she could be questioned by any means necessary and fully interrogated without any type of legal recourse. Now, the magistrates of this town, John Hawthorne and Jonathan Corwin, held the examinations

in these crowded meeting houses, right? They're not trials yet, but the tone is very clear. Like, the men aren't looking for innocence or, you know, there's no innocent until proven guilty or, you know, like standard of proof. They're just demanding guilt. So the afflicted girls are there, too. As each woman enters, the girls are screaming and collapsing and they're saying that they're being strangled by these unseen hands. And whenever the accused woman lifted her arm, the girls would cry out specter, which means like her invisible spirit or like the ghostly form was like attacking them. And the room was just in chaos, okay? And again, this isn't like a trial or a tribunal. This is literally just a public examination of these women with no lawyer or anything present. So Sarah Good just denies

everything. She swears that she's innocent. But in that world, her anger and her desperation just made her look more guilty. So the magistrates were pressing her, okay, if you're not a witch, who is? Backed into a corner, Sarah Good did what many would later do to basically save themselves, and she just said, she is. And they basically just forced the women to snitch on each other.

So she says it's Sarah Osborne. Now, Sarah Osborne, the cremogeny old lady, she also denies it. She says that she herself was being attacked. And in a nightmare, they, you know, these spirits tried to drag her from her bed, and that she's weak and that she's sick and frightened. She ends up going to prison and dies two months later in prison as an old woman and is never tried,

is never convicted. She just dies. Now, to Tuba, her examination is a little different. She confessed. Now, no one knows what happened before she spoke, whether, you know, Paris, the minister, the man that owned her would beat her or threatened her or promised her mercy if she cooperated, like, you know, basically like a deal. No one knows exactly, but whatever the reason, Tatuba just said what they wanted to hear, right? She said, yes, she had seen the devil. He came to her as like this tall, white-haired man, you know, dressed in black with like a book and he told her to sign it. And she said that there were nine names in the book, though she couldn't read them. She said that good, you know, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne were in the book as well. And she painted like this very vivid picture, right? She said, you know, a yellow bird, a black dog with a woman's head, a strange creature covered in hair walking on two.

legs. She spoke of like these animal spirits that served the witches and described the devil traveling with two women and a dark skin man, all urging her to harm children. And she was crying and trembling and terrified. And for the Puritan, you know, lay people that were standing there in that room, her confession just cemented it, right? In Puritan law, this type of confession wasn't just like evidence for a trial. It was just proof. It meant, you know, that obviously sin is real and the devil is active, of course. And, that witches are real. So if this woman is saying that she's a witch and that, you know, had basically done a deal with the devil, that she's guilty. And the villagers obviously believed every single

word, right? There's nine names that are written in this devil's book. So that means that there are more witches out there. They already got Tatuba. They got, you know, Sarah Osborne, but that means there's seven left. So with Tatuba's confession, the villagers just believe everything, right? They believe that there's nine names written in this book. And they have Sarah Good, who Tatuba says is in the book and they have Sarah Osborne who is also in the book but that means that there's still seven more witches still in this village and the Salem witch hunt had officially begun and basically with these types of you know witch hunts you know from that moment the the pattern was the same brutal sort of process right do you would be accused you would be you know investigated and

if you confess you might survive in prison and if you deny it then you might actually just get killed. So by March, the panic was spreading fast. Each week, there were new names, new accusations, new arrests. Everyone's talking to each other, snitching on each other. And the girls at the center of it have become like almost celebrities, right? They had the ability to basically just get anyone killed whenever they screamed. So the more people that these girls would name, the more believable the whole thing became. And if you weren't careful, you could end up getting wrapped up as, you know, a part of it, either as a victim or as the accused. And by the end of May, more than 60, people were in custody. By people, I mean 60 women. And by September, that number would reach around

150. And what had begun with a single household now stretched far beyond Salem Village into Salem Town, and over Topsfield, and basically half of Essex County. Men, women, and even children, some as young as four years old, were accused. The girls making these claims were mostly children themselves. And Putnam Jr. was only 12 years old and became one of the most active accusers. To Puritans, that made them more believable and it made sense to them because kids were thought to be pure and less capable of lying. They had like an innocence. But it's ironic because that same innocence made their accusations completely unstoppable, right? Who would doubt a child that's suffering with, you know, demonic torment?

So at first, the targets were typically pretty poor. They were social outcast or kind of like odd people in the town or just outliers. But soon that started to change. Martha Corey got accused. She was a devout church-going woman. And when she was accused, everyone was shocked. If someone like her could be a witch, then that meant that no one was safe. Reputation basically meant nothing and faith didn't protect you.

