Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 502: The Salem Witch Trials Part III - Witch of the Week

Episode Date: August 13, 2022

This week the boys reach the third chapter in the story of the Salem Witch Trials and as the number of witch allegations reaches new heights across New England, a series of gruesome executions would begin... 

There's no place to escape to. This is the last time on the left That's when the cannibalism started I'm sorry, it's my vocal warm-ups. I'm really good You're nailing it. I think it just hurt my voice. That's the butt breathing you've been working on. It could have saved me I know if my head's drowning I could learn to fucking breathe out of my own butthole We know this now. We figured it out. What do you mean we know this now? They're scientists I'll show you they studied a bunch of pigs buttholes and found if you put a bunch of oxygen in it Then it helps them breathe. They can breathe. Oh, and that's great. That's great

That's that's certainly something that we're gonna be using in the future at some point But you know who could have used it some of these witches in Salem when they were being hung Wow, they could have figured it out. Hey, what's up everyone? Welcome to last podcast on the left I am Ben hanging out with Henry And hanging out with Marcus as well. Hi. Oh my god. We are on to Salem witch trials part three Well part three divided by two That's numerology So when we last left the scene in Salem the first death had occurred as a result of the accusations when Sarah Osburn

The sickly woman dragged from her bed to face charges succumbed to jail fever in Boston Oh, we know what jail fever is. Absolutely death by scissors. Yep When you die with all the hot sex In a cute case of caged heat. Yes. Yes. No, she died of exposure. Yeah. Well, or cholera or maybe diphtheria now But just before Osburn died the afflicted had accused a former Salem minister named George Burroughs And it was with this accusation of a man of the cloth that the Salem witch trials truly took off See it was one thing for a bunch of crotchety old ladies to be accused of witchcraft But it was another game entirely with the accusation of a minister and the crowds that came to watch the examination of George Burroughs

With the largest yet. It was a hit. It tested great. It must have coming back for a limited season two Absolutely, I mean I can hear it now No, they were civilized they hung him. Oh But George Burroughs, he's this really was a massive turning point in the entire story because up until now like we've been doing these Examinations and talking about the various accusations and now it's just kind of been just it started with the usual suspects, right old people living in fringe of town like and and Annoying people Right, and then it's slowly getting more and more important

But when a minister is finally accused of being a witch normally in any other time period ministers were like they were immune To being witches, right? They were considered to be the only ones that could get you out of hot water After you're accused of being of which if you have a minister there, then you're you're actually good. That's right cuz the comma Jesus Mmm, he's eaten it so long And they know that cuz they say trans some station Right and so goes in his mouth It gets all over his tongue over his molars and shit right just the breath keeps the which he's got But now right they don't like that the fact that George Burroughs is on the chopping block means that all and all the rules are fucking off the fucking

Book, uh-oh Ted Allen. He's lifting up the plate and indeed his dish is on the chopper Well when Burroughs was brought into the courtroom each of the afflicted girls convulsed and shrieked in torment Imagine five or six teenage girls shrieking at the height of high-pitched noise like The loudest shit that you've ever heard. I went to Barnes and Nobles one time to use the restroom and Shane Dawson was there and my god to those young girls love that weird weird weird man Oh, I thought it was because you walked into the ladies bathroom. No Where the story was gonna be. Oh, absolutely not. Oh, it's kind of on the hairy styles killed those five girls in 2013. He never did that Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, just like that the shrieking and shrieking

Well, two of these girls testify that they've been visited by the ghosts of both of Reverend Burroughs's dead wives Oh, God nice. However, those two afflicted the 12 year old and Putnam jr. And the 18 year old Susanna Sheldon They had conflicting stories. What? Putnam jr. Said that Burroughs had stabbed and strangled his wives while Susanna Sheldon claimed that the ghost told her that Burroughs had smothered and choked them Important distinctions. Hmm. That's how I like my hash browns smothered and choked But as with all the contradictions during both the examinations and the trials to come the magistrates ignored the competing stories It's very scary. It's very scary. I mean the main thing is they were visited by this dead woman

Yeah, I mean, it's all fake two dead women. Yeah, two dead women both fake Okay, George Burroughs had been kind of dog with this idea that he had because he did have two wives that died early Right, so he was kind of dogged with this idea and there's like, you know, either Something about he he like he fucks too good and they couldn't take it and so they just passed out of dry And they just went away from being sexually satisfied. I mean, it is kind of weird that he has two dead wives, right? I mean, you know a little odd Massachusetts it's not that odd People did die very quickly extremely quickly like there was something like when during what is it?

The first settlement how like the percentage of people who died in the first three days was like 70% It was crazy. It's not good pine cones are sharp man I guess so and George Burroughs He also the main problem is that George Burroughs was looking to embrace in the the half covenant like the idea that you can kind of Lesson the restrictions Lifestyles to be able to hang out so people could actually stay it's cool church man You can have tattoos. God also had piercings on his hands Although they were actually on his wrist We know that now

It's actually more painful because the human body's weight couldn't be supported by just the meat of the hands You guys want to hear a funny joke about Jesus, you know why ladies love him because he's hung like this. It's a visual joke Medium it is indeed also one of the jokes that I really wanted to get off my chest was what is a really confident pickle say Why are you doing this? I'm a pretty big deal. You're okay, but I mean that one technically at least Jesus had context Confident pickle say I'm a pretty big deal pickle says nothing. Yeah pickles in a inanimate object That's only there to eat to be eaten really Concerning the dead and

Putnam jr. In particular claim to have been visited quite often. They always come they always come I wonder why her milkshake brought all the ghosts to her dreams. I think we should stop the show. She's well She said that the ghosts of burrow's wife in particular looked quote like co-ops is swathed and winding sheets flushed red as they accused their husband of Cruelty, could you actually do it? It's cool haunted little girl as well. Okay Look like coops is swathed and winding sheets flushed red as they accused their husband of cruelty I think these kids need to lighten up a little bit and here's a good pickle material 12 year old children you would have accused of witchcraft because you would have believed in an inanimate object was speaking to you

And a problem make you sign the pickles book. Oh my god Well soon after claiming to have spoken to the ghosts a bit more She sharpened her story to say that one wife had been fatally stabbed under the arm While the other had been killed in a boat by burrow's and his current wife Many mediums absolutely very involved. Yes, and burrow's was not the only person accused of murder by ghosts that spoke only to Amputnam jr. She claimed that the ghosts of nine children had told her that Rebecca nurse the town saint now on trial for Witchcraft had killed them all in addition to killing Anne's aunt Mary There are so many murder accusations that are just getting flown flung around willy-nilly here. It's everywhere

Everybody I mean it's just everyone saying whatever they can say because again We I think we brought this up inside in this little room from the examination so the quote unquote grand jury to the trial Mm-hmm. They were living in an alternative reality where all of these things were real deadly deadly real And so at this point like they're just being whatever sticks everybody's throwing because that's how that was the main thing It was like they're trying to build evidence, right? This is this constant story of like how do we make sure you're a witch because I'm we're doing it legit You don't want to mess this up. You want to mess it up? And so now it's more like okay. Good. You're a murderer. You're a ghost murderer

So you murdered living people. You also murder ghosts. You control little birds double murder. That's a lot right there You don't mean like you just start because everyone is just making shit up as they go right the case Yeah, I do like your witch health inspector character Okay, I could help but notice That you know you guys open kissing this thing's butthole. It looks like it Unfortunately, you need some kind of antiseptic white before we can move on absolutely. It's time for me to take another look at your tongue Yeah You've been looking that same butthole. I see the brown

Well, what's important to remember as we get into this episode flowing from the examinations into the trials is that we're basically Give any of the highlights for each accused person that we discuss keep in mind that two three or even ten more are being thrown in jail on suspicion of witchcraft and Still others are claiming to be afflicted by witchcraft in one way or another and still others are reporting Just seeing strains shit out on the road or in town or in house if you want the c-span version It's the Salem witch trials a day-by-day chronicle of a community under siege by Marilyn K roach That's the c-span. We're doing the court TV. All right, absolutely fantastic. Let's get to this Nancy Grace content Yeah, I mean in all 172 people in Massachusetts were accused of consorting with the devil

So unless we made this a nine-part series. Hey, we're court TV in this motherfucker all the way through I'm Denise Richards You really are wild thing Now while the Reverend George Burroughs never came close to confessing to witchcraft out of principle just like so many others who eventually swung With them quite a few other accused witches were starting to succumb to community pressure Hmm Margaret Jacobs for example had once been amongst the afflicted, but it's since stopped showing symptoms Oh, this of course led to the steadfast afflicted to accuse her of witchcraft Oh, yeah, this pattern of affliction recovery and accusation would occur again and again over the following months

She probably just got tired of doing the act out. It sounds exhausted. It is look at my life Oh, it's really hard. I have to do at least 15 minutes of Peloton Cardio energy I need to do look at me You belong outside of a used car lot with these moves They can't see they don't know how hard I work. I know you just mime sucking up dick That's really impressive stuff Marcus. Did you know that Henry got Peloton shorts and he has to wear them? Wow, he doesn't have a butt. I don't know. Oh my god He has to wear Peloton shorts for your Peloton. There is legitimately

I mean, this is not in it. This actually is an anti endorsement for Peloton It is it is so deeply painful for a frog-shaped man to ride a Peloton that I I had to buy full bike shorts and if you Man, there's nothing quite as emasculating Yeah, as the walk from when would not not sitting in the couch and I go to my office on my Peloton And I've got the click-in shoes and the bike shorts up to my fun. I look like I look like gay Humpty-Dumptons Underneath my tits and I just go like you know and I just go don't look because you have to have a full Do you have to have it? It's like a chair inside of the short. I know it buddy. It's a pretty big deal No, it's not a big deal. It's an opposite. It's a grumpen

Okay, I will not sign the pickles book This woman Margaret Jacobs even though her family tried to convince her to not confess She gave in the community pressure and this came with some very very serious consequences in her confession She implicated her grandfather George. She was executed. Okay, John Willard who was executed Alice Parker who was executed? Oh, that's three and Reverend George Burroughs who was you guessed it Executed he was executed. Yeah A lot of people went down For somebody else's bullshit, right?

