Speaker 1: You're listening to the third and final part of Unexplained,
Speaker 1: Season seven, episode twenty five, The City upon the Hill.
Speaker 1: A tortuous scream of pain rips through Salem Jail. A
Speaker 1: slight and pale Dorothy Good whimpers, terrified by the sight
Speaker 1: of her mother in such agony. Sarah clasps her four
Speaker 1: year old daughter's hand. The chains that bolt them to
Speaker 1: the wall rattle as she draws her clothes. It's okay,
Speaker 1: she says, it's okay. Another wave of pain shoots through
Speaker 1: Sarah like a bolt of lightning. She wants to vomit.
Speaker 1: That's it, says Rebecca, Nurse, stroking her back.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: A few narrow strips of sunlight strayed through the bars
Speaker 1: on the window, turning the sweat on Good's forehead liquid gold.
Speaker 1: The bars are there to stop her and Dorothy's specters
Speaker 1: from escaping the jail. It is the same in the
Speaker 1: cells of all the accused. Sarah screams again as she
Speaker 1: squats deeper over the blanket that Rebeccah placed over the
Speaker 1: filthy ground. It was all she could do to provide
Speaker 1: a semblance of cleanliness in the foulness of it all,
Speaker 1: but there is no time to dwell on that now,
Speaker 1: nor has there ever been. That's it, says Rebecca. It's coming. Push, push,
Speaker 1: It's too much for the jailer. A sign to keep
Speaker 1: watch on, Rebecca nurse, he turns to face the war.
Speaker 1: Sarah twists and pulls at her chains, anchoring herself as
Speaker 1: another wave of pain rises up from deep within. It's
Speaker 1: as though her inside are turning molten with heat. Mamma
Speaker 1: cries Dorothy in anguish. It's okay, says Sarah, between gasps
Speaker 1: of breath and gritted teeth. Mamma's o k With one
Speaker 1: or mighty push, A bloody lump of flesh and bone
Speaker 1: bursts forth from between Sarah's legs, its dark wisps of
Speaker 1: hair slicked down with vernix cassiosa, and then from its
Speaker 1: tiny mouth, a piercing wail rings out. Had any one
Speaker 1: else been present that day, they would have seen it
Speaker 1: too real. Undeniable magic performed by the so called witches
Speaker 1: of Salem, life giving birth to life, new beautiful life,
Speaker 1: A miracle of God, says Rebecca as she helps it
Speaker 1: wriggle free. Perhaps we are not forsaken after all, sarah
Speaker 1: SLINKs to the ground, exhausted as Rebecca swaddles the baby
Speaker 1: in the blanket. It's a girl, she says, handing her
Speaker 1: to Sarah. Sarah beams at the baby through tears as
Speaker 1: she holds it tight against her body. She pulls Dorothy
Speaker 1: closer to I'll call her Mercy, says Sarah through the sobs.
Speaker 1: Mercy Good. It seems as good a name as any.
Speaker 1: Sarah Good was pregnant when she was arrested and imprisoned
Speaker 1: in March sixteen ninety two, alongside Titchebur and Sarah Osborne.
Speaker 1: It isn't known exactly when the baby was born, though
Speaker 1: some believe it may have been as early as April,
Speaker 1: suggesting either Good was heavily pregnant when she was sent
Speaker 1: to jail or the baby was severely premature. Either way,
Speaker 1: if she or any of the other accused individuals languishing
Speaker 1: in jail alongside her, were hoping it would grant them
Speaker 1: some leniency in the eyes of their accusers, they would
Speaker 1: have been very much mistaken. In mid April, three more
Speaker 1: names are added to the list of accused, Abigail Hobbes,
Speaker 1: Brigid Bishop, and Mary Warren, the same Warren servant to
Speaker 1: John and Elizabeth Proctor, who had accused her employers of
Speaker 1: witchcraft only a few weeks before. Like all except Titchuburb
Speaker 1: before them, Bishop and Warren plead innocent and a duly
Speaker 1: throne in Salem jail to await trial. Abigail Hobbes is
Speaker 1: the next to be examined. Hobbs is about fifteen at
Speaker 1: the time of her arrest. She and her family had
Speaker 1: moved to Salem, Massachusetts, from Falmouth in Maine a few
Speaker 1: years previously. Falmouth, about one hundred miles to the northeast
Speaker 1: of Salem, is effectively the frontier of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Speaker 1: Like many of their fellow Falmouth residents, Hobbs and her
Speaker 1: family were forced to move further south for their own
Speaker 1: safety due to the constant fighting between Native Americans and
Speaker 1: the various colonial powers that clashed at the outer regions
Speaker 1: of the English colonies, and so in search of serenity
Speaker 1: and security, with complete faith in their God, they came
Speaker 1: to Salem. Like most of her fellow prisoners, Abigail was
Speaker 1: accused by Anne Putnam Junior, Mercy Lewis, Elizabeth Hubbard, and
Speaker 1: Mary Walcott of psychically attacking them on April nineteenth. She's
Speaker 1: led into the Salem Village meeting house to face the
Speaker 1: regular case magistrates John Hawthorne and Jonathan Corwin. Though many
Speaker 1: in the congregation believe the accused to be guilty, few
Speaker 1: expect them to admit it. In fact, only Titchubur to
Speaker 1: date has actually confessed to the crime. The rest vehemently
Speaker 1: protested their innocence, but not this time. Abigail Hobbs begins,
Speaker 1: Magistrate Hawthorne, you are brought here to answer for sundry
Speaker 1: acts of witchcraft committed by you.
