So Supernatural - CONSPIRACY: Salem Witch Trials

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

The Salem witch trials involved a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts. The trials were characterized by mass hysteria, fear, and superstition. The accusations began with a group of young girls who claimed to be possessed and accused several local women of witchcraft. The trials resulted in the execution of 20 people and the imprisonment of many others. For a full list of sources, please visit: sosupernaturalpodcast.com/conspiracy-the-salem-witch-trials So Supernatural is an audiochuck and Crime House production. Find us on social!Instagram: @sosupernatualpodTwitter: @_sosupernaturalFacebook: /sosupernaturalpod

You know how some kids grow up wanting to be fashion designers or athletes or, I don't know, astronauts or podcasters? Well, this might be one of the most millennial things I've ever said, but there was a time in middle school where I wanted to be a witch. Now my ultra-Christian parents absolutely hated this, but all of my allowance would go towards those little spooky spell books that they sold in stores. You know, the ones that told you how to do love charms on your crush. Those were the things that made a good sleepover.

But it wasn't until I got older and started seriously researching this stuff that I realized witchcraft isn't just about getting your crush to fall in love with you. It can be a lot darker, and a lot scarier. And to some people, and certain cultures, it is be a lot darker and a lot scarier. And to some people and certain cultures, it is a real serious business. That's how the people of Salem, Massachusetts felt back in 1692. And for the next year, more than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft, and 19 of them were hanged for it. And more than 300 years later, the Salem witch trials remain somewhat of a mystery,

but more importantly, they left a legacy and a never-ending fascination with witchcraft culture, one that I'm obsessed with. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is so supernatural. Since Halloween is coming up, we wanted to do something extra special this week and extra spooky. And what screams Halloween more than witches taking over a tiny Massachusetts town, am I right? You are so right.

The Salem witch trial started in January of 1692 after a bunch of young girls in Salem came down with an illness that no one could explain. They were having seizures and visions, which the local doctor diagnosed as witchcraft. The search for the real culprits led to the infamous Salem witch trials. The results were inconceivable, with roughly 150 arrests and 19 people put to death. But even today, no one can really explain how something like this could have ever happened. It's strange enough to make you wonder if some sinister magical force really did fall over the town of Salem after all.

So Yvette, I think sometimes people might think that some things that we do are a little witchy, right? Absolutely. I mean, we grew up with, you know, gemstones and even to this day, like on my desk, I have rose quartz, which represents healing. So some people might call that witchcraft, but you know, it's just a day-to-day practice that we have. Yeah, it's all about manifestation.

That's right. Well, I'm not the biggest TikToker, but the other day I was actually browsing Witch Talk. You know, that corner of Tik Tok that's all about spells and new age and Wiccan magic? I mean, what better way to celebrate spooky season, right? Well aside from all the fun things you can learn about crystals, candle burning, tarot, and the natural world as a whole, I sort of love that online witch culture talks about

magic being a very real and very accessible form of art. Because despite what Hocus Pocus, or even my personal favorite Harry Potter, portrays, real modern day witchcraft is not really about brewing potions or turning people into newts. It's more about wanting something, focusing your energy on it, and letting the universe make it a reality, also known as manifesting your intentions. I absolutely 100% believe in this, as you know, Rasha. Because I feel like if you believe in something, if you really believe and you trust the process,

I mean truly you can just about do anything. But you know, the way we think of witches today is very different from what you'll read in the history books. In the 17th century, Puritans didn't see witches as cute TikTok girlies burning herbs to calm their anxieties. In their mind, witches were very real and a very scary force to be reckoned with. They saw witches as people who'd actually soul their soul. Like literally, people who tempt and torture their neighbors, their community in exchange for magic powers. So I'm not very religious, but I was shocked to find out that there's even a verse in the Bible, Exodus 22, 18, which says, thou shall not suffer a witch to live. At the time, this was seen as a confirmation that not only were

they real, but God's people were literally commanded to kill them. And back in the 1690s, lots of Puritans believed that they had a sacred duty to do God's work on Earth, almost like they were on the front lines of this war against the devil. But the problem with being on the front lines is that you're the first one the enemy goes after and if you found yourself the target of witchcraft, you were pretty much done for. So that just gives you a sense of people's mindsets in 1692 in Salem Village, Massachusetts. At this point, Salem wasn't a fully fledged town in its own right. It was this teeny tiny community on the brink of destruction.