Now next on the docket in this round of examinations after Reverend Burroughs was a woman who an appearance behavior and name Was the most likely out of all the accused to actually be a witch I think this is the only real witch in the story. We have a potential real witch. That woman was the elderly Dorcas whore now, let's just all listen We're going to move forward with maturity and I feel like that's the real that's what shows almost over a decade 11 12 years and we can move forward and not giggle at the name Dorcas whore God I just love because I love any sexually liberated woman who's into the spider-man Yes, okay, but that's fine. It's the last joke. I'm gonna do it. That's all right

Well for years Dorcas was known as a woman who would make unsolicited prophecies of doom Concerning when a person's child or spouse would die seemingly just to ruin their day Yeah, I'm just I'm hanging out here Yeah, Dorcas God damn it Dorcas, Dorcas whore. It's just I'm so sick of my full name Dorcas whore. Yes. That's what it is. That's what it is. Yeah Yeah, you'll die next week. I don't want to die Dorcas. It's fun to say Thank you However, she did once look at a neighbor's nine-year-old son and she did say the boy had not long to live and the boy did indeed

Die two weeks later. I mean, I mean she might be a witch. Yeah, I mean buskers make a lot of money Absolutely, and sometimes you're just right, you know, you look at little boy You've been calling it and calling it and you look at a little boy. He's going. He's like he can't pick up a stick Yeah, you know, he's good Dyson couple of days left. I kind of like that though. Just go randomly curse people I was at the Dodgers game yesterday hanging out with some friends and these people they have the the the balls They have those floaty balls that oftentimes you use in a pool Yeah, you're talking about Beach orbs, and I like the idea if it comes near me, I want to pop it. Yeah, sure

Yeah, ruin everyone else's fun. Yeah, you're an asshole. Well, no because We're not at the beach. No one's going cruising. It's just good old-fashioned fun And you want to crush it like you're the dean and animal house Yeah, and you want to be pedantic about fun about where fun should be had and what kind of fun You had where there was a woman that got beamed with it in front of me. That's the part of the fun Yeah, it was not happy. That's just one of the baseballs that you could get crippled there because the ball can literally just shoot out Just hit you in the back of the head if you're not making that you're in the game Which is what you kind of have to you he's supposed to watch the ball

We had to I sat in the outfield and it was very scary, but anyway heck of a game Well, Dorcas whore also practiced the art of metoposcopia Which was the art of foreseeing prophecy based on the lines and shapes of people's faces Oh, and while this skill not unlike palm reading was mostly one of those folk magic practices It was like had origins in the Middle Ages It was by the time of the trials Believed by many to be firmly within the devil's realm because again It's just looking at somebody's face and being like you'll have cancer soon. Mm-hmm. You would be unlucky in love

Ugly That's all you gotta do. I mean, it's not like things are gonna be good No, so if she only predicts bad doom upon people, she's going to be right There's one time in history when Dorcas whore is gonna be right seven out of eight times That's how everybody's gonna die soon. Yeah, and everything's gonna be bad. It's this deer Well appearance wise Dorcas whore had short gray hair It's easy to manage but hidden underneath her cap was a four foot seven inch long Darker patch of hair growing out of the back of her head

Like no one knows why she had it. No one knows why she kept it hidden No one knows why it was darker than the rest of her hair Maybe she she's a little Steven Seagal and also Steven Seagal. Do we know if his name is not Steven Seagal whore? What maybe they're related What Ponytail it was just it was a patch of hair that she just refused to cut and she said that for some reason if someone were to cut It off she would die Maybe she's right. What do we know I thought it off and she did die but not from her getting your hair cut off

But she did die. Okay. Yeah, she just seems to be genuinely old-school creepy. She's grumpy And so during this time period. She's a great character. Yeah, you know like she's around like you kind of Like what do we find right? How many times people have persecution complexes? They love it They actually really love it when they turn out to be true Right like they really like it because then it gives them it makes them feel like all of my fantasies are are real Makes them feel important. Yes. We're Dorcas whore. She was fucking trying to be evil Yes, we're absolutely. She's one of the more famous Dorcas is around. Mm-hmm

No, additionally Dorcas whore had also given birth to a brood of psychopathic children. Yes about 14 years before Horror was accused of witchcraft. She and her grown kids robbed the home of a neighboring reverend named John Kale While he and his wife were away and they terrorized the hail children in the process Literally, I mean it was a whorehouse. I tell you what Yeah, it was the whorehouse. This is the hail house. No, it was the hail house from the hail house But the hail house became a house of whores because they all showed up and took over the house That's just crazy. Well, allegedly the whores threatened the kids with a hot frying pan and dangled them over the well Threatening to kill them if they told the parents that the whores had been there. Oh my goodness. Isn't that when Michael Jackson did the blanket?

Yeah, it would shug night to divinize. I'm same. Mm-hmm same vibes Yeah, for the theft all whores were found guilty but supposedly the whore children found a cow afterward belonging to the hails and Clubbed it to death then spent night after night chucking rocks at the hails house. I'm gonna have fun with it. Why not? This is one of the only pluses I've heard about having kids. This is the most fun I've heard yet in this series you get your whole you made a gang. Yeah And then they all got to go with you. Yeah, it's like the Parker gang except. It's just petty vandalism Yeah, go go throw rocks at the hails house. Why would you check out over there?

He's been dead. Yeah, mom. I'm you the funnest woman. I've never heard my life That's why I love you son because you and me we are true chaos You never been cow tipping before The final piece of evil attached to Dorcas whore was the fact that her husband William had died the winter before the trials and Neighbors believed even before Dorcas was accused of witchcraft that she had choked him to death This of course led to afflicted girls to accuse Dorcas of choking a woman to death in Boston I'll be it spectrally. She didn't actually go to Boston She sent her ghost to Boston to choke a woman to death

And you notice it also goes down to Boston because Boston that was the secular world. Okay? Now even though these examinations were packed to the brim with supposedly good Christians those in attendance were nevertheless quite jumpy During one public examination to afflicted girls so that a spectral bluebird had flown in and landed on the defendant's back Would just not go. Yeah, I just yeah, I would try to avoid it Yeah, I would well most people we talked about this I did we not talk about this last episode about the most times like it was a common thing that if you were accused of witchcraft You just leave town. Oh, yeah, what else you gonna do? I got a lot of times Yeah, yeah, I would just gotten on a buggy and gotten the fuck out of fucking Salem Village

If you could afford to do so because the people who were accused of witchcraft Yeah, a lot of them fucked off to Boston or to New York or wherever else Some even fucked off back to Maine But remember Reverend borough's fucked off back to Maine and they came in got his ass It's kind of weird how like a small little group can control where you live, but if you don't have the means to leave it Then you're kind of stuck into like watching everything around you turn into total chaos and Pain absolutely. I wonder what's that's like. Yeah Now when the bluebird came into the room

No one else could see it because it existed only in the fore mentioned invisible world. Oh Hey, see so there wasn't a bluebird. Yeah, I mean no there was But there wasn't it was invisible nobody was it, but it was real in the invisible world. Yes But when a large moth that everyone could see fluttered into the room Everyone hardened frontiersmen who had survived drought famine and bloody frontier wars all freaked out like they were rodent odd Flanders This is the problem all wound up. Yeah, everybody's fucking They're all on a hair trigger ready to jump because then you it's a moth. You're gonna turn the lights off people every day

But it's a big moth. It's a really big moth. I don't like them either No, we love the good moths for the working-class butterfly. We love moths. I don't like a big one. They're gross I don't have no emotional attachment to the moth or not the moth. I don't say it's good for the eke Yeah, they're gross or weird because if you get too many moths in your room and it's a little chilly in the house and the room And you're warm moths will spend all night They'll they'll fly in your face over and over again You can't at least that's what used to happen to me when I was a kid We get moths

They just fly into my face all night long and I had to wake up not to spend all night trying to kill all the moths in the room All the moths in the room. You were bullied by moths. I forgot you grew up in Colonial Williamsburg. I I wasn't living in a world where there were so many moths But then every time I say something that mark is like no when I was a kid I used to have to eat moths and then all these moths farted on me And it's like I don't know the wheels of the show are spinning in the mud. I grew up in a house I just don't recall moths knocking on the door and we letting them in I had to think about urban things Well along with Dorcas whore more of the undesirable members of the Salem community were taken down by the afflicted

Following her accusation following her arrest on May 13th. Mary Warren accused 37-year-old single woman Abigail Somes Somes had a brother who had once been whipped for breaking the law 15 years before and she had another brother Who'd been punished for not attending public worship? Killer I say we fucking kill. I don't think so. Also. Those are her brothers. It's not even her no But it's good. Remember this whole thing is guilty by association I mean if so if you have a person in your family who's accused of being a witch Then it is much more likely that you yourself will be accused of being a witch Oh, yeah, if one of your relatives is afflicted then you are also more likely to be accused of being a witch if witchcraft

Is in any way in your sphere then you're a likelihood of going to the fucking gallows Skyrockets, yeah, especially during this time period. Everybody's getting covered in it. I don't like it Well, Somes was brought in to face her accusers and her presence naturally caused Mary Warren to go into the largest seizure Yet seen in the examinations so to see if Mary could be relieved of her acute affliction The magistrates ordered something called a touch test See back then it was believed that if a bewitched person touched the witch who was attacking her the suffering would immediately end I don't know why I mean, I guess it kind of works for fruits and vegetables when you're in the grocery section But if it's ripe or not, yeah

This test was actually considered scientific by the court who believed that a witch's touch reabsorbed what they called quote The venomous and malignant particles that were ejected from the eye I mean, I know that's science You need to start believing in the science Well, they did consider all this science that they literally called it science that they called it It's this so they called it the science of bewitchment the science of witchcraft. That's how you make it science trust the science Now the touch test have been done during the Salem examinations a couple of times before to no avail But this time Mary Warren immediately calmed down upon feeling the touch of Abigail Somes

Therefore, Somes was imprisoned for witchcraft that that fucking easy. That's a good cantaloupe. Hey, my goodness Mm-hmm. Now the day after what? It's funny. She's talking about it being ripe. He's he's Over he's at the grocery store. It is mine. He sees guy fairy there He's running around looking for the various ingredients according to the clues. Yeah, it's amazing what he's done with just three letters But the day after Abigail Somes was sent to the stinking rotting cells of Boston Jail Massachusetts saw the arrival of a new governor named William Phipps Mm-hmm who had arrived at the colony to deliver and enforce the new Massachusetts Charter from

Mary Old England, okay? Now it's time for all of you. We're gonna calm down. Everyone's gonna shit a bit Okay, yeah, I'm gonna have a bit of rules now say and I need all of you scruffies Well, are you so dirty when your buckles and all you got your big heads? You know Actually, I'm gonna go back to Boston. Yeah March your way here with boss. Hey, I just have a question. How are you you're hovering above the ground? Oh, yes Oh, no, this is my invisible slave But Phipps was not a true believer in the Puritan faith at all and it only become a Puritan the year before so he could govern the colony

He was also not very well equipped to handle the ever-worsening crisis gripping Massachusetts Simply just And everyone is yelling Yelling I can't even be near a bird. I know that mr. Phipps that girl named Mr. Phipps See Phipps was a classic example of a man failing upward He had a little political experience and had led a number of disastrous military campaigns in New England Plus, he was barely literate reading us for pause. They need to know that's Things and they are things written down that other people can know it for me. Okay. Here's your gruel mr. Phipps. No, thank you

I like a soft food. I know you do from what I can tell Phipps only got the job of colony governor because he had been knighted for bringing twenty million dollars in Spanish treasure to the King of England. He was a chips captain. He's a good earner. Yeah, I see and Phipps had therefore appointed himself governor after he helped draft the new Massachusetts Charter I have a crazy idea. Uh-huh. What if now listen after I said free crackers to anybody who hives fives correctly Are you gonna make yourself governor make sure you look at the elbow? Yeah high five because that's how you do it correctly You're gonna make yourself governor. Yeah It's because I just feel like I like I like fit it. I'm just like the guy. You're the guy. Yeah, do you have any idea how to govern?

