Speaker 1: Our guest historian today is Stacy Schiff, author of a
Speaker 1: number of historical works. Her book Vera was a Pulitzer
Speaker 1: Prize winner, and she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for
Speaker 1: her book Santa Suberie, and of course, her book The
Speaker 1: Witches was one of the works referenced as we researched
Speaker 1: and wrote on Obscured Season one. Her list of awards
Speaker 1: of publications is enough to make any historian jealous, So
Speaker 1: I'll point you toward her full bio on the Unobscured
Speaker 1: website if you want to learn more. I had a
Speaker 1: chance to sit down with Stacy Shift this past summer
Speaker 1: and we had a fantastic conversation. So without further delay,
Speaker 1: let's get on with the show. This is the Unobscured
Speaker 1: Interview series for season one. I'm Aaron Mankey, I'm Stacy Schiff.
Speaker 1: I'm the author of The Witches, um in narrative history
Speaker 1: of what Happened at Salem, to which I came because
Speaker 1: I was surprised by how little most of us really
Speaker 1: know about what happened in Um Salem, which trials seemed
Speaker 1: like a shorthand, but none of us really understands to
Speaker 1: what it is a shorthand. Um. I had written a
Speaker 1: book about Cleopatra before this, and it was the same
Speaker 1: kind of dynamic of just a name that a name brand,
Speaker 1: something that everyone recognizes without really having any grasp of
Speaker 1: the actual history. Well, when you talk about the misunderstanding,
Speaker 1: I think the place to start here is almost the
Speaker 1: most obvious question, what was a witch in Salem? And
Speaker 1: you're right, that's the question over which we stumble because
Speaker 1: our definition, the century definition of a witch, is not
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century definition of a itch. So so which
Speaker 1: at the time witchcraft is a Biblical construct and which
Speaker 1: at the time has a concrete reality because she's mentioned
Speaker 1: in he or she has mentioned in the Bible, and
Speaker 1: which is understood to be any figure male or female,
Speaker 1: but primarily female, who is in league with the devil,
Speaker 1: and who works his or her magic by means of
Speaker 1: little imps or a menagerie of little animals, who can
Speaker 1: do his or her bidding. Um. And that was something
Speaker 1: that was imported to the colonies from England. It was
Speaker 1: an extremely rampant It was extremely common concept in in
Speaker 1: the Old World and actually throughout the Old World. Although
Speaker 1: by two the idea of witchcraft has pretty much fallen
Speaker 1: out UM. In Europe. The colonies are in a little
Speaker 1: bit of a TimewARP of their own, and they haven't
Speaker 1: quite got the message that this this the switchcraft concept
Speaker 1: is a little antiquated by now, UM, but you see
Speaker 1: it throughout the colonial record there, which is really from
Speaker 1: the very beginning of New England. And the only difference
Speaker 1: with two is that UM is the prosecution is that
Speaker 1: you get this um feverish set of accusing tions and
Speaker 1: you get a relentless prosecution. In earlier cases, UM, there
Speaker 1: had been tremendous leniency. Often someone who brought in a
Speaker 1: charge of witchcraft was accused of lying and was sent
Speaker 1: home with a whipping. Um. Things were not necessarily taken seriously.
Speaker 1: In obviously the opposite happens. Going back to these differences
Speaker 1: in our perception, there's how we imagine it to be
Speaker 1: and there's the reality of it. How do some of
Speaker 1: the common symbols of witchcraft that we have today, like
Speaker 1: flying on a broomstick or black cats, connect with the
Speaker 1: Sandwich trials or do they? One of the one of
Speaker 1: the most interesting to meet pieces of this is how
Speaker 1: the flight gets into UM. The entire panic, the entire
Speaker 1: delusion in there had not been um, there had not
Speaker 1: been flying witches in New England before six UM, and
Speaker 1: it would see and they were not flying, which is
Speaker 1: an English witchcraft either. So this is really an import
Speaker 1: from the continent. And it would seem that we get
Speaker 1: that idea from a narrative that cotton Mouth, one of
Speaker 1: the most influential ministers at the time, includes in an
Speaker 1: earlier text of his and he writes about a Swedish
Speaker 1: witchcraft epidemic in which a little girl UM is on
Speaker 1: her way to a satanic meeting to two young children
Speaker 1: in fact set off this witchcraft crisis, and a little
Speaker 1: girl falls off her broomstick. He writes about all these
Speaker 1: wonderful details which we will then see transpost to Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: But he writes about things that had never before happened
Speaker 1: in New England. A satanic meeting UM in a meadow
Speaker 1: at which people sign satanic pacts into which they fly
Speaker 1: on sticks. UM. And that is really there were French
Speaker 1: flight French flying, which is before suct. Ninety two, there
Speaker 1: had never really been English flying witches. So that's pretty
Speaker 1: pretty much seems to be where that aspect of it
Speaker 1: comes from. Black Cats I spent a lot of time.
Speaker 1: I live with a black cat, so I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time on black cats. And they seem to
Speaker 1: have been the devil since antiquity. They've they've had a
Speaker 1: bad wrap all along. And if you look at the
Speaker 1: Salem testimony, the court testimony, you see a tremendous number
Speaker 1: of cats. They're translucent cats, there are gleaming cats, they're
Speaker 1: black cats, they're red cats. They're all over the place.
Speaker 1: And it does it does seem to be it's a
Speaker 1: seductive creature, it's a female, mean creature many many people's minds,
Speaker 1: and a black cat will detach itself from the darkness
Speaker 1: without any warning, and it's a cat is unpredictable. So
Speaker 1: there's that sense that you can caress a cat and
Speaker 1: be rewarded with scratches, and all of those things seem
Speaker 1: to add up to something that people are very uncertain
Speaker 1: about and often taken aback by. So there are many
Speaker 1: number of theories as to how black cats get get
Speaker 1: wrapped up in the witchcraft. But yes, that is a
Speaker 1: constant from day one. We talk about uncertainties and and
Speaker 1: the unpredictability of the world around the Puritans. Um tell
Speaker 1: Us about how they viewed the natural world around them,
Speaker 1: and you know, in relation to to how they viewed
Speaker 1: God and their mission of this thriving Puritan culture. You know,
Speaker 1: you have things like the weather or um, the economy
Speaker 1: or politics in the world around them, and how do
Speaker 1: they view all of those as in relation to their
Speaker 1: their safety or their faith. Everything you just mentioned is
Speaker 1: in flux and essentially in so you've just you've just
Speaker 1: given a great overview. Um. They've just a very bloody
Speaker 1: and very tragic war with the Native Americans, with the
Speaker 1: Indians they would have called them, has just ended. And
Speaker 1: pretty much everyone UM in New England at this point
Speaker 1: has lost a friend or a relative in that conflict
Speaker 1: and in new war where the Indians is about to start.
Speaker 1: So there's a sense of being um under assault certainly
Speaker 1: and under siege, which is very Ums, very much goes
Speaker 1: to the heart of Puritanism. I mean, these people have
Speaker 1: come to America because precisely because they feel persecuted. Um.
Speaker 1: They are at the one the one hand, watchful people,
Speaker 1: always watching for the second coming, of always watching over
Speaker 1: each other. There's a great sense of community and they
Speaker 1: are in a hostile world. I mean, it's not for
Speaker 1: nothing that they refer constantly to the howling wilderness, and
Speaker 1: that howling wilderness is, when you begin to look at it, UM,
Speaker 1: a pretty frightening place. We have wolves, very wolves barking
Speaker 1: in the wolves howling in the distance. UM at all times.
