Pod Insights Conspiracy Theories Salem Witch Trials: The Dark Forces That Divided a Town About this episode The injustice and hysteria that defined the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 is so shocking, historians have spent centuries looking for an explanation. In reality, it was a perfect storm of tensions that led to the deaths of at least 24 innocent people. But in all of that confusion, who was really pulling the strings? And why didn’t elected leaders step in sooner?
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Transcript 0:05 Speaker 00 Sei tuon saikkaan Salomin kysymyksen kanssa, joka on Giles Corey. Kaikki 20 ihmiset, jotka on oikeasti oikeita, on seuraavaksi seuraavaksi, joka ei ole oikea. Seuraavaksi oli seuraavaan kautta suurraa kahdella. Seuraavaksi oli Giles Corey kysymyksen kanssa kysymyksen kanssa kysymyksen kanssa kysymyksen kanssa kun on oikeasti kysymyksen kanssa. Seuraavaa on kysymyksen kanssa, kun on oikeasti kysymyksen kanssa. Seuraavaa on kysymyksen kanssa, kun on oikeasti kysymyksen kanssa. Seuraavaa on kysymyksen kanssa, kun on oikeasti kysymyksen kanssa. Seuraavaa on kysymyksen kanssa, kun on oikeasti kysymyksen kanssa.
0:48 Speaker 00 Seuraavaa on kysymyksen kanssa, kun on oikeasti kysymyksen kanssa. Mutta seuraavaa on Giles Corey. "Tois kahdella." Giles Corey on 81. Ja olen ollut oikeasti katsomassa oikeastaan. Seuraavaa on oikeastaan katsomassa, kun on oikeastaan katsomassa. Seuraavaa on oikeastaan katsomassa, kun on oikeastaan katsomassa. Seuraavaa on oikeastaan katsomassa, kun on oikeastaan katsomassa. Mutta olen katsomassa oikeastaan katsomassa. Olen ollut oikeastaan katsomassa, kun on oikeastaan kysymyksen kanssa. Seuraavaa on oikeastaan katsomassa, kun on oikeastaan kysymyksen kanssa. Mutta seuraavaa on oikeastaan katsomassa, kun on oikeastaan kysymyksen kanssa.
1:34 Speaker 00 Giles Corey on oikeastaan katsomassa, kun on oikeastaan kysymyksen kanssa. Mutta seuraavaa on oikeastaan katsomassa, kun on oikeastaan kysymyksen kanssa. Seuraavaa on oikeastaan katsomassa, kun on oikeastaan kysymyksen kanssa. Kun on oikeastaan kysymyksen kanssa, seuraavaa on oikeastaan katsomassa. Seuraavaa on oikeastaan katsomassa, kun on oikeastaan kysymyksen kanssa. Mutta seuraavaa on oikeastaan katsomassa, kun on oikeastaan kysymyksen kanssa. Seuraavaa on oikeastaan katsomassa, kun on oikeastaan kysymyksen kanssa. Seuraavaa on oikeastaan katsomassa, kun on oikeastaan kysymyksen kanssa. Seuraavaa on oikeastaan katsomassa, kun on oikeastaan kysymyksen kanssa.
2:17 Speaker 00 Seuraavaa on oikeastaan katsomassa, kun on oikeastaan kysymyksen kanssa. Mutta seuraavaa on oikeastaan katsomassa, kun on oikeastaan kysymyksen kanssa.
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6:09 Speaker 00 You may have heard this story about how the Salem witch trials all began. In the winter of 1692, a group of girls gathers in secret. One of them taps an egg on the edge of a glass, cracks it open, and drops the whites into water. She watches as the egg spiders out, taking on some ghostly form inside the liquid. It's a type of fortune telling. The idea is an image will appear, hinting at what her future holds. A child? A husband? A home? It's just a game, a bit of innocent fun. But the girls also know they have to keep this a secret.
6:50 Speaker 00 In the devoutly Puritan Salem village where they live, this kind of tomfoolery is expressly forbidden. They may as well send Satan a personal invitation to come to Salem.
7:04 Speaker 00 And then, one of the girls cracks an egg and sees an image of a coffin. Soon after, she, and eventually her friends, are racked by painful fits. They scream and they growl as their bodies contort, and their parents have no idea what to make of it. They call upon doctor after doctor, but no one can find a medical cause, which leaves only one answer: the girls are being tormented spiritually by witches. The devil has answered the girls' call.