You go a you stand over there. This is a seat crackers I Mean what was very much a whatever decision because Phipps was the first American born Englishman to ever be knighted So since he was knighted and since he was you know a guy of the Americas They figured like that fuck it. Yeah, let him govern Massachusetts. He seems to want to do it So that's American bullshit. It's good. It's good. It seems like a pretty big deal Because he took himself out of it. Yeah, were you the governor? Have you ever been a fucking governor before? No? I don't need the responsibility

Well such when Phipps showed up in Massachusetts to find that well over a dozen people have been accused of witchcraft one of whom It already died in jail like so many politicians before and after gave the job of dealing with the witches to Someone else you do it Sounds like somebody could be accused really easily I'm gonna go. I think that's the right idea Phipps see the new Massachusetts Legislature was not set to meet until June of 1692 about a month after the arrival of William Phipps and about Yeah, five or six months after the accusations began So in the meantime to take care of the fast-growing population of witches in Boston Jail

Phipps created what was called the court of oh yeah and Terminare I was a bailiff you've seen a gosnevee fraudsters check it out when he was in law school I was the bailiff for his mock trial. So oh yay. Oh yay. Oh yay Hey Cuz you said it like that I just said it like you're supposed to say it yeah But it's it and I say they know you're a comedian. They prepped you he did in his case. Oh good Well oh yay and Terminare that means to hear and determine. Oh Even though Phipps did let the crown back in England know that he was creating a court of oh yay and Terminare

He neglected to mention in any of his letters back to the homeland that he created this court Specifically to deal with cases of witchcraft. Oh yeah, and it was it oh yay and toy may toy oh yay and Terminare Terminare, so maybe it's Terminare Terminare I don't know Las Vegas duo where they go inside of each other somehow Oh yeah, it's inside of tour me. That's fantastic. How was he in there? I Christ that guy's probably a pretty big deal So much well Phipps was also about to find out just how much damage a court like this could do in just a month

Oh, and like I don't want to give England any credit. No, right. I never I never gonna do it Except I do likes the cut of their suits. Yeah, of course, but in England at the time They were trying to like how do you put it? They were trying to be like we're moving on from the witch thing We've murdered Hundreds maybe Thousands of witches of the last thousand years right and but now during this time period They're kind of finding it. They literally find it icky like The same thing that Phipps had his reaction to it is actually really similar to where he came from

Which is his idea but everyone were like they don't really want to deal with this anymore If they had known because once they do find out we'll find out what happens But if they had known they probably been like like what are you doing because he just then Let them all just deal with themselves. He just kind of like all right this pot see they're gonna like stop bubbling Like or it's gonna boil over. Yeah And so it was the court of oh yay and terminate alone who would determine the fate of the accused Witches that court by the way was stacked with judges with no legal training But plenty of business experience because the judges and the Salem witch trials were the proverbial 1% of

Massachusetts I would say you should read the book the storm of witches to get the full breakdown of all of the judges and kind of What their deal was what their dill was thank you Kissel But the they were truly the they were completely in charge of the colony as it was they were the massive businessmen Now we're also gonna see that that is what caused them to be extra aggressive. I would have accused the judges You wait You know that's a part of like we started crawling up the ladder. Yeah, and not coincidentally that was when things started Simmering down a little bit Okay, now the indictments in the Salem witch trials use the same language as England's witchcraft act of

1604 which called for the death penalty for anyone who invoked evil spirits consorted with a devil or took a familiar Hence the public's apprehension towards the toads of Reverend boroughs Now as we said last episode there were two ways to convict a witch either the witch confessed And when that was paired with evidence of witchcraft like a poppet or a potion or Two people had to witness the same act of black magic. Okay, but since these two things were extraordinarily difficult to obtain It's almost like it didn't exist, right? The judges what you could technically poppets you could get you could find poppets and you could get a witch's confession So technically those things could be obtained. They just were very difficult to find wait. What's a poppet?

We'll get to poppets in a bit. We'll get poppets later It's basically a voodoo doll, but we'll get to poppets later The judges in the Salem witch trials because those types of evidence that talked about before because that was difficult to obtain the judges relied heavily on the so-called spectral evidence attacks that only the afflicted could see an experience this of course was exactly What led to almost all of the executions to come now today? It's somewhat be the equivalent of a death penalty case hinging on someone saying that they had a dream that Told them that you were the one then right murdered that person. You did it. What you did it I had a dream that you did it though

But you and that would be and that in the entire case would hinge upon that and that would basically be the only thing that you I had a dream that you killed someone and you happened to be in the same city as that murder And then the death penalty based on that Judge, I happen to know for a fact Marcus can't dream Some people can't dream and because he said it last He's is true. Whoo interesting interesting. All right fine. I'll find another way to take his ass down Keep on sugar in his food. I'll lose him. He'll lose himself piece by piece I

However, there was controversy concerning spectral evidence back then while some believed the girls implicitly Others warned that Satan was so powerful that he could impersonate the innocent so they would unfairly be accused of witchcraft Oh my god So even the people against it had batshit reasons to be against that's the thing is that they had their own dumb shit validation Oh, mm-hmm. This they believed would destroy Christian communities from the inside out and once those communities devoured themselves They would be replaced by what else but Satanic settlements I mean, it's not sweet we drive by them all the time the thing the suburbs that are made in the weekend Everyone has a shitty house

Marcus showed me a video when he was in town of the line, which is an a massive a hundred thousand person construct that literally is a Mirrored it's more than a hundred thousand. It's millions of people. It's like it. It's miles long It's just this one building that is miles long there. Everything. It would be in Dubai or Saudi Arabia Yeah, it's basically just a long string of cities all attached together in this one Mirrored tower that's that it's the future. We're living in that I kind of a little excited because it felt very like Elysium like it Felt very like whoo that sci-fi everything was horrible. Yeah, yeah Yeah, and we're not gonna be on the inside, dude. No, no, we're gonna be on the outside Yeah, all the inside and then you have all the gangs fighting all the fresh water inside of the building

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Roast as dark as the night perfect for fueling the cryptid research and mad ravings required for your Podcasting don't mind the red eyes. He's just trying to warn you of the bridge Finally from the caffeine addled brains of Spring Hill Jack coffee and last podcast on the left We bring you Mothman's red-eyed blend. Yes delicious Panama beans go to last podcast merch calm to order yours today Now in theory the magistrates they were supposed to be the ones who kept shit like spectral evidence from being used Because the public was a little too eager at times to blame all their misfortunes on witchcraft So the magistrates were supposed to be the safety valve that kept the boiler from exploding It's just an example of they have been this was like this has been a central argument in witch hunting for hundreds of years

They've been talking about this because ever since the Inquisition there was another dude That was that's all sorts of fucking jacked up. There was like from the 1200s His name was Conrad of Marburg that was a guy that was an Inquisition leader that murdered hundreds of people Two little goons. The whole thing was about how he believed that if you were accused you got you got tried convicted and executed that Day, yeah, like you had shred. Yes, and that's just which was cool again in a comic book and also Well, it's a real life everybody gets that room is bad, right? Right because that was an expedite justice that way. It's not No, it's not good. It's not fair But this this whole thing is about like they had thrown out spectral evidence

Spectral evidence was done in Europe. They didn't want to use it anymore because they kept saying all these people We're just murdering people for no reason. They were need real proof like teets We need real proof like the crops dying like the plague. Yeah, you need proof Yeah Well for example as far as that safety valve went in the 30 years before Salem the Massachusetts courts had tried 31 witchcraft cases of those 31 Eight had resulted in conviction and only one of those eight resulted in execution But during Salem the court of Oye and Terminae tried 28 cases and produced

28 convictions Stefan Curry from the three-pointer line Yeah, absolute Lawless justice. Yes, indeed Well, one actually might say that the judges did far more than anyone else to keep the witchcraft hysteria going for as long as it did And they kept it at the level. It was necessary to produce 19 Executions. It was almost like they were chasing away from the crowd itself Wondering if we could just literally kill all of them. They won't accuse us, right? Well partly this was because these judges got just as caught up in the fear and paranoia as everyone else because being wealthy and successful in business

Does not necessarily mean that you can't also be a fucking idiot in other realms What? No! Businessmen! They found the backbone of this country, the most reliable people! I can make a list of the most reliable businessmen in the world! Briefcases. Those guys from Enron. Shoes. Wow. Yeah, they got jackets on. Yeah, but just like we can't point to any one reason why the Salem witch trials occurred in the first place We similarly can't point to a single reason why the judges decided to execute so many accused witches Well a possible motivation for the large number of executions is something that seems like a modern invention But is actually as old as time. To wit, Massachusetts didn't want to appear as if they were soft on crime This has been going on for hundreds of years. That's why I'm running for president and I am hard on crime. I'm rock hard right now.

I have sex with a burglar. Absolutely. I'll suck the dick of a- I mean honestly, he's low level crime, so let's just be frank. But that's how hard on crime I am. If I even see a child sneeze wrong, I get hard. I'll get hard right now. Seriously. Do something my old jaywalk in front of me right now. Dude, I'm rock hard. Oh well. Wow. Honestly, I've been hard for several hours and I was beginning to hurt. Rock hard on crime. Well concerning crime in Massachusetts, just the year before Salem, a case of piracy fell in front of the colonial courts in which a group of sailors had spent a month seizing vessels off the coast of New England, seemingly on a whim. They illegally downloaded a bunch of fiddle music. That's hilarious. The difference between these sailors and, say, Blackbeard's crew, who were operating at the exact same time, was that the New England

sailors were well connected to the Puritan merchant community. They were pranksters. I mean, it fell off the truck, right? Isn't it the same thing? It's old school. It's just always been this way. If there's commerce, there's going to be people be there kind of trying to get off the side of it. Yeah. See, after these weakened warrior pirates were captured and tried, they, for the most part, were given a slap on the wrist. While one pirate was executed for show, probably their actual pirate buddy, who wasn't just some fucking rich kid, the rest got no more than a fine of 20 pounds. It's about six grand in today's money, which is absolutely nothing to men with friends in high places. No, you don't even get paid that much to do a commercial anymore, which I'm learning the hard way. Yeah, I know. Isn't that sad? It's just true, but that's about the amount of money. But the one they did execute, he downloaded the entire Weezer Blue album. And again, he did not pay the $11.99 for it.

He keeps it coming, man. He don't ever stop, man. I don't ever stop. It must be that piss you're drinking. No, it's Rockstar. I'm a Rockstar. I have a Rockstar lifestyle. Well, this light sentencing, of course, caused much outrage in the general public who had to deal with pirates on a regular basis. The blame for these light sentences was rightfully placed at the feet of the magistrates. And as it happened, five of the magistrates who passed down these light sentences would preside over the Salem Witch Trials with a much heavier hand. Ugh, God, just imagine being at the foot of the magistrate, just the gunk in the curl. I'm going to go ahead and say I probably have a magistrate's foot. Yeah, I can see that. They know it's not pretty. No, every magistrate has plantar fasciitis. That's for certain. It's just the towel. It's like, you know, I keep it trimmed, but my feet just like, that's the one part that's just getting worse and worse as I truly, as I get older. You're half eagle. Well, the thing to keep in mind here is that Witchcraft was, at its core, a crime. It's no different from theft or murder.