Speaker 1: We have obviously the Indians vanishing into the bushes at
Speaker 1: all times with a lot of UM, with a lot
Speaker 1: of subsequent trauma for the colonists. We have an economy
Speaker 1: that's in tatters at this point, and I think not
Speaker 1: um unimportantly and actually fun to mentally, there's a political
Speaker 1: hiccup at this moment. You're in two the colonies between
Speaker 1: governors UM. No one knows they've overthrown the royal governor
Speaker 1: UM in a really sort of preview for the American
Speaker 1: Revolution and a military coup a few years earlier, and
Speaker 1: they don't know if they're about to be punished for this,
Speaker 1: and they don't know what kind of government they can
Speaker 1: expect and what kind of governor they can expect. And
Speaker 1: it's in that little interregnum that the witchcraft breaks out.
Speaker 1: So there is this sense of being on the precipice,
Speaker 1: watching for signs. And this is a religion which gives
Speaker 1: itself very much to watching, making meaning of any little incident,
Speaker 1: which of course means that when you see something you
Speaker 1: can't explain. Witchcraft is a very good explanation, um. Watching
Speaker 1: for this new what this new government will constitute watching
Speaker 1: each other, which of course also ends in accusations of
Speaker 1: various kinds, um, and trying to make sense of this
Speaker 1: very very hostile, difficult world. You talk about the wilderness,
Speaker 1: and I think what I appreciate about what you brought
Speaker 1: to your approach to the Sandwich trials is that it's
Speaker 1: easy for a lot of people to stay in Salem
Speaker 1: in the sale, you know, the town, in the village,
Speaker 1: and leave the focus there. But but what you're bringing
Speaker 1: up is that there's this there's an outer conflict going on,
Speaker 1: especially to the north in the frontier of Maine on
Speaker 1: the edges of what people feel like is they're safe space,
Speaker 1: and that conflict is quite literally coming back into Salem village.
Speaker 1: I mean some of these refugees right exactly, and you
Speaker 1: have you have both that conflict beginning to approach because um,
Speaker 1: because the border with the Indians is getting closer and closer,
Speaker 1: and you have this influx of refugees and there are
Speaker 1: any number of the accusing girls whom we know have
Speaker 1: come from families and what is today southern Maine, um
Speaker 1: who had known Indian attack or who had lost parents
Speaker 1: in Indian attack. I should also just have mentioned, by
Speaker 1: the way, the darkness, and this was something that struck
Speaker 1: me over and over when reading the court testimony, the
Speaker 1: prior court testimonies. These people were lived in a pitch
Speaker 1: black world. And when objects move and and make sounds
Speaker 1: in the dark, you know, we you know what that's like.
Speaker 1: And this is a world in which really you can't
Speaker 1: see the shapes, and shapes very often resolve themselves into
Speaker 1: something else altogether. Um. In that sense of really being
Speaker 1: on edge and having the inexplicable you know right before you,
Speaker 1: and not knowing what danger you should anticipate is very raw.
Speaker 1: And you see a lot of it throughout, even things
Speaker 1: which don't concern witchcraft. You see a great deal of that.
Speaker 1: People sneaking into basements, people not being able to make
Speaker 1: sense of a creaking beam, people wondering, you know, how
Speaker 1: how the roof has suddenly flown off the meetinghouse. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I just keep thinking back to what you said about
Speaker 1: black hats and how they do bleed into the blackness
Speaker 1: of the night or a dark room and just step
Speaker 1: out whenever they want, and it's kind of systematic or
Speaker 1: symbolic of everything happening around them. My favorites were always
Speaker 1: the court testimony. This is prior to the witchcraft years,
Speaker 1: of women who would report that they'd come home at
Speaker 1: night and they've crawled into bed to find another man,
Speaker 1: not their husband's sleeping there, right, I mean, just anything
Speaker 1: could happen because you couldn't see in the dark, right.
Speaker 1: And also and the length of the winter was unpredictable,
Speaker 1: so there was the additional question of do we have
Speaker 1: enough firewood, do we have enough food? Are we going
Speaker 1: to make it through the winter? This is a you know,
Speaker 1: this is a very barren climate in many ways. Um,
Speaker 1: some winters in the winter before sixteen ninety two was
Speaker 1: particularly severe. Some winters were very very horrible. Um, how
Speaker 1: are you going to make it through? Do you have
Speaker 1: the firewood? It's going to take? Well? You know, you
Speaker 1: talk about the darkness and the unknown and the propensities
Speaker 1: who look for excuses or to play supernatural blame on things.
Speaker 1: Colinists seemed to see the devil everywhere around them. What
Speaker 1: was their view of the devil. Who was the devil
Speaker 1: to them? In two? The devil is I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time on this. The devil is a very um.
Speaker 1: There's a very abstract and inconsistent sense of the devil.
Speaker 1: At this point, there's an enormous amount of devil talk,
Speaker 1: both from the both from the pulpit and among the people.
Speaker 1: There are lots of just in day to day discourse,
Speaker 1: there are lots of mentions of the devil, and go
Speaker 1: to the devil, and you know you are a devil,
Speaker 1: and your wife's, especially your wife's a devil. Um. No
Speaker 1: one really seems all that certain who the devil is.
Speaker 1: He has, however, a very palpable presence, and the sense
Speaker 1: that evil is lurking obviously is very close to the
Speaker 1: to the mind of many of these many of the
Speaker 1: villagers who are at the heart of a story. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: when the witchcraft testimony, when there will be a lot
Speaker 1: of witchcraft testimony, you begin to see that people have
Speaker 1: a very different vision of who he is. He's sometimes
Speaker 1: a tall man, he's sometimes a short man. He has
Speaker 1: a club and foot, or he doesn't have a club
Speaker 1: and foot. It's there's a very vague sense of who
Speaker 1: this sinister creature is, but he's very palpably there. Absolutely
Speaker 1: years before Salem, we have the episode with the Godwin children.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us about how the event with the
Speaker 1: Godwin children UM shaped the response like that initial response
Speaker 1: when when Betty and Abigail begin to have these similar
Speaker 1: fits in the home of a minister, it would have
Speaker 1: been almost impossible for Samuel Paris, the father and uncle
Speaker 1: of those two girls, not to have known intimately of
Speaker 1: the Godwin case. Um. First of all, the Godwin case
Speaker 1: is included in an earlier book of Cotton Mathers, so
Speaker 1: many people would have read of it, and I mean
Speaker 1: it was this was sensationalist reading. We would all have
Speaker 1: you known of this in a way, um. And he
Speaker 1: was friends with one of the he Paris was friends
Speaker 1: with one of the ministers who had observed the girls
Speaker 1: in their distress, with those children in their distress, and
Speaker 1: it was his congregation which was involved in Boston, So
Speaker 1: it would have been a story that he was on
Speaker 1: quite close terms with the symptoms in the Paris household
Speaker 1: and in the Godwin whole household are very similar. Um.
Speaker 1: He's very Paris is very slow to mention the word witchcraft,
Speaker 1: but the word must have been at the tip of
Speaker 1: his tongue because they're such a correlation between the two.
