Pod Insights Short History Of... The Salem Witch Trials About this episode For more than two centuries, between the late 1400s and early 1700s, a terror of witches gripped Europe. From Scotland to Spain, thousands of people were accused, tortured and executed. But as the hysteria faded in Europe, it crossed the Atlantic. In 1692, in New England, it took hold of a small Puritan settlement in Massachusetts - Salem. The events that followed resulted in the most infamous witch hunt in history.
But how did the actions of a group of young girls lead to 22 executions and over 200 accusations of witchcraft? Why did Salem believe the Devil had arrived on its doorstep? And how did a family grudge, a minister’s intransigence, and a rising tide of fear lead to the self-destruction of the small town?
This is a Short History Of The Salem Witch Trials.
A Noiser production, written by Sean Coleman. With thanks to Katherine Howe, an award-winning historian and novelist, and author of The Penguin Book of Witches.
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1:05 Speaker 01 Welcome to the 50th Hunger Day. Witness the beginning of the revolution.
1:09 Speaker 02 Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.
1:12 Speaker 01 Film for IMAX.
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1:16 Speaker 01 The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, November 20th, rated PG-13.
1:24 Speaker 00 It's a bitter winter in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. The village is quiet, with folk wrapped up inside to fend off the icy cold.
1:37 Speaker 00 In the parsonage, a fire crackles in the hearth of a small downstairs room. It's the only heat in this dark little house, and right now, its warm glow bathes the faces of the two pale young girls standing at the table beside it.
1:55 Speaker 00 This is the home of the very strict Puritan minister of Salem Village, Reverend Samuel Parris.
2:02 Speaker 00 This morning, he's out attending to his flock. And in his absence, his nine-year-old daughter Betty and her 11-year-old cousin, Abigail Williams, are up to something they know they shouldn't be.
2:14 Speaker 00 They're practicing a spot of fortune-telling. Speaking in whispers, they're on high alert to any sound indicating the Reverend's return. Because what they're doing, seeking knowledge outside of God's will, is deemed so sinful that it's akin to talking to the devil.
2:34 Speaker 00 But for the girls, this is important. While they may both be very young, their future is already more or less set in stone. They'll be expected to marry and have children, just like most women of the village. And one of the few glimmers of excitement in that future is the uncertainty of what kind of husband they might get.
2:55 Speaker 00 Will he be handsome, rich, kind?
2:59 Speaker 00 That's what the girls, giggling and jostling each other, are hoping to find out this morning.
3:07 Speaker 00 With the Reverend Paris out in the village, and Betty's mother tucked up in her sickbed upstairs, the two girls are unsupervised, save for the Caribbean slave woman Tituba, who's preparing lunch in the kitchen.
3:21 Speaker 00 Now, whispering in nervous excitement, Betty places a glass of water on the table, while Abigail cracks an egg and carefully separates the yolk before dropping the white into the water.
3:34 Speaker 00 The girls lean in.
3:37 Speaker 00 Their eyes wide in the flickering firelight, they watch as the albimun swirls and twists in the glass. Rumor has it that the white will form into shapes to show them what their future holds. Is that a house? A coin? A tiny horse?
3:56 Speaker 00 But then, Abigail sees something that makes her recoil in fear. Something she's seen before, when her own parents were lowered into the ground.
4:07 Speaker 00 A coffin.
4:10 Speaker 00 Screaming, the girls rush from the room, clattering past Tichuba, who's come hurrying to see what all the commotion is about.
4:18 Speaker 00 In the ominous silence, Tichuba sets about cleaning up the mess, suspicious of what the girls have been doing. No good can come of this.
4:30 Speaker 00 And she is right to be concerned, because this incident will launch an outbreak of unsettling symptoms spreading like wildfire through the village.
4:39 Speaker 00 What follows will change all of their lives forever.
4:54 Speaker 00 For more than two centuries, between the late 1400s and early 1700s, a terror of witches gripped Europe. From Scotland to Spain, thousands of people were accused, tortured, and executed, finding themselves the victims of mistrust, religious extremism, vindictiveness, and panic. In what is now Germany, entire villages were wiped out. In England, self-proclaimed witch-finders roamed the countryside, rooting out supposed servants of the devil.
5:30 Speaker 00 By the end of the 17th century, as Europe was emerging from the apocalyptic wars of religion, which claimed the lives of millions, new, more skeptical governments reasserted their control, and witch fever began to die down. But just as the hysteria was fading in Europe, it crossed the Atlantic. And in 1692, in New England, it took hold of a small Puritan settlement in Massachusetts. What happened in Salem was not the largest witch hunt in history, but it's possibly the most infamous.