Additionally, the problems facing the colony that we talked about in the first episode, those were only getting worse, and Satan made a convenient scapegoat. In other words, life sucked and everything was hard, but there was now an option to do something about it. Or at least appear as if you were doing something, because the slaughter of the innocents when society is under pressure has always been popular. If I even see someone making a strong chili and it starts to boil over, I get hard. That looks like Witchcraft to me, and I know that's a crime. I don't know what a crime is until I see the bulge. Oh, that's a crime. You know, these guys, that's just one reason. There's other weird reasons. Okay, I mean, there's a lot going on. But there's a baked-in one that I also think it's really interesting, because there's the religious reason, too, because these guys, being the most powerful merchant group in all of the area, they had, let's just say, been pretty fucking loose with their Puritan ideals in order to become these businessmen, right?

They had to live and engage in the secular world in a large amount and manipulate the secular world and be a part of it and traffic in it. Like the Amish. Like the Amish. And so they view themselves as they try to keep it separate, but half the time they end up blowing their own children and selling cocaine, right? That's what the Amish do. Oh, my. Is that true? Yes. And it's the same shit, because these guys then realize, like, oh, everybody's going to look at us as half Puritans, too. They're going to see that we are, like, they're going to start thinking these thoughts about how we're just businessmen and we traffic all these things. So now, also, there's this other pressure. We got to show these guys we're full-time Puritans. It's like the evangelicals in politics, where it's like they are fully ensconced in the secular world and get total benefits from it. No, no, I think they're pretty pious. Yeah, they're pretty pious. But it shows that it's the same thing. Well, now we're going to show all these guys the Puritan rule of law, because they have to project it to keep everybody from, you know, making them next. We can always make fun of the Amish, like, well, we don't, because you shouldn't, but they can't listen. No, that's the best part. No, isn't that interesting? The Amish still listen. They're liars.

The Amish are liars. On the whole. Now, just as the court of Oye and Termine was being assembled to actually hear the witchcraft trials, eleven more people were not only accused of witchcraft, but had formal complaints filed against them. It's basically filing, pressing charges. You have to go and press charges against someone for being a witch. You know, because they waive, too, that you used to have to put up a bond to make an accusation. You used to have to pay to get involved. And they waived that. This is true. It's like it's all everything's so fucking corrupt. It's like it's like, but they had a loot box. Yes. But they waived that. So now anybody can do it. Well, furthermore, the afflicted were spreading their accusations all over Massachusetts to nine other communities, and each person accused had to be captured and brought to Salem for holding at Ingersoll's Tavern prior to their examination. But even though the accusations were being flung at the so-called good people of Salem, like Rebecca Nurse, the people of Massachusetts were continuing to use the panic as an excuse to get rid of some of the so-called bad people. And to be honest, some of them were, in fact, massive pieces of shit. I mean, it's a good time to clean house. All right.

One 75-year-old man named Thomas Farrar was a violent drunk known to have thrown a pregnant woman from her horse. But the clincher for witchcraft was that Farrar was known to deny the sacrament in church due to drunkenness. Get your fuck away from me, you fucking little... Well, you want to have a little car, buddy? Car fall load. No, you fucking... I eat at my own time. All right. I eat at an age or so. This is pregnant woman doing on a horse. You gotta get to the other town somehow. Yeah. She can be dragged by a rope. She can be put in a fucking cart. I don't know. I was pregnant. I'd just take it easy for a second. Stay put. Is it tougher time to be alive? It was. Yeah, you had to be a tougher person. Yeah. And most of the time they died. Right. Well, concerning another undesirable, there was fishwife Wilmot Reed, who is known to be sournatured and grouty, which means ill, bad, tempered, and rude. I like the word grouty. I like grouty. It's probably where grouty came from. Why? But yeah, she's right. Yeah, she is me. Everyone's like, oh, she's grumpy. It's fucking miserable. That's the problem. So what if you're just correct? Just put a smile on your face for a second. Right? Come on. Everybody smile. Right? I know. Now I won't. Now I won't because I hate that. Grouty. I'm not grouty. I just hang him. Who's a grouty boy? Who's a grouty boy? Are you a grouty boy? I'm not a grouty boy. Sounds like you're being grouty. I'm not being grouty. Gosh, what's wrong with you? Well, put a smile on your face. It wouldn't hurt you to smile every now and again.

It sounds like a real grouty person this time. It would hurt you to smile every now and again. Wilmot Reed had a habit of wishing children ill by saying that she hoped bloody cleavers would be found in their cradles. I mean, she's just my grandmother. Yeah, she's mean. I think that my grandmother had for my little brother Michael was squirreled because she hated squirrels. Wow. Wow. Well, another on the list was Philip English, an Ebenezer Scrooge type who bought, sold, mortgaged, and repossessed properties in the Salem area and was quick to sue for debt no matter the circumstance. Additionally, people distrusted Philip English because he was an immigrant, a Protestant, and despite his surname, a Frenchman. Well, it's because he changed it. Yeah. It was originally Philip. This is true. Laonglès. Laonglès? It was French for English and then he changed it. And then he has to go like, Allure, I am simply from a mere Eastern part of Elendor. Okay, France. Yeah. Okay. France, England. Well, as far as accusations against English went, Susanna Sheldon said that his specter put a knife to her throat to make her sign the devil's book. Then she saw a ghost accuse him of murder. That's the thing. She saw a ghost accuse him of murder. She didn't even think he was... The ghost accused him of murder?

Oh, yeah. That's all it was. Nobody actually saw anybody kill anybody else. It was that the ghost of the people of the witches murdered would show up to the afflicted and say, Hey, George killed me or Philip killed me. Go make sure he gets killed. It's a 75-year-old man. He might have been scumbag, right? He was drinking too much. He was an asshole, maybe perhaps. Then it's just a rightfully angry woman because she can't vote. And then a dude who was surrounded by morons who was just absolutely upset that he has to look at them. Yes. So this is all how we would be. Yeah, we're dead. Oh, no. If three of us were in this scenario, we'd all be dead. Oh, yeah. Oh, well, I mean, we would have died long before for many other reasons we would have died. They would have seen my incredible transformations. And they would have been like, Oh, he must be a warlock because he's the best actor I've ever seen. Oh, yeah. Marcus is a familiar. Absolutely. I would view him as a familiar. And you are a big horrible goon. You're a half beast. I could either be ran out of town or I could be governor. We don't know. We don't know at all. But speaking of murder, people tried to use witchcraft to explain every disturbing thing that happened in Massachusetts. Everything that happened in Salem that was out of the ordinary took on a new sinister meaning, where he's before such disturbing things might have been met with a so-it-go shrug. Who gives a shit? I don't know. That is weird. Yeah, it is weird. For example, a man named Daniel Wilkins was found dead with bruises on his back and broken skin in several places. The corpse's skin had been punctured all over. And when the people who found the corpse turned it over, blood gushed from its nose and mouth.

Oh, we've got a juicy one. Uh-oh. That was the original gusher. Oh yeah, it is. That's what the original gusher's are. It's corpses. Just corpses. I actually hate the gusher. And I don't know why. I don't like it when it pops in my mouth. You have to remember that it's a gusher because that's worse when you have it and you think it's just a normal gummy and you eat it and then it pops into the back of your throat like you're a new kid in town. That's the only thing about it. I feel like I've been hating too much. I do like a gusher. I just don't like the candy. I do. I do. Female ejaculate, I believe is what he's referencing. I don't know what jackets. I don't know about anything like that. I don't know. He's becoming a man I'd avoid. He's becoming a person I'd avoid out of the bubble. A ejaculate? Was it cold outside? I hate this. However, while poison was first suspected in the death of this corpse, there was none of the telltale swelling or any of the purging of vomit or feces.

Therefore, a grand jury concluded that this death was unnatural and had occurred at the hands of a witch. Now, coincidentally though, Wilkins was the nephew of accused witch, John Willard. That's not good for John. No, it doesn't sound like it. He got executed. But just as the witches were seemingly getting more violent, the officials in charge of eliciting confessions were using torture to move things along. John Proctor, who was formerly a community leader of sorts, and played by Daniel Day-Lewis in the movie. I remember. Absolutely. He was bound neck and heels in the English tradition of officers punishing soldiers. Yeah, dude. Duffelbag style.

Seems kind of like a hog tie. I think it is. Well, I think it's a thing. It's their tied back. It's your hands and your arms are tied back. That's a hog tie. It's like what they did to my dog Puffin. Well, it was only after John Proctor's nose started gushing blood after 24 hours of being hog tied. We got a juicy one. It was only then that he was finally cut loose.

I mean, at some point, didn't they just see a reflection of themselves in the mirror and say, what have we become? Mirror's actually very expensive and hard to come by. Maybe in the glass. Maybe glass then. Yeah. Very normal. Are we not? He was very dark. Now, even though nobody was really in charge of the colony as a whole when the trial started,

and even though Salem itself had no real spiritual leader that everyone could get behind, Massachusetts at large was under the heavy influence of a Puritan minister named Cotton Mather. This big-haired fucking moron, I hate Cotton Mather, man. Yeah. I mean, that'd be controversial. I know. But I dislike Cotton Mather. I don't think it's controversial.

Yeah, I know. Yeah. He had, what's his name? He had Mubatu hair. Yeah. From fucking, from Zoolander. Yeah, he did. Very, it was a gigantic wig for that man war. Now, even though Mather was a highly influential figure in American history, even outside of witchcraft,

witches certainly played a large role in his biography. In 1684, eight years before Salem, Mathers published a book called Remarkable Providences. In which he covered the possession of a group of children in Boston all belonging to a family called Godwin. As a consequence, scholars think the description of the devil's activity put forth by Cotton Mather may have been read by some of the first afflicted girls in Salem, because many of his descriptions of possession were reasonably similar to what they were describing and doing. However, when Cotton first heard about what was going on in Salem, he came out in opposition to spectral evidence, but still said that he trusted whatever the judges decided.

Pulled a bit of a Lindsey Graham. Oh. Mathers also said that he fully believed that what was happening in Salem was an outbreak of witchcraft. But since some of the accused witches might be in the thrall of the devil against their will, he suggested lighter sentences than death. This is a quote from him, and it feels very Lindsey Graham. Just a suggestion. He is worthy considering whether there be a necessity always by extirpations, by hanging or burning.

Sure. Every wretched creature. That child will be hooked in some degrees of witchcraft. Sure, yeah. But what if some of the lesser criminals be only scourged with lesser punishments? Right? Right, my baby. My baby.

We also put some Salem. Open public and explicit renunciations of the devil. Now, I have to think that the devils would then cease afflicting the neighborhood if they felt unwanted. I love it. Ham and biscuits, y'all. That is a fantastic idea. So instead of killing them, they just eat. We whip them.

You whip them. We whip them. You whip them and you put up a sign. Here's your sign, devil. Here's your sign, devil. Here's your sign. I want to bring back throwing of rotten foods. We've been talking about this for a long time on Last Podcast and Side Stories as a whole,

where I do believe they're more public. I don't think that many of these politicians need to even go to jail, but they need to, every Thursday, they need to go to a public space in a different major city and allow all of us to torture them. Okay. Throw rotten food at them. Throw rotten food at them. Throw rotten food at them.

Softly. Like, hit them with dunked noodles. Fucking dunce caps. Pull the pants down. Throw eggs at them and shit. Okay. All right. So nothing deadly or anything.

Traumatizing. I want an embarrassment and humiliation. Gotcha. Okay. Never eat a meal in peace ever again. That type of thing. All right. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Please send me all materials that I need to become a member. Yeah, come over my house. You're gonna love it. Leave your shirt at the door. Whoa. We're actually, we're doing a pool day, so. That's the news today. Yeah.

