1
00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:03,440
Speaker 1: Okay. At the Salem witch trials, twenty people were executed,

2
00:00:03,720 --> 00:00:06,960
Speaker 1: and at the witch trials in Europe fifty thousand were killed.

3
00:00:07,360 --> 00:00:10,840
Speaker 1: But crazy enough, some of the accused were only cleared

4
00:00:10,880 --> 00:00:14,280
Speaker 1: in the last few years, including a Salem witch cleared

5
00:00:14,400 --> 00:00:17,160
Speaker 1: just last year with the help of some eighth graders.

6
00:00:17,440 --> 00:00:21,480
Speaker 1: I'm Patty Steele. The witch trials are finally over. Next

7
00:00:21,520 --> 00:00:30,319
Speaker 1: on the backstory. The backstory is back. Hard to believe it,

8
00:00:30,400 --> 00:00:33,479
Speaker 1: but accusing an enemy of witchcraft has a long history

9
00:00:33,479 --> 00:00:35,800
Speaker 1: in Europe and of course in our neck of the woods.

10
00:00:35,800 --> 00:00:39,760
Speaker 1: At the Salem, Massachusetts witch trials. In Salem, the witch

11
00:00:39,840 --> 00:00:43,440
Speaker 1: hunt lasted two years and the trials just four months

12
00:00:43,640 --> 00:00:46,720
Speaker 1: in the summer in autumn of sixteen ninety two. More

13
00:00:46,760 --> 00:00:50,080
Speaker 1: than two hundred people were accused of witchcraft and twenty

14
00:00:50,120 --> 00:00:53,840
Speaker 1: were executed. All but one were hung. The last a

15
00:00:53,960 --> 00:00:57,600
Speaker 1: man was pressed to death with large stones. At least

16
00:00:57,640 --> 00:01:00,560
Speaker 1: six others died in prison or while being tested for

17
00:01:00,640 --> 00:01:03,320
Speaker 1: being a witch. Now what's amazing is that it was

18
00:01:03,360 --> 00:01:06,679
Speaker 1: over three hundred years ago, but the last person accused

19
00:01:06,959 --> 00:01:10,679
Speaker 1: only had her name cleared last year. Eventually, all the

20
00:01:10,720 --> 00:01:14,000
Speaker 1: accused were exonerated, but it was taken case by case,

21
00:01:14,400 --> 00:01:18,760
Speaker 1: and somehow Elizabeth Johnson Junior slipped through the cracks. She

22
00:01:18,920 --> 00:01:22,399
Speaker 1: was accused and imprisoned, She wasn't executed, and it's now

23
00:01:22,440 --> 00:01:25,720
Speaker 1: thought that she was intellectually disabled and more apt to

24
00:01:25,720 --> 00:01:29,160
Speaker 1: make a false confession. She was finally released from prison,

25
00:01:29,400 --> 00:01:32,640
Speaker 1: but her name was never cleared. So last year a

26
00:01:32,680 --> 00:01:36,360
Speaker 1: group of eighth graders from Danvers, Massachusetts, went to bat

27
00:01:36,360 --> 00:01:39,639
Speaker 1: for her with the state legislature, and finally, in June

28
00:01:39,640 --> 00:01:44,640
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty, Elizabeth's name was officially cleared. The Salem

29
00:01:44,680 --> 00:01:48,280
Speaker 1: witch trials began when the town was experiencing some upset

30
00:01:48,360 --> 00:01:53,640
Speaker 1: over church politics, family feuds, financial upset, pretty much typical stuff,

31
00:01:53,880 --> 00:01:57,080
Speaker 1: and folks wanted to blame something, so they blamed the devil.

32
00:01:57,360 --> 00:02:02,000
Speaker 1: Always got to find escapegoat, right anyway. Three girls aged nine, eleven,

33
00:02:02,040 --> 00:02:05,600
Speaker 1: and twelve started it all off by throwing fits, as

34
00:02:05,680 --> 00:02:09,120
Speaker 1: tweens do, but they blamed their upset on three poor

35
00:02:09,160 --> 00:02:13,320
Speaker 1: elderly women in Salem. The three women were brutally questioned

36
00:02:13,360 --> 00:02:16,280
Speaker 1: and pressured to confess, but only one of them did.

37
00:02:16,840 --> 00:02:19,200
Speaker 1: The one that did was a slave from the Caribbean

38
00:02:19,280 --> 00:02:22,320
Speaker 1: named Tituba. She had dabbled in voodoo a bit, and

39
00:02:22,360 --> 00:02:24,800
Speaker 1: she said the devil came to me and bid me

40
00:02:24,840 --> 00:02:27,040
Speaker 1: serve him. She said there were other witches in the

41
00:02:27,040 --> 00:02:29,840
Speaker 1: town as well. All this so she might get off

42
00:02:29,880 --> 00:02:33,800
Speaker 1: a little bit easier. Several accused witches confessed and then

43
00:02:33,919 --> 00:02:36,960
Speaker 1: named others. You can imagine the frenzy this all set off.

44
00:02:37,560 --> 00:02:41,120
Speaker 1: As the months went by, dozens more were accused. They

45
00:02:41,160 --> 00:02:45,359
Speaker 1: were tested, but witch tests were actually almost impossible to pass.