First, a wave of smallpox swept through the area, killing a bunch of people. And things were tense with the local indigenous community too. Tense enough that deadly violence broke out pretty regularly. Salem was just full of widows and orphans who'd recently lost loved ones in these skirmishes. So if the Puritans saw themselves as fighting a war between good and evil, then it was becoming increasingly clear that evil was winning in Salem. Which was probably why people were looking for signs everywhere.

Signs from God about how to turn the tides in their favor, but also signs that the devil was getting closer. I mean, anything could have a meaning. And that's why it's a big deal when a 9-year-old girl named Betty Paris gets sick in January of 1692. She has what they called fits, but they sound almost like seizures. She completely loses control of her body, she flings her arms and legs around, and makes noises that don't sound like anything a human being should be making.

When the fits stop and Betty is calm and collected enough to speak, she says she feels like someone is pinching or biting her. Only no one is touching Betty. Which is all it takes for her family to think Betty is under attack from Satan himself. This is especially alarming because Betty's dad is Samuel Parris, the pastor of a local church. So not only has the devil found a way to hurt an innocent young girl, it's made its way into the pastor's household. Okay, so the pastor, the church, I mean, if the parishes aren't safe, who is?

It gets worse from there because Samuel's niece, an 11-year the parishes aren't safe, who is? It gets worse from there. Because Samuel's niece, an 11-year-old girl named Abigail Williams, also lives with them. Before long, she starts having the exact same symptoms as Betty. The fits, the weird noises, the feeling of being bitten and touched. All of it. Now, you might hear this and think the girls have to be faking it. But witchcraft is serious business in 1692 Salem.

Even a child knows better than to fake something as serious as that. Even worse, this illness seems to be spreading, infecting two girls who live outside of the Paris household. 12-year-old Anne Putnam and 17-year-old Elizabeth Hubbard. Eventually, the Paris' call a doctor to see if he can figure out what's wrong with the girls. And lo and behold, after the doctor examines them, he confirms everyone's worst fears. His diagnosis? Well, he's seen something like this before and he says, they're sick because witches are attacking them.

And to me, the doctor can't figure out why, so his first reaction is witches. So that says a lot. The people really believe that there are witches in this town. What's even scarier is, apparently, these witches have the ability to hurt people without even being in the same room with them. And the attacks are getting worse,

escalating from feelings of biting and pinching to choking and stabbing. One girl says she had a vision where a witch handed her a knife and told her she should use it to cut off her own head. It's really disturbing and the Salemites think so too. They go to the girls and ask, do you know who's hurting you? Do you recognize them? Is it someone we know?" And after a little bit of pressure, the girls actually name three people. Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba. The girls know these women and they live in town. And they all have one other thing in common. They're all social outcasts. Titapa is an enslaved woman of color who lives with and works for the Paris household.

Unfortunately, there's almost no record of her life outside of the trials. We don't even know how old she is. And the lives of Sarah Goode and Sarah Osborne aren't much clearer as well. All we really know is Sarah Goode is 39 years old, utterly broke, spends most of her time begging in the streets, and she also misses church on most Sundays, which is a big deal in a Puritan society. And as for Sarah Osborne, nobody has respected her since she fell for the wrong guy. So basically, she was involved with someone who was poor and didn't have much of a social

standing. But that was years ago, and they can't seem to get past it because everybody still judges her even now that she's in her late 40s and very sick. She can barely find the strength to get out of bed most days. This also means that she misses a lot of church, but it's not her fault because she has serious physical limitations. But plenty of people hold that against her anyways. So basically, everyone was in everyone's business in 17th century Salem, which I guess

is prime entertainment when you don't have podcasts or reality TV. The crazy thing is, nobody's willing to stand up or speak up in their defense. And all three women get hauled before the authorities, and all three of them deny the accusations. I mean, they insist, we have no idea what's making the girls sick, and we have nothing to do with it. But nobody believes them. The accused are being treated as guilty until proven innocent.