I only go bottomless in the pool. Absolutely. Always wear a shirt. Oh my goodness. Is that a crime that I see? How is this a crime? I'm sure the murderers would show up time and again during the trials, but while he could have pumped the brakes quite a bit through his influence, he usually only made

things worse, much to the eventual detriment of the Puritan faith. It's the hand wringing. It's not coming out strong against it. It's like saying, maybe, why don't we, and all it did was make it make them all go harder. I mean, to be fair, he may have been horribly scared himself. Oh, very much so. I mean called a witch.

Yeah, very much so. I think were above reproach at this point. I think what they were more worried about was possibly losing influence. And they were also- Yeah, as soon as you lose influence, you're a witch. Maybe. But I think it was,

but we'll also, we'll get into it later. We'll get into it much more in the next episode because Cotton wasn't the only Mather around. There was also his father, Increase Mather. And they were sort of playing this game, this like kind of balancing act of like one of them would come out for it and the other one would come out against it.

But it did not work. Covering all angles. They tried to cover all angles so they could continue to be highly influential people. But we'll talk next episode what that actually accomplished in the end. What was his uncle's name, Decrease Mathers? That's funny.

Again, he's just- Again, he's coming. Well, you know, Ben's kind of a big bill, you know? He's doing his job today. I will not sign the Pickles book. Now the court of Oye and Terminay began the Salem Witch Trials officially on June 2nd, 1692,

with the case of an accused witch named Bridget Bishop. We're here, people, we've arrived. So five hours later. So all of the other, we've had death thus far. Oh yeah. But no executions. Now it's a trial, dude. Now we're at the trials.

We're past the examinations. We're past the depositions. We're past the arraignments. We are now officially in trial mode. All right. Bridget Bishop was first on the docket because she supposedly had the most evidence going against her.

You wanted to start with a win. This is a guaranteed win here. Yeah, okay. See, this was actually Bridget Bishop's second witchcraft trial in less than 15 years. Back in 1679, she'd been charged and tried for witchcraft after a man accused her apparition of plaguing her. But she'd been acquitted for lack of evidence

because spectral evidence wasn't allowed to be used in the trial. He just likes me. It sounds like it. As such, the judges were determined to not let that happen again, especially because Bridget was elderly, poor, and quarrelsome. Plus, she was suspicious because a neighbor

had once accused her of stealing a spoon. Trying to take my fucking spoon? Whoa, that's one of your prized spoons. This is my spoon. I use that spoon for spoonable items. Whoa. I mean, it's a big deal back then, stealing a spoon. How many spoons do you have in your house, Ben?

Oh, at this point, I have a lot. I have a lot of spoons because I went to Target. Oh, really? So you actually, because I was about to say, you were the wrong person to ask about spoons because I would imagine up until very recently you only owned two to three spoons. I mostly imagine him using his hands or most of the food,

whatever he could pour from the delivery container into his face. I was using plastic spoons for a while, but no, I went to Target and I bought a whole bunch of spoons and they're gold. So what if I steal your spoons? How would you feel? I wouldn't care.

Yeah, well, you wouldn't care because you have a whole bunch of spoons that were easily obtainable. You just go, you wouldn't even notice a spoon was missing. No, I would not. But in 1692, you're gonna have at most four spoons. Maybe, or one big spoon. Yeah, yeah, one of those gigantic spoons. No, okay, no, no, no.

All I know is, spoons have been around even in this era. All I know is, when it comes down to it, hang this bitch because I am fucking, yeah. Okay, because not your spoon. All you do is hammer something down into a spoon, cave into it. Yeah, you know, forks are pretty recent inventions. Forks are never, now if you said someone stole a fork.

Your words, your penis are saying different stories because you are fully engorged showing no for a fact that you know somewhere inside that it's a crime. No, it is a crime to steal a spoon, yes, and this is why I am engorged, but I'm saying it's not executionable. Mm-mm, well, it's not executionable, but it can definitely push you along the path.

But even outside of the spoon stealing, 10 people came forward to testify on Bridget Bishop's history of satanic activities, which included mysterious deaths, unusual accidents, and an ability to summon monstrous satanic imps. She just knew her crowd and loved it. I mean, it does seem like no one liked her. No, no one liked her.

10 people. Yes, 10. But as far as what she did specifically in Salem, it seems as if Bridget Bishop somehow became a figure of nightmare and her image became the de facto sleep paralysis specter for a number of people. This is all I want out of life. She's like the nun.

I mean, I want to be that for other people. That would be incredible. If someone else is haunting specter. You want to be like the flannel man or the have you seen this man in your dreams? You want to be that guy? The graphic tea man. Do you have any, do you see any notable differences

between you and those kinds of people? I'm so fun and charming. How could you possibly be scared by me? Kind of, in a way. You'd be like, whoa, actually, who's this delightful man? I would be surprised if you, like Slender Man is scary. Cause he's skinny. And tall.

You're saying I'm fat. Well, he's fine because they'll take it. I'm endomorphic. Yeah, there's some skinny chubby people remembered Dr. Giggles. Yeah. Very true, good boy. Colin, what's his name?

Ferrell. Nope. John Leguizamo from Spawn. Cole Meaney. You're talking about Cole Meaney, the guy that played captain, or he played chief of Brian? I'm thinking the dentist and I'm thinking Corbin Burtz.

Corbin Burtz. Oh god, let's just, oh god. Corbin Burtz. We're in major league hell here. Oh, absolutely. The Guardians. Well, Nate Burtz, accused Bridget of attacking them specifically when they were asleep,

hitting people on the side of their heads, sticking things in their mouths, and crushing people by sitting on their chest. In every case, the specter disappeared when the victim was finally able to speak. These, of course, are all symptoms of sleep paralysis. Sure. Sleep paralysis occurs when people wake up during REM sleep

when muscle activity is suppressed. This causes the person to wake up feeling basically paralyzed, which is sometimes paired with a feeling of weight on the chest, a choking sensation, and or the belief that the individual is somehow under attack. What if you feel like that all day? It's just unbridled, unmedicated anxiety.

That's extreme anxiety. Yeah, that should be addressed. Pressure on the chest. Just asking. Absolutely. I always love REM sleep, night swimming, shining happy people. I love REM.

I really do. Losing my religion is a great song. They should have lost their religion in the story, and then maybe some of these people would have lived. Absolutely. Very true. Well, sleep paralysis sometimes also comes with an extremely vivid vision

of an apparition of some kind, because the waking world and the world of dream are, in essence, fused. And interestingly, people do see very similar objects during sleep paralysis. But these are all things that would have been poorly understood by a resident of Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. Yeah, because they also could just be lying. They could be.

Well, for example, a man named John Louder testified that he'd fought with Bridget Bishop over some chickens of hers that had gotten loose in his garden. Hey, man. Man, this is just so chickens and spoons. I mean, this is like. This is the problem. I loved reading the Storm of Witches,

but when you go into the granular details of the inner conflicts that they all had, eventually you're just like, shut the fuck up about chickens and fences. It's all chickens and fences. All right. Good lord. Now, the fight must have been something volcanic, because Bridget soon became an apparition in Louder's dreams.

Snack, macaw. Snack, macaw. Oh, chicken leg. That's a chicken leg. Chicken woman's coming. I love it. The day of chicken woman or league of chicken deans. One of the greatest characters in sketch comedy history,

the kids in the hall. Oh, yeah. Chicken lady. Yeah, I love the chicken lady. I love chicken lady. Well, during what was almost certainly a sleep paralysis episode, Louder said that he woke up to find Bridget Bishop Specter sitting on his stomach while it tried choking him to death.

Yeah. You want to come up here a little bit? I'm going to come up about a foot. Yeah, I love eating these chickens. Yeah. Chicken pussy. Is it any good? Well, during.

It's a cloaca. It tastes a lot like a lot of other things. What's it like? Well, from there, Louder either had a full-on hallucination out of fear or he simply lied to juice up his story. On a day when Louder stayed home sick from a Sabbath service, he said he saw a black pig in a locked tavern. Hi.

Hi, buddy. Hi. Hi. It's pig day at the tavern. The pig disappeared and was replaced with a black-furred chicken-footed imp who leaped into his window and spoke with a disturbingly human face. Supposedly speaking on behalf of the devil, the creature said, quote, I am a messenger sent to you.

I understand you are troubled in mind. Everybody will be ruled by me. They don't want for nothing in this world. I love this devil chicken. Especially his feathers. Yeah. Yigs. You got legs for days.

Yigs chicken? Oh, yeah. Why don't you come sit in my face a little bit? I'm a girl. Okay. The beast then threw dust at Louder. And that dust struck him dumb for three days. And while Louder might very well have deliberately lied to get the

scary chicken lady out of his life, he also might have been suffering from a kind of mass hysteria experienced by those people in Salem who swore up and down that they actually saw some fucked up shit. They're also looking for it. Yeah. Those three days that he was dumb, he loved young Sheldon. I just think it's funny that he wore a nice suit when he was a kid, but then as an adult, he wears t-shirts.

It doesn't make any sense. You're correct. The Lord doesn't hold. He really doesn't. He really doesn't. Well, no. But concerning Bridget Bishop's trial, a panel of nine women and a surgeon named John Barton searched Bridget Bishop's body for devil's marks

or teats that have been sucked on by Satan or a witch is familiar like a cat, a bird, or a toad. A little milky nipple. I know what they're up to. Now, it cannot be understated how thorough these examinations were because just such a teat was found, quote, between the pedendum and the anus, i.e. the taint. There it is.

Well, there it is. My favorite part. Imagine, I mean, this looking, staring into this old lady's crotch, like having to move up on them, airing stuff out of the way. Come on. Let's take a look at it. Okay. I've never seen this before.

Look at that. However, when Bridget Bishop had her butthole area looked at again hours later, the excrescence, as it was called, had disappeared. Oh, maybe it was just a little piece of duke. I'm thinking it might have been duke. The most damning evidence against Bridget Bishop, however, came from a man named John Bly and his son. See, John Bly had bought some pigs from Bridget's not yet dead husband a few years earlier.

But for some reason, Bridget found the deal unsatisfactory. None of these pigs are willing to have sex with me. They squeal and squeal and squeal and none of them will moan. And as it went, after the sold sow gave birth to a litter of piglets, it became deaf and blind, after which it foamed at the mouth, broke free from its pin, and terrorized the townsfolk for two hours before it was caught again. It's hard to be a mom. It's hilarious.

Yeah, it's a fun day. It is. It is a fun day. Go get it. Come on. Go get it. But again. What else are the kids going to do?

Go get the pig. It's all about soundtrack. Right? Because you put like... Everyone's fun and it's a funny thing. You put that in, but as soon as you put in the soundtrack from the witch, over the thing running through the field, it's immediately creepy. And that's what they did.

The whole thing was just putting a creepy soundtrack over a bunch of shit that was just normal ass neighbor fights. Now this pig incident was baffling to John Bly. Or at least it was until he and his son did a little repair work at the Bishop household seven years later. Allegedly, Bly found several puppets in the walls of the Bishop home made of rags and hog bristles. And those puppets were filled with headless pens.