Speaker 1: So in the Godwin case, UM, you have a couple
Speaker 1: of afflicted children who begin to um, to writhe and
Speaker 1: to roar and to gallop around on imaginary steeds, and
Speaker 1: who can't seem to pray and conscrub a clean table
Speaker 1: but not a dirty table, and won't do their chores,
Speaker 1: very similar set of symptoms. Conn mother will step in
Speaker 1: and try to make a sort of clinical study of
Speaker 1: what is happening with those children. UM. And in the
Speaker 1: course of that, a washer woman and a laundry woman
Speaker 1: in Boston is accused of having bit witched the girls,
Speaker 1: and she actually will hang on Boston Common. And that's
Speaker 1: the most recent UM prosecution for witchcraft before and one,
Speaker 1: both in terms of the symptoms and in terms of
Speaker 1: the fallout that would have been on many people's minds.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the symptoms. One of the things that I've
Speaker 1: noticed through my work. On my other podcast lore UM
Speaker 1: some continental you know you you talked about the broomsticks
Speaker 1: and the flying witches and how there were differences between
Speaker 1: Europe and England and then and then the New World
Speaker 1: we here, Um, the symptoms seem to be interpreted differently,
Speaker 1: whether it's on the continent or in England or the
Speaker 1: New World. You know. So we have the events of
Speaker 1: lu Dunne in France, where a lot of nuns at
Speaker 1: a convent went through a lot of the same symptoms
Speaker 1: of convulsions and seizures, but that was viewed as possession.
Speaker 1: And it seems that here in Salem, same symptoms but
Speaker 1: viewed as they are being afflicted by a witch who's
Speaker 1: outside somewhere. And why are the differences like that? Is
Speaker 1: that an Anglican versus Catholic difference or is it something deeper?
Speaker 1: It's not. And it's something that even in six people
Speaker 1: had trouble passing one from the other. There's a little
Speaker 1: confusion as to where witchcraft ends in possession begins. And
Speaker 1: you see it even in the work of Cotton Mother,
Speaker 1: where initially he says it's either witchcraft or possession. Um.
Speaker 1: The bottom line, and TI meant to put it baldly,
Speaker 1: is that in possession you are not complicit um. I mean,
Speaker 1: are you are complicit in the witchcraft? You are not
Speaker 1: complicit in what's happening, so a case of possession would
Speaker 1: have been preferable. Um in many ways, Um, you see
Speaker 1: increased mother cotton, mother's father also a minister grappling with this,
Speaker 1: trying to basically differentiate the two. They sometimes they in
Speaker 1: a way bleed into each other. The differences that with
Speaker 1: possession you don't have a guilty party, and in witchcraft
Speaker 1: you have you can point an accusing finger at the
Speaker 1: person who is causing this distress. The similarity with with
Speaker 1: Ludon is interesting because um, again you have a case
Speaker 1: of women living together in a very cloistered, very sheltered environment,
Speaker 1: very visually monotonous. I mean, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: similarities with a winter, a very white winter in the
Speaker 1: cold in Salem, absolutely or Samuel Willard's experienced twenty years
Speaker 1: before Salem with exactly exactly who goes on to marry
Speaker 1: a man named Samuel Scripture, which I have always pleasure
Speaker 1: in that she's she's actually a fascinating character because she's
Speaker 1: clearly so enjoying this attention, and I've loved reading about
Speaker 1: her because there were so many hints anyway of what
Speaker 1: must have been it must have felt like for the
Speaker 1: Salem girls in the sense that you could dismiss the
Speaker 1: women around your bedside but ask for the handsome men
Speaker 1: to stay to observe you in your distress. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there were many advantages to some of these afflictions. Let's
Speaker 1: shift gears from witchcraft and perceptions of the world and
Speaker 1: talk about the trial for a bit. Um in your estimation,
Speaker 1: who were the people who are really propelling the trial forward?
Speaker 1: What were the cultural forces who were pressing them into
Speaker 1: this sequence of events. You can't have this kind of
Speaker 1: a prosecution without an inherent belief in the existence of witchcraft.
Speaker 1: So for starters, you have a religious base here, which
Speaker 1: obviously encourages this kind of an examination, if not prosecution. UM.
Speaker 1: Everyone has his reasons. In this case, you have local reasons,
Speaker 1: and then you have larger cultural reasons, and you have
Speaker 1: political and religious reasons. Locally, you have a minister, and
Speaker 1: this would be Samuel Paris, who was it on with
Speaker 1: his community. UM was divisive by nature, was bitter by nature.
Speaker 1: UM had had every reason to fall out with certain families.
Speaker 1: And in this case it's probably not. It's probably happy
Speaker 1: to encourage something that is going to UM somewhat purge
Speaker 1: the community of auto off some elements. UM. In a
Speaker 1: larger way, however, which you really have is a set
Speaker 1: of ministers and a set of civic authorities, UM, whoever
Speaker 1: different reasons, are really working in lockstep, working hand in glove. UM.
Speaker 1: Each of those groups has a tremendous amount to gain
Speaker 1: at this very sort of precarious political moment from a
Speaker 1: witchcraft prosecution. And you can see that most clearly, I
Speaker 1: think with Cotton Mother, Um, the young Minister of the
Speaker 1: young sort of great hope of the New England Ministry,
Speaker 1: and William Stowton, who's the Chief Justice and the Lieutenant Governor,
Speaker 1: who really is the driving force behind the trials and
Speaker 1: was probably the single person who had the power to
Speaker 1: slow them down, if not stop them, and choose and
Speaker 1: chooses not to. And in fact when the court, when
Speaker 1: the Witchcraft Court will be shut down in the fall
Speaker 1: of two, he will throw a very public temper tantrum
Speaker 1: because he feels that he was, as he puts it,
Speaker 1: on his way to ridding New England of these creatures
Speaker 1: and he's been stopped. Stoton Sorry, So Stone is really
Speaker 1: the figure. Insofar as one is tempted to lay blame
Speaker 1: at someone's feet, I would have alas Finger William Stowton,
Speaker 1: who he's very little. Uh. There's very little paper record
Speaker 1: for Stone, and it's it's shocking how little there is.
Speaker 1: It's also interesting that after the trials, when he clearly
Speaker 1: is the driving force and the most devout and most
Speaker 1: pious of he really feels he's on a crusade against
Speaker 1: this witchcraft. Um. He will remain in political power. That
Speaker 1: will never be a sense of questioning him, that will
Speaker 1: never be a sin of sidelining him. He'll remain in power. UM.
Speaker 1: But you see it most clearly because these um, both
Speaker 1: of these forces, the church and the civic authorities, are
Speaker 1: trying together to prop up a new government. They have
Speaker 1: William Phipps, the new governor who's arrived. They have um
Speaker 1: not endeared themselves to the mother country, and they're trying
Speaker 1: to prove their own a law and order campaign. They're
Speaker 1: trying to prove um that they can adjudicate their own affairs,
Speaker 1: that they can um, they don't need any help from
Speaker 1: the old country. There is not utter chaos and disorder
Speaker 1: in the colony as has been reported. And in Stone's case,
Speaker 1: he's really trying to rehabilitate himself. He's a He's a
Speaker 1: the ultimate political survivor. He's been a member of many
Speaker 1: different governments. He had helped out the previous very prominently,
Speaker 1: had ousted the royal governor. Um, and this is a
Speaker 1: case where he can really prove his metal. Um Cotton
Speaker 1: Mother will go to him just as the objections to
Speaker 1: the trials begin to surface in the fall and say,
Speaker 1: why don't I write something to flatten the fury, as
Speaker 1: he puts it? And Um, when that book is published,
Speaker 1: which we know as Wonders of Invisible World, it will
Speaker 1: come out as if as if Stone had actually asked
Speaker 1: Um Mather to write it. So you begin to see
Speaker 1: a little bit of the of the of the game
Speaker 1: these two are playing together in the most damning statement.