Speaker 2: What say you? Are you guilty or not? Speak the truth? Child?
Speaker 1: I will speak the truth. I have seen sights. I
Speaker 1: have been very wicked, says the young Abigail, to gasps
Speaker 1: and cries from the crowd. What sights have you seen?
Speaker 1: Asks Hawthorne the devil sir. The crowd has stunned into
Speaker 1: silence by Abigail's unexpected admission. She goes on to detail
Speaker 1: how exactly it happened. It all started back when she
Speaker 1: was living in Falmouth, she says. One day, while she
Speaker 1: was walking through the woods, a devilish creature appeared to
Speaker 1: her in the shape of a man. He offered her
Speaker 1: fine things she says, if she did what he asked,
Speaker 1: what would he have you do? Asks Hawthorne. Why be
Speaker 1: a witch? Of course, she replies. Hawthorne squirms uneasily in
Speaker 1: his chair, And did you make a contract with him?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I did, replies Abigail.
Speaker 1: It's a few days later when Thomas Putnam, the wealthy
Speaker 1: and influential friend of Salem's minister Samuel Parris and father
Speaker 1: of principal accuser Ann Putnam Junior, pays a visit to
Speaker 1: Magistrates Hawthorne and Corwyn. He tells them that the night
Speaker 1: before his daughter was attacked again by yet another malicious specter.
Speaker 1: He could barely believe it himself, he says, when the
Speaker 1: specter who'd come dressed in minister's clothes revealed itself to
Speaker 1: be none other than former Salem minister George Burr's. Burroughs
Speaker 1: was Minister of Salem from sixteen.
Speaker 2: Eighty to eighty three.
Speaker 1: Prior to that, he'd lived in Falmouth when Abigail Hobbs
Speaker 1: and her family resided there. It didn't take much to
Speaker 1: marry the two accusations together. Clearly, thought Putnam, Burroughs must
Speaker 1: have been the devilish figure that coerced Abigail into being
Speaker 1: a witch too. As many have noted, Burroughs and Thomas
Speaker 1: Putnam had long been in disagreement about some debts that
Speaker 1: Putnam believed Burroughs owed to him. Putnam had already tried
Speaker 1: once to have him arrested for it. For his part,
Speaker 1: when he was Minister of Salem, Burroughs believed he was
Speaker 1: being woefully underpaid by the village for his role on
Speaker 1: the orders of Thomas Putnam. Eventually he refused to preach
Speaker 1: until they agreed to pay him more. In the end,
Speaker 1: he felt he had no choice but to leave. When
Speaker 1: Anne accused Burroughs of being a witch, she added two
Speaker 1: that he had also killed two of his wives, one
Speaker 1: of which had died while he was Minister of Sale,
Speaker 1: and that he used witchcraft to kill countless colonial soldiers.
Speaker 1: Minister Burrows was tracked down to a house in Wells
Speaker 1: in Maine, then arrested and dragged back to Salem to
Speaker 1: face trial. It was a few days later, on May tenth,
Speaker 1: that a jailer making the rounds of Salem prison came
Speaker 1: to call on Sarah Osborne, one of the first three
Speaker 1: to be accused of witchcraft, and found her unresponsive. It
Speaker 1: isn't known exactly how Osborne died, though malnutrition or from
Speaker 1: an infection caught while in prison are the most likely culprits.