7:43 Speaker 00 Okay, so that's how the story of Salem usually begins, but there's reason to believe it's not even true. Historian Mary Beth Norton points out there are no contemporaneous reports about the fortune telling going down that way. Even if it did, the timeline isn't clear, and we don't know for sure that it happened right before the girls came down with their affliction. It really seems like the whole "image of a coffin" thing is just a legend, an eerie catalyst to explain how a small farming village became overrun by witches.
8:23 Speaker 00 A moment we can point to where everything started to spiral out of control, but in reality, there is no singular starting point. There is instead, a long and complicated list of tensions. Crops aren't growing like they used to. Common diseases are mysterious and deadly. Skirmishes with Native Americans, especially in Maine, have everyone on edge. One day, the cauldron just boils over. And there's another driving force behind the witch hunt, and some experts think it was the most disastrous of them all.
9:05 Speaker 00 It's something the most powerful Salem villagers do have control over: petty squabbles and family feuds. And they're willing to let innocent people die in order to win. Before we get into the politics of Salem, let's go over the basics of what happened there in 1692. It's around mid-January when nine-year-old Betty Parris and her 11-year-old cousin, Abigail Williams, start having fits. Painful, torturous, screaming fits. Dr. William Griggs, the only doctor in Salem, delivers the diagnosis. The girls are, quote, "under an evil hand."
9:50 Speaker 00 Heard of being on the good foot. I guess one could have an evil hand. Well, what he means is, the girls are being attacked by witches. And maybe the most shocking part of it, this is all happening in the home of Reverend Samuel Parris, Betty's father and the ordained minister of Salem Village. Reverend Parris and just about everybody else in Salem believe witches are real. And they are in the Bible, after all. The village is overwhelmingly Puritan, and the Puritans are part of an intensely devout offshoot of the Anglican Church, who feel God has chosen them to spread Christianity in the colonies.
10:35 Speaker 00 So, the adults in charge accept this diagnosis. Perhaps they think, if the devil has come to tempt them and destroy their work, what better place to start than inside the reverend's home? But the affliction spreads. More Salem girls experience their own fits. Anne Putnam Jr., Betty Hubbard, Mercy Lewis, and several others join the first two.
11:05 Speaker 00 The witches, they say, come to them in spirit form. They describe being pinched and pricked by unseen hands. Only the girls can see their invisible torturers, but the reverend takes their word for it. Pretty soon, the afflicted girls start naming names. Three women are the first to be accused. Tituba, an enslaved woman in the reverend's household. Sarah Good, who people generally don't like after a series of unfortunate events took her from riches to rags. She isn't exactly a ray of sunshine, and neighbors have long suspected she's a witch.
11:48 Speaker 00 Lastly, there's Sarah Osborne. She's also been a hot topic in the Salem rumor mill ever since she married her indentured servant. Formal charges are filed against all three women by John Hathorn and Jonathan Corwin, the local magistrates. When it comes time to interrogate the accused witches, all of Salem gathers to watch. You might be wondering how officials can prove anybody is a witch? And no, in Salem, they aren't throwing people into the water to see if they drown, but they can subject the accused witches to a body search to scan for something known as the devil's mark.
12:32 Speaker 00 The idea is, if you make a pact with the devil, that kind of evil leaves a visible scar. If the magistrates can't find any physical proof, well, they have other options to build their case. In the 17th century, signs of being a witch include, "People think you are a witch." Maybe you get into a big argument with a neighbor, and the next week, their livestock dies. Blammo, you might be considered a witch. Likewise, if you're simply related or married to somebody rumored to be a witch, have a weird sister, good luck. And should you dare to suggest that all of this witch stuff is just a bunch of hogwash,
13:17 Speaker 00 well, my friend, that would definitely make you sound like a witch to the people of Salem in 1692. Now, the courts at this time have a real guilty until proven innocent vibe, and the defendants don't have any kind of legal representation. So the bottom line is, if one of the afflicted girls names you, the chances of clearing your name are slim. Of course, the easiest way to prove someone is a witch is by getting them to confess. But that doesn't work with Sarah Good or Sarah Osborn. They both deny the charges, and they still wind up in prison awaiting trial.