And now the community is on lockdown. Everyone is frozen in fear. To defend the accused basically was to be accused yourself, right? Like if this woman is accused of being a witch and you're like, well, hang on. This is my wife. She goes to church every day. Everyone's like, well, what are you hiding? So to question the girls was to basically question God himself.

So as a result, people just stopped talking. Everyone just came on lockdown. And then came Rebecca Nurse. She was a 71-year-old. She was kind. She was respected. And she was sick in bed when the constable actually came for her. Her family was begging for mercy.

And even her neighbors didn't believe it. But the girls said that they saw her specter, this ghostly form around her. And that was all that it took. In Salem courts, invisible evidence carried more weight than like a lifetime of good deeds and church going. And during her examination, every movement was twisted. When she clasped her hands, the girls cried that their hands were being crushed. And when she shifted her weight, they screamed that she was crushing them. And the logic was airtight.

Everything she did, the girls were reacting to. So as a result, you know, people said, well, she must be guilty. So if the girl said that you hurt them, you did it. And if you denied it, you were lying. And if you confessed, you're guilty. So the only way to survive and maybe just get prison time and not get hung was to confess. And this is what they called spectral evidence, the belief that the witch's spirit could leave her body to harm people even miles away. You could just be sitting in church while your ghost was strangling someone across town and you yourself didn't even know it because you were basically touched by this evil hand of the devil.

And the courts just accepted it. Visions were now testimony and if someone saw your shape choking them, you were doomed. And the judges would basically tell the accused, you may not know it, but Satan is working through you. you how how do you fight that like if you're just like they're like hey we know you're innocent but saden has taken over your spirit and is using it to kill people or to you know assault people you're just be like all right great what's up guys we're going to take a break really quick because i have a story to tell you fun fact after you have a child your testosterone naturally goes down it's a way for you to like become like more empathetic and more in touch and like protect your kid and stuff and i didn't

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specter was now threatening them. Both the husband and the wife were arrested. Elizabeth at the time was pregnant. The only thing that spared her from just fully being killed, at least temporarily, was that she had an unborn child. And the courts at the time would not kill an unborn. But they had no problem just, you know, chaining the mother up in prison. John wouldn't be so lucky. In late April, the jails in Salem, Boston, and Ipswich were just overflowing, rich, poor, young, old, no one was safe. People were just getting rounded up and put into prison. What's interesting in retrospect is that the only people that were untouched from these accusations were the powerful, right? Magistrates, wealthy merchants, influential ministers,

they were never accused. The net, basically, of these witch trials, only caught the weak. Old grudges now were turning to fuel, right? These land disputes and family feuds that people have had for, you know, decades now was proof of witchcraft. Thomas Putnam, one of the the village's most powerful men had long argued over property with several people that happened to have been accused. Now those enemies were being carted off to jail and the land was his to have. Witchcraft had now become a weapon for land ownership. Some people refused to wait for trial. A few managed to escape like John Alden, who was a ship captain who escaped with the help with, you know, some friends and basically just vanished off to the countryside. Others fled before they

could be caught, you know, carrying stories of Salem's madness to these neighboring towns. some were sheltered. Others were just completely turned away for fear that this witch plague might be real, right? That maybe this person is a witch and they've escaped the, you know, they escaped Salem and they came to my town, but I'm not going to risk having them because what if, you know, the trials come here and I'm harboring a witch. So they would just send them away. The panic was even touching animals. How crazy is that? Two dogs were accused of being witches and they were executed. Now if animals can serve Satan, then literally everything is out the window, right? Like, everything was dangerous and suspicious. Like a bark at night could just be a demon's call. And then immediately they're coming to your house, taking your dog to get killed. So by that summer, the whole town was upended. People are turning on their neighbors,

even family members versus family members, husbands are testifying against their own wives, parents are accusing children. It wasn't all malice. Some of it was, of course, but it was mostly just terror. It was terror that you would be accused. It was terror of letting evil hide among you.

It was terror that God might punish you for being complicit with witchcraft. And in Salem, things had completely gone crazy. So by late May, 1692, Massachusetts is falling apart, right? The jails are totally full. The magistrates had basically run out of, like, authority. The colony was now drowning in these accusations. And at this point, so many people were accused that they didn't know what to do. So when the new governor, Sir William Phipps, arrived in May 14th, he was walking into this completely,

like degenerate spiritually terrified town. And so by the time he settled into his post, freshly appointed by the English crown to be the new governor of this colony, he basically needed to get a grasp on what was happening. And this witch crisis wasn't something that he could ignore.

So in order to restore order, he created a special court, one that was meant to handle this threat. And he called it the court of Euler and Terminer. This was like an old French term basically to hear and determine, you know, what the specific cases were. Now, the name suggests that it's pretty fair, right?

