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180 residents of Salem, massachusetts, were accused of witchcraft. 144 of the 180 accused were victims of consequences from these accusations, many of which were put in jail, chained and left to withstand harsh weather conditions alone. 55 of the accused gave false confessions. I am a witch. I signed my name in the devil's book. It's been speculated by many scholarly sources and historians that these 55 were tortured into confessing. 19 of the accused were hanged to death, one was pressed to death and a handful of others died while waiting in prison. It is so tragic the details of this case and it did not discriminate. Babies with their mothers died in prison. A toddler was driven to irreversible psychological damage and trauma from what she witnessed. The elderly were executed.

Speaker 1: 1:10

This is True Crammin Headlines and this is Episode 13, part 2 of 2, the Salem Witch Hunt. And I'm your host, jules. Let's go. Welcome back everybody. Jules is me, I am Jules.

Speaker 1: 1:48

Joe is not here because we are recording a bunch on the same day and she had a work call out that she had to go take care of. Now we know Joe works three, four full-time jobs, two healthcare jobs, the podcast, and she's a mama. So we are very understanding with each other and it helps. You know we're best friends and family comes first, her jobs come first and we just keep on rolling with the punches and we have to record these so that you guys are able to have them in October. While I am recovering from my surgeries, again, you can go on Instagram at your host, jules, and follow along what surgeries I'm having in my recovery and you can follow along as we grow in the podcast world and share stories. Just go ahead and say hi to us. We're also. Our podcast page is at True Crime and Headlines. Okay, if you haven't listened to part one, you likely will need to go and listen to part one. Go ahead, we'll be here when you get back. We'll always be here for you, besties. Thank you so much for being here. I am so excited to continue to nerd out with you guys on the Salem Witch Hunt. Let's go.

Speaker 1: 2:57

How did this even happen? Many people have different theories, but the most common narrative with historians is that a group of young girls inexplanably became ill and when the town couldn't find an answer for the girl's estranged symptoms and ailments, they turned to witchcraft as the most plausible explanation why the girls were just ages nine through 19,. A group of them, and among the group was the daughter of the town, reverend Samuel Parris, his daughter, nine-year-old Betty Parris, and her cousin, 11-year-old Abigail Williams. She was being raised by Reverend Parris as well and this would obviously look really bad for the reverend, as it was his job to lead the congregation to the Lord and under the Lord's laws, and it would obviously be humiliating absolutely. And if witchcraft was going on in his town and he was letting it happen and get away and it was affecting his family, he would most likely be dismissed from his role as reverend of this congregation and that would mean he would lose his income and he would lose the house. You know the house is provided for by the town and because so many laws were based off of religion remember we have theocracy, theology mixed with democracy, no separation of church and state right now. The reverend in the town's law enforcement were hand in hand.

Speaker 1: 4:30

I believe it was an attempt to control the narrative about the girls before the town could find them out. And what is it that they could have found out? One theory is that the group of young girls went with Reverend Parris's slave, a woman named Tatuba. Tatuba was South American and she was teaching allegedly teaching the girls about her culture and her culture's tradition, which was seen by the Puritans as devil, demonic works. You know this could have involved herbs, mushrooms from the forest. There are different theories about the involvement of Tatuba with her influence on the girls of her culture, and one of the theories is that Titubo was teaching them the dances of her culture and the congregation was believing that Titubo was negatively influencing these girls in the ways of the devil. It's one theory that the girls ended up becoming very high from hallucinogens that they took one evening and thus that's what sparked all this the two girls. They were not getting any better, you guys.

Speaker 1: 5:47

They continued to show signs of ailing health and after a month of home remedies and they weren't getting any better, somebody had to Titubo make a witch cake and feed it to the family dog. Recall, the witch cake is the urine of the victim. So they took the urine from the girls. Hey, buddy, hey Abigail, give me your pee, I'm going to put it in this cake with rye and ashes and I'm going to make it into a cake and feed it to this here dog, who I think is a quote unquote familiar in accompaniment of a witch who is partaking in dealings with the devil. And then this dog, a familiar, is going to lead me to the witch who cursed them. Let's go. Well, guess what? It didn't work, and what ended up happening was these girls ended up accusing three women of witchcraft. So when the familiar cake did not work the witch's cake, we can call it the peepee cake. It well, peepee would be something else the urine cake.

Speaker 1: 7:03

When that did not work, they pointed out three women who were witches. And this is how it starts. They cannot explain it away. It must be a witch. What if the girls were doing something else and they didn't want to get caught? What if they were so afraid of the punishment, of the shame that the spirited covenant put upon them? This was the better option. Of the three women that these two young girls accused, remember, they're nine in 11 and they accused three grown women of witchcraft. Only one of them confessed to being a witch. And it's then that that woman who confesses points to other women as being witches. Remember, if you confess and you point out the witches that overtook you, the ones responsible for you becoming cursed and afflicted, you could survive and live. What if I told you it was Tituba, the reverend slave who admitted to being a witch.