And let's be real, there's no way to prove you're not a witch, is there? Exactly, because the more that these women insist they're blameless, the more the town officials are convinced they're lying. Finally in the effort to get at the truth, they physically torture Tichuba, and that's when she cracks. She says, yes, I'm a witch and I'm the one who's been hurting the girls. And the crazy thing is, she doesn't stop there. She tells the people of Salem exactly what they want to hear in detail.

She even adds some new information that they weren't expecting. Since this is a coerced confession, I've got to imagine that Tichuba is word vomiting every thought that pops into her head. She's saying anything that she can to save her life and make the torture stop because the story is so elaborate. She explains that the devil came to her one

night and gave her incredible powers and all she had to do was agree to use her magic to torture good innocent Christians to death. Tichapa also says that she saw four other witches with her own eyes. Two are Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, who she knows have already been accused. But she says she doesn't recognize the others. They've only appeared to her in her visions. She also adds at one point, Satan showed her a list naming each of his servants. And Tichapa has difficulties reading and writing, so she says that she couldn't make it out. But there were at least seven names on it.

The Sarahs and Titcheba. To make matters worse, the Paris girls aren't getting any better. In fact, the illness is spreading further outside the home. To the people of Salem, the only way to save everybody is to track down each and every witch and then bring them to justice. And they won't stop until blood is shed. In early 1692, the people of Salem have a very big problem. They think there's around 11 witches living in their village.

And those are just the ones that they know about. So far, they've been handling this issue in a pretty unofficial way. The actual Salem witch trials haven't even begun yet. Right now, it's more like the Salem witch mobs. Because at this point in the story, local officials don't have any legal authority to actually put the accused witches on trial. If anyone wants to resolve this witch infestation, they need to bring in the big guns. Some town leaders reach out to the governor of Massachusetts colony, William Phipps.

Now remember his name because he's going to be important later on. But now, Governor Phipps helps the people of Salem Village set up a special kind of court. It's going to accept something called spectral evidence, meaning if someone has a vision of someone else performing black magic, that's just as valid as any physical proof. Now y'all, this is completely outside the norm,

even in 1692. But obviously, there's no DNA analysis or fingerprinting in the 17th century. But there's an expectation that courtroom hearings are, at the very least, going to be based in reality. Most people understand that dreams and hallucinations aren't factual evidence. And if the devil is at work in Salem, who's to say he's not giving people false visions so they'll wrongfully accuse innocent people? Yeah, I mean, it's just illogical. But for the people of Salem, logic has long gone out the window. Another big issue with these trials is that they're not really about figuring out who's

guilty and who's innocent. For all intents and purposes, every single person accused is already considered guilty. The only way to avoid the death penalty is to confess and promise to do better, and name more collaborators. And as a reward for their cooperation, some of the accused are actually freed after their confession. The ones who insist they're innocent are sentenced to death. I mean, if this isn't backwards, I don't know what is.

I couldn't agree more. But by the following spring in May of 1693, somewhere between 144 and 185 people have been formally accused of witchcraft. A massive increase from that original three. These are people from Salem Village and other towns in the area. About 50 or so have confessed, and the rest are either waiting for their day in court or have already been sentenced to death. And literally no one is safe from the accusations.