Speaker 1: She is the first of the accused to die. Reverend
Speaker 1: George Burrows is examined on a thirtieth of April, and
Speaker 1: like all the others, he is found likely guilty of
Speaker 1: the crime and thrown in jail to await a formal trial.
Speaker 1: Though accusations have been steadily building ever since the first accusations,
Speaker 1: Minister Burrows's arrest opens the floodgates. If a man of
Speaker 1: the cloth can potentially be a witch, nobody is immune
Speaker 1: from both the power of the devil or from accusation.
Speaker 1: Within a week of his arrest, fifteen more suspects are named,
Speaker 1: and within a month another forty are jailed. And now
Speaker 1: the accused are found not only in Salem, but all
Speaker 1: over the colonies, from northern Maine all the way down
Speaker 1: to Boston. Abigail Hobbes's parents Deliverance and William Hobbes, Mary Easty,
Speaker 1: Nehemiah Abbott Junior, Sarah Wild's Edward, Bishop, Mary Black, Mary English.
Speaker 1: The list goes on Deliverance Hobbes claims there is a
Speaker 1: congregation of witches in Salem Village, a demonic church that
Speaker 1: holds meetings next to Minister Samuel Parris's house. She paints
Speaker 1: a terrifying picture of Satanic deacons who give out red
Speaker 1: bread and red wine, while a preacher who oversees it
Speaker 1: all administers some kind of black sacrament. The deacons, she says,
Speaker 1: are Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Wild's, another accused member of
Speaker 1: the Salem Village congregation. The satanic preacher, of course, is
Speaker 1: none other than Minister George Burr's. All this time, the
Speaker 1: accused have been simply left to rot in jail, since
Speaker 1: the province of Massachusetts Bay, of which Salem is part of,
Speaker 1: had yet to establish a legal court to hear the trials.
Speaker 1: In late May, newly installed Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony,
Speaker 1: Sir William Phipps arives back from a trip to England
Speaker 1: to find Salem jail full to the brim with apparent
Speaker 1: which is alarmed at the scale of the sudden outbreak
Speaker 1: of Satanic practice. He quickly signs an order to establish
Speaker 1: the court of oyer and terminay. It borrows from the
Speaker 1: French terms meaning to hear and to determine. The court
Speaker 1: is established in Salem Town, with seven judges appointed to
Speaker 1: manage the trial. The defendants are given no legal representation.
Speaker 1: A Reverend Nicholas Noise is employed to be the chief
Speaker 1: minister of the trial, while overseeing it all is Chief
Speaker 1: Justice William Stoughton. Also returning to Massachusetts with William Phipps
Speaker 1: is Increase Mather. Both he and his son Cotton carry
Speaker 1: great influence in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. As ministers themselves,
Speaker 1: they are fervently committed to the Puritan cause and to
Speaker 1: the divinely inspired success of the colony. Cotton in particular,
Speaker 1: sees himself as an expert on the subject of bewitchment.
Speaker 1: In sixteen eighty nine he published Memorable Providences relating to
Speaker 1: Witchcrafts and Possessions, which gave an account of an earlier
Speaker 1: trial involving an indentured servant named Anne Glover, who was
Speaker 1: accused by her masters of witchcraft. In sixteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: she was hanged for her apparent crime. In the book,
Speaker 1: Matha confidently affirms the indisputable existence of witches and devils
Speaker 1: and urges all Christians to weed them out at the
Speaker 1: first opportune unity. He also highlights their preference for using
Speaker 1: spectral versions of themselves to commit their wicked acts. It
Speaker 1: could almost have been a blueprint for the events in
Speaker 1: Salem Village, which occurred only three years later. Cotton Matha
Speaker 1: also recommends that bodily searches be carried out on the
Speaker 1: accused to look for marks.
Speaker 2: Of the devil.
Speaker 1: Sixty year old Bridget Bishop is the first to face
Speaker 1: trial in the court of Oyer and Termina. Bridget, who
Speaker 1: many are already wary of due to her fondness for
Speaker 1: wearing bright and colorful clothes, ran to taverns with her
Speaker 1: husband Edward before she was arrested. During her trial, and
Speaker 1: Putnam Junior claims she heard Bridget calling the devil her god,
Speaker 1: while local farmer Richard Coleman accuses her of using her
Speaker 1: spectral form to drag him and his wife out of
Speaker 1: bed by their throats.
Speaker 2: One of the.
Speaker 1: Accusers falls to the floor, suddenly gasping and wretching and
Speaker 1: scrabbling at her throat. The crowd struggles to get a
Speaker 1: view of her as she clasps a hand over her
Speaker 1: mouth and begins to gurgle and cough, until finally she stops.