14:00 Speaker 00 Tituba is a different story. Not only does she confess that the devil came to her, she says he threatened to torture and kill her if she did not hurt the children of Salem and sign the devil's book. So Tituba claims she signed it. Then, she reveals that hers wasn't the only name in that book. Nine others had already signed. Sarah Good, Sarah Osborn, and seven more witches living in Salem and Boston. The officials can't believe what they're hearing. Tituba is saying there's a whole coven of witches,
14:45 Speaker 00 and most of them are still out there, waiting to be uncovered. Side note, Tituba was almost certainly bullied into confessing, and she's not the only one who threw the two Sarahs under the bus. Both of their husbands did too, in court, in front of everybody. William Good's exact words were, "She is an enemy to all Good." Not sure that was in the vows you took there, William. Anyway, with this confession, Tituba ends up saving her own life. The Salem magistrates want to keep her alive,
15:27 Speaker 00 along with anybody else who will tell them what they want to hear. This moment will set a precedent for others to confess, not because they are guilty, but because it's the only way to survive.
15:42 Speaker 00 For the next few months, Salem Village is overcome with hysteria. More and more people are accused, questioned, and eventually tried, including Sarah Good's daughter Dorothy, who's only four years old. Then there's Elizabeth and John Proctor and Bridget Bishop. People kind of suspect she was a witch even before this all began. A lot of these people are easy targets. They're mostly women who don't conform to social norms. But a few weeks in, the tide starts to change. The accusers start to name some unusual suspects,
16:26 Speaker 00 like Martha Corey, a God-fearing member of Reverend Parris's church, and Rebecca Nurse. At 71 years old, Rebecca is the wife of a prominent Salem landholder. She attends church in the next town over. It's been there longer than Reverend Parris's church. Though she pops by to hear his sermons too, she's as devout as anybody around. A few neighbors are so certain of Rebecca's innocence, they petition the court. Even so, the officials accept these accusations. They believe Salem really is under attack. In a way, it makes sense to them
17:11 Speaker 00 that the devil would try to recruit people like Rebecca. By mid-May, the prisons are filling up. There are already 38 "witches" in prison, and when the trials began in June, they are a real spectacle. Nearly everyone in Salem comes to watch. One after the next, the accused are paraded before a panel of nine judges. If they've already confessed to witchcraft, the process is fast. If they haven't, they try to plead their innocence, which is tough to do. There's a special place reserved in the courtroom for the afflicted girls, like Ann Putnam Jr., Betty Parris, and Abigail Williams.
17:58 Speaker 00 They sit right up front, between the judges and the defendants. If an accused witch looks their way, the girls scream like they're being tortured. They claim the witches are sending their invisible spirits to harm the girls, right there in the courtroom. Sometimes, the spirits confess to other crimes they aren't even on trial for, like murders. They even reveal the names of other witches in their midst. Oh, well, according to the girls. The court considers these claims spectral evidence, and the judges take it into account
18:41 Speaker 00 when deciding someone's fate. A fate that's always bad news. The conviction rate is high. Almost everyone tried between June and September is found guilty, including Rebecca Nurse. The petitions written by her friends and neighbors help. At first, she gets acquitted, but then one of the judges urges his colleagues to reconsider. Rebecca is found guilty, along with Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, Bridget Bishop, the Proctors, Martha Corey, and several others. Nineteen are executed by hanging.
19:23 Speaker 00 At least four more die while in prison, and then, of course, there's Giles Corey, who is pressed to death by rocks. The Salem witch trials go down as a terrifying cautionary tale, a shocking example of injustice. It's fascinated historians for centuries. In 1969, nearly 300 years after the trials, two of those historians decide to collaborate. Professors Paul Boyer and Steven Nissenbaum are teaching a course at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and they come across a bunch of rare documents about Salem.
20:04 Speaker 00 They start piecing together the story of what was going on socially and politically in the village back then, and they realize something. When they map out the homes of most of the accused witches, and then the people who accused them, it almost looks like the town is divided right down the middle.
20:28 Speaker 00 And they start to believe it wasn't really the afflicted girls driving the witch hunt at all. It was the adults in charge of the girls who were pulling the strings the entire time.
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21:44 Speaker 00 These days, it's well understood that the Salem witch trials targeted women who didn't conform. We're not here to debate that. But if the following theories are right, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Starting in 1969, Professors Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum spend years researching the trials. Like many historians, they dig into depositions and other legal forms, but they also analyze tax assessments, land deeds, and petitions passed around at community meetings.