Speaker 1: I guess, Um, and answer to your question, after the trials,
Speaker 1: Um Cotton Mother will write, not not for publication, that
Speaker 1: he felt afterward that Um, these events had really helped God.
Speaker 1: They Christ had got more disciples, God had was more
Speaker 1: closely embraced, This had awakened the sluggish that had filled
Speaker 1: the pews, and the devil had got precisely nothing out
Speaker 1: of the deal. It doesn't mention, of course, the innocent
Speaker 1: lives that were lost in the process. Absolutely the cost
Speaker 1: of all of that. Um. And a lot of that
Speaker 1: began in the meeting house in Salem Village. Um, sort
Speaker 1: of that pre trial examination that happened before we moved
Speaker 1: to oil and terminer in Salem Town. But what do
Speaker 1: you think the atmosphere was like in that meeting house especially?
Speaker 1: You know that first and talking to Richard Trask, he
Speaker 1: said that first day there there gonna be fifty people
Speaker 1: living in Salem and they were standing out the packed house,
Speaker 1: standing outside the windows in the cold, watching And what
Speaker 1: do you think that was like? If there were five
Speaker 1: people in Salem? And I think Richard's exactly right. They
Speaker 1: were probably more than five packed into that space, which
Speaker 1: I think is by thirty eight or some I mean,
Speaker 1: it's tiny, it's a tiny little space. Um. And we
Speaker 1: know from there too, extremely good accounts of those early examinations,
Speaker 1: one from a man whose wife had come to try
Speaker 1: to defend herself and the second from a from a
Speaker 1: former minister who had come back. Um, we know it
Speaker 1: was pandemonium. We know it was utter chaos. Um. Everyone
Speaker 1: is packed cheek by jowa. People are sitting in the pulpit,
Speaker 1: people are gathered together in the gallery of the places
Speaker 1: is really overflowing, and everyone is very is packed in
Speaker 1: very tightly against people whom they suddenly are wondering, Um,
Speaker 1: whom they're wondering about, whom they're thinking maybe the guy
Speaker 1: next to me is also guilty of the switchcraft. And
Speaker 1: meanwhile you have these convulsive, screaming girls who are crashing
Speaker 1: to the ground, and you know, assuming these acrobatic postures,
Speaker 1: UM and who are stopping the trial. It's a very
Speaker 1: stop and go process. Not trials stopping the examination. It's
Speaker 1: a very it's a very slow and and you know,
Speaker 1: plotting process, because you have to wait until the girl
Speaker 1: has just fallen lifelessen to the trance revives herself before
Speaker 1: you can continue. UM. And the girls, according to one
Speaker 1: of these accounts, are allowed to prowl around the room,
Speaker 1: so they're sort of canvassing the room, occasionally chatting with people,
Speaker 1: occasionally breaking out in new convulsions, occasionally screaming that they've
Speaker 1: just been bitten or pinched again. UM. You get a
Speaker 1: sense that the court reporters couldn't hear a lot of
Speaker 1: the time UM center and are having trouble keeping writing
Speaker 1: things down because either they can't hear or events are
Speaker 1: proceeding so quickly, and often will then resort to simply
Speaker 1: summarizing what was heard, as opposed to trying to write
Speaker 1: the actual words down. So I think that the short
Speaker 1: answer is it's dark. There's a sense of smudge, darkness.
Speaker 1: It's very dark in that meeting house. It's very um,
Speaker 1: it's it's very very sort of crackling lye UM fright
Speaker 1: frightful of the can I stopped them all of a sentence? Um,
Speaker 1: it's crowd thing with fear. The former minister who comes
Speaker 1: back talks about how the hair you can see the
Speaker 1: hair is rising on the backs of next with people
Speaker 1: who are just you know, they're in the presence of
Speaker 1: the supernatural. It's terrifying. It's a charged place, completely ready,
Speaker 1: completely Obviously. The examinations UM involved bringing people in for
Speaker 1: the first time, especially that first day Sarah Good, Sarah Osbourne, Tituba,
Speaker 1: and as we go along, the accused begin to make confessions.
Speaker 1: Why were these confessions so important to the witch trials?
Speaker 1: The confessions are hugely helpful because the confessions, as confessions
Speaker 1: will UM tend to coincide, so they coalesce around UM.
Speaker 1: A very similar and familiar story. It's not. UM. It's
Speaker 1: very clear that when people are put into prison having
Speaker 1: denied all charges of witchcraft, and then come out UM,
Speaker 1: they tell a more and more grandiose story. And you
Speaker 1: can see this happening with people who are examined several times.
Speaker 1: The at first perhaps they had been in the service
Speaker 1: of the devil for a year, and then when they
Speaker 1: the second time they were deposed, they've been in the
Speaker 1: service of the devil for six years, and so has
Speaker 1: their sister in law. And then the third time they've
Speaker 1: also been to a Satanic meeting where the bread was read,
Speaker 1: and by the fourth time the bread is even redder.
Speaker 1: So there's this snowballing sense of detail and of involvement
Speaker 1: with people. UM. The answer to your question really is
Speaker 1: when you when you get toward and over the sale
Speaker 1: and witchcraft of ultimately will will migrate to and over,
Speaker 1: and by that time all the imagery has really changed.
Speaker 1: It's less about the enchanted hey and the Satanic cat,
Speaker 1: and it's more about this um, this diabolical meeting to
Speaker 1: which people have flown from all over New England, and
Speaker 1: there most of the testimony is utterly on point. It's
Speaker 1: extremely as if everyone compared notes while in prison, everyone has,
Speaker 1: everyone talks about precisely the same sound to call the
Speaker 1: people to the field. They talk about the same person
Speaker 1: presiding over this, this this dark sabbath um. They mentioned,
Speaker 1: you know, exactly the same guest list of who was there.
Speaker 1: Every detail corroborates each detail. And that's obviously because they're
Speaker 1: being told either by their friends in prison or their
Speaker 1: family who think they're guilty, or the ministers in hard
Speaker 1: what to say. Why weren't their doubts about spectral evidence.
Speaker 1: It seems looking back that that should be easy to dismiss.