Speaker 1: She pulls her hand away to reveal a spit covered
Speaker 1: pin in the palm of her hand, having seemingly just
Speaker 1: coughed it up. It must have been Bridget's doing, she says.
Speaker 1: When Bridget is examined for marks, one durer shrieks out
Speaker 1: that they have uncovered an excrescence of flesh on her chest,
Speaker 1: a third nipple. It is a certain sign of devilry.
Speaker 1: When a subsequent investigation fails to find it, it is
Speaker 1: clear to all present that Bridget merely used her witchcraft
Speaker 1: to hide it. Throughout her eight day trial, Bridget Bishop
Speaker 1: begs and pleads with the jury to ignore the accusations
Speaker 1: and see past the noise. She begs them to see
Speaker 1: that she is not a witch, but just an ordinary
Speaker 1: citizen of Salem, innocent just like them.
Speaker 2: But it is no use.
Speaker 1: On tenth of June sixteen ninety two, Bridget Bishop is
Speaker 1: found guilty by Justice William Stoughton, cries of which ring
Speaker 1: down from the crowd as Bridget is dragged from the
Speaker 1: court and thrown in the back of a cart. From there,
Speaker 1: she is transported to a small wooded and rocky outcrop
Speaker 1: on the outskirts of Salem. As a large excitable crowd behind.
Speaker 1: As she nears the outcrop, Bishop can see a lone
Speaker 1: oak tree, silhouetted by the sun. A thick line of
Speaker 1: rope dangles from one of its lower branches. Bridget continues
Speaker 1: to protest her innocence as the noose is placed around
Speaker 1: her neck while her feet teeter on the.
Speaker 2: Edge of the stool. Then the stool is.
Speaker 1: Kicked out from underneath her and her breath is instantly
Speaker 1: taken away. She struggles for a few minutes, froth foams
Speaker 1: at her mouth and her reddening eyes begin to bulge
Speaker 1: in their sockets. Then her body is stilled. She is
Speaker 1: the first of the accused to be executed. It is
Speaker 1: around this time that Sarah Good tries for the last
Speaker 1: and final time to feed her baby daughter, Mercy. Mercy
Speaker 1: dies as Sarah cradles her helplessly in her arms. In
Speaker 1: late June, Sarah is convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death.
Speaker 1: On July nineteenth, a terrified and inconsolable four year old
Speaker 1: Dorothy Good is wrenched away from her mother and left
Speaker 1: alone in her cell as Sarah is taken away. Sarah,
Speaker 1: along with Rebecca Nurse from Salem, Elizabeth Howe, and Sarah
Speaker 1: Wild from Ipswich, and Susannah Martin from the nearby town
Speaker 1: of Salisbury are all thrown into the back of a
Speaker 1: cart and taken up to the wooded rocky outcrop on
Speaker 1: the outskirts of town. As each woman awaits their fate,
Speaker 1: the Reverend Nicholas Noise is on hand to offer them
Speaker 1: some redemption. He urges them to confess, telling them that
Speaker 1: a confession will grant them grace in the eyes of
Speaker 1: the Lord. None will have it, though, if they are
Speaker 1: to be executed for their apparent crimes, the least they
Speaker 1: can do is to ensure there is no public record
Speaker 1: of them admitting to the crimes, so that their names,
Speaker 1: as they echo through eternity, will do so untainted by
Speaker 1: the mark of the devil. But while Rebecca Nurse Elizabeth Howe,
Speaker 1: Sarah Wiles, and Susannah Martin keep a quiet counsel, Sarah
Speaker 1: Good refuses to go silently into the night. She rails
Speaker 1: and screams against the injustice of their convictions. I am
Speaker 1: no more a witch than you are a wizard, she
Speaker 1: cries to the Reverend Noise. I am innocent, and if
Speaker 1: you take away my life, God will give you blood
Speaker 1: to drink. Noise is unmoved, and minutes later Sarah Good
Speaker 1: and the others are dead. With the death sentences mounting
Speaker 1: both Increase and Cotton. Mather, despite what Cotton has himself
Speaker 1: previously written, advised the jurors to look at more than
Speaker 1: just the spectral evidence, the anecdotal evidence of apparent attacks
Speaker 1: made by spectral forms before coming to their decisions. But
Speaker 1: that horse as well and truly bolted from the stable.