Touch of the pigs. Put simply, puppets are voodoo dolls. But from what it seems, the puppets in Salem were mostly used not to torture the afflicted, but the farm animals of neighbors who annoyed the alleged witches. Why with the animals? It wasn't real. I would say don't torture the animals though.

It's all malificum. Just torture the neighbor that you don't like. It's little devilish magics. It's little things. But puppets, it's called image magic at the time, or the sympathetic magic. But it's interesting because puppets have been around forever. They've always used it.

It's always been a part. It's been such a part of folk magic. I bet she did have puppets around. But a lot of times they were for good. It was to protect your own property. It was to protect your own crops. So that was what it was supposed to be used for. I don't know man, I think she's making her neighbor's hamsters go crazy.

I mean, it's not hard. What you gotta do is set up a couple of firecrackers and these hamsters go nuts. You put them in a fire, put them in a cage. Much like the guinea pigs from DC Super Pets. This has to stop. Yeah, you wouldn't saw it, huh? You know, Marcus, please don't.

He has been literally bringing it up on every single piece of media that I create. Well, because Bridget Bishop had used a pig puppet and because she had a weird taint and because the afflicted said she'd attacked them spectrally, she was found guilty and was the first to be sentenced to hang. Jesus, it's just a lot. It's just a big punishment.

Well, the thing is, again, it's all silly. It's all silly garbage and then you die. Yeah, it's a pig. I mean, it really is. You had a pig puppet, you had a doll, your taint's weird and then these little girls said that your ghost attacked them. Shouldn't have had a weird taint. I guess not.

You got that sandblasted last week if you wanted to not be a witch this week. I didn't know anyone was going to look at it. Well, Bridget's death warrant was signed and sealed by Chief Justice William Stoughton, perhaps the most aggressive of judges when it came to prosecuting witches and Bridget's execution was scheduled for the following Friday. So, on June 10th, 1692, Bridget Bishop was taken from Salem prison and transported in a cart surrounded by guards and mounted officers. And that is truly the image you get from every single movie about witches.

It is exactly what you think, is the cart goes down the rocky trail and everyone's on the sides of it going like, BANAH! BANAH! Jesus. It's a fun day for everybody outside of the cart. Well, that is true. It is fun.

The problem is that everybody ends up back in the cart. Right. The legendary Gallows Hill, however, was not the site of execution for all these witches, mostly because nobody was going to pull a cart up a hill just to hang a witch instead. So they took the lazy way out also on this? If you're going to hang me, you need to do some cardio. Put in some effort, yeah. Put in some effort.

That was always the legend in Salem is that, yes, the witches were hung up there upon Gallows Hill. But when historians started looking into it and started thinking about it, they were like, they would never pull a cart up a hill. They wouldn't do that. They don't have to do that. Life's hard enough as it is. I had to walk up hill just to go watch the Dodgers play and I didn't even get to see anybody die. Now you're just starting to sound like, you're starting to sound like our grandfathers.

Because you're just talking about a ramp. It's not a hill. No, it is a hill. It's a ramp. It's a ramp. No, the Dodger Stadium. It's for a handicap access. No, no, no.

The Dodger Stadium is on top. It's on top of a... I've been to Dodger Stadium. It's a ramp. It's a ramp. No, you guys are actually completely wrong. You wait until you get the messages about being wrong. Well, instead of it being Gallows Hill, the site was just a common pasture on the edge of town

where the witches were hung from nothing more ceremonial than a rope tied to a tree branch. It's pretty bad, man. Yeah, it's horrible. See, back then, the Puritan way of hanging was simply to lean a ladder against a tree branch, make the condemned walk halfway up, put a rope around their neck, and push them off. What about no? What about I'm not going to walk up there? You just got to run and scream, but they were having...

They had dignity kiss on them. That is not a dignified way to allow yourself to be had. It's not. I also would... I would carboload. I would eat so much bad food. Hopefully you would kill... No, you didn't starve.

Have starved in the jail there. You don't get a final meal or anything. No. This is, of course, different from the Gallows method in which everything in the hangman's power was done to make sure that the neck of the accused broke when the rope went topped, thereby ensuring a quick and clean death for the condemned. Well, we did our entire episode on executioners, and it was a skill and it was a craft. You had to go and you had to get good at it, and you had to train for it.

You practiced. You did math. In Salem, though, no such hangman existed, nor did the pity. Uh-oh. When a person was hanged from the branch in Salem, they were slowly but surely choked to death. Blood wept up from the eyes, nose, and mouth while the victim hung, and the whole body thrashed against its bonds as it convulsed uncontrollably, expelling every bit of waste

in sheer, instinctual terror. You just got cleansed of the devil. Oh, my goodness. Pamela, why don't you go grab her ankle and hang on it a little bit there? It's taking forever. That was too merciful. That was way too merciful. Yeah.

They wanted it to be awful. So how long did it take? I mean, you could take anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes sometimes. Yeah, because you're still grabbing at the rope. They're not grabbing at the rope. Their hands are bound. Oh, okay. But it does.

Yeah, their hands are bound. Their feet are bound. So it's just imagine just a big sack just trying to convulse and just fucking... And they did have hoods on a lot of the time. So the blood would seep through the hoods. And they're, of course, just shitting themselves the entire time. Piss is flying everywhere. I actually learned why people shit themselves when they get scared.

I learned that recently. You know what? It's the lizard brain because when we were... It's the amygdala, that little lizard brain part of our head. When we were tiny little lizards, when we got super scared, when a predator bigger than us came to try to kill us, we would shit ourselves so we could run away faster. That's cool. Yeah, but that part of our lizard brain is still there somewhere.

So when we get really scared, that's why people fill their pants with mess. Is that why I shit six or seven times a day? Are you scared? A lot. What are you scared of? Just my own teeth. It's called generalizing anxiety when I said before it's true. In Bridget's case, she pled her innocence right up to the moment she was pushed off the ladder.

And after she died a slow, painful, terrifying death, her corpse was buried quickly and unceremoniously nearby, making her the first person executed during the Salem witch trials. Congrats. I guess. Now after Bridget was brutally murdered by the state, there was a two week lull in supernatural activity, as if some sort of primal need by the people had been temporarily sated. No new people were accused and the afflicted seemed to recover. But that did not mean that the death stopped.

I think it almost, it kind of almost just feels like you're just ready now. It's almost like it started and now like, okay, now we're going to get good. But also didn't they get the bloodlust out? So they're like, we're going to get a little bit. Almost like a macro serial killer after the first kill. They're like, yeah, I feel pretty good. Two weeks later, they're like the issues back. Yeah.

Hey, what's up everyone? How you doing? Ben Kissel here with Henry Zabrowski. Yeah, it's me, Beth. Yeah, bro. Henry Zabrowski is smoking some of that sweet last podcast on the left, babe. Go out there and purchase yourself some. I hope you enjoy it.

We have Sativa, we have Indica, and we have a hybrid. And I have to tell you, from my personal experience, they are wonderful. Super tasty live resin. You really get the delicious, weedy taste, which is what I like. And three different experiences. You go to your local vape store and get it. Absolutely. Thank you all so much for supporting the show.

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Hail Satan. Well, in the period between Bridget's execution and the next set court date for the following witch trials, a suspected witch named Roger Toothacre died in jail. Now, Toothacre was a self-admitted witch, but he considered himself to be on the side of good fighting against Satan's evil. To have this man's life would have been fantastic. He considered himself basically a superhero.

Yeah. He was with it. I mean, he's stupid in a way. He couldn't believe they tried to do that. He really leaned in. I think he's just having fun with it. Yeah, yes. But they're killing people.

He's technically the positive version of Abigail Hobbs, where he's like the guy that's just been like, no, I'm a good witch, and you can't receive that magic and be white. And be very free-flowing with it. Meanwhile, you can't be Alan Cummings in this time period. They're going to nail you to a fucking wall. Well, Toothacre was a folk healer and a self-styled white magician who specialized in the detection and punishment of maleficium.

I'm also going to be a big fraud all safe against the witch. Oh, cool. I like this guy. Yeah, he openly admitted to using counter magic to kill a witch by heating a sealed bottle of urine collected from an afflicted person. I boiled that piece. I'll kill that witch and I'll do it again. Fantastic.

This, however, only made him more likely to be accused. A man in Andover said that a pack of witches had swarmed his house, stabbed him with an iron spindle, and burned him with a tobacco pipe. Roger Toothacre was said to be amongst these witches, but unbeknownst to the accuser, Roger Toothacre was already dead for, like, days by the time that attack occurred. News did not travel fast. It's possible then, isn't it?

The ghost of Toothacre, isn't it? But here's the thing is that the ghosts of witches, as far as I know, never actually haunted anybody. It was the ghosts of people that the witches killed the haunted people. And I don't think anyone ever said, like, after, say, like Sarah Good was executed. She was out of equation. Yeah, they're out of the equation. They're gone.

Rich off the board. Yeah. Yeah, because that's the thing. If they were to say that they were still roaming the earth, and that would go against the entire Puritan narrative, that doing witchcraft was going to send you to hell for an eternity. You had to go to hell immediately or else the whole game falls apart. He's right in hell.

This is pretty weird science. It is. Well, Roger Toothacre's death did not keep more accusations from coming. And the woman who reawakened the community's fears after the pressure was let off by Bridget Bishop's death was the aforementioned Susanna Sheldon, who was very much faking everything. See, she wasn't getting the attention she needed. So now it's time to get involved.

Oh, my God. If they kill her, it takes 22 minutes. That's the episode of Sheldon. That's young Sheldon. See, Susanna was not only faking every accusation, but it's almost certain that she had help, because some of the things that happened to her could not have happened unless Susanna was a secret stage magician.

You never know. You do. You don't. In one incident, Susanna showed up with her hands bound tightly with strings, so tight that the bindings had to be cut off. This was supposedly the work of witches. Another time, Susanna was found hanging from a hook. Again, she said that specters had hung her and left her for dead. And this happened three more times.

The only way I could possibly making this up is if I was some form of mind freak. Whoa. How's he levitating? Sweet. That's cigarette lit itself. Dennis Rader could have used this as his defense. He tried. What do we know? We interviewed the person who knows him best. He spent hours setting this shit up.

It took a long time, but he did it. That's what proves that she might not have had any accomplices at all. Dennis Rader made it happen. But did she have enough time alone, like Dennis Rader did, to perfect her craft? It seems like people were very lonely. You could just go out in a field. Yeah.

And so it was amongst the physical attacks allegedly perpetrated by Susanna Sheldon that the next round of witch trials were held starting with Sarah Good, one of the first accused. Now Sarah's trial is one of the few that showed provable fakery in the courtroom. During Sarah Good's trial, one of the afflicted claimed that Good stabbed her in the breast

and broke the knife blade, and when Good was examined, a sliver of metal was found in her clothes. However, a young man in that very courtroom said that he had broken a knife the day before, and when he produced the knife, the silver fit the broken blade perfectly. Is it just a moment of silence? Hmm?

Court claimed to prove nothing. No! Yep, nothing at all. And so, along with the spectral evidence, Sarah Good, second accused, would also be the second to be sentenced to hang. Next up was a woman named Susanna Martin, whose plea of not guilty was met with contortions

from the afflicted so violent they seemed to dislocate joints, which was accompanied by the prerequisite vomiting of blood. Cool! They were just popping and walking. I guess so. But it is tough to vomit blood. You won't break my cell.