A four-year year old girl gets accused and she goes on to confess. Two dogs are even executed. And one man, Giles Corey, is also accused. But he refuses to spoil his good name by confessing and letting the courts find him guilty. Plus he doesn't want to condemn more people to their fates. So when Giles is called to submit a plea, he says nothing. Crickets. His trial can't go forward without some kind of response from him. So what do town officials do? They force him to lie down under some heavy stones. They figure eventually the weight will be too much for him and that he'll finally agree to face the judge. He holds out for two full days

and Giles still won't cooperate. Finally he dies when those stones crush him to death. That is a horrible way to die but at the same time it's pretty heroic because Giles, he never pointed fingers at someone else to save his own life. He was seeing the situation clearly, and he didn't believe there was anything to the accusations, and he wasn't alone. Even in 1692, while the witch trials were in full swing, officials thought that the convictions were ridiculous and illogical, and they were all asking, what's in the water in Salem? During the trials, one Boston-based minister named Cotton Mather wrote a letter to all of

the judges and town leaders in Salem. And he says basically that they were making total fools of themselves. No honest, credible court can convict people on the strength of spectral evidence and confessions given under duress. His father, Inquis Mather, is also very respected. He's literally the president of Harvard at this time. And he publicly condemns the trials too, saying, it were better than ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person be condemned. The point is, people are speaking out against the trials trials but most folks don't have the social standing that Cotton and Increase do and even with all of the respect these two have they can't even get the trial shut down.

Eventually a woman named Mary Phipps is accused too and that's when things get really interesting. Mary's husband is William Phipps, the governor of the Massachusetts colony. Remember this guy? Pretty much right up until this moment, William has been very supportive of the witch trials. He helped the villagers set up their courts and even allowed the spectral evidence. But now that it's his own wife on the line, William is basically like, okay, that's enough, wrap it up. He stops the police from arresting anyone new. He also shuts down the court in Salem and transfers all of the pending trials to a new court.

Most importantly, he says that going forward, nobody gets to bring spectral evidence to the judge or jury. We're not hearing about your prophetic dream. We're not paying attention to what sick girls are babbling about during their fits. If you've got hard evidence, then bring it. Otherwise we're not condemning anyone else. And after that, the trials eventually wind down.

There are still 56 people who are tried by the new court. But with no spectral evidence and no real evidence, they're practicing witchcraft. Only three are found guilty. But they're not executed. In fact, everyone who's been imprisoned or on death row for the crime gets a pardon. They get to go back to living their lives. Even more importantly, the people of Salem realized almost overnight that they've been in the wrong this whole time. Literally, it's like they just snap out of it

and go back to acting like this never happened. And on January 14th, 1697, about five years after the trials began, the people of Salem did a formal day of atonement. One judge and twelve jurors actually made public apologies too. They fully admitted and acknowledged that they were out of line. And the town later paid reparations to the victims' surviving family members. Eventually, all of the people who were executed for witchcraft

were formally pardoned. But it took some time. In fact, the last pardon didn't go through until the summer of 2022. Yes, you guys, yes, just two years ago. The accused was a woman named Elizabeth Johnson Jr. who was believed by historians to be intellectually disabled, which may have led to her false confession. But thanks to an exoneration provision added to the state budget bill, she was finally pardoned when it was signed into law by the governor of Massachusetts in July of 2022.

Wow, that's so hard to believe, but there's one big question that I have. How the heck did this all happen? I mean, hundreds of arrests and 19 executions, all in the name of witchcraft, in the US? Well, there's a lot of theories about what may have caused them. I'd like to say the most popular is, maybe even the most grounded explanation goes back to a question that we asked earlier. What's in the water in Salem?

Only the question should have been, what's in the bread? See, there's this fungus called ergot and it grows on grains like rye, but it also is what LSD is made out of. So imagine that you accidentally are eating some of this stuff in large quantities. I mean, you're eating it for breakfast, you're eating it for lunch, you're eating it for dinner. Like, ergot can make people hallucinate, have seizure-like fits, or feel like there's something crawling or touching their skin. Like, y'all, does that sound familiar?