Speaker 1: In August, Reverend George Burroughs is tried. At his trial,
Speaker 1: the court are treated to a dark and fantastical story
Speaker 1: in which one accuser, Eliza Keyser, recalls returning home after
Speaker 1: a spat with Burrows to find a dozen or so
Speaker 1: strange shapes appear in his fireplace, moving, he said, like
Speaker 1: jelly through water. Clearly they were agents of the devil,
Speaker 1: conjured thereby Burrows to intimidate him. Burrohs is duly convicted
Speaker 1: of being a witch. On August nineteenth, With the noose
Speaker 1: around his neck, Minister Burrohs proudly recites the Lord's prayer.
Speaker 1: The baying crowd are initially stunned into silence. After all,
Speaker 1: it's common knowledge that no witch or agent of Satan
Speaker 1: can properly recite the Lord's prayer. Some in the crowd
Speaker 1: begin to cry, suddenly unsure of what they're doing. Others
Speaker 1: push forward and demand that the minister be freed from
Speaker 1: the noose, but the stool is kicked out from under
Speaker 1: his feet before things get out of control. Cotton Mother
Speaker 1: urges the people of Salem not to let the devil
Speaker 1: for them, though it might seem like the Reverend Burrows
Speaker 1: was a pious and innocent man, that was just the
Speaker 1: kind of trick the devil would play on them. George Jacobs,
Speaker 1: Martha Carrier, John Willard, and John Proctor are also hanged
Speaker 1: alongside Reverend Burroughs. Proctor's wife, Elizabeth, is also convicted and
Speaker 1: sentenced to hang. However, she has granted a stay of
Speaker 1: execution when she is found to be pregnant. With eleven
Speaker 1: people now execute it, the jail still full and the
Speaker 1: accusations and arrests showing no signs of stopping, the mood
Speaker 1: in Salem grows increasingly bleak. On September ninth, Martha the Cory,
Speaker 1: the upstanding and pious Martha Corey, is then sentenced to
Speaker 1: be executed for her husband Giles a very different fate awaits.
Speaker 1: When Martha was first accused of being a witch, Giles
Speaker 1: testified against her, only to then himself be accused of witchery.
Speaker 1: A few weeks later. The eighty one year old Giles
Speaker 1: as watched as one by one is fellow accused of
Speaker 1: being dragged in front of the jury to answer for
Speaker 1: their crimes, and no matter what they say, the result
Speaker 1: is always the same. All are sentenced to death. He
Speaker 1: decides to say nothing. The act of refusing to plead,
Speaker 1: be it as not guilty or otherwise is known as
Speaker 1: standing mute. Without a plea, you can't be tried. So
Speaker 1: to avoid people cheating justice, a legal remedy was devised,
Speaker 1: known as penn forte jeure, or hard and forceful punishment.
Speaker 1: Its aim to quite literally squeeze the truth out of you.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 1: On September nineteenth, Cory is dragged from his jail cell
Speaker 1: and taken to an open field close to the jail,
Speaker 1: where he is stripped, naked and tied to a board
Speaker 1: on the ground. Another board is tied on top of him,
Speaker 1: then heavy stones are placed on top of that, with
Speaker 1: one after the other increasing the pressure pushing down on
Speaker 1: his body. The torturers wait patiently for Cory to finally
Speaker 1: give in, but Corey steadfastly refuses. After three days of
Speaker 1: ever increasing weights of stone piled on top of him,
Speaker 1: his body is so crushed, his lungs and diaphragms so
Speaker 1: collapsed that his tongue lulls uncontrollably out of his mouth.
Speaker 1: Taking his cane, the Salem Sheriff George Corwyn pokes Corey's
Speaker 1: tongue back into his mouth and asks, for the unteenth
Speaker 1: time if he has anything to say. The faintest wisp
Speaker 1: of a sound comes from Corey's lips. Corwyn stoops lower
Speaker 1: and puts his ear close to Corey's mouth. More wait, more, wait,
Speaker 1: he rasps. He dies soon after. Three days later, Giles
Speaker 1: Corey's wife Martha, along with Margaret Scott, Mary Eastye, sister
Speaker 1: of Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Cloyse, Alice Parker, and Pudiator
Speaker 1: Wilmot Read. Samuel Wardle and Mary Parker are all hanged,
Speaker 1: taking the total number of execute it to nineteen by
Speaker 1: December sixteen ninety two, With the death toll of the
Speaker 1: Salem witch Trials at twenty two. There are many who
Speaker 1: have had enough enough of witches, enough of convulsing, screaming
Speaker 1: young girls, enough of the fear that they will be
Speaker 1: accused next, enough of trials and executions. Equally, there are
Speaker 1: those who, having gone so far down the path of
Speaker 1: purging New England of witchcraft, feel that to stop now
Speaker 1: would be weakness and failure. Or, as Shakespeare's Macbeth had it,
Speaker 1: I am in blood stepped in so far that should
Speaker 1: I weigh no more more? Returning were as tedious as
Speaker 1: to go o'er then came one accusation in late October
Speaker 1: that truly sends a shockwave through Massachusetts. It is made
Speaker 1: against Governor William Phipps's own wife Mary. With it, Phipps
Speaker 1: brings the trials to a screeching halt. The Court of
Speaker 1: Oyer and Terminae is dissolved immediately and replaced by a
Speaker 1: superior Court of Judicature with instructions to ignore all spectral evidence.