We're going to hear all the cases and determine who's guilty. But the court isn't built to decide, like, is witchcraft real? It was built to find who the witches are. So it wasn't like if you were a witch. It was who in this room is a witch. So Phipps appointed seven judges led by Lieutenant Governor William Stoughton, and none of them were trained lawyers, but all of them were true believers in the word of God. They saw Satan as a real threat, active, you know, enemy in Massachusetts, and themselves basically is like soldiers of God.

So Stoughton especially was very ruthless. He was a Harvard graduate, a former minister himself, and he believed that mercy was weakness. So to him, letting a witch live was betraying God and basically letting everyone in the town be, you know, potentially a threat to the problem of witchcraft. So every acquittal was a sin, right? Every execution was an act of righteousness. So under his lead, the court became an engine of guilt. When the juries were hesitating, he was pushing them harder and harder to get a conviction. And when witnesses were faltering, he was pressing even harder.

Like, it's almost hard to even wrap your head around, like, the pressure that these people were feeling. Like, I guess you can imagine, you know, like some type of terrorist or something in your town, wherever you live. Imagine, okay, there's five people here that are terrorists and you don't know who they are, what they look like, anything like that. but we just know that some of them are. And every person that you let off is going to just kill more people. So now you're like, okay, we'd rather put multiple innocent people to death than potentially let one of these bad people go free. And that's how they saw this threat. Now, the problem with witchcraft is that there's no evidence or, you know, standard for justice or anything like that. So they're basically just kind of going off vibes. Now, the court met for the first time June 2nd in Salem Town. The first who faced trial was Bridget Bishop, a woman in her late 50s who worked in a tavern. and was always dressing in these bright, bold colors. Now, this is a world where women were expected to be modest and quiet, and Bridget was standing out. She wore, you know, like bright red colors. She was married three times.

She was working around alcohol, around men that were drinking. And that enough was, you know, enough to make her a suspect of being a witch. Now, she had been accused of witchcraft before. But, you know, this time, the outcome was already written, right? The afflicted girls were screaming the moment that she entered. Witnesses told stories once again about her specter, about her ghost spirit, climbing through the windows and sitting on their chests and threatening them. One man swore that he saw her ghost in his room and he actually swung a sword at it. And when the blade struck her specter, nothing happened.

And the court said that that was proof that she was a wish. Like if there was flesh, if she was actually been in the room, she would have been killed. And the fact that nothing happened proves that she was supernatural. So the jury found her guilty. And on June 8th, her death warrant was signed. Two days later, Bridget Bishop was hung at Proctor's ledge. She insisted that she was innocent until her last breath. But her denials just once again only convinced the judges that she was truly guilty.

They're thinking on this is that a real witch would lie. So it was just like a Kafka trap, right? Like if you said, I'm a witch, they'd be like, well, you're a witch. And if you said you weren't a witch, they'd be like, well, that's what a witch would say. And so from then on, the trials just became theater. meeting house was packed every session and the afflicted girls sat right at the front, treated like these honored VIP guests and every time they cried, the court would stop and when they pointed, everyone would turn and they were just the most powerful people in Salem at that time. And the

performances were really intense. Whenever an accused person would move, the girls would mimic the action, right? They would just grab their necks. They would claim that they were being bitten and crushed and that, you know, they were being attacked by these women just sitting there in the courtroom and the crowds would gasp and the judges would lean forward. And even when those marks were proven fake or self-inflicted or, you know, the bite marks that they had under their dresses were done by themselves or by people near them, at that moment, it didn't matter because the belief that the people had was enough. And then came the touch test. The judges basically ordered the accused to touch one of the girls. And if the girl suddenly stopped convulsing, the court would take it as proof. The

which his spirit had returned to her body. It was all nonsense, right? But it played like evidence. And because it was so theatrical, the people just ate it up. English law should have protected the accused. I mean, by all accounts, English law at this time was very sophisticated. And in the world, it was the standard of evidence, right? There was a right to counsel. There was a right to cross-examine witnesses. There was a presumption of innocence, all the things we have in America today. But in those in Salem at that time, those protections were gone. There were no lawyers, no defense, no presumption of innocence. This was basically just an impossible task and the crime was invisible, right? How do you prove that your spirit didn't leave your body? How do you prove

that you didn't sign a deal with the devil in a dream? The only way to prove innocence was to confess that you were a witch and accuse other people. And so as a result, confession was the only path to survival. Like the spectral evidence that people would talk about, right? The idea of like waking up and seeing a person in a room that was like the ghost version of them, you know, this was accepted in court. And normally English law, even at this time, would reject this type of evidence. But the influential Boston minister, Cotton Mather, had sent a lot of mixed signals about this topic. He was warning against relying solely on spectral evidence while also kind of encouraging the court to proceed with vigor, trying to get all the witches. The problem was