Speaker 1: I think the easy answer is. I think that the
Speaker 1: simplest answer is this cotton Mother says god Mother is
Speaker 1: is called on several times to a pine about the
Speaker 1: legitimacy of including spectral evidence in the courtroom, and he
Speaker 1: always is a little bit ambivalent, and he's always sort
Speaker 1: of speaking out of both sides of his mouth. But
Speaker 1: the bottom line is this special evidence should really not
Speaker 1: be taken at face value. However, when there are physical
Speaker 1: manifestations of evil or physical manifestations of harm, then you
Speaker 1: must believe the evidence. So what you have are these
Speaker 1: girls who are claiming or whoever is claiming that they
Speaker 1: have been bitten, pierced, pricked, whatever, burnt um, and who
Speaker 1: have the wounds to show it. So in the courtroom
Speaker 1: you have a girl who's suddenly bleeding from the mouth,
Speaker 1: or a girl who can show the mouth mark, the
Speaker 1: the bite marks up and down her arms. That's really
Speaker 1: hard to deny. And moreover, you have um, really ear
Speaker 1: piercing screeches. You see these girls assuming postures that I
Speaker 1: think most of us would be would find terrifying. So
Speaker 1: in the presence of those convulsing girls, I think it
Speaker 1: was very hard to say witchcraft wasn't being practiced and
Speaker 1: to fail to subscribe to the evidence you felt. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's very much an Emperor's new close situation. Everyone else
Speaker 1: is saying, oh, I see the moth flying around the room,
Speaker 1: which is clearly as the specter of one of the accused,
Speaker 1: and you think, I don't really see it, But I
Speaker 1: guess everyone, I guess I must. Maybe that piece of
Speaker 1: lint in the air, maybe that's the moth. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's very hard to be the dissenting voice
Speaker 1: and say I don't see what everyone else claims to see, um,
Speaker 1: and what's actually interesting is that when the first three UM,
Speaker 1: when the first three women are brought in UM, there
Speaker 1: isn't a hint of spectral evidence until Tittiba starts telling
Speaker 1: her elaborate and kaleidoscopic tail. Well, when Tittipa starts to talk,
Speaker 1: she brings in brand new elements, a lot of it.
Speaker 1: I think hearkens back to what we talked about earlier
Speaker 1: with the animals. You know, there's a strong UM subtext
Speaker 1: of birds and creatures, and you know the dark Man
Speaker 1: falls into that because at some point I think he's
Speaker 1: described as as more like a hairy beast who walks
Speaker 1: on two legs UM as one of his many descriptions. UM.
Speaker 1: Why why do you think for her in particular, UM,
Speaker 1: the animalistic qualities were so important. You know, we know
Speaker 1: so little about titte but that it's very hard to
Speaker 1: say where that comes from. It has been hinted at.
Speaker 1: It's possible that she was fed some lines. Remember that
Speaker 1: she's the only person of those three, the only woman
Speaker 1: of those three who's a slave, UM, which and we
Speaker 1: probably lived in fear of what she had to of
Speaker 1: reporting back to Samuel Parris, in whose household she lives.
Speaker 1: She's clearly been with the family for years. She clearly
Speaker 1: loves the children. She lives in close quarters. She probably
Speaker 1: slept in the same beds as they. Um, she may
Speaker 1: have been told a tale. She may also have been
Speaker 1: a tale teller. I mean, there may have been a
Speaker 1: great you know, she might have been sitting around the
Speaker 1: kitchen showing peas and telling great story reas. We really,
Speaker 1: we really have no idea where that comes from. Um,
Speaker 1: we do know that she was that someone goes to
Speaker 1: see her in prison before she is interrogated. So it's
Speaker 1: very possible that she was, you know, that there was
Speaker 1: some discussion of what she was going to say it
Speaker 1: indeed it indeed is she who mentions the she's got
Speaker 1: yellow birds, she's got red cats, she's got a black hog.
Speaker 1: It's very colorful stuff. And yes, the furry creature with
Speaker 1: the wings and the long nose who sits by the fireplace,
Speaker 1: I mean it's and and as soon as she says this,
Speaker 1: things take off at a gallop. I mean the very day, um,
Speaker 1: that she testifies, men begin to see two laborers on
Speaker 1: their way home see this unearthly creature by the side
Speaker 1: of the road and the moonlight who suddenly transmogrifies into
Speaker 1: three women, and the next day two men will have
Speaker 1: visits from spectral balls of you know, fire in their beds.
Speaker 1: Who turned clearly were some of the defendants. So immediately
Speaker 1: there's this sense that everyone, um, the spectral world begins
Speaker 1: to manifest for everyone. You mentioned the jails earlier, this
Speaker 1: idea that going into the jail, a lot of them
Speaker 1: their descriptions would magnify when they came out. What were
Speaker 1: the conditions in the jail? What do you think that
Speaker 1: was a motivation for them? The conditions in the jail
Speaker 1: were really deplorable. Um. New England jails had not been
Speaker 1: built for long term stays. Um. This was a culture
Speaker 1: that essentially dealt with malefactors quickly and effectively. No one
Speaker 1: was really meant to live in a jail the way
Speaker 1: these people ended up staying in these jails. Um, Nor
Speaker 1: were the jails built for this. Many people think there
Speaker 1: were sixty people in jail by May and a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty or so by the fall. Um. The Salem
Speaker 1: jail is described as a suburb of Hell, and from
Speaker 1: the Boston jail was described as a grave for the living.
Speaker 1: So I think there you have it between the two
Speaker 1: of their tiny spaces, um unventilated. An earlier prisoner had
Speaker 1: talked about the fact that he couldn't breathe for the
Speaker 1: pestiferous stink, as he puts it, um, the air is
Speaker 1: fitted their armies of life. And to add insult to injury, UM.
Speaker 1: In colonial New England, you paid for your keep in jail.
Speaker 1: So you paid for your straw, you paid for your food,
Speaker 1: and you paid for your shackles. And in fact we
Speaker 1: have jail keepers accountings. One of the surviving documents is
Speaker 1: the jail keeper's accounting of how much people were in
Speaker 1: debt to him for the shackles to which they are,
Speaker 1: which by which they are attached to the walls. And
Speaker 1: the shackles were important for a which because of it,
Speaker 1: which had no use of her arms, she couldn't work
Speaker 1: her she couldn't work her magic, she couldn't work her
Speaker 1: her powers were limited. So UM. It seems that these
Speaker 1: people were shackled fairly effectively, and Richard Traska suggested that
Speaker 1: they were. That they were shackled in a way that
Speaker 1: where the shackles couldn't be removed except by a blacksmith,
Speaker 1: So these were not removable irons. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I've noticed is that a lot of the witches
Speaker 1: who confess in these trials are allowed to live. Why
Speaker 1: is that when you confess, you generally confessed UM in
Speaker 1: a way where you accused others, so you're very useful
Speaker 1: to the prosecution. Also, the point of confession was that
Speaker 1: you could then somehow UM pushed the narrative forward in
Speaker 1: some way, so you're re entering UM. You're you're serving
Speaker 1: the business of the court beautifully if you do that. UM.
Speaker 1: It is unclear what was going to happen to the confessors, however,
Speaker 1: it's not but they many of them thought they were
Speaker 1: going to ultimately going ultimately to be executed. But they
Speaker 1: were certainly being used by the prosecution for what they
Speaker 1: could then relate. UM. There's a certain point here in
Speaker 1: the summer, not been fairly early on, where it's very
Speaker 1: clear that it was smarter to accuse than to let
Speaker 1: yourself be accused. And there's a rash of confession and
Speaker 1: an accusation at this point, which almost seems as if
Speaker 1: people were trying to just get ahead of the game.
Speaker 1: And the interesting the upsetting part I think there is
Speaker 1: often that some of those people are pointing fingers at
Speaker 1: their own family members and often in laws or daughters
Speaker 1: in law. Things like that tell me about Georgie Burrows.
Speaker 1: He seems to have such a powerful narrative arc. Burrows
Speaker 1: is someone for whom you know when you live you
Speaker 1: live in Hope, the documentation will surface one day. Burrows
Speaker 1: is sort of the Great White Hope in that respect.