Speaker 1: 8:17

The other two women were in the community, women of the community. They denied witchcraft to. Tituba had everything to lose. She's not in her home country, she's not with her family. Most definitely she would have been hanged. The community didn't like her customs, her culture, her language. If she it was an act to save her life, her backs against the wall, she has no allies. These kids that she's taken care of just accused her of witchcraft. She lived in the house with them, not as family, because she's being forced to live in a house. She's a slave, she's not free and she's going to probably be killed. But she was caring for these children, the only woman of the house. And now these kids have accused her of being a witch.

Speaker 1: 9:17

The other two women were from the village but they, like I said, they denied the witchcraft dealings. They were Sarah Good. Sarah Good was a beggar and she was also a mother, but she was a beggar and a fairly safe person, I think, to accuse. They likely felt that Sarah Good didn't really have a strong network of family and honor, so she's kind of the safety one to accuse as well. And then there was Sarah Osborn. Now, sarah Osborn was often missing from church. These days she had pulled away from the church and she was pulling away from the Puritan community and way of life and she was likely an easy target as well.

Speaker 1: 10:00

Oddly enough, a few months later the other girls in this group who were also around to Tuba began feeling ill. So it's a few months later, after the first accusations of witchcraft made by Abigail and her cousin Betty, that the other girls that were with them in a group with to Tuba, about the same time they started feeling ill as well. It's interesting it took a few months, I'm wondering. Did they see the power that these young girls were having over their community? Did they want a part of it? How bored are they? How tired are they? What's their life like?

Speaker 1: 10:55

Pretty soon, these girls who originally had very little freedom or a voice in their lives, they were being seen as powerful and righteous in the war against the devil. When they accused someone of witchcraft, the elders of the town took them seriously. These girls were learning how to control the town and they were receiving respect at the same time. Go forth and do the Lord's work and bring that witch out. Remember the Exodus chapter I shared. Do not let the witch live is basically what they're saying. Take it down, the girls, you guys. They put on a full spectacle in court. They're acting outrageously, speaking in weird noises, barking, screaming. They spared no theatrics in this and could.

Speaker 1: 11:45

Their lifestyle contributed to the catalyst for the witch hunt. These girls knew that their Puritan villages believed in witches as the abominable opposite of the Bible, and they held the panic of the people in the palm of their hand. These are girls who are at the bottom of the social totem pole. In the Puritan village you would have the men, the unmarried men, the boys, the married women, the unmarried women, the young girls. I mean, they're the very bottom as far as the social ladders go and the importance in the village, and girls were the weaker sex. It would be hard for them their words, not mine, don't come after me it would be hard for them to resist the devil. He's so charming and because the women are weaker and they're more susceptible to being wicked, it makes sense.

Speaker 1: 12:42

Let's go over some of the theories about what actually happened with these girls and why they were acting strange. So mass conversion disorder, also known as hysteria, where anxieties are manifested as physical symptoms. So it would look like twitching and according to a Boston news article quote the afflictions in Salem ended in 1692. Around the same time the special court created to try witchcraft cases was dissolved. Examples of what could bring on conversion disorder include a repressive family life or post traumatic stress disorder. He noted that several of the afflicted girls were refugees who had lost their homes in family members in King William's war. So that brings in post traumatic stress disorder symptoms which could manifest in a similar manner in their actions to what the town was witnessing. But we don't have Joe here today to talk about this and what I was doing.

Speaker 1: 13:48

I tried my best in reading about the debates on mass conversion disorder, aka hysteria, and there's a lot of conflicting information and I'm not comfortable giving an opinion because I'm not the expert here. But I will say this the post traumatic stress disorder symptoms when you're reading them, the physical symptoms of somebody who's actively experiencing it, do mirror some of the descriptions of what the girls were doing. But so does epilepsy. That's another theory. Maybe something that they did with Tatuba spurred on epileptic seizures. These girls were related to each other. Could it have been part of their genetics and then the other girls months later were faking it. Could it be that Betty and Abigail actually were afflicted and then it just got out of control within the group and they couldn't stop. And then there's poisoning. Did the girls consume some type of poison, some hallucinogen mushroom? And let's go back to the first two girls and we need to learn a little bit more about them.

Speaker 1: 15:06

I mean, I think it's a really big key in understanding the start of the Salem witch hunt, abigail Williams, who was just 11 years old and born July 20th 1680. Unfortunately for us, there's not too much documented for Abigail and her life, apart from the Salem witch trial events just from that one year. But we do know that she wasn't living with her parents and many scholars theorize it's because she was left an orphan after her parents died and she was under the care of Reverend Samuel Parris, her uncle, and she lived with him and his daughter, nine year old Betty, in the home, with his South American slave Tituba and his male slave named John Indian. What's left to know is that Abigail suddenly stopped testifying in court against the accused, like just all of a sudden up and done this girl who was the biggest catalyst in the switch, and all of a sudden is gone. Many theorize it's because Reverend Parris sent her away, because he also sent his daughter Betty away. Betty would later return to Massachusetts and have a family of her own and would never go on record apologizing for her role in the witch hunts which took 20 lives and changed hundreds forever. Now what happened and became of Abigail Williams is unknown. The location of her grave is unknown, although some literature does suggest that Abigail died before she even turned 17,. But nothing is verified.