Unless you bite your own tongue and you just spit out the blood, and they say vomiting blood, and yes, it was very dramatic, but they could have just literally just gone like... Yeah, they might have. We don't know. There weren't cameras. Now, Goody Martin had, like Bridget Bishop, already survived a witchcraft trial a few years earlier

after she allegedly sent a ghost puppy to menace a man named John Kimball after they argued over the sale of a live puppy. How would that even be a menace? Because he tripped. He tripped on it. Yeah. But it's up to you to get out of their way.

Yeah, to their house. Hey, are the dogs walking you or are you walking the dog? Yes. Well, for this, who's Susan Charger? Who? They're a piece of... He's crying. Kisses crying.

Yeah, you can see it. It just depends on me for everything. Well, for this, amongst other spectral accusations, Goody Martin was called, quote, one of the most impudent, scurrilous, wicked creatures in the world by Cotton Mather. Because she sent a ghost puppy. And she was there by sentence to be hanged.

Oh, my God. It's just a lot of punishment for very little crime. I'm half hard with this crime. A ghost puppy? Yeah. I'm not even fully engorged. No. That's a little crime this is.

Yeah, ghost puppy was one of the worst techno albums I've ever heard. Yeah. I wonder if ghost puppy is a band. I guess so. I'm sure that it is right along with dead mouse, ghost puppy, dumb cats. Oh, what do you know?

Because I love dumb cats. There's definitely a ghost puppy. But Hungry Marching Band, who's the first band I ever saw play in New York back in 2003, they have a song called Ghost Puppy. So there you go. Fascinating. Fascinating.

How is that gonna stay in the show? The big bass drum. I don't know if Marcus did it. Now that gets to stay in the show. Yeah, because I wrote the outline. That big bass drum they used to play in the cowmen bought that for a member of Hungry Marching Band. Everybody loves this.

Fascinating. They love it. Fascinating. They are interested in Marcus's history. Tell me more about big drums. I got a lot to say about big drums. I love big drums. Have a seat.

Let me talk to you about big drums. Next on the docket, however, was a woman that many believed prior to the accusations to be beyond reproach. That was one of the town's favorite old ladies, the godly Rebecca Nurse. Now the evidence against Rebecca Nurse was pure hearsay and coincidence.

For one, there had been a petty dispute involving a neighbor and a pig who'd gotten into nurses' fields. And Nurse, of course, got very angry about the pig getting into her field. And then she yelled at the guy. But then the guy was struck with spells of blindness, stomach pain, and choking.

Doctors could find nothing wrong with the neighbor and he later died amidst a series of violent seizures from God knows what kind of horrible colonial disease. It's called the shivers. It's called the shivers in the twist. He's blind. He's vomiting. The doctor's like, what are you talking about?

That's the thing. Well, the other things weren't real. None of that happened. No, he did go blind and he did have stomach pain and he did choke and he did die after a series of violent seizures. All that happened, it definitely happened. It was because he was sick.

He was sick. Yeah, he had a very serious disease of some kind. He probably had cancer eating him from the inside out. And you know, Rebecca Nurse is the exact type of person who's like, now y'all know me. Y'all know me, y'all know my way. It's like an old timey sheriff. Yeah, now y'all know.

Now Rebecca Nurse will never be accused of something like this before, right? And Rebecca Nurse will never be... Did she chew cigars? Yeah. And Rebecca Nurse would also never be guiltily accused and confirmed of subscribe. So what's your name?

You're turning into Johnny Cochran. No, no, I'm saying right here. He said, we're almost paying attention. Rebecca Nurse is an innocent woman. I'd never make a man sick. I only make a man glad. I only make a man smile. Your Rebecca Nurse is wrong on everything.

Yeah. Gender. I'm gonna say race. That's Rebecca Nurse's voice. That's what she sounds like? Y'all know me. Yeah. Do you sound like...

Your Rebecca Nurse sounds like the guy that tried to prove that the JFK assassination was connected to all those orgies. Now you have to know that JFK himself was present. And you knew he was because he was on his back. And they always played a wheelbarrow game when JFK was present. I love that game.

But after the troll Abigail Hobbs and her mother Deliverance claimed that Rebecca Nurse was the servant of the devil, people remembered the pig argument and the ensuing death as far more sinister than it really was. Oh my goodness. I'm starting to think they got to kill the pigs.

A lot of grief is coming from these pigs. I guess so. I like a good pig. But if it's human life or pig death... I don't know. You still think about getting a pig? As soon as I got my land, I'm gonna get my pig. Yeah, absolutely.

Hey, what is land you got a pig for? But I just don't... I mean, there's no such thing as a little pig. No, they grow big, no matter what. They're just going to be huge. But yeah, I'm gonna name it... I'm gonna name it Oyster. That's cute.

That's a cute name for a pig. Oyster the pig. That's a great name for a pig. You're gonna love having a pig. You're really gonna enjoy it. I know you are. Absolutely. Now, Rebecca Nurse was the first amongst the accused

which is to have character witnesses testify during her trial, all of whom said that she was a good and godly neighbor who would never deal with the devil. I only look for sales with the devil. And indeed. That's just so everyone's listening to everyone.

That is his... That's your Rebecca Nurse. I'm Rebecca Nurse. Right? And I do all the work which is why I'm Rebecca Nurse and not Rebecca Doctor. You know what I'm saying? I actually do like that.

Nurse is being underappreciated. Underappreciated. And indeed, after 39 testimonies to her godliness, including 20 written depositions, the jury found Rebecca Nurse not guilty of witchcraft. Not guilty. I told you you knew me.

No. But when the verdict was announced, the afflicted shrieked louder than they've ever shrieked before. Oh, come on. This is just what Twitter is. And so Chief Justice William Stottin told the jury, why don't you look at the evidence again?

So you want us to totally throw out all of what we've just done. So basically... Because they didn't get the thing that they wanted. They forced her to be found guilty. Yeah. Well, they then asked Goody Nurse if she identified as a witch or is one of the wrongly accused.

And Rebecca Nurse, I would imagine, sick of this shit, just refused to answer. So because she refused to answer and because the Chief Justice was putting a lot of pressure on him, the jury changed their judgment to guilty and sentenced the nice old lady to hang. Jesus. Now there was a last-ditch effort

to save Rebecca Nurse's life made by Governor Fitz. That would be so terrible. Yeah, you're the governor. Why don't we instead, we give a spanking out in the field? Oh my goodness. He issued a reprieve for her execution. But when faced by complaints from the afflicted

and an unnamed Salem gentleman, Fitz rescinded the reprieve and Rebecca Nurse was set back on the path to the news. Uh-oh. Now the good person defense that was tried for Rebecca Nurse was also given a go by the next person on trial, Elizabeth Howell. Even though the conviction of Nurse

proved that the court would stop at nothing to hang anyone who put up resistance. A dozen people testified in Howell's favor, with many bringing up how kindly she'd taken care of her blind husband. However, suspicions in the community grew when Howell's brother-in-law offered no argument or help after she was arrested.

What does that mean? He's a brother-in-law. Yeah, exactly. Brother-in-law, I love him. You don't have to. No, you're just like, what'd you do? Yeah, man. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Yeah, sure. Oh, wow. Yeah, whoa, huh? Yeah, while you're playing video games, he's like, yeah, it's just like, huh? Huh? Take yours to your candle. Wow.

Which? Yeah, she musta. That's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. You're the brother-in-law. Yeah. Well, the main testimony here came from a man named Timothy Pearly, whose daughter had been struck

with a wasting disease that took two years to kill her. If only. The disease, of course, had set in just after a quarrel with Goody Howe had with Timothy Pearly over some cows. Oh, gosh, the cows. It just seems like these people were constantly fighting with each other, and then at some point after one fight,

you do naturally die. Which is also why the, this cuts back to why they had such a hard time finding a minister in the first place is because this town and this whole area was filled with grouty bitches. And everyone was just at each other's fucking throats 24-7 because it was garbage living. And they all got trapped in a world of pain.

Yeah, and they all believed that, I mean, the amount of pressure and fear that these people lived under at all times is insane. I mean, because you got to think that every single one of these people also think that they could be murdered at any point by natives. At any point, you see the swaying of a blade of grass, and you might think, oh, here they come for me right now.

I don't want to get too far in this, but yeah, the reason why they're mad is because they used to be living where you're living now. Right. Then you showed up and you took where they lived. And now, yeah, they're understandably a little upset. They're upset. They're upset.

They're very upset. I mean, it's another war, you know, like wars were pretty commonplace back then. Well, this assertion that this girl died after the cow fight, this was taken as evidence despite the fact that the dead girl refused to say that she had been attacked by witches even as her brother tried to convince her on her deathbed to name Goody Howe as a witch.

That's how this little girl spent the last moments of her life. Her brother going, are you sure it wasn't a witch? Are you sure this wasn't done by a witch? Are you sure it wasn't Rebecca Howe? There's worse ways to die. I guess there are worse ways to die, I suppose. You gotta have fun with it. Yeah, but after dying of a wasting disease for two years,

that's how it ends. Yeah. Further evidence against Goody Howe came from a man named Nehemiah Abbott who owned an ox that had trampled Elizabeth House Field. Allegedly, Howe told Abbott that she hoped his ox would choke. And when the animal did indeed choke on a turnip, the funniest way for an ox to die.

Yeah, it's funny. Howe's hope was seen as evidence of witchcraft. In my ass. Remember that one ox book, that book about an ox grown up? Yeah, I do. Babe, the big blue ox? Yeah, it was cute. That's what I'm telling you.

And so, despite support from her family and her ministers, Elizabeth Howe was sentenced to death based on a snide comment and a couple of petty arguments about farm animals. Oh, my goodness. Of course, and along with the obligatory spectral evidence. Oh, yeah. After Howe was Sarah Wildes of Topsfield, which is about 30 miles away from Salem.

Wildes was one of those outside of society types who had once been whipped for fornication. Oh, God. And even though she had been whipped, she still, quote, had the brass to flaunt finery above her station. Yeah. What does that mean? She wore like a pair of glasses or something?

Yes, she had anything that would seem fine or nice. Nice, yeah. I mean, it really wasn't in Puritan times. If you wore something, if you were, say, just a farmer and you wore like a fancy businessman's jacket, then that was seen as wearing finery above your station. You could actually be punished for it. Yeah, and they looked at themselves.

Again, remember, they were constantly in her conflict because the Puritans did celebrate when you made it in business. So that was kind of the Mormon edge where they did sort of like, they were into you being a successful Puritan. Right. But you couldn't show it and you couldn't be happy about it and you couldn't express it. You just had to be that and then never show any sort of example

of it because then you're a brag. I grew up in Wisconsin, I know. Yeah. Now, the accusations against Sarah Wilds were perhaps the pettiest of all. Mostly, her conviction came as a result of her not wanting to lend a scythe to her neighbors. This refusal to lend tools somehow caused the neighbors' ox

to refuse to pull a cart. Then the cart wheels fell off. Then the ox ran away and the hay that was in the cart spilled into the stream. Oh, my God. Just like all that bud light that was just recently spilled on the highway. Killed this bitch.