Speaker 1: Burrows is the ex minister Um who leaves the community
Speaker 1: on bad terms and is as much a hero in
Speaker 1: his commune in his new community in today's southern Maine
Speaker 1: as he had been a persona on grata in Salem.
Speaker 1: He was clearly a very um, stubborn and difficult man,
Speaker 1: and possibly an abusive husband with when he was in Salem.
Speaker 1: Um stories of how he had mistreated his wives will
Speaker 1: trail him even when he when he moves to Maine.
Speaker 1: And he's a person who to whom Um, one of
Speaker 1: the earliest Um girls will make mention as the ring
Speaker 1: master here, as the ringleader of the entire um, of
Speaker 1: the of the of all the witchcraft Um. He fits
Speaker 1: the role in the sense that he's a He's clearly
Speaker 1: a figure of some authority. He's clearly a very learned man,
Speaker 1: and he's powerful, so he is the he's called a
Speaker 1: wizard at the time, which is with two z's, which
Speaker 1: I always find very charming. UM. But it's interesting that
Speaker 1: in this epidemic, which is so much being um propagated
Speaker 1: by women, a man acquires the you know, takes the
Speaker 1: central role all the same. UM. And it's Burrows who um,
Speaker 1: who's the one suspect for whom we really in a
Speaker 1: way can't account many. In many of these cases we
Speaker 1: can see why people were accute. We can find long
Speaker 1: term family feuds. Many of the women who were accused
Speaker 1: UM had been accused years earlier, so the charges just
Speaker 1: resurface slightly um cooked slightly cooked a little bit better. UM.
Speaker 1: With Burrows, there's this terrific um vexed history with the community.
Speaker 1: There seems to be a certain amount of getting back
Speaker 1: at him by women who may have been friends with
Speaker 1: his ex wife, with his dead wives. In the case
Speaker 1: of Burrows, people mentioned ghosts of the dead wives, which
Speaker 1: no one really talks about ghosts, and no one really
Speaker 1: differentiates specters from ghosts, so it's a little bit hard
Speaker 1: to figure out how the two are related. UM. But
Speaker 1: he's clearly someone whom everyone lives in fear, including the authorities.
Speaker 1: Even when Cotton Mather will write up his choice cases
Speaker 1: of witchcraft later, he will refer to the other suspects
Speaker 1: by name, but he will refer to Burrows with only
Speaker 1: with the initial be. It's as if he can't even
Speaker 1: name his use the full name. So there's clearly something.
Speaker 1: He's also a Harvard man. I mean, there's just he's
Speaker 1: one of them. So it's an interesting case of um,
Speaker 1: the ministers having to prosecute one of their own, clearly
Speaker 1: odd man out, but someone with a very similar background
Speaker 1: is theirs. Yet. Emerson Baker in our interview talked about
Speaker 1: how all of the magistrates involved in the trial were.
Speaker 1: They were men who thought that they would probably go
Speaker 1: into ministry at some point, you know that they were.
Speaker 1: They were all very deeply devout and and I think,
Speaker 1: in his words he said, probably wrestled for the rest
Speaker 1: of their lives with with um questions of doubt as
Speaker 1: to why they didn't go into ministry. Here they were,
Speaker 1: you know, forced to be wealthy businessmen and military leaders
Speaker 1: of the community. Um, do you think that there was
Speaker 1: something there where they viewed Burrows? I mean, he was
Speaker 1: from what I can tell top of his class in Harvard,
Speaker 1: or or at the near the top, and he was
Speaker 1: a smart man UM. And do you think maybe these
Speaker 1: ministerial wannabes in the magistrates viewed him with a little
Speaker 1: bit of jealousy. It's conjectural, but I think it's something
Speaker 1: a little bit different. I think with Burrows. Burrows goes
Speaker 1: to Maine UM and protects his parishioners in a very
Speaker 1: small community against a hideous and very savage Indian assault.
Speaker 1: And he's forced to do that because the Massachusetts authorities
Speaker 1: have essentially cut off UM there. They stopped protecting those
Speaker 1: communities because they don't have the funds to do it,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to cut back. And I feel as
Speaker 1: if they might have been a piece of residual guilt
Speaker 1: there for having left those communities unprotected. Um. Burrows would
Speaker 1: have had every reason, would have had every reason to
Speaker 1: chastise them for UM kind of cutting off those settlers
Speaker 1: who are really at the very forefront of the really
Speaker 1: at the edge of the frontier there and are getting
Speaker 1: no protection. And he'll write. The one document we have
Speaker 1: of his, which is really extraordinary, is an account of
Speaker 1: an Indian raid on the community where he's um, where
Speaker 1: he's protecting his parishioners inside a barricade, and you know,
Speaker 1: he writes of it in biblical terms. It's an astonishing
Speaker 1: document in which he proves to be a very courageous
Speaker 1: and ingenious man. And the other interesting thing about Burrows
Speaker 1: is that he's really he's very strong, and he's very canny,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the testimony against him will be
Speaker 1: testimony to about his somehow magical strength. How did he
Speaker 1: lift that barrel? How did he fire that very long musket?
Speaker 1: How is it possible that he heard that conversation from
Speaker 1: that distance? How did he get to be two places
Speaker 1: at once? So, in other words, the kind of things
Speaker 1: that you might have admired in someone who was with
Speaker 1: whom you were on good terms, um, which are suddenly
Speaker 1: suspect when you've fallen out with that person. There's a
Speaker 1: point in which Burrows and Martha Carrier are referred to
Speaker 1: as the King and Queen of Hell. What was the
Speaker 1: significance of that label for them? That's an expression of
Speaker 1: Cotton Mathers. I think he kind of makes that up,
Speaker 1: To be honest with you, I don't think there's a
Speaker 1: king and Queen of Hell. Um, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think that was just, you know, Mother trying to make
Speaker 1: the whole thing a little bit more dramatic. It's not
Speaker 1: in the typical cosmology. I haven't foreseen that anywhere else,
Speaker 1: and no one else really pick upon it. I think
Speaker 1: it's just mad. They're trying to make a good story.
Speaker 1: He's a really good writer. He really goes to um
Speaker 1: great lengths to paint Martha Carrier in the most wretched terms.
Speaker 1: And you know hen mother would have been at the trials,
Speaker 1: and he bases his portraits there loosely on the testimony.
Speaker 1: If you look at it, you see he's taken some
Speaker 1: liberties with the testimony. He's left out a great number
Speaker 1: of things. He's left out things that were to people's credit. Um,
Speaker 1: he's injected things that didn't that weren't actually in the testimony,
Speaker 1: and my senses that would for whatever reason, Martha Carrier
Speaker 1: rubbed him the wrong way, and that's why she gets
Speaker 1: promoted to Queen of Hell. Burrows is able to recite
Speaker 1: the full Lord's Prayer. And this was significant, right, very significant.
Speaker 1: I was understood that which could not recite the Lord's
Speaker 1: prayer Um Burrows on the gallows is apparently a tremendously
Speaker 1: moving and and troubling site, because he is, in fact
Speaker 1: a man of great presence, and he clearly knows how
Speaker 1: to speak, and he delivered he's delivered sermons that many
Speaker 1: of these people have heard. And here he is, in
Speaker 1: that same it sounds deep voice, um reciting the Lord's prayer.