Speaker 1: 16:56

In the 1950s author Arthur Miller wrote the play called the Crucible. Many of you guys read that in school and it's about historical events he read about during the Salem witch trials and it's also said to be a commentary on the communist quote unquote witch hunt at the time. In his story he made Abigail Williams a little bit older, who had an affair with a man named John Proctor, a man whose wife was accused of witchcraft by Abigail After he had an affair with Abigail. And Arthur Miller stood by his interpretation of events by claiming it was obvious that Abigail headed out personally for his wife, elizabeth Proctor. In the historical documentation of the trials against Elizabeth Proctor, However, it's highly contested that Abigail and John Proctor even knew each other in real life. You guys. He was 60 years old and she was 11 in real life and it's more likely that John Proctor was targeted because he was vocal against the girls and their antics running the town and for spectral evidence being used in court. These girls are just out to get attention, so it would be likely that he would be targeted.

Speaker 1: 18:13

So, after the conviction, what would happen? There were a few different routes, but the most common was to be publicly killed by hanging. Giles Corey, an 81 year old man, however, was not hanged. Giles Corey originally was going to testify against his wife, martha Corey. However, he then revoked that and refused to testify. And then he was accused and he refused to enter a plea into court. Because he refused to enter a plea into court, they tried to press his plea out of him, literally press it out of him. They put him on the ground, put a board over him and put rocks but not just any rocks like boulders on top of him and they would say what's your plea? And he would not answer them. Take another rock, put it on top. What's your plea? They are literally stacking, stacking, stacking, heavy stones on top of this 81 year old man and he ends up being crushed to death.

Speaker 1: 19:26

And in the books by Arthur Miller excuse me, the play by Arthur Miller the Crucible Giles Corey is painted kind of like this heroic figure. Because there's this old man who's refusing to enter a police and it stated historically in the documents that he said why the court's already decided I'm guilty, look at what's happened to everybody. Why would I enter a plea into this? Mockery of this court Is essentially what he's saying. So he refused to play their game and a lot of people think that the court's had it out for Giles Corey anyway because he had previously been convicted of murder at some point in his past as well. And there's the famous line in the Crucible more weight. That was his plea, more weight. It's very powerful.

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How did the Salem Witch Trials end? According to many sources, the Salem Witch Trials did not end because the Puritans and subsequent towns people stopped believing in witches or that it was wrong. Nope, it was because they stopped believing that the court was able to adequately prove witchcraft and accurately identify those who were affected. Now it is said that Governor Phipps PHIP who's the governor his own wife ends up being accused of being a witch because she sympathizes with the women who are being accused and taken from the families and killed, and so she's thus accused of being a witch. And it's soon after his wife's accusal that he forbids spectral evidence to be used in court. Must be nice to be able to do that and save your wife. And very soon after, in 1693, he does go ahead and release and pardon all remaining accused.

Speaker 1: 21:28

In the common thread which ties most of these victims together is that they pushed societal norms. One of them had a child at a wedlock, one was going against land deeds and a late husband's will. Some were outspoken against what the church was doing, some challenged the rules and most were women with bold and new-age ideas and behaviors which, could all be argued, threatened the community's image that they were the chosen ones to purify the church. The irony that the Puritans believed they were chosen by God to purify the church and yet they turned around and made a lasting legacy of mockery of the events of the late 1600s is not lost on me. Massachusetts has officially exonerated all of those in history, through the Salem witch trials, who were convicted and sentenced wrongfully to death of witchcraft. Massachusetts is not the only one who had witch hunts. Connecticut, around the same time, also had witch hunts. However, after this it was not common and you could not use spectral evidence after this. So this is a teachable lesson in history to learn from, and that's why we cover these older cases too To study the human condition and to try to understand how we even got to where we are today.

Speaker 1: 23:11

If we can understand the collective thought that a group of people can have to justify murder and to save their own skin, we can start to understand even the crimes of today. A human is a human. The human condition is ever evolving, ever changing. Yet I truly believe that the one thing that remains consistent is the human's desire to save one's self, and I think a lot of crimes come out of self-preservation.

Speaker 1: 23:44

Thank you for listening to True Crime and Headlines' spooky season. This was the Salem witch hunt, episode 13, part two of two, and I so appreciate you joining me. This was kind of a quick little episode, but I do appreciate that you came out here and put us in your earbuds whatever you're doing in your car and we could be your best friends. Joe will be back and hopefully I could entertain you a little bit. Nerd out on the history and remember we have all our sources and all our sites, on our website TrueCrimandHeadlinescom. And don't forget, in 2024, I am releasing my first full-length investigative podcast on the 2004 unsolved disappearance of Jennifer and her daughter, adriana Wicks, from the small, historic town of Cross Plains, tennessee, and I am working directly alongside Jennifer's sister, casey. You will not want to miss this and I will see you at CrimeCon 2024. I love you. Bye, babes, and me, I love you. I'll see you. My mama is a podcaster. Bye, too, bye.