Dang it. But because the same neighbor said they had, quote, longstanding suspicions about the witchiness of Sarah Wilds, she was found guilty and sentenced to hang. Yeah. Maybe they just need to get a community theater. No, that would be awful. That's how you know where the witches are.

And so, with five trials and five convictions, Elizabeth Howe, Sarah Wilds, Susanna Martin, Sarah Good, and Rebecca Nurse were all loaded up into a cart and taken to the hanging pasture just outside of town. Get the cart. Burn them. Burn them. I wonder what they talked about in there.

In the cart? Yeah. Yeah, probably just been like, oh, you're finally awake. Oh, hey, how are you? You ready to get hanged? Yeah. Whoa. This is where the clips hang out, huh?

I think this is where all the clips hang out. That's wonderful. Thank you. That's nice. Well, once there, Salem Towns Jr. minister, Nicholas Noy, gave Sarah Good a chance to confess as she stood on the hanging ladder, telling her that at least she would not die a liar if she told everyone she was a witch.

Great. The irony is unbelievable. Mm-hmm. But Sarah Good, with a noose around her neck, defiantly told the minister that she was no more a witch than he was a wizard, and if he took her life away, God would give him blood to drink. Oh, nice.

And while that sounds like cool improv, Sarah Good was actually referencing the Bible, Revelation 16-6, when God turned the rivers and springs into blood as a consequence for mankind's actions. Specifically, it said, For they shed the blood of the saints and prophets, and therefore thou hast given them blood to drink. Hemoglobin.

Fuck at it. Yeah. Interestingly, though, years later, Reverend Noy did indeed suffer from an internal hemorrhage, which, in fact, did cause him to choke to death on his own blood. There's kind of a, I feel like it's more like, sometimes people get what they deserve. Yeah.

Sometimes you get your own personal milkshake. And so as Sarah Good kicked on the rope, the other four had to watch. Then the other three, then the other two. Jesus. Until finally only one person was left. That one person would have spent what was probably an hour or so watching everyone else slowly choke to death

in front of them, one by one, before finally climbing up the ladder themselves. Well, maybe by the time they get to four, they'll be tired. Maybe we'll see how crazy this is, and we can all, like, maybe come down a second. Because I mean, honestly, with the cows and shit, hang that fucking bench. This is crazy.

For me? Not me. I'm nice. Y'all know me. What would you rather be, number one or number five? Number one or number five? Number one. Number one, absolutely.

I would rather be number five. Why? There is still a chance. No, there is no chance. But again, would you find out? No, you're not Robin Hood. No one's going to come in and shoot the fucking rope with an arrow.

You're just dead, man. Yeah, you're little, John. Unfortunately, so you die. If you end up in the gallows, you die. Well, but it's still until you're dead, you're not dead. So you got a chance. I think I said it's true. What if they did get tired?

Like, what if after, like, the third hanging, they were just like, ugh, let's go. It's possible these people are lunatics. It seemed to just energize them. Okay. Yeah, they got more and more excited. Meanwhile, even more people around Massachusetts were being accused of witchcraft with the help of the afflicted.

And Andover, which had the second highest instance of witchcraft allegations behind Salem, a woman named Elizabeth Ballard said that her house was full of spectral witches torturing her and drinking cider. That's kind of fun. Why would they need to drink cider? Because they're having fun. They're having a party.

They're having a witch party. Yeah, yeah. But you weren't invited. I don't want to be invited. I do. Yeah, I do too. Yeah, an invisible witch party with cider. That's cool.

Then you're all going to be hung. Then you're hung. Yeah, not now. We can just make it on TikTok. And so her husband sent for Ann Putnam Jr. and Mary Walcott, two of the afflicted from Salem. They walked in the house and almost immediately identified the witches supposedly torturing Elizabeth Ballard.

They named names. I love consultants. Fantastic. And from there, more girls in Andover suddenly came down with fits and spectral attacks, which brought more visits from Putnam and Walcott, which only caused more fits and accusations. Now, to give you an idea of how these witch accusations

spread from person to person, let's start with a witch that was named by Ann Putnam Jr. and Mary Walcott in Elizabeth Ballard's house. And she was named a witch of the month? She was. Nice. Her name, you know, I would say it's more of a witch of the week type of situation.

Witch of the week. Unfortunately. Yeah. And it's also a witch of the week is kind of what's happening here in each one of them nights. Ice. Well, the accused was named Ann Foster. And when she was questioned, she confessed

and said that 305 witches were all working together in a conspiracy to replace God with the devil, using Salem Village as their base of operations. Now, once Ann Foster confessed to being a witch, the sickness spread to her daughter, who started making accusations against a woman named Martha Carrier, saying that Martha had used black magic to kill Martha's brothers

and her brother-in-law. And I think that this is mostly to avoid the fact that you are now the daughter of a witch and you are probably the next to be accused of being a witch or at least in line with a witch. And so now you have got to accuse somebody else before it lands on you. Okay.

Ann Foster's daughter also accused Martha Carrier's two teenage sons of being witches. They were consequently tortured using the same blood-inducing neck and heels method that was used on John Proctor. Only this time, the jailers made John Proctor do the torturing. You remember how we did this thing to you?

No, you do it to them. I want you to do it, but do it like it hurt like we did it to you. So even you know how that is, right? You get in there and you do it. Well, John Proctor probably didn't want to do that. He didn't. That's a form of torture in its own self.

Yes, it's own right. You're correct. One of the teenage sons, Richard Carrier, finally broke under torture and named many of the witches who had already been executed as those who had been satanically baptized. And that's because he's a good kid. Yeah.

Because at least they were already dead. This, however, was yet another turning point in the trials. See where before, people were reasonably sure they'd done the right thing in hanging all these old ladies. After the confession of Richard Carrier, they were now a hundred percent convinced

that they'd done God's work. Because Richard Carrier had confirmed that they were all witches. That's just totally brilliant. These people are just genius. Everybody's in a panic. And they're IQ points are dropped 50 by what they have allowed themselves to believe.

Yeah. Carrier's words held even more weight because Richard's mother, Martha, had previously been said by the afflicted to be the future Queen of Hell to Reverend George Burroughs' King of Hell. Oh, come on. They don't have that kind of clout.

Hey. Hey. It sounds like how many Queens and Kings of Hell are there in this story? Yeah. They could be a Constipole or something like that. But not everyone's the King and Queen of Hell. The Countant of Hell is coming.

Yeah. There's no way. Yeah, I guess King and Queen of Hell. But I don't know. I mean, you're always Napoleon. You're always Jesus Christ. I mean, you're always Ann Bolin. Is it districts?

Do they have districts? Well, the Watch Your Pretty Face is going to Hell, and you find out there's many different types of hell, especially season four. It's on HBO Max right now. Soon to be Discovery Plus. So once you get over there, once we transfer, you can find it again.

How many apps do I have to buy to watch your show? Well, you just have to watch. You have to buy all of the apps. You have to get the Adult Swim website. You're going to get a membership. It's just that easy. Have you been to your doctor recently? No, I haven't.

No, you should talk to your physician and actually find out how many apps you need. OK, fantastic. Furthermore, the good people of Massachusetts were emboldened when the news of the horrifying earthquake at Port Royal that we discussed in our Blackbeard series reached their colony. I'm crazy.

That is nuts. They think God's coming in. God's clean in house. And they were even more emboldened when the report came that a Puritan minister had escaped alive. That's what happens when you retrofit everything into your own little bizarre worldview, and then everything can be an act of God.

That's what it is. However, most of those put on trial for witchcraft and Salem would not be as lucky as that minister. And it's with the other 13 executions and the eventual sobering up of Massachusetts that we'll conclude our series on the Salem witch trials. Well, we have been to Massachusetts, and that sobering up has ended.

They are drunk. Temporary. Very temporary. It's interesting. Next week, we're going to talk about the long-running consequences of which we are still seeing to this day. Absolutely. Like that it keeps coming up again.

We're going to talk about how this all resolved itself and how it wasn't yet quite resolved and just what it does and just the idea that no matter what seems to happen in history, we go through these things again and again and again. And what I'd like to maybe submit to society is like, do we need to retcon all information? And do we need to do all of it this decade?

Yeah. Do we need to do that? Do we need to go and just pull back every single thing that we've decided is now set and done with and in the past? And then just keep dragging this corpse into our future which poisons the reservoirs again and again and again. The Salem witch trials to this day. Still a big deal.

It is. I brought outside the pickles box. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Hope you laughed. You learned. I hope.

Kiss your neighbor in which and if you ask, ask a witch. It's still on. I've had several witches bring up to me because I did say in the last episode by a witch or milkshake and a lot of them are saying now we're getting threatened with hexes saying, can we provide it with the milk? We're getting blackmailed. Oh, which is saying that we need to start providing milkshakes

for people. And so I just want to say I want to clarify if you're in the physical presence of a witch and you can prove that you're a witch by either, how do you prove your witch? I show them your third nipple, your teeth. Show me your third nipple. And that's it. But that's if you're comfortable.

I'm not going to show you a teeth for a milkshake. I mean, if you look at my teeth right now. I'm going to Sonic right now. If you find yourself looking at my teeth, you'll want to buy me a milkshake. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to take, remember, whenever you would have a little face like when time made us the people of the year, take that

little fake ass fucking mirror plastic. They used to put it right on your taint. So then when someone looks at your taint, looking at themselves. Exactly. Wow. All right, everyone. Thank you, Philadelphia. We're going to be there.

Yeah, we have. I mean, please. I think it's already sold out. So it's moved. Yeah, it's close. There's still tickets left. There's tickets left. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Grab some tickets if you want to. We're going to be in Philadelphia. Can't wait to see you on Saturday. Hopefully you guys allow us to do a show. I'm unlike the last time. And then that was an act of good. It was an act of good and power greatest power.

Yeah. An act of the horrible shape that the Philadelphia infrastructure is. Well, they don't plow. No, no, we know that. We know that now. And then next week we're going to be in Psycho Vegas. Can't fucking wait.

I can't wait to do our show. It's going to be crazy. That's right. It'll be a special show too. So you can, we always say, don't come drunk to our real live show. But for this one, you could be hammered. You'd be hammered. Yeah.

So be respectful. No screaming out things while we're trying to talk. No, we're going to torture them. That's our plan is to make your night worse. You can scream, of course, but just remember that we are the show. Yes. Oh yeah. No, we're not.

They're going to be unhappy. I can't wait for Psycho Vegas. That's for us. That show is for us. That is definitely for us. And that is a bit of a hint as to what the show will be. It's for us. All right, everyone.

Hail Satan. Hail G. Magustinations. And if you want to speak, my sweet little taint, you can see what's all there. You got to pay me $1,000. Wow, that's it. That's cheap. I mean, I do it.

Will you? I guess. Is that a promise? I guess. We should do that. I mean, I just have to look at your taint. You should do that in Vegas. I mean, I just have to look at his taint.

And I made $1,000. Can I do it for blackmail? Can I take a picture of it and be like, see? You can't even blackmail me. I'm unblackmailable. Yeah. I mean, $1,000 is a lot of money. But to show your taint to somebody, it seems compulsory.

It was weird that I offered to pay $1,000. You did want it to. Very quickly. I don't see it. That's like three pairs of shoes for me. Yeah. I'll do that in a second. All right.

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