22:23 Speaker 00 Okay, not exactly my idea of a fun Saturday night, though. Actually, maybe it would be, looking at all these documents, drinking a little wine, trying to figure out who was accusing whom. Well, it turns out, those records hold a lot of clues about what was really going on in Salem back then. And the picture they paint looks a little different from the official story. From what Boyer and Nissenbaum can see, the witch trials may have been heavily orchestrated by two Salem families. You've already heard their names. The Putnams and the Perris family. As in Reverend Perris, whose home happened to be ground zero for the witchcraft hysteria.
23:09 Speaker 00 Okay, let's back up a bit to when Salem Village gets its start. By the way, I did not realize that there were actually two Salem. Yeah, in the late 17th century, there's Salem Village, known today as Danvers, and then there's Salem Town. Salem Town comes first. It's established as a port city in 1626, and it flourishes. It's home to a bunch of well-off merchants who tend to be more liberal than their Puritan neighbors. Over the years, some of those Puritan families leave the bustling Salem Town for the country. And after the community grows there, that it gets its own name.
23:53 Speaker 00 Salem Village, or Salem Farms. Here, the population is lower, and the pace is slower. One of the first families to settle in Salem Village is the Putnams. In the 1640s, they get a 100-acre land grant. The patriarch, John, grows that into an impressive 800-acre expanse by the 1660s. That's roughly the size of Central Park in New York. By the time John dies and divides his land between his three sons, the Putnams are the second wealthiest family in the village.
24:28 Speaker 00 They're beat out by the Porters. The Porters came to Salem Village around the same time as the Putnams and started off with the same size 100-acre plot, but their patriarch grew their holdings into something like 2,000 acres, more than twice the size of the Putnam lands. Not only that, the Porter lands are situated closer to Salem Town. That gives them easier access to trade and everything else the bigger city has to offer. So, the Porters end up being more well-connected. They're elected to local office more than the Putnams, and the Porters have a more diversified and successful family business.
25:12 Speaker 00 The Putnams, by contrast, mainly stick to farming. They try to get involved in iron smelting, but the venture is a big failure. It seems like the Porters are constantly one-upping them, but the Putnams keep trying to gain the upper hand. In the 1670s, Salem Town gives Salem Village partial independence. Technically, Salem Village is just a settlement, not its own municipality, so most of the big decisions are still made in town, and the villagers pay their taxes to Salem Town, even though the town is doing so much better economically.
25:52 Speaker 00 But Salem Village gets permission to build their own meeting house, a church, and hire their own minister. Now, they don't have to travel all the way to town just to worship. Starting their own church comes with its own set of difficulties, though, like finding the right person for the job. The first four ministers are polarizing. The Putnams even use their poll to drive out one they don't like, the village's second minister, George Burrows. When Burrows comes back to collect his last paycheck, one of the Putnams actually has him arrested on a minor charge.
26:33 Speaker 00 When it comes time to hire their fourth minister in less than 20 years, the village considers Reverend Samuel Parris. He's known for giving these fiery, zealous sermons, often about the devil. The Porters are a pass. They don't like Parris, and they sign several petitions against hiring him. But the Putnams, they think they've finally found a winner. Almost all of them throw their support to the new Reverend. Parris ends up getting hired in 1689, about two and a half years before the witchcraft hysteria begins. Since he's the first ordained minister in the village,
27:18 Speaker 00 a whole gaggle of Putnams officially joins his church. The porters, meanwhile, keep attending church in Salem Town. Actually, most people in Salem Village choose to keep making that long trek to avoid Reverend Parris. In retaliation, he lashes out at them as outsiders. He and his church, which is, no joke, made up of 25% Putnams, intentionally exclude people like the porters. So, let's think about that. The main, and really the only self-governing force in Salem Village, is Parris's church. They take every opportunity to shut out their neighbors
28:04 Speaker 00 who don't like what they're doing. Meanwhile, Parris is preaching about the devil and witches. In January 1692, Parris gives a sermon about how the devil is the great enemy of the church. All of the adults in the room understand that he's low-key slandering his detractors, but to younger churchgoers in the room that day, including his nine-year-old daughter Betty and his niece Abigail Williams, they're just hearing an impassioned sermon about how the devil is at work in Salem and how these outsiders are bad people. Days later, in Reverend Parris's house,
28:48 Speaker 00 Betty and Abigail start experiencing fits, followed shortly after by Anne Putnam Jr., John Putnam's granddaughter. Remember the first three witches they name? The easy targets? They call out Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne. And the girls have probably heard their families say horrible things about these women. But get this: Sarah Osborne is also currently in a land dispute with Anne Putnam's father, Thomas Putnam.
29:23 Speaker 00 And what did we learn from Giles Corey? Number one, we'll always have some badass final words ready to go, just in case. And number two, if you're convicted of witchcraft, you risk forfeiting all of your property. Well, guess who else has been tangled in land disputes with the Putnams? Rebecca Nurse. Her family has been warring with them for years. And once again, it's Ann Putnam Jr. who accuses Rebecca. Now, we don't know for sure that Ann's father tells her to incriminate Rebecca, but even the most meticulous historians admit it's not hard to imagine.
30:04 Speaker 00 At the very least, it explains why Ann even thinks to name Rebecca despite her spotless reputation and the support of her neighbors. That includes the Porters. They signed that petition, are the one that tries to save Rebecca from a conviction. They testify on her behalf at trial, but they can't help her. The Porters can't even shield their own from the accusations. Like Daniel Andrew. He married into the Porter family. He's wealthy, successful, and owns a lot of land. Last year, he served on an anti-reverend parish village committee. Hmm.
30:48 Speaker 00 He's recently acquired a new parcel of land in a prime spot between the village and the town, and in April, he's elected to office. Shortly after that, the afflicted girls, led by Ann Putnam Jr., say that he's really a witch. Now, Daniel Andrew survives, but only because he goes on the run and he loses the political seat he just won. A special election is held that July during the height of the witch hunt fervor, and he's voted out, along with another man named Philip English, who's also been called out as a witch.
31:31 Speaker 00 Which is interesting, since Philip English won that election by defeating a Putnam. Oh, no, but I'm sure that had nothing to do with it. Back to Boyer and Nissenbaum. When they look at all these documents, these tax assessments showing which families are the richest, land deeds showing who owns what, petitions that show a clear divide between the Putnam and Porter families, they decide to make a map. First, they plot out the homes of the accusers, then the accused witches, and a clear pattern emerges.
32:13 Speaker 00 Overwhelmingly, the accusers live on the west side of Salem Village, closer to the wilderness and to the Putnam lands. Most of the accused witches live on the east side, closer to Salem Town and the Porters. So, maybe the hysteria was just a clever guise to target the Putnam's enemies, to settle longstanding disputes, to finally establish dominance over the Porters. Side note: Some detractors say it's not an airtight case. Author Benjamin C. Ray is the director of the Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive.
32:58 Speaker 00 He's poked a few holes in Boyer and Nissenbaum's theory. Notably, he says the map is not comprehensive enough. It leaves off some of the people involved who, incidentally, don't fit in with the idea of Salem being divided down the middle. It's a good reminder: always question a map. While Ray makes a good point, a lot of Boyer and Nissenbaum's theory stands. The Putnam's did play a major role in deciding who was charged with witchcraft, and a lot of the accused were in league with the Porters, and they wanted Reverend Paris gone. Okay, another thing I learned about the Salem Witch Trials: officials didn't go around
33:43 Speaker 00 arresting every single person the moment the afflicted girls called them a witch. I mean, I was kind of under the assumption that once they threw your name in the ring, you were immediately toast, but that's not how it happened. Officials would wait for an adult to file a formal complaint, and a lot of those adults who stepped in to help were named Putnam.
34:07 Speaker 00 How did they find the time? I mean, aren't you supposed to be running a huge farm? Maybe that's why your iron smelting business never took off. You're running around filing charges about witches. I mean, how do you run an iron smelting business into the ground? Anyway, if the Salem witch trials really were an act of revenge by the Putnams, we still can't blame them for everything. This may be the 1690s, but there is a court of law, magistrates, judges, a governor overseeing all of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Shouldn't they have seen what was really happening here before so many innocent lies were lost?
34:47 Speaker 00 Or did they know that what was happening wasn't right and let the trials go on for their own selfish reasons?
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35:59 Speaker 00 If the Salem witch hunt was prompted by jealousy and fighting between neighbors, that still begs the question, uh, where were the people in charge? How did they let this go on for as long as it did? Well, in January 1692, right as the witchcraft hysteria breaks out, the Massachusetts Bay Colony gets a brand-new governor. Sir William Phipps has been living between London and Boston, so he knows Massachusetts well. He's just not there when things go haywire in Salem, because he's off working on a new charter, basically. England's new rules for how its American colonies are to be governed.
36:43 Speaker 00 In the meantime, the magistrates in Salem have a problem. The witch trials can't move ahead until the governor returns and the new government is put into place. Phipps doesn't come back until mid-May, something like four months into the whole ordeal. Because of how slow news travels, he doesn't even know what's going on until he gets home. By then, at least 38 of the accused are piling up in prison. Even though Salem is in crisis, Phipps has a bigger problem to deal with first. The colonists are fighting with Native Americans up in Maine,
37:24 Speaker 00 so for now, he orders the courts to start processing cases. But importantly, he does not tell his superiors over in England what's going on. Why? We'll come back to that in a minute. During those long and chaotic four months, the magistrates, like Hathorn and Corwin, have been conducting all those interrogations we talked about. And they've already made some odd choices. I don't know about you, but I kind of took it for granted that a lot of the weird stuff happening in these witch trials was just the way things worked in 1692,
38:05 Speaker 00 starting with the fact that they open up these pre-trial hearings to the public. But in reality, they should be conducting them in private, not in the largest building in Salem, where practically the entire town can come watch. It leads to total madness. Sometimes, people are yelling out their own questions from the audience. Even for 1692, it's a bold choice. According to historian Mary Beth Norton, "We don't know why the officials made the decision to hold public interrogations." Maybe they figured, "What the heck? People want to see witches? Why not let them see witches?"
38:50 Speaker 00 There's also the fact that none of the Salem magistrates are, um, trained in the law. Well, that could have something to do with it. But there might have been a more personal motive, too. Norton points out that a few years earlier, two colonial forts were destroyed by the French and Native Americans. And it was all thanks to poor decision-making on the part of a small group of powerful men, which included Hathorn and Corwin, the Salem magistrates. That mistake led to mass destruction and loss of life. It's a hard fact to have to live with.
39:32 Speaker 00 And now, here comes this group of girls claiming evil is lurking everywhere, and witches are responsible for just about anything bad that happens: crops, sickness, death. By 1692, the magistrates should know better than to accept witchcraft charges at face value. But perhaps they need to believe that the devil is to blame for their own failings.
40:02 Speaker 00 The same theory goes for the chief judge during the trials, William Stoughton. He was involved in negotiations with the French and Native Americans. If he'd been successful, it's fair to say the war would have been long over by now. But he failed. Once the trials begin in June, Stoughton and the other judges make another controversial decision: to allow spectral evidence. You know, when the afflicted girls would claim they saw witchy spirits in the courtroom? This isn't super common in witch trials.
40:43 Speaker 00 There is precedent for spectral evidence from a case 30 years earlier in Suffolk, England, and Cotton Mather, the highly influential clergyman and a vocal supporter of the trials, says, "Well, it's fine, as long as the judges don't rely solely on it for a conviction," which they definitely do. But the decision sparks debate in Salem, even while the court is in session. A justice of the peace involved in the trials writes that spectral evidence is, quote, "more commonly false and elusive than real."
41:24 Speaker 00 He adds, "Why would an accused person stand here and plead their innocence while at the same time spiritually attack the girls in front of everyone?" It doesn't make sense. By the late summer and fall of 1692, another highly respected voice agrees with that judge. His name is Increase Mather, Cotton's father. He doesn't think they should be using spectral evidence at all. He does think that whatever's going on here is surely the work of the devil, but maybe not witches. I mean, how do they know the devil wouldn't just appear as an innocent person to sow distrust
42:09 Speaker 00 and cause chaos? Over the summer of 1692, across four rounds of trials and executions, public support for the witch hunt fades. More and more prominent people start to question how the trials are run and who is being accused. A major turning point comes when George Burroughs, former minister of Salem Village, is convicted. He'd been accused by Ann Putnam Jr., no surprise there. Her father, Thomas, who we know did not support Burroughs, filed the charges. And like everybody else
42:46 Speaker 00 on trial that summer, Burroughs is found guilty. On August 19th, a crowd gathers on Gallows Hill to witness his execution. Before he's hanged, Burroughs steps forward and recites the Lord's Prayer without skipping a beat. The crowd is shocked because they believe a witch would not be able to do that. A few of them actually tried to put a stop to his execution, but they're talked down by Cotton Mather. Now, Cotton's father, Increase, these
43:27 Speaker 00 names, is good pals with Governor Phipps. He and a growing crowd of concerned Bostonites have the governor's ear. Phipps realizes innocent people are dying here. On October 29th, he finally shuts down the court that he had set up specifically for the Salem witch trials, and he calls for an end to the arrests. That same month, Phipps finally writes about the whole debacle to his superiors back in England. He admits he's responsible for setting the courts in motion, but he also downplays his role. He hasn't even been in Massachusetts
44:09 Speaker 00 while many of the trials were taking place. He was in Maine. And as soon as he heard rumors that innocent people were being executed as witches, he stepped right in and put his foot down. He's lying. According to Mary Beth Norton, Phipps was in Boston most of that time. And there's something else he conveniently leaves out of his letter. The governor may have had personal reasons for not shutting things down in Salem earlier. See, Phipps realizes that both he and his wife are at risk of being identified as witches. Well, he's been known to visit a fortune teller here and there. His wife is related to another accused witch.
44:54 Speaker 00 Both of those markers are considered awfully witchy in 1692. While the public is in favor of the witch hunt, Phipps wouldn't want to stick his neck out. Anybody suggesting the accusations were false was painting a target on their own backs, amounting to more negative attention. The safe play would be to wait until public sentiment turns against the trials, which is what Governor Phipps does. But that's not all he waits for. His wife has just been named as a witch. It doesn't look as though she's formally accused, but talk usually leads to an arrest.
45:38 Speaker 00 Before things can get that far, Phipps shuts everything down. He just waits until his spouse's life is in danger, and by then, at least 25 people are dead. His order isn't a get out of jail free card, though. In 1693, another 52 people still in prison are tried. Only now, the hysteria has died down. Judges are no longer putting much stock into spectral evidence. In the end, everyone left to face witchcraft charges is either acquitted or granted a reprieve by the governor.
46:20 Speaker 00 In 1697, just five years after it all began, hindsight in Salem is already 2020. The town holds a day of fasting, a way of atoning for what happened there. A judge issues a formal apology, and Reverend Samuel Parris is forced out of the village in a coup led by the family of Rebecca Nurse. Two years after that, Thomas Putnam and his wife die before writing a will. The Putnam children receive small inheritances and learn their new estate carries a lot of debt. When Ann Putnam Jr. grows up,
47:02 Speaker 00 she stands up in church one day and asks for forgiveness. She now believes she had been deluded by Satan into sending innocent people to the gallows. It's unclear if she ever came to terms with the fact that she'd also been deluded by her own father. There's so much we do know about the Salem witch trials. Historians have carefully preserved a lot of primary source documents, from depositions to warrants to diaries. But there's one more thing I want to mention. There are still a lot of holes in the records, a lot we don't know about the actual trials. And sure, that could be because this all happened over 300 years ago,
47:46 Speaker 00 but we know certain people took notes that were never fully recovered. One example: An archive of personal letters written by a Salem judge is missing everything from 1692. It's a little suspicious. Mary Beth Norton says participants and their relatives may have intentionally destroyed some of the documentation from Salem. Reverend Samuel Parris almost certainly did, because when everybody stepped back months later and saw the horrors they'd been involved with, they wanted to erase any record of their involvement. Kind of makes you wonder how much of what we know of the Salem witch trials
48:31 Speaker 00 and these conspiracies, whether it's the governor's involvement, the Putnam's orchestrating it, or the accusations themselves, were shaped by powerful men removing their names from embarrassing or incriminating.
48:49 Speaker 00 Documents.
48:57 Speaker 00 Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories. We are here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram @TheConspiracyPod. If you're watching on Spotify, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Our sources for today's episode include Mary Beth Norton's book, In the Devil's Snare: The Witchcraft Crisis of 1692, Paul Boyer and Steven Nissenbaum's Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft, and the Nat Geo docu-series, Witches: Truth Behind the Trials. Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story. And
49:38 Speaker 00 the official story isn't always the truth. This episode was written and researched by Miki Taylor, edited by Justin Sales, fact-checked by Sophie Kemp, and engineered, video-edited, and sound-designed by Alex Button. I'm your host, Carter Roy.
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