Speaker 1: Trials resume in January and February of sixteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: but only three out of fifty six individuals are convicted,
Speaker 1: And just like that, as swiftly as it had seemingly started,
Speaker 1: the salem which trials were over by May sixteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: although still languishing in jail. Over one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: people are pardoned and released, including Elizabeth Proctor, who had
Speaker 1: since given birth to her baby. The intense trauma, the
Speaker 1: loss of money, property, and life, and the almost total
Speaker 1: eradication of neighborly trust had a devastating impact on the
Speaker 1: Salem community for years to come. Many were debt ridden
Speaker 1: after their ordeal, owing to the perverse rule that defendants
Speaker 1: were charged rent for their time in jail, even if
Speaker 1: not eventually convicted. Many suffered extreme physical and mental health issues.
Speaker 1: The four year old Dorothy Good, after nine months chained
Speaker 1: up in a jail cell, most of which were spent
Speaker 1: fending for herself after her mother was murdered, never recovered
Speaker 1: from the trauma. As for the apparently afflicted girls, Mary
Speaker 1: Walcott and Mercy Lewis married and moved away. Young Betty
Speaker 1: Paris stayed in Salem, where she also married and raised
Speaker 1: a family of her own. The whereabouts of others such
Speaker 1: as Elizabeth Hubbard and Abigail Williams has been lost a time,
Speaker 1: but there are some writings that account for a quote
Speaker 1: young girl afflicted who never quite recovered her sanity, which
Speaker 1: some believed to be a reference to Abigail. The enslaved
Speaker 1: Titchuba remained in the dire conditions of jail for thirteen
Speaker 1: months because the godly Minister Samuel Parris refused to pay
Speaker 1: her fees. In April sixteen ninety three, she was sold
Speaker 1: to an unknown person for the price of her prison debt.
Speaker 1: She was later said to have alleged that Paris beat
Speaker 1: her original confession out of her and then instructed her
Speaker 1: on what to say and how to say it. When
Speaker 1: she was first questioned in seventeen oh six, a then
Speaker 1: twenty six year old and Putnam junior, unmarried and still
Speaker 1: in Salem, stirred in front of the local congregation and
Speaker 1: offered an apology for her part in the events of
Speaker 1: sixteen ninety two. She believed she was in fact delusional
Speaker 1: at the time, and that even though those delusions were
Speaker 1: likely brought on by the devil, the people she named
Speaker 1: were innocent. She was forgiven by their families. It is
Speaker 1: said that the Reverend Nicholas Noys, the official minister of
Speaker 1: the trials, who presided over the excommunication of some of
Speaker 1: the defeats and encouraged others to confess to their sins,
Speaker 1: later regretted his part in the trials, perhaps troubled by
Speaker 1: a supposed witch, Sarah Goods, threatened to him that if
Speaker 1: he were to let her die, God would give him
Speaker 1: blood to drink. He had a change of heart. Others
Speaker 1: are not so sure. One seventeen o three petition to
Speaker 1: clear the names of all accused witches, signed by a
Speaker 1: number of ministers, did not include his name. It was
Speaker 1: fifteen years later at his home in Newbury when Noise,
Speaker 1: on the cusp of his eightieth birthday, suffered a massive
Speaker 1: brain hemorrhage. Some say as the hemorrhage intensified, Noise was
Speaker 1: heard coughing and spluttering up blood until he eventually choked
Speaker 1: on it. This episode was written by Richard McClain Smith
Speaker 1: and Ella McLoud Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions podcast
Speaker 1: created by Richard McClain Smith. All other elements of the podcast,
Speaker 1: including the music, are also produced by me Richard McClain
Speaker 1: Smith Unexplained.
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