Yeah. Okay, so you've got a group of Puritans who truly, deeply believe that they are on the front lines of a war between the devil and God. The grain they've stored for the winter has ergot growing on it, and they eat it without realizing there's anything wrong with it. Then they start tripping. Their hallucinations are going to reflect the things they're really afraid of, like witches. This theory makes sense, right? I mean, at least at first. But the big issue is the witch trials lasted well into 1693. And by the springtime when there were fresh new crops growing and they were no longer eating last winter's ergot, infected rye. Plus, in a small town like Salem, they were likely all sharing the same grain. Which means everyone would have been eating

that bread, not just the girls who experienced those symptoms. Which is why these days most historians think the ergot theory is not the most likely explanation, even though it's the most grounded in science. There's another theory that approaches it more like a psychological phenomenon. Basically that everyone got caught up in the same shared delusion triggered by intense stress. This is called Mask Conversion Disorder. The idea is that when people are under a ton of pressure, sometimes it makes them physically sick and just like a normal illness, this stress-induced one can be contagious.

The only cure is to get rid of the thing that was making you feel so worried in the first place. So, the idea is that these girls were so scared of witches that they actually gave themselves seizures. Like we said before, the people of Salem had already lived through an epidemic and squirmishes with the local indigenous people. Some of them were orphans and I guess the stress was enough to make anyone crack. Yeah, I mean look, it could have been a combination of a bunch of those things. Maybe some people were hallucinating because of the ergot, and others

were sharing that same fear because we know fear creates fear, right? But then there are also other people who were probably just opportunists hopping on the chaos to pursue their own agenda. hopping on the chaos to pursue their own agenda. The thing is, there are so many possible explanations out there, and just as many counter-arguments that can poke holes in them. But there's one more theory that the town of Salem, in particular, has really embraced in recent years. That one of the real reasons the witch trials took off was because of actual witchcraft.

It goes without saying these days Salem, Massachusetts is synonymous with witches. I mean, it's got to be the first thing you think of when I say the town's name, right? It's the first thing I think of for sure. But that hasn't always been the case. For centuries, basically up until the late 1960s or so, the trials were like Salem's dirty little secret. They didn't like talking about it, and they certainly didn't advertise it. And that didn't change until actual self-proclaimed witches got around to reclaiming

their legacy. So it started around 1969 with a witch named Lori Cabot who was living in Boston. And let's be clear about what we mean when we say Lori was a witch. She definitely didn't sell her soul to the devil and she did not torment her neighbors. In fact, Lori saw witchcraft as being almost like another kind of science, right there beside chemistry or biology. But instead of using Bunsen burners or test tubes, witchcraft was all about being in touch with your emotions, the natural world, and various spirits. If you knew how to get all of those things in line, you could accomplish

anything. And it's totally what we said earlier. Lori was manifesting her intentions, and she was open to letting the universe take the lead. Lori didn't always know how she was going to get to her destination, but she did believe she'd get there. And she definitely didn't want to use her magic to hurt anyone. Lori, like a lot of witches, believed actions had consequences. If you used your powers for dark purposes, something even worse would happen to you.

All to say, Lori was basically the opposite of what the people of Salem used to believe about witches. And she was hyper aware of that. Historically, Salem had not been a good place to practice the craft. So she wanted nothing to do with the town, thank you very much. Problem was, Boston is expensive and Lori couldn't afford to stay in the city for long. She needed a cheaper apartment, and that meant moving to a smaller town with a lower cost of living. Lori started out by

looking at all of these other parts of Massachusetts, anywhere but Salem, but nothing was quite right. Finally, she gave in one day and decided to just glance at the classifieds from Salem. And right away, almost like fate was intervening, she saw the perfect listing. It was an old, historic house that was beautiful and right in her budget. Lori couldn't turn this deal down. She moved to Salem, but she tried to keep the fact that she was a witch on the D.O. During the day, she did her best to seem

like an ordinary woman who blended in with the rest of the town. But at night, when she was alone, she would cast spells and she prayed to a goddess. She liked wearing black robes and long gowns and letting her long long dark hair grow long and get out of control. And she had black cats. Just really leaning into the whole aesthetic around witches who keep cats as servants or familiars. Well one night one of her cats named Molly Boo

got out. She ran straight up into a tall tree and refused to come down. Lori tried coaxing Molly Boo out, but the cat would not budge. So Lori called the police and the firefighters and she explained what was going on and the authorities were basically like, uh, okay lady, we have more important things to do than deal with a cat in a tree. This went on for three days until finally Lori decided that the only way to get the town officials to help her was to shame them into doing it. She looked up the phone number for the local paper and she called the tip line where she said,