That other proof was usually just like gossip or like land disputes or grudges or just more visions. And so this ambiguous advice gave the judge's permission to continue and they didn't really care about, you know, British common law or anything like that. And because without the spectral evidence were the rumors, there would be no cases. So they would also search for these witches marks. This was a physical sign left by the devil. Women were stripped and they were examined. And they would look at everything on their body. to determine if they're a witch or not. So that could be a wart or a scar or a mole,

and that could be enough to doom you. If it didn't bleed when it was pricked with a needle, it was proof. And if it did, they just looked somewhere else until they found something else suspicious. Like, it was completely dehumanizing and demoralizing for these women that were pulled out of their houses, stripped, and then searched for, like, a weird wart on their shoulder, and then pricking it. And, you know, if it didn't bleed, there you go. Now, the trials were moving fast. And this was, you know, this was on purpose. The judges were afraid that if they hesitated that that might bring some doubt. And so some days saw multiple convictions in a row. And this justice was extremely fast and because it was already decided beforehand. So by

late June and then August and then September, this pattern continued to repeat. Accusation, examination, trial, conviction, execution. And each death made the next one easier to justify, right? If that woman was a witch because she had a weird mole on our shoulder, then if you have a weird mole, then you're also a witch. So to stop would mean, you know, admitting that innocent people had been killed, and you couldn't do that. So now they were in just this infinite flywheel of conviction and execution. And the jails are getting even more overcrowded, right? The prisoners were chained in these dark, cold cells. Like, you have to imagine, like, you know, Salem in the late 1600s isn't great for anyone. And you can

imagine how bad it is for prisoners. So they're forced to pay. for their own food and some are dying before the trials were even starting and the families are getting billed for the people staying in prison. I mean, the whole thing is just insane. The girls are screaming. The witnesses tell stories. The accused would deny everything and they would say, well, that makes you a witch and then you would become guilty. And, you know, no one would walk free from these sessions. And when the juries hesitated, once again, they were pushed even more to get a conviction. Now, maybe the craziest part of this insanity is that all of these executions were public. They always were. And each time the condemned were loaded into an open cart and taken through

the center of Salem Town, a slow ride to Proctor's Ledge where people would be hung, and people lined the streets and they would watch. Many were just staring in silence. Other people would kind of jeer and mock the women that were getting hung, and others would, you know, say prayers for the people that were dying. And the prisoners just sat there, exposed. Their hands were bound, the wind hitting their faces. A few of them were, you know, praying out loud. And just basically for, you know, forgiveness or, you know, to be accepted into heaven or perhaps that the executioner at last minute would have a change of heart. Others would just cry to themselves silently, accepting their fate. Some would shout and get angry and profess their innocence to anyone that would listen, but it did no good.

Proctor's ledge sat at the edge of the town, this sort of rocky kind of area, and it was at the base of Gallo's Hill with a view of the harbor. And for centuries, people believed that the hangings occurred at the top of Proctor's ledge, but historians confirmed in 2016 that the actual site was the ledge below. Now, every hanging drew a crowd, and for some, it was a duty to witness, you know, justice in this new colony. For others, it was curiosity. And for some of them, it was just fear, afraid that staying home might seem like they were sympathetic for the witches and that, you know, everyone that was there were, you know, condoning what was happening that that would make them safe. You know, ministers would show up too, and they would walk. and nod and basically remind everyone that this is what justice looks like. And then June 10th, 1692, Bridget Bishop went alone.

Her execution was a test. This was basically to see how the public would react, right? If people rioted, then maybe the trials would have stopped, but there was no outrage. Everyone was just succumbed to the sphere. There was no protest and they just watched it happen. And then July 19th, five women died together, Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, Susanna Martin, Elizabeth Howe, and Sarah Wilds. They are carried to the hill in the same cart, forced to watch one another get hung one by one. Sarah Good shouted at Reverend Nicholas Noyes before she died, calling him a liar and swearing that God would make him choke on blood one day.

Rebecca Nurse, 71 years old, had actually been found innocent at first, but Judge Stoughton didn't like the verdict. And then he pressured the jury to reconsider, basically telling them that they had made a mistake. And then they returned the guilty verdict. Governor Phipps then issued a reprieve, but withdrew it under the pressure from the justices and, you know, basically renewed this sentence for the afflicted women. Rebecca Nurse's execution set a dangerous precedent, right? Mercy was no longer allowed. Any juror who hesitated learned that leniency could then cost them their lives. August 19th, five more are hung, George Burroughs, John Willard, George Jacobs Sr., Martha Carrier, and John Proctor. Now, this is an interesting inflection point because now men are being. hung as well. Burroughs was interesting. He had been a minister. He was educated. He was respected.

He was once a leader in the faith that is now condemning him to death. Before he died, he recited the Lord's prayer perfectly. And according to Puritan belief, a witch couldn't do that. So in that moment, the crowd went completely still. And for that moment, everyone in the audience kind of looked to each other like, did we make a mistake? And then Cotton Mathers rode forward on horseback. warning that the devil could appear even as an angel of light. That Burroughs perfect prayer was just the brilliance of Satan's deception. And the crowd was like, oh, that's a good point. And the execution went forward.

But something in that moment cracked. And for many, this seed of doubt had been planted. And that maybe, just maybe, that they were sentencing these innocent people to death. And then eight more died on September 22nd. Martha Corey, Mary Eastie, Alice Parker, Mary Parker, and Putator. Margaret Scott, Wilmot Red, and Samuel Wardwell. Eight hangings in one day, and the trials are moving faster and faster, as if the court sensed that time was running out and the people were kind of getting a little bit tired of this entire theatrical charade.

This hill had become, you know, sort of a point in a stage for mass death. At this point, 19 people, 14 women and five men, were executed between June and September. And their bodies weren't buried in a churchyard where bodies typically would be. To the Puritans, these witches died in lockstep with Satan, in an alliance with the dark one, and that no consecrated ground could accept them. So what followed was actually very sad. After they were hung at the gallows, they were dumped in shallow, unmarked graves nearby. Families sometimes would go back at night to dig them up in secret and carry their body's homes to give them a proper burial. But even that was dangerous because if you got caught, that would mean that you were arrested and that, you know, you were now.

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details and important safety information. And thank you so much to BluDhub for keeping the lights on and making this show possible. Now let's get back to it. But one man's story stands out. And that's Giles Corey. Eighty-one years old, stubborn, unbroken. And when he was brought to trial, he refused to plead guilty. And as a matter of fact, he just didn't say if he was guilty or not guilty. And under English law, that meant that the court couldn't proceed. So they turned to an old punishment. And this was pressing. This is no. known as Penfoot-Eduro. Now, they laid Corey on the ground, and they placed a board over his chest and started to stack stones. Slowly, deliberately between each addition, and each time they

would ask him to enter his plea, are you guilty or not guilty, and he continued to say nothing. The weight was building, his ribs were cracking, he couldn't breathe. They say that his tongue pressed out of his mouth, and when it did, the sheriff would push it back in with his cane, but still he refused to speak. His last words, according to the legend, was simple, more weight. He died on September 19th. Three days later, his wife Martha was also hung with eight other people. Because Giles never entered a plea, his property couldn't legally be seized by the state, and it passed on to his family just as he planned. He was crushed to death, but ultimately not defeated. At least five others died in prison, Sarah Osborne, and the

infant child of Sarah Good. I mean, the jails were freezing and overcrowded and foul and food was scarce. And even after the trials ended, some remained locked up because they couldn't afford the fees for their food and shackles. So they were literally indentured because in that time you had to pay for your own prison stay. The executions themselves were not exactly mob violence, right? Like they were official and orderly and signed off by the authorities of Massachusetts. And that's what made it worse. Because this wasn't chaos from a bunch of people that you could some way sort of quell, it was the law of the land. This was the law twisted into something unrecognizable because of religious panic and fervor. Ministers urged the condemned to confess and save their souls, and

most of them refused. They just prayed and forgave their accusers in the Christian way and just faced death on their own terms. Mary Eastie was one of the last to die and wrote a petition before her execution to ask the court to stop, not to save her, but to just prevent any more innocent people from dying. And in her last word, she forgave everyone who condemned her, which to me is, you're a better woman than I am, Mary Eusty. But others were still defiant. Sarah Good cursed her minister till the end. Rebecca Nurse prayed quietly. George Jacob Sr., too weak to stand without his cane, said simply, I'm innocent. And by the final hangings in September, the crowd had changed. There were no more cheers, no more shouts of victory, just a defeated

silence. And the executions had become routine, right? This was a grim ritual that the town was performed because it had been told that it was right. But deep down, the people started to feel that this was wrong. And they started to feel the weight of what they had actually done. And no one would say anything out loud, but the silence on the hills said everything. And by October, 1692, I mean, almost, what, eight months since this whole thing, not 10 months since this whole thing started, the panic that had once consumed Salem was starting to break apart. Not in the village itself, like the girls were still screaming and still pointing, but beyond in Boston and the wider colony. The rest of Massachusetts started to think that what was happening was too crazy.

Too many people had died. Too many of them were respected and educated and even godly people going to church on a regular basis. I mean, a minister had been hung. Like, what is happening? The trials no longer look like justice. It just looked like chaos. And among those watching was a man named Increase Mather, one of the most powerful ministers in New England and the father of Cotton Mather, who had defended the trials early on. But by October, Increase Mather circulated a manscript amongst Boston ministers that said what many had begun to think but would never say. He basically said that spectral evidence could not be trusted. The devil, he said, could take the form of innocent people trying to trick the courts. So to hang someone based on visions only or dreams only was to risk killing the innocent, which is what the devil actually wants.

He basically took their satanic panic and flipped it on him. He said, we're killing innocent people, which is exactly what the devil wants us to do. So he said, it were better that 10 suspected witches should escape than one innocent person be condemned. And that single line, that thought hit like lightning. And his sermons were printed in pamphlets. and they called it cases of conscious concerning evil spirits. And it spread all throughout Massachusetts, and people would read it in taverns and in kitchens.

And for the first time, the idea that the trials might be wrong started to feel possible and everyone started to realize, hey, this has gone way too far. And then came the accusation that changed everything. There was an accused woman named Lady Mary Phipps. Now, if that name sounds remotely familiar, that is because that is the governor's wife,

William Phipps. Now, for Mary Phipps to be accused of a witch was a massive scandal and at this point it just crossed a line. The fear had reached a zenith. Governor William Phipps was sent there to control this colony and put order to this town and he was struggling to prove his control over these people to England and suddenly saw the madness threatening not just his colony and his township but his own family, his own wife. And so he acted quickly. And on October 29th, 6th,000, In 1692, Phipps dissolved the court, and he ordered that no more arrests would be made for witchcraft. And just like that, the trial stopped. And by January 1693, one year later, a new court was formed.

This is the Superior Court of the Judicature. And this time, spectral evidence was completely banned. And they heard 56 cases of witchcraft. And out of these 56 cases, only three of them led to conviction. And these three convictions, Phipps quickly parted. of them. And by May, every remaining prisoner of these witch trials was released. Many had been locked up for over a year, and they walked free into a town that would barely even look at them. They were still social pariahs. Technically, the hysteria was over, but what came next was this uneasy,

angry silence, right? This town of Salem was broken. Families were gone. Neighbors who once stood together in church now wouldn't even talk to each other. This guilt was just in the air, and everyone had lost something or someone. Everyone knew someone that was killed. Still, some refused to let the story end at that point. In the years that followed, petitions began to circulate. Families of the executed demanded justice. They wanted their loved ones' names to be cleared because this was a stain on their family. Oh, so-and-so's brother was a witch. So-and-so's aunt was a witch. They wanted their property back. They wanted their family name to be redeemed. And in 1696, 12 jurors signed a public apology, admitting that they were wrong. The next year, the Massachusetts General Court declared a

day of fasting and repentance for what it called the tragedy raised among us by Satan and his instruments. It was sort of a tacit confession, basically blaming the devil, not themselves, that this had gone wrong. That same year, Samuel Paris, the minister whose household started this entire thing, was forced to leave Salem Village. He never admitted fault. He never said that that his, you know, children were lying. He just insisted that he had done his duty before God. And some confessions actually came later. 1706, Ann Putnam Jr., one of the original accusers stood before her church and apologized.

She said that she was diluted by Satan. And whether she believed that or simply said what she was supposed to say, no one can really know. Samuel Sewell, one of the few who repented, stood in his Boston church in 1697 while his pastor read his confession aloud. He bowed his head as the congregation watched, then fasted on the anniversary of the executions every year for the rest of his life. But William Stoughton, the chief judge and the man who had really driven the trials forward with this vigor, and he wanted everyone to be completely convicted and get rid of all the witches, he never apologized. He became the governor and defended everything that he did until the day that he died. The people of Salem tried to move on. You know, they built new houses and planted new crops and, you know, new children were born and raised new generations.

but the weight of what happened in this town never faded. It just sank deeper and got buried under years and years of silence. Technically, the hysteria was over, but the shame never left. And I don't know, understanding Salem is never really an easy thing for, you know, Americans to really understand. But this kind of thing happens all over the world, right? For centuries, people have been asking the same thing. How did this small town just lose its mind? How did fear turn these ordinary people in?

into like a quasi-gastapo and, you know, turn regular people into executioners. Some say that it's, you know, faith in God, gone too far. Others call it just a mass hysteria where, you know, one person would have this panic and this anxiety that would spread to the next person and the next person. The girls might have started, you know, with a real panic. Maybe they were having night terrors or maybe they liked the attention or maybe they're coerced by their parents to rid the town of evil. Either way, once the people believed them, it was too late.

And then not to mention, you know, the old politics of Salem that really fueled a lot of these grudges, right? This town had been simmering for years over land and money and pride and all these people coming to this town trying to, you know, get wealth and create a life for themselves. The trials really gave them permission to aim their anger somewhere, right? And then not to mention, you know, the sexism that existed in the colony at this time, most of the accused and most of the people convicted and executed were women who just didn't really fit the mold, right? widows, independent women, outspoken women, women that wore clothes that men didn't like, they were just witches and it made it way easier than controlling them. And the world beyond Salem wasn't calm either, right? The colony had been attacked, the leadership was shaken. The English crown was looking at this. Like, what is happening to our people over there? This is crazy. And the future of this entire colony was really uncertain and everyone needed someone to blame and witchcraft and this satanic panic gave them an outlet. And in the end, it wasn't about demons or witches or any of that stuff. It was about people. People convinced that they were right in the name of God, people who were afraid for themselves and their family, they were willing to sell out their neighbors. And that's

why I think this story is worth remembering and worth really meditating on and thinking about, because it shows just how quickly justice and fear and indignation can lead us to, you know, putting justice in the back burner and, you know, really, really, going after our fellow neighbors and people that we share community with, right? Like this silence now becomes safety. No one wants to speak out. And it just shows how easily like fear can turn regular good people into monsters. And nowadays, you know, Salem is a pretty quiet town. You can go there and they have cafes and souvenir shops. You can go to Proctor's Ledge and you can see the memorial that they made in 2017. And they have 19 names carved into stone. People will stop and read them and, you know,

think about what it was like to be in this place at that time. And it took the colony years to admit its mistake. By 1697, there was the fasting and prayer. And then by 1711, they overturned some of the convictions, but it wasn't until 1957, more than 250 years later. Your parents may have been alive in this time that Massachusetts issued a formal state apology to all the innocent people they killed. Some of the victims were cleared them, you know, the rest, not until 2001. And then the very last victim wasn't exonerated until 2022, literally 330 years

after the original execution. And for a long time, families would carry the weight of, you know, those names and, you know, they would tell stories to their children and grandchildren about how their family member was unjustly killed by the state because of the execution or, you know, the witness, rather, of

just a few small people in the town. Now, these names are just sort of ghosts that you see in, you know, plaques and museums and Halloween, people will go there with witch's hats and sort of, you know, play, you know, almost like play it up. like it's like a tourist stop and I get you know it's fun like I would do the same thing and other people say that it's like you know like healing and you know taking back sort of this uh you know quasi misogynistic sort of moment in American history others say that it kind of cheapens and it creates

a mockery of this terrible tragedy that happened but either way the past is still there you know and now exists as a tourist stop but the real Salem isn't you know the shops and museums it is sort of this moment of mass hysteria where people were able to be so afraid and and that justice was able to be so co-opted by bad actors that innocent people were killed. You know, the trials ended in 1693, but the patterns don't. And it's something that humans, I think, have to deal with, right? This fear to blame, you know, minority groups for the problems happening in society, the desire to condemn people because it's convenient, the fear of staying silent and not standing up for justice.

You know, Salem was just one of the first times that it was really written down and acknowledged. And so I think for us, it's not about witches. are, you know, mystery and witchcraft. It's, I think, just a human story for how we behave in times of high stress and struggle. And that is a shortened history on the Salem witch trials. I don't know, dude, it's like, I think it's just a human problem where human beings, when faced with an existential threat, some type of, like, difficulty that we're dealing with as a society to just blame something, someone, some group. And in that time, because of the religiosity of the people, there was a very easy scapegoat.

And when you have the law working in lockstep with sort of the spiritual class and the religious authority, things can go sideways. And I say this as a Catholic, right? Like, I think that the separation of church and state in America is very helpful. Because if you're just assuming that these types of spiritual attacks are, you know, valid evidence, then you have stuff like, you know, like skeptor testimony. And you're like, well, you know, I saw this person as a ghost. And there's no standard of evidence. there's no proof that can actually beat that. And if you say that you're innocent, then you're actually a witch.

And you create these sort of logical traps where you have people that are, you know, completely destitute and also suffering now on the hook. And it's not like things got better in Salem. It's not like the next winter was better because they got rid of the witches. I'm like, I don't know, it is a, it is a human problem. And I think like these things that we have in place in society are really helpful, right? Separation in church and state is valuable. And as much as like, you know, I'm Catholic and I'm down with, you know, I'm Catholic. know, Catholic stuff. It's like, yeah, but I have to recognize that not everyone in my society

is Catholic, so they can't be governed by the same laws. I don't think the Bible can be, you know, the sole rule of law in a place. And furthermore, I think like, you know, all of these balances that we have in the judicial system, like innocence still proven guilty, a certain standard of evidence, you know, a jury of your own peers that are not being pressured by judges, the right to, you know, a speedy trial with an attorney present. All of these things slow down the judicial process, but they are so important for maintaining that innocent people aren't killed. And, I mean, even the death penalty in general, I think is probably something that should be questioned in relation to this. Like, yeah, should the state have a monopoly on murdering people? I don't know. You look at this case,

and you're like, yeah, there's a ton of other issues, but now people are getting killed at the hands of the state that, you know, 200 years later, they go, whoops, but those are real people with kids and families and wives and husbands and, you know, that just were just ventilated, taken off the earth, just because, you know, some kangaroo court convicted them. So I think it's an interesting sort of proxy for the modern day where it's like, hey, anytime you're in a position where things are going bad for a society and the people in power just want to be like, hey, it's those people's fault. I'm like, take a step back, take a breath.

You know what I mean? Like, if it is a group of people that is causing the problems, have some type of legitimate trial with an attorney present and, you know, the actual due process that we, you know, afford to all the people in this nation. And just try to just chill, you know, because the Salem witch trials is just a microcosm for other things that have happened all over the world, right? Foreign governments will have their own sort of judicial systems where someone says you did something and they have high status, then you're just going to be caned, you know, like you're just going to get whipped or something. I just think that as the, as Americans and, you know, as people with like a rich history of justice, we should try to maintain that standard of justice. And stuff like Salem, I think is unfortunately a helpful.

lesson to know what happens when hysteria takes over a group. I'm curious, was there ever any type of modern consensus as to why these girls were behaving in this way? I like the girls that were accusing. Could you look that up? I'm assuming that like the father's a minister. He's teaching his kids from day one. Like, hey, the devil's at the door. The devil's going to come in. Devil's going to come in. I'm assuming that these girls have religious trauma and start having like night tears as a result of like this, you know, fear. And then the dad is telling them like, Hey, if you convict this person, you're going to rid our town of, you know, you're going to rid our town of, you know, Satan himself. But I also wonder if there was maybe like an external thing.

Was there like lead in the water? Yeah. So it's actually close. Possible ergot poisoning from contaminated rye causing mass hysteria, which is something I've heard before. Interesting. Ergot poisoning from contaminated rye, specifically in that part of Salem. Correct. Wow. And that all these people are, what are the symptoms of like contaminated rye? like delusions and like paranoia and stuff. Convulsive, nausea, vomiting, muscle pain, spasms, confusion, hallucinations, seizures. Interesting. So these girls are afflicted with potentially, potentially, this contaminated rye that then is making them have these like convulsions and seizures.

And then the fact that it was the minister's daughters, he was like, well, obviously it's the devil. And then as a result, you have this whole spark of the witch trials. get started with like one or two of them actually had the sir got poisoning and then the rest kind of just a hysteria and then on top of that i imagine that you know the the people are like you know the the dad who's the minister's like pressuring his daughter like hey whoever did this to you we will get them taken care of just tell me who it was right i mean it is like i get like you know this whole i think it has been co-opted by like a lot of feminists where they're like yeah this is like you know the patriarchy killing women and i get that right because like it is like it

It is a patriarchal sort of society that is killing women. But at the same time, it's like everyone in this town was complicit. You know, like women are snitching on women. Like all of the testimonies that's basically putting all these people to death are women themselves. So, like, I think the lesson shouldn't be like men are mean to women, which they are. I'm not doubting that. But I'm suggesting that this is a human issue that all human beings need to be aware of in the event that not literally this happens again. But like we get to another point where the state, the government is trying to convince people to snitch on each other.

And I think ultimately the working class needs to rise up against the elites. That's maybe more of the lesson that I think we can take from this. That, you know, the ruling class is ultimately trying to blame all of their shortcomings on the people and get us to fight. And we need to have solidarity. Also, the play or the book is really good, but the movie is even better, if you ask me, Daniel DeLuis is John Proctor. Oh. Yeah. It's really good.

What's the name of the movie? The Crucible. The Crucible. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I've heard of this. I should probably watch that. Great. It's pretty fire.

One of its best performances. Maybe I'll peep that. Maybe I'll check it out. I've really got to start watching movies. Anyway, guys, this has been another episode of camp. I appreciate you guys supporting. As always, you can check out religion and history camp where I focus on those topics specifically. Also see me on the road, Mark Jaggon Live.

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