46
00:02:45,800 --> 00:02:49,040
Speaker 1: Take the swimming test, the judge said, if the accused floated,

47
00:02:49,080 --> 00:02:52,760
Speaker 1: they were guilty because the water would reject evil. If

48
00:02:52,800 --> 00:02:55,560
Speaker 1: the person sank, they were innocent, but of course they

49
00:02:55,600 --> 00:03:01,520
Speaker 1: often drowned. And then there was the test. The accused

50
00:03:01,560 --> 00:03:04,160
Speaker 1: had to touch their victim, and if that person felt

51
00:03:04,200 --> 00:03:07,400
Speaker 1: pain and screamed out, the accused was guilty. Of course,

52
00:03:07,520 --> 00:03:12,160
Speaker 1: the hysterical accusers could easily lie and scream anyway. Finally,

53
00:03:12,200 --> 00:03:14,800
Speaker 1: the governor ordered a special court to be set up

54
00:03:14,919 --> 00:03:18,560
Speaker 1: and the trials began. Within several weeks, the first execution

55
00:03:18,720 --> 00:03:22,440
Speaker 1: took place, and nineteen more followed over the course of

56
00:03:22,480 --> 00:03:26,399
Speaker 1: the four month trials. How did the craziness end? When

57
00:03:26,400 --> 00:03:29,840
Speaker 1: the governor's own wife was called in to be questioned

58
00:03:30,120 --> 00:03:34,640
Speaker 1: as a possible witch. He immediately dissolved. The court pardoned

59
00:03:34,680 --> 00:03:37,360
Speaker 1: those accused witches that were still in jail, and it

60
00:03:37,400 --> 00:03:41,120
Speaker 1: was almost twenty years later, in seventeen eleven, the colonial

61
00:03:41,160 --> 00:03:44,880
Speaker 1: authorities pardoned some of the accused who'd been executed and

62
00:03:44,960 --> 00:03:48,520
Speaker 1: paid off their families. But again it took three hundred

63
00:03:48,560 --> 00:03:52,600
Speaker 1: and thirty years to get the final person, Elizabeth Johnson, cleared.

64
00:03:53,200 --> 00:03:56,320
Speaker 1: Same thing happened in Europe, where the numbers were staggering.

65
00:03:56,880 --> 00:04:00,000
Speaker 1: Hundreds of thousands were accused over a three hundred year peace,

66
00:04:00,680 --> 00:04:04,360
Speaker 1: as many as fifty thousand executed, and as in Salem,

67
00:04:04,560 --> 00:04:07,840
Speaker 1: the vast majority of those accused and executed were women.

68
00:04:08,520 --> 00:04:12,840
Speaker 1: Executions in Europe involved hanging, drowning, beheading, being burned at

69
00:04:12,840 --> 00:04:15,640
Speaker 1: the stake, and stoning. Now one of the last witch

70
00:04:15,680 --> 00:04:18,920
Speaker 1: trials in Europe ending in execution involved a woman named

71
00:04:18,960 --> 00:04:23,119
Speaker 1: Anna Goldie. Happened in Switzerland in seventeen eighty two, almost

72
00:04:23,160 --> 00:04:27,440
Speaker 1: one hundred years after the Salem witch trials. Anna, a housemaid,

73
00:04:27,560 --> 00:04:30,800
Speaker 1: was beautiful at sort of a mysterious aura around her,

74
00:04:30,839 --> 00:04:34,840
Speaker 1: which was obviously very enticing to men, including the wealthy

75
00:04:34,839 --> 00:04:38,480
Speaker 1: guys she worked for. There were some shenanigans between them,

76
00:04:38,560 --> 00:04:42,440
Speaker 1: but eventually Anna also got involved with the guy's much

77
00:04:42,480 --> 00:04:46,520
Speaker 1: hated brother in law, so suddenly needles were showing up

78
00:04:46,520 --> 00:04:49,160
Speaker 1: in loaves of bread in the house and the employer's

79
00:04:49,200 --> 00:04:53,120
Speaker 1: little girl started having fits. Anna was accused of bewitching

80
00:04:53,160 --> 00:04:57,279
Speaker 1: the child by her spurned lover employer. Of course, the

81
00:04:57,360 --> 00:05:00,000
Speaker 1: brother in law was also accused by the same god

82
00:05:00,320 --> 00:05:04,919
Speaker 1: and executed with his tremendous wealth then passing to his accuser.

83
00:05:05,720 --> 00:05:08,640
Speaker 1: Anna was tortured until she confessed to being a witch,

84
00:05:09,000 --> 00:05:12,720
Speaker 1: but after the torture stopped, she took back her confession. However,

85
00:05:12,760 --> 00:05:17,279
Speaker 1: the execution took place once again. Her exoneration was a

86
00:05:17,320 --> 00:05:21,719
Speaker 1: long time coming. The Swiss government officially cleared Anna Goldie

87
00:05:21,720 --> 00:05:24,880
Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven when a local official went

88
00:05:24,920 --> 00:05:28,000
Speaker 1: to bat for her, two hundred and twenty six years

89
00:05:28,120 --> 00:05:39,520
Speaker 1: after her death. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a

90
00:05:39,560 --> 00:05:43,719
Speaker 1: production of iHeartMedia and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is

91
00:05:43,760 --> 00:05:48,240
Speaker 1: Doug Fraser. Our executive producer is Steve Goldstein of Amplified Media.

92
00:05:48,320 --> 00:05:51,279
Speaker 1: We're out with new episodes twice a week. Thanks for

93
00:05:51,360 --> 00:05:54,800
Speaker 1: listening to the Backstory. The pieces of history you didn't

94
00:05:54,839 --> 00:06:00,160
Speaker 1: know you needed to know. M