Speaker 1: So here he is um doing something that which was understood,
Speaker 1: which would be proof in fact that you were not
Speaker 1: a witch. And the crowd apparently at that moment, has
Speaker 1: a moment of doubt and begins to surge toward him
Speaker 1: as if to um somehow bring the proceeding to an end,
Speaker 1: bringing the hanging to an end, and they're pushed back
Speaker 1: by the authorities, which does indicate that it's the upper
Speaker 1: echelon really that has that's holding the the animus for
Speaker 1: for Burroughs in some way. Um, that's one of those
Speaker 1: moments where you begin to see hesitation building and then
Speaker 1: it's tamped down again and where it will remain until
Speaker 1: the fall, isn't it? At Burrow's execution that Mather Mather's
Speaker 1: present cotton mother and and turns and speaks to the
Speaker 1: crowd and kind of explains how this is a good thing. Right,
Speaker 1: we think it's Cotton Mother. It's a little bit unclear.
Speaker 1: Pretty sure it's Cotton Mother, And yes he explains that
Speaker 1: there on again that there this is God's work. Um,
Speaker 1: con Mother's got a tremendously good argument, not at that moment,
Speaker 1: but just general really for why UM one should let
Speaker 1: this run its course and I one should subscribe to it,
Speaker 1: which is that, Um, it's further proof that New Englanders
Speaker 1: are the chosen people. God would not have let um
Speaker 1: the devil. The devil would show up where he's hated
Speaker 1: the most. So this is proof that not only that
Speaker 1: the Second Coming is at hand, but that UM, New
Speaker 1: England is special and it has this special mission and
Speaker 1: that is why it's repelling these invaders. Moving to after
Speaker 1: it's all over, UM, I think taking some of that
Speaker 1: element with us to that idea that we have this
Speaker 1: vision for the puritan New England culture that needs to
Speaker 1: be preserved. We start to see dissent about the trial, UM,
Speaker 1: things like Governor Phipps prohibiting the printing and the publication
Speaker 1: of stories about it, and obviously Cotton now there is
Speaker 1: writing about it. Afterwards, UM, what does it tell us
Speaker 1: about the trial aftermath that these authorities are they're sort
Speaker 1: of suppressing what has happened. Well, it would seem to
Speaker 1: indicate that there was there seems to be an admission
Speaker 1: of guilt in that doesn't there. Um, it should be
Speaker 1: said that yes, Phipps um stops anyone from publishing anything
Speaker 1: about Whitchcraft, unless of course his last name or Mather,
Speaker 1: because two mother books are published after the prohibition, after
Speaker 1: he shuts down the presses. Um, there's deafening silence all around,
Speaker 1: and it's almost it's almost a conspiracy. And when you
Speaker 1: look at when you begin to look at the record, UM,
Speaker 1: the diaries have been purged from those years. That meant
Speaker 1: the Congregations Book, as you know, um paris pulls out
Speaker 1: those entries for those months, so that we don't have
Speaker 1: those entries. The court records are missing. Even Samuel Willard,
Speaker 1: who is one of the great Boston ministers, we have
Speaker 1: his compendium of sermons, which is an enormous volume, but
Speaker 1: missing are the sermons from that summer. UM. So there's
Speaker 1: clearly a sense of shock to the system and a
Speaker 1: sense that um of regret, and I think of tremendous
Speaker 1: guilt at what has happened. There seems to be a
Speaker 1: realization that no one really articulates until Samuel Sewell, one
Speaker 1: of the judges, finally does. But um, there does seem
Speaker 1: to be this um, you know, could we cover this
Speaker 1: up as quickly as possible? Could we make it go away?
Speaker 1: Feeling afterwards? And that's an attitude of the leadership and
Speaker 1: the people involved. Do you feel like the just the
Speaker 1: the normal everyday person echoed to that feeling of yes,
Speaker 1: let's move on, let's not talk about it. There's a
Speaker 1: curious um thing if you if you look at the
Speaker 1: reparations requests, which are much later early eighteenth century. In
Speaker 1: the early eighteenth century, it's it's understood that some of
Speaker 1: the people who have lost relatives, um in this misfortunate
Speaker 1: summer should be reimbursed for their you know, for their hardship,
Speaker 1: and their requests for moneies often omit. They can't seem
Speaker 1: to mention the word witchcraft. It's almost like the recent unpleasantness. UM.
Speaker 1: So you even see there that there is a there's
Speaker 1: almost an inability to grapple with the hideousness of the
Speaker 1: entire event. Um. There's also a funny phenomenon and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure I can explain it, but very often you
Speaker 1: see widows of people who hanged and widowers marrying after
Speaker 1: after people who had been families of the accused marrying,
Speaker 1: and that could be that they had suffered a very
Speaker 1: similar trauma. But it may also be that people were
Speaker 1: not willing to go near them, that they had somehow
Speaker 1: been marginalized in the events. Because you do know that
Speaker 1: the belief in witchcraft continues long after six two. People
Speaker 1: still believe in witchcraft. They just don't believe that this
Speaker 1: prosecution was legitimate. Um So that since that those people
Speaker 1: bonding together may also indicate that there was that at
Speaker 1: every level people just didn't want to talk about this,
Speaker 1: and that if you had somehow been involved in it,
Speaker 1: you were part of a somewhat toxic community. Are you
Speaker 1: there was some taboo attached. Richard trask Um allowed me
Speaker 1: to go into the archives with him, his little room
Speaker 1: full of amazing things, and showed me the I believe
Speaker 1: it's the church's notebook, not the minister's notebook. But where
Speaker 1: where Years later, when Reverend Green is minister of the church,
Speaker 1: Um and Putnam, one of the four one of the
Speaker 1: main accusers, wants to become a member. Must she must
Speaker 1: to become a covenant member of the church, and in
Speaker 1: a church where so many people in that community had
Speaker 1: lost people because of her accusations. And it's a sobering
Speaker 1: thing to see his transcription of her confession, and then
Speaker 1: you know her signature underneath that. And um, I can't
Speaker 1: remember the date on that confession. I want to say,
Speaker 1: at see quite late. Yeah, it's quite late. And if
Speaker 1: you look at that confession and you look back at
Speaker 1: some of the earlier there are there are two earlier confessions.
Speaker 1: One is from some of the jurors who who who
Speaker 1: are very much regret what has happened. And the other,
Speaker 1: of course, as soll begin to think that Ann Putnam
Speaker 1: may be copied from their homework, there's a certain similarity
Speaker 1: of wording. But everyone essentially, I mean, she says she
Speaker 1: was essentially led astray, right. It's a little bit the
Speaker 1: devil made me do it kind of excuse, But she
Speaker 1: does indicate that she was. She doesn't address how she
Speaker 1: came up with these spectral images. Um, she simply says
Speaker 1: that she was misguided and deluded. Mm hm. When did
Speaker 1: the last imprison which walk free? I think January I'm
Speaker 1: actually not sure is that true. Titiba comes out in January.
Speaker 1: Tittibo is hard because nobody wants to claim to tob
Speaker 1: You can't leave until you've paid your jail fees, and
Speaker 1: no one is willing, it seems, to pay Titibus until later.
Speaker 1: I think she's in jail for a year altogether. Would
Speaker 1: that have fallen to the Paris family to pay her
Speaker 1: I don't know what the what the law would have
Speaker 1: been for a slave. They certainly didn't want her back um,
Speaker 1: and we have very little sense of where she could
Speaker 1: have gone after that. By the way. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: interesting because she's so completely at the heart of this
Speaker 1: um and therefore would have been very much spoiled. Goods UM.