6:07 Speaker 00 But how did the actions of a group of young girls lead to 22 executions and over 200 more accusations of witchcraft?
6:16 Speaker 00 Why did Salem believe the devil had arrived on its doorstep? And how did a family grudge, a minister's intransigence, and a rising tide of fear lead this small town to tear itself apart?
6:30 Speaker 00 I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Network, this is A Short History of the Salem Witch Trials.
6:45 Speaker 00 In 1692, Massachusetts is not yet America, and its people not yet Americans. There are Englishmen and women in exile, settlers on the frontier of a vast and untamed continent.
7:02 Speaker 00 Their world is small: isolated towns, simple wooded homes, and a relentless struggle against the hostile wilderness that surrounds them. Winters are harsh, supplies are scarce, and the constant threat of conflict with Native Americans ever present.
7:20 Speaker 00 This is New England, home to the strict Protestants who left Old England with a dream of a new, pure society.
7:30 Speaker 00 The Puritans, as they are known, believe they are God's chosen people. To them, faith is not just a belief system, but the very foundation of their existence: a force that shapes laws, families, and every aspect of life.
7:47 Speaker 00 Theirs is a world where every failed crop, every sickness, every attack is not just a test of faith, but a sign of the devil at work.
7:59 Speaker 00 Kathleen Howe is an award-winning historian and novelist, and author of The Penguin Book of Witches.
8:06 Speaker 03 The Puritans occupied a worldview that was absolute. To their mind, either you accepted the word of God as they understood it to be, or you were of the devil, you were devilish.
8:20 Speaker 03 There is this sense of a godly community besieged on all sides by devils in wilderness. So there is this sense of isolation, there's a sense of religious extremism.
8:41 Speaker 00 The deeply Puritan village of Salem may be small, but tensions here run high. Land disputes and family rivalries abound, and arguments leading to bloodshed among neighbors are not uncommon. Recently, something new has been added to the unhappy mix in the form of a new minister, Reverend Samuel Parris. A fire-and-brimstone kind of preacher, his church is bare and austere, his sermons long and thunderous. But the community is already divided in its support of him.
9:16 Speaker 03 Samuel Parris had had trouble making his way. He kind of made himself irritating to the congregation. He had demanded that they give him the deed to the parsonage where he was living, like he wanted them to just give him a house to keep, not to just stay in while he was working there. He had demanded they pay for more firewood for him. In general, he felt like he wasn't getting enough respect, wasn't getting enough pay, wasn't getting enough privilege.
9:43 Speaker 00 With his harsh sermons stoking tensions in the already fractured village, the place is ripe for suspicion and paranoia to creep in. And when it does, Parris is quick to add fuel to the fire.
10:03 Speaker 00 In January 1692, just days after trying to foretell her future, young Betty Parris falls strangely ill. At first, she's just withdrawn, maybe a little preoccupied. She is distracted during daily prayers and grows agitated with no obvious cause. But now her symptoms become more pronounced. Spasms, sudden outbursts, and the occasional scream overwhelm the child from out of nowhere. And when her cousin, Abigail, who has lived with the family as a maid since her parents passed away, begins to exhibit similar behaviors, the worry really sets in.
10:43 Speaker 00 The girls go into convulsions. They scream, they bark like dogs, they hide under furniture and claim to see spectral figures attacking them. Abigail's condition is the more pronounced and dramatic, but over the following weeks, the episodes become more intense.
11:01 Speaker 03 So at one point, Abigail, in her fifth, is running around in the kitchen, flapping her arms and saying "wish, wish, wish", and saying she's gonna fly up the chimney, which, to me, sounds like an 11-year-old girl being silly, being an 11-year-old girl.
11:23 Speaker 00 In a strict Puritan household, the concept of childhood has no value. Children are merely small adults who must be harshly corrected. And yet, rather than see the girls' behavior as childish play-acting, the austere Reverend Parris discerns something altogether darker. And he is not alone.
11:44 Speaker 00 In the middle of February, a local doctor visits the house. Having failed to identify any known illness, he declares the girls to be "under an evil hand". In Puritan New England, these words can mean only one thing: witchcraft.
12:02 Speaker 00 The home of a minister is supposed to be a place of moral strength, not a battleground for the devil. And as a result of this terrifying diagnosis, all hell breaks loose.
12:21 Speaker 00 News of the girls' predicament travels quickly, reaching the ears of a neighbour, Mary Sibley, who is well-practiced in the folk remedies from Old England. She has an idea of how to identify exactly who is bewitching the girls. Without consulting the Reverend, she instructs his slave-woman, Tituba, in the practice of making a special biscuit known as a witch cake.
12:46 Speaker 03 To make a witch cake, you take urine from the afