Haunted Cosmos - The Dusty Tome: Salem, Part I

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

Enjoy this second installment of our inter-season sneak peeks at our Patreon-exclusive show: The Dusty Tome.In this episode, Ben talks about the Salem Witch Trials. Saying anymore would either be platitudinous, disingenuous, unnecessary, or (most likely) all the above.Love Haunted Cosmos? Get access to our exclusive show, The Dusty Tome, early ad-free access to main episodes, monthly AMA's, and livestreams with Ben and Brian by becoming a patron of the show: https://www.patreon.com/c/HauntedCosmosBuy the Haunted Cosmos book: https://www.newchristendompress.com/cosmos PS: It's also available as an audiobook!This episode is sponsored by Joe Garrisi with Backwards Planning Financial. Content Joe today to talk about managing your wealth.Hey! Since you're still reading this, why don't you grab some special coffee here. And since you are still reading (why though?), pick up a ticket to this year's New Christendom Press Conference. It's happening in June in Ogden, UT and Brian and I will be doing a live haunted cosmos recording sesh. Support the show

Hello, constant listener, and welcome to this in-between season break of Haunted Cosmos. In this time of limbo, where production on the main shows of next season is in full swing, we want to make sure we don't leave anyone hanging. To that end, we will be releasing episodes of our special weekly patron-only show called The Dusty Tome to all of you for the next six weeks until the first episode of Season 3 drops to the public. These shows that will release make up a series that we did on the broad topic of witches and the particular topic of the Salem Witch Trials.

These episodes originally dropped to patrons over the month of October in 2023, and so the series culminates with a general history of Halloween or The Hallotide. We hope you enjoy this taste of what it's like to be a patron of our show. None of it's possible without them. And if you like what you hear, consider becoming a patron yourself. Not only will you gain access to a 40-plus episode backlog of the dusty tome with new episodes dropping every week, but depending on your tier level, you could also get early access to add free main episodes. That's a pretty good deal if you ask me.

But enough of me just rambling. Do you guys know that I'm going to be turning 40 this year? What? What? Yeah, looking back, one of my biggest regrets is that I didn't know the basics of investing. That whole world was foreign to me. And I didn't know where to go to get help. The thing is, I missed decades of opportunities to build inheritances for my kids and to take care of my wife and me in retirement.

You know what, Dan? I'm in somewhat of the same spot, except I still have all my hair. My eyes glaze when people talk about IRAs, life insurance and tax strategies. But not only that, Dan, I don't have time to sit at my desk, study stock market charts and read tax codes. You guys may be older than me, but it's not too late, even at your geriatric age to get it. help. Joe Garrisey with backwards planning financial is helping all of us with our financial planning. He is a Christian man who works with one of the largest and most trusted financial service companies in the world. You know, that's part of why I regret not doing this earlier. Joe helped me to see

the opportunities I missed and he developed a plan for my family based on my goals. Joe has made himself available at all hours of the day to help me. Whether you have millions in assets or just starting to invest, Joe Garrison will help you reach your goals to grow the kingdom and leave a good legacy for your generations. Visit backwards planningfinancial.com. That's backwards planning financial.com or call 615-767-2-55 to speak with Joe to prepare for the future. Let's get into the show. We're glad that you're here, and we look forward to sharing season three with you in just a few short weeks.

In the year 1664, as the Renaissance continued its meteoric rise of post-christendom thought, that would soon culminate in the horrible blackness of the French Enlightenment, the people of Suffolk in England embarked on a stomach churning and misadventure. You see, in the township of L'Osoft, a storm was brewing, whose winds and mist would reach far and wide over the Atlantic, even touching the shores of the New World, the place where the devil roamed free. LoSoft was a small and relatively isolated fishing community in Suffolk County.

Given its size and economic stature, any of her residents really could not afford to be socially picky. Especially if one found himself in the position of merchant, he couldn't be too idealistic in his choice of customer and company he kept. The bottom line was, fish needed to be sold so that other fish and food could be bought to put dinner on the tables of growing families. All of this is to say,

for a fishing merchant to deny the patronage of someone in the town was a big statement, and yet just such a thing happened. While it may seem insignificant, it would lead to the hanging of two women, Amy Denny and Rose Cullender. For some time past, the people of Lofoft had a sneaking suspicion that Miss Denny, an old widow, was actually a servant of the devil who frequently practiced witchcraft. On one otherwise unassuming day, this social pariah stopped one of the local merchants, a man named Samuel Passy, and asked him to sell her some fish. Passy, not wanting to to fall into business with such a potentially wicked force, denied her request three times over

in just as many days. Upon his third denial of the woman, Mr. Passy traveled home to his quaint and lovely family. However, to his dismay, Passy's evening would take an emergency turn when his young daughter Deborah began to violently convulse and complain of an extreme sting of pain deep within her stomach. The girl likened to the wound to being stuck full of pins like a soar's cushion. Onlookers described her cries as likened to those of some animal and agonized torment, beastly, inhuman, viscerally tortured.

As the shock of the situation began to submit itself to the rising sense of duty in Passy to do something for his worsening daughter, Deborah began to shout something very unsettling. In between her shrieks of hellish siren song, she shouted a name, Denny, Denny! The girl, it seems, in rare moments of semi-lucidity, was shouting the name of her aggressor. This was no ordinary sickness, no, this was a malicious attack of ancient and evil force. Two days later, as the Passy home waited with crippling anxiety for the next fit to afflict young Deborah, another turn of doom's page fell upon the besieged homestead,

for in the high noon of the day, the other daughter, Elizabeth, began to suffer the same horrible oppression. It's said that Elizabeth's torment was to the degree that she could not control her own breath. Helpless, she began suffocating. The strong and merciless fingers of the dark arts strangled her, as if finally cashing in on some long-awaited vendetta against the girl. Now, herein lies a key variable of this curious case. For as I said, Deborah began calling out Amy Denny's name as her malefactor early on in her bout with this preternatural disease. But against every modern sensibility and assumption of the time period, Mr. Passy refused to bring any formal accusation against the woman. Though this time period and this type of community is stereotypically associated with the burning of innocent damsels any time a little two-year-old accuses them of witchcraft, this little community was different.

The example of apparent restraint exercised here is one that was actually far more common in that day than many people might expect. But, again, I digress. Back to the story. After three weeks of semi-frequent and unpredictable fits striking his two beloved daughters, Samuel Passy called upon a local physician named Dr. Fevere. Upon close examination of both of his girls, no natural diagnosis could be achieved. Normally, this would call for the attention and intervention of the clergy, but Passie pursued no such course. Why, we don't know.

Instead, he watched his daughters incrementally worsened for the next two months. Their range of symptoms increased to swallow up lameness of the legs, immense soreness of the muscles, muteness and deafness. Sometimes the girls lost their speaking ability and sense of hearing for days at a time before it would randomly return to them. It was near the end of these two months when the truth of the matter would reveal itself even more explicitly. Neighbors and family, as well as Passy himself, began to notice.

a distinct increase in the frequency and severity of the fits when the girls were within earshot of someone saying, Lord, Jesus, and Christ. The girls were observed by multiple townsfolk as they vomited up pens and two-penny nails, foreign objects which would cause abject pain that somehow came out of the girls, despite their never having consumed them. Additionally and finally, Deborah and Elizabeth began insisting they were receiving unwanted visitors in the night. Ghostly apparitions of two women who would tower over them as they lay paralyzed, threatening them to cease speaking Denny's name in the course of their fits, lest the torment increased tenfold. The two ghosts were those of Amy Denny, unsurprisingly, and another old

reported witch of the town, Rose Cullender. The evidence pointing to the dark became too great a mountain to ignore, and thus a trial began. Now, dear listener, our concern really is not with this case, nor with the timeline of the subsequent trial, which sought to and eventually succeeded in ridding the town forever of the witches Amy Denny and Rose Cullender. Instead, I relay all of this in an attempt to prime the mental pump, so to speak. Today we begin our exploration of one of the darkest tales in our country's short history. I've said what I've said because what I've said is important and relevant to our study of the incident in Salem.

I trust the importance and relevance will make itself clear to you as our study unfolds over the coming weeks. For now, before leaping across the Great Blue Pond, I'll leave you with one final detail from this gruesome case in Suffolk County. During the trial that ensued, more people came forward, encouraged by the bravery of Passy and the sobriety of the presiding judge, Sir Matthew Hale. One of these accusers was a woman named Anne Durant, Unlike the alleged witches, Anne was happily married and was still in her childbearing years. Naturally, this means she often coveted extra hands that would allow her to stay ahead of her list of glorious duties

she was daily engaged in about the home. Some years previous to the trial, before the rumor of Amy Denny's union with the devil began to spread widely at all, Anne happily accepted the older woman's offer to watch her infant son, William, while Anne ran some errands in the town. After a day out dealing with merchants and purchasing scant supplies she could use to patch some old clothes for her people, Anne peacefully made her way down the path to her humble home as the first garnishes of fall begin to make themselves known via a slight chill in the evening air. Anne, as most mothers can relate to, missed her boy, her William, and was very comforted by the thought of seeing him after being away for so long. Walking into the house, though, she was met with a

startling sight. Miss Denny, the kind old widow who had offered to care for the boy, was caught by Anne as she attempted to nurse the infant, though she was far too old for this. Anne confronted the woman with the vital aggression and pointed directness of a mother who feels her cub is threatened. Denny, stumbling over her words, explained that the boy had grown greatly hungry and was refusing to indulge in any of the stored milk that Anne had left behind that day. Angry, betrayed but left with nothing much else to do, Anne Durant pulled the boy away from the wrinkled old hands and bid the woman leave immediately.

Denny left, whispering shamed and embarrassed curses under her breath. That very night, little William Durant fell into a fever and suffered under the influence of strange fits. Though the fever dwindled quickly, the fits continued for many weeks before the Durant's finally called upon a doctor for help. help. Unfortunately, the doctor could find no reason nor remedy for the boy's illness, and so turned to an old wife's trick he had learned in his youth.

If there be any suspicion that a child be bewitched, Dr. Jacob said, hang his blanket over the chimney for a full day and night. If, when you retrieve it, you find something therein, burn whatever is found immediately. This will set the child free from any oppressive force. Durrance obeyed, hanging William's blanket over the fire for 24 hours and waiting. And when Anne went to take the blanket down to wrap up William, a massive toad fell out of it and onto the floor, a slimy thing. Another boy chased the toad through the house until finally cornering it and catching it. Immediately in accordance with Dr. Jacob's orders, the toad was thrown into the burning hearth. But instead of burning, witnesses claim the toad simply vanished

behind one quick and unnaturally bright burst of flame, leaving nothing behind. Some days later, a kinswoman of Amy Denny, the old widow, reported to a neighbor that her aunt was severely burned on the arm. Little William Durant had no more fits nor fevers, and recovered fully soon after. Centuries before all of this stuff took place, long before Anne Durant's encounter with Amy Denny and her eventual trial and condemnation with Rose, Long before the world of convoluted story, motive, and evidence we are about to descend into began, the world was sitting happily in the golden hour of Christendom, the Middle Ages. Interestingly, there were virtually no witch trials during the Middle Ages.

This is not to say it wasn't happening, but it certainly was not so prolific a sin of the people, nor was it a major concern of the innocent masses. But this quickly began to change before and during the great famine of 1315. as we discussed in the previous episode. However, just because there was no overt practice of witchcraft, that doesn't mean there was no practice of magic. Charms, what some clergy back then called white magic, were frequently used as a means to bring about God's blessing on a thing.

Now, let's be clear. I'm not saying this was a good thing per se, and there's much more research to be done on the matter for another day before we reach any definitive opinion of our own. But for now, suffice it to say that this practice of white magic was happening in the form of talismanic charms that would be used to bless fields and houses and livestock and any other thing one might want to be blessed with good favor from above. But before we think all of this was purely offensive and positive forms of magic, the defensive arts also still existed.

Things like haggstones and witch bottles and witch cakes would be made to fend off. evil spirits from a home or homestead. Little is known about how the making of these charms began, and again, that's not the purpose of today's show. But one thing is for sure, as time went on, their meaning and their manufacturing gradually changed to better suit the darker times that came about. The example of these charms most relevant for our study in the Salem trials is the witchcake. At the time of the trial, a witch cake would be made by one who believed another person was bewitched. The maker would collect the urine of the person they believed to be under the evil oppression and would mix that urine with rye flour and ashes before baking it in an oven. Once baked,

the cake would not be consumed by anyone, at least not normally. Instead, it would just be viewed as a method to extract a piece of the bewitched person and therefore the witch him or herself and would thus free the victim from the evil influence. The idea, in short, was that the bewitched was so infected by the witch that any part of the person that could be drawn out and then destroyed would also sever the tie between the two parties. And so normally the cake would just be thrown into a fire. But any time this disgusting cake would be consumed, it was by a pet or some other animal, never a human. And this was only done in extreme cases where the person still behaved as if they were bewitched after the cake was made.

in this case, the cake would be fed to, let's say, a dog, and then the dog would somehow reveal who it was that was doing the bewitching. I'm not saying the dog would talk. Normally, this would be done by the dog attacking the person, or barking at the witch, or a sudden ability in the victim herself or himself to somehow identify their attacker. And while all of this may seem like extraneous and overly intricate detail,

it does play a crucial role in our understanding of the Salem witch trials, a role that will be made clear shortly enough. For now, we must turn to the series of events themselves. To begin, let us understand the people who were engaged in them, the Puritans. As the Protestant Reformation surged ahead in England, a sect of Protestantism arose that sought to aggressively reclaim a more biblical foundation for ecclesiastical structure, Sunday liturgy, an overall Christian life and obedience. They called themselves, fittingly, the Puritans.

Spurred on by an unwavering confidence that reformers like John Calvin, Peter Vermigley, and Bollinger would, could they be alive to see it, be completely on their side and nearly everything, they stood as bold bulwarks against the increasing grift of the Anglican Church. Many of them helped formulate the Westminster Confession of Faith. They reclaimed a way of living out the Christian faith that was extremely potent, Christ-centered, jovial, and consistent. Indeed, we owe a massive debt to the Puritans, and we would all be far better for trying to live in a way more akin to their own culture. But despite this overwhelmingly positive goal, tensions between the Puritans and the Anglicans began to increase, their affinity for one

another growing ever more sour. Because of this, many Puritan groups sought to sail to the west in pursuit of manifest destiny to form their own qualities in societies in which their distinct culture might flourish without the intrusion of their Anglican brothers and sisters. But at the roots of it, it wasn't an attempt to flee conflict that led the Puritans west.

It was instead that manifest destiny mindset that I just mentioned. You see, a large number of Puritans adhered to a post-millennial paradigm of eschatology. If what I just said sounded like gibberish to you, don't feel bad, it's actually pretty simple. simple. Eschatology is just the study of last things, or end matters. In Christianity, it's the study of how we understand the end of the world. While Americans today are generally more familiar

with a view of the end that is akin to that espoused and the left behind books and movies, you should know that this view isn't the only one that exists. You see, Brian and I are both post-millennials, and to avoid unnecessary technical jargon, it just means that we believe Christ's victory on the cross will mean that the world will gradually become a better place. as the nations are disciples, baptized, and taught to obey all that the Lord commands. The end product will be Christ's return to a world that is largely Christian before he defeats the final enemy and brings out the new Jerusalem, the new heavens, and the new earth. And the reason this is so important is because the Puritans thought it their God-assigned duty

to travel to the ends of the earth, bringing Christian order with them. They viewed the Americas as being realms still dominated by the devil and his forces. even going so far as to view the forests surrounding their various townships as dangerous places where evil beings still roamed free. And as you, dear patrons, know quite well, we don't think this is an entirely radical way of viewing the world. Though we may use different terms, we oftentimes express how the weight of generations

of pagan worship and worldly sin still seems to bend the backbone of many places in America. I've repeatedly said, with complete seriousness, that I bet the state of Utah wouldn't be a place so plagued by drought and infertile ground if it wasn't a place that has only ever been predominantly anti-Christ for all of its history. And I say all of this to say that I don't think the Puritans were wrong to view their role in the Americas in such a dramatic way. The Native American Algonquin-speaking people surrounding the Great Lakes and northeastern coast of North America have a legend.

focused on displaying the graphic malice of greed and selfishness in the most macabre of terms, the legend goes that the end of the road of one who's overcome by covetousness is a blanket and unnatural desire to consume all of the life around him. And when I say consume, I mean that. The end of greed is cannibalism. The beginning of greed is a seemingly innocent loathing of the fact that in this world some people have things that you don't have. Giving in to that evil way of thought

is the gateway to the path of disdain for those who have more or other than you. And the end of this path is the insatiable and sleepless hunger for all things. Now the paradox is that deep down, whoever embarks on this road knows that all things could never satisfy him, and so he grows more and more gluttonous for others,

while remaining constantly fan, and emaciated because that hunger is never satisfied. It never diminishes. It never goes away, even if all the world and life and light were to be swallowed up by him. The native people had a name for just such a one, a windigo. A creature that though born human had grown so bent in its will and lust for others that it ceased being a man and instead continued as a sort of witch who roams the hills, seeking to extinguish and spark out goodness that it encounters on the way.

An Indian folk tale from Lottie Marsden encapsulates the fullness of the horror that the windigo exhibited to those who were decent. It reads as follows, quote, One time long ago, a big windigo stole an Indian boy, but the boy was to him too thin, so the windigo didn't eat him up right away, but he traveled with the Indian boy, waiting for him to get fat. The windigo had a knife, and he'd cut the boy on the hand to see if he was fat enough to eat.

But the boy didn't get fat. They traveled too much. One day they came to an Indian village, and the windigo sent the boy to the Indian village to get some things for him to eat. He just gave the boy so much time to go there and back. The boy told the Indians that the windigo was near them, and he showed them his hand where the windago cut him to see if he was fat enough to eat. They heard the windigo calling the boy. He said to the boy, hurry up.

Don't tell lies to those Indians. All of these Indians went to where the windigo was and cut off his legs. They went back again to see if he was dead. He wasn't dead. He was eating the marrow from the inside of the bones of his own legs that had been cut off. The Indians asked the windigo, if there was any fat on them. He said, you bet there is. I've eaten lots of Indians.

No wonder they're fat. The Indians then killed him and cut him to pieces. This was the end of this giant Wendigo. Naturally, even if this legend is hardly half true, you can see the unbridled world of darkness and depravity the Puritans felt they were entering into. And this was not as simple as just avoiding the surrounding land until they could settle it all.

The building of communities required lots of labor, labor that a handful of hardy folk from England may not be able to accomplish all in their own. And so, the Puritans purchased slaves to assess. assist them in building and running their homesteads, caring for their children and tending to their flocks of herds. In return, the Puritans housed them, fed them, paid them, and in many cases arranged for their marriages with other slaves in the town. Though it was imperfect and many accusations and critiques, some of them quite valid, could be levied against this system. It was

the norm of the time, and for all intents and purposes, it worked fairly well. The greatest This difficulty in all of it was the cultural one. After all, the Puritans felt they had a prime directive to disciple the pagan natives and bring them to a saving faith in Christ by the power of His Spirit. And so when the natives resisted this or were slow to buy into it, the settlers grew worried. A little leaven leavens the whole lump, and thus we finally come to it at last. For this very principle would be the little step from someone on a snowy slope that triggers a deadly and massive avalanche, which runs like Odin's wolves into the valley below.

In 1692, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was thriving. Many years prior, the disciplined and pious culture of the Lord's sainted soldiers had pressed through unspeakably difficult journeys across the Atlantic to found a colony of Christian liberty and had thus far succeeded. In light of the growing populace and ever-increasing need for qualified ministers to preach God's counsel to people, a man named Samuel Paris answered the internal call of the spirit to full-time ministry. He had tried his hand in commerce in his early adulthood, and though certainly not incompetent, had found that his disposition simply didn't lend itself to that high-demand world. No, he wasn't born for that. Instead, he was born for a different high-demand world. He was born to give his strength to the study of God's

word and the shepherding of his people. And finally, after years of his own study and examination by others, the external call had come to Reverend Paris, and so the man made his way, his family and his household in tow to the rural Salem village. Little did Samuel know of the weighty shadows of dark providence that followed his wagon there. The family settled in to their humble but certainly very charming home and began familiarizing themselves with their new covenant community, one they were tasked with orienting towards the heavenly way of life. Part of this settling in included getting acquainted with the household staff. Two members of this staff, Native American John Indian and his also-native wife, Tituba, proved to be impressive and diligent workers who had years

of experience that came with a track record of being very faithful to their employers. The family relied upon these two and especially great deal. In fact, Reverend Paris trusted Titabah with a direct oversight of his daughters and her friends when they couldn't be watched by their mother or father. was a trust that proved well-found time and time again, as Titaba kept a close and protective watch over nine-year-old Elizabeth Paris and her best friend and cousin, Abigail Williams. However, as time wore on, the sinister shade of the coming storm began to show itself. Those same girls, Elizabeth and Abigail, the good reverend's daughter and niece, began to fall into horrible fits of seizure and convulsions that bordered upon the uncontrollable.

Apart from this, the girls would shout and throw themselves and other things wildly and with great strength around the house. The girls would lose their sense of smell or taste or sight or hearing or even the ability to speak for days at a time, while the parents of the girls looked on in abject despair. One minister from the nearby village of Beverly, John Hale, recounts watching the girls crawl underneath furniture via inhuman contortions of their limbs, as if they were servants of the great spider on Goliant herself. Hale and another reverend, Diodot Lawson, who was the former minister of Salem, swore that the girls would utter strange sounds, deep and guttural moanings too low for their young female frames,

before switching to a high-pitched banchy-like shriek that would bring pain to the ears of onlookers. They were losing their minds. They were losing themselves. Sam Paris, in quiet desperation, was losing his little girl. As days dragged past and torture for all, the girls began complaining of sharp pains all over their skin, even inside of their bodies.

They felt as though little sewing needles were being quickly pushed onto them before quickly being pulled away. It was death by a million stings. Realizing the futility of waiting for this mysterious illness to run its course, the paris is called in the local physician, Dr. William Griggs. As you can predict, Griggs could find no method of treatment, nor any physical evidence on the girls that might explain their strange condition. With a grave expression,

in a nervous glance to the western tree line that marked the boundary between their little Christendom and the antagonistic forces of evil, Griggs whispered to Paris that the girls might be under the sway of a witch. As words bred, the people joined in unified prayer for the deliverance of the girls, while one church member, a woman well-read in the Malius Maleficarum and the charms of medieval yore, decided to also try a more hands-on solution. She directed the native Tituba, the respected slave of the Paris house, to bake a witch-cake for little Elizabeth in the hopes of clutching the girl's freedom from evil. Tituba, who was herself well acquainted with the recipe for this charming

cake, somehow obtained a urine sample of the nine-year-old, before kneading it together with rye and ash, one can only imagine the smell. Upon baking it, Titabu realized that this case of bewitching would require the strongest charm she could muster, and so she fed the cake to the dog, a last-ditch effort to determine who was causing her young friend and master to suffer. As the dog chewed the disgusting loaf with sloppy bites and drooling, lips, a horrible sound echoed down the halls that were darkened by the unfeeling decay of a winter evening. It was Elizabeth, little Betty, shouting a name as loud as she could. Tituba, Tituba, why have you bewitched me? Tituba sat stunned and saddened in sullen and briefly

peaceful silence. She was now an accused witch, who lived in the presiding minister's home. Before the close of spring in the same year, 20 people would be publicly hung, found guilty of practicing the dark arts in league with the devil. Please join us as we continue our study of the Salem Witch Trials next week on the Dusty Tome. For a haunted cosmos, then make your way over to Patreon, where you can get early access to our content as well as exclusive content in regular Dusty Tomes and monthly live streams with Brian and myself.

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