Speaker 1: But I think most of the wives, most of the
Speaker 1: people who are UM, most of the husbands will actually
Speaker 1: petition to get their wives back late in the fall,
Speaker 1: it's harvest season. It's really important that the wives be
Speaker 1: there to help, you know, can the preserves and get
Speaker 1: the house in order. And I think most of most
Speaker 1: of those women are released knock Obra November. There's this
Speaker 1: there's this perception that I have of Paris where he
Speaker 1: you know, he we all know, he comes into town,
Speaker 1: he's he spends almost a year negotiating his contract. I
Speaker 1: think when he's he's really picky about all of this,
Speaker 1: especially the firewood, and you know, he wants it delivered
Speaker 1: to him instead of him going to pick it up,
Speaker 1: and elements like that. To have the witchcraft begin with
Speaker 1: symptoms in his own house and then one of the
Speaker 1: chief accusers be a slave from his house, there must
Speaker 1: have been a sense of um, shame and needing to
Speaker 1: make up for to atone for that through through the
Speaker 1: months that the trial took place. I would add to
Speaker 1: that by the way that if you take that one
Speaker 1: step further, the girls in the house or the kids
Speaker 1: in the house, would have been under tremendous strain to
Speaker 1: see their father being so badly treated by the community,
Speaker 1: and so much it odds with the community would have
Speaker 1: put such I mean, it would have been so difficult
Speaker 1: and so embarrassing in so many ways. And there would
Speaker 1: have been when you begin to see clearly they're trying
Speaker 1: to say something, when they begin to convolve from twitch
Speaker 1: and and complain of of fights and pinches, and you wonder,
Speaker 1: you know, the stomping of the foots of the parishion
Speaker 1: feet of the parishoners as they came by to complain
Speaker 1: to their minister or other. These continued very acrid negotiations
Speaker 1: that would have taken a toll on the family. Um. Yes,
Speaker 1: Paris goes through a long period where he can't apologize
Speaker 1: for what's happened, and the entire New England ministry essentially
Speaker 1: bears down on him after to essentially say you need
Speaker 1: to apologize, and he delivers those kinds of apologies which
Speaker 1: are basically I'm sorry if I did something that you
Speaker 1: think is subjectionable. Um. And they will it will take
Speaker 1: years for them to get him essentially to leave the
Speaker 1: to leave the parish and to issue some kind of
Speaker 1: statement that in some way, um, is reconciliatory. Did those
Speaker 1: come at the same time, leaving and apologizing? Um, it's
Speaker 1: one is one is slow after the other. He's a
Speaker 1: very difficult man, um and it. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: any coincidence that that that these kinds of things break
Speaker 1: out in the household. A couple of questions to wrap
Speaker 1: things up, you know, we might tend to look back
Speaker 1: at Salem and sort of sneer at them for hunting witches, right, that,
Speaker 1: you know, believing in the like black cats and which
Speaker 1: is on broomsticks. But are we really any different today
Speaker 1: in other ways? You know, I feel like it takes
Speaker 1: a different form. I feel like at the base of
Speaker 1: this there are a couple of things which is just
Speaker 1: constants in human behavior. I mean, first of all, there's
Speaker 1: this deep seated sense of causality of you know, what,
Speaker 1: what caused that? Why did the roof fly off the
Speaker 1: meeting house? Why did the ox fall sick? Whatever? You know,
Speaker 1: why did my computer just freeze? Um? There's got to
Speaker 1: be some reason for this, and very often the reason
Speaker 1: for that involves your neighbor or somebody you know, or
Speaker 1: the person who who was just overly nice to you.
Speaker 1: And a lot of these are people who actually paid
Speaker 1: calls on their neighbors and then for some reason the
Speaker 1: good wheel gets converted, gets converted to poor with ill will. UM.
Speaker 1: So there's that constant sense for um, a victim for
Speaker 1: you know, someone who can lay the blame upon um.
Speaker 1: And I think there's there's an overreaching need to believe
Speaker 1: that there's another world out there. I mean, really, there's
Speaker 1: this sense of well, that had to be I did
Speaker 1: everything the same way I did last time, So why
Speaker 1: did the computer do this this time? You know, why
Speaker 1: did the pothole suddenly appear in the road. Um. So
Speaker 1: there's that searching for some explanation which is not at hand.
Speaker 1: And sometimes religion provides that explanation and sometimes it doesn't.
Speaker 1: And obviously in this case, one went directly to religion
Speaker 1: for the explanation because it witchcraft more than anything, or
Speaker 1: the super matchment more than anything, will explain everything. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can explain any number of mishaps, you know, lingering, doubts, glinting,
Speaker 1: you know, accusations, anything with with the witchcraft accusation, it
Speaker 1: isn't enough to make sense, but you can explain it
Speaker 1: with now. And that's the beauty. That was the beauty
Speaker 1: of spectral evidence. It was my word versus yours. And
Speaker 1: I've seen it and you haven't. Um, And yes, it
Speaker 1: certainly doesn't have to make sense. So you've written what
Speaker 1: I think is a beautiful retelling of of the story
Speaker 1: of Salem. It's one that I highly recommend people read. Um,
Speaker 1: you soaked it all in, you spent years on this.
Speaker 1: It's almost unfair to ask you this. But if there's
Speaker 1: one thing that you feel like you want people to
Speaker 1: know about Salem? What is it? You know? I think
Speaker 1: it makes time with what we're just talking about. Somehow,
Speaker 1: that sense of our our ability to suspend reason and
Speaker 1: subscribe to a delusion. I just feel as if we
Speaker 1: are all of us at all times prone, if not tempted,
Speaker 1: towards that behavior. And it's really important to kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, stop yourself for just a second. There's so
Speaker 1: much retailing here of vandwagon jumping here and retailing of
Speaker 1: someone else's narrative um without any original thought. And that
Speaker 1: is how the that is how this goes off the
Speaker 1: rail so quickly. Really is that no one is willing
Speaker 1: to raise his hand and say, but wait, have you considered?
Speaker 1: Or but wait that doesn't make sense. And when finally
Speaker 1: the first person does do that, it's under it's very dangerous.
Speaker 1: It's Thomas Brattle, and it's extremely dangerous. He can't sign
Speaker 1: his name even too that document. But it's an act
Speaker 1: of utter courage. And I guess that would be my
Speaker 1: my takeaway would be how important it is to be
Speaker 1: that person who says, um, you know what, may we
Speaker 1: should look at this through a different optic because the
Speaker 1: reasoning here just really doesn't hold up. This episode of
Speaker 1: Unobscured was executive produced by Me, Matt Frederick, and Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: with music by Chad Lawson and audio engineering by Alex Williams.
Speaker 1: The Unobscured website has everything you need to get the
Speaker 1: most out of the podcast. There's a resource library of maps, charts,
Speaker 1: and links to Salem document archives online, as well as
Speaker 1: a suggested reading list and a page with all of
Speaker 1: our historian biographies. And as always, thanks for supporting this show.
Speaker 1: If you love it, head over to Apple podcasts dot
Speaker 1: com slash Unobscured and leave a written review and a
Speaker 1: star rating. It makes a huge difference for the show's growth,
Speaker 1: and as always, thanks for listening. H