I'm a witch. That is my familiar. I want my cat out of my tree now. An ordinary cat in a tree wasn't a news story, but a witch's familiar, loose in town definitely was. News crews and a fire truck came racing over to Lori's house, and suddenly her witchcraft wasn't a secret anymore. It was literally making headlines. It's like she started a new trend by coming out as a witch in Salem. She gave the town

a reputation as a place where other witches were welcome too. And before long, practicing witches started flocking to Salem, in part because they wanted to reclaim their history. They didn't want people to picture evil devil-worshipping monsters when they heard the word witchcraft. And today, there are something like 800 to 1600 self-identified witches living in Salem. Now that might not sound like a lot, but when you think about the fact that the town only has 40,000 people living in it, it's a pretty big chunk.

And about a million tourists come to Salem every single year to sightsee, to visit magic shops, and to celebrate all things spooky and supernatural. A bunch of them go to Witch City, which is the downtown area that is just jam-packed with stores and restaurants, all of them celebrating witchcraft. And when I say they're celebrating witchcraft, I'm not talking about the modern day stuff you see on Witch Talk. Some of these touristy businesses actually try to say that the people who were executed in the Salem witch trials were real life witches. Like they really, truly were wrongfully killed for their religious beliefs.

There are tours and a museum all about Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, Tichuba, or the others might have been secretly burning herbs and chanting incantations right up until they got caught. So if you ask some of the modern-day residents of Salem who were actually practicing the craft, they'll tell you the real reason the Salem witch trials were so big and so widespread was because there were a whole lot of witches living in Salem back then too. It's pretty wild to think about it. I mean, take this story about a man named Joseph Bailey. At one point around the time of the trials, he and his family were traveling across Massachusetts

and they apparently spent a night with some friends in Salem. The next morning when it was time to leave, Joseph said he felt an invisible force attack him. These attacks continued once he and his family got home. Joseph also claimed invisible bugs were crawling on his skin. His muscles cramped up. Plus, some unseen force was biting and pinching him. Now Joseph wouldn't have been faking his symptoms for attention. He wasn't from Salem and he had nothing to gain from getting caught up with the accusers.

So you have Joseph's story where he goes to this town that's supposedly full of witches and then he gets attacked by a witch too? Maybe there's something to be considered here. To be clear, I mean there's no evidence at all that any of the accused in the trials were doing any of this. They probably hated witches as much as the people who were executing them. But that hasn't stopped Salem from rebranding itself as a witch haven. Well, I do think there's something magical about this place, even if nobody was doing

magic in 1692. We talked a little bit before about how modern day witchcraft is very much about making your beliefs a reality. And Salem really seems like a perfect example of how that works. Even if there weren't real witches in Salem Village in the 1690s, the Puritans who lived there truly believed there were. They acted like that was the reality throughout these witch trials. And then the universe got involved. The stars were aligned just the right way that Lori Cabot ended up moving to Salem even though she didn't want to. She just so happened to call the newspaper tip line and got them to cover her story.

Call it chance, call it destiny. But everything worked out so that now Salem is the hub for actual real witches. The Puritans' beliefs manifested into reality. If that's not a sign that magic works, then I don't know what is. This is So Supernatural, an AudioChuck original produced by Crime House. You can connect with us on Instagram at So Supernatural Pod and visit our website, SoSupernaturalPodcast.com. Join Rasha and me next Friday for an all new episode. So what do you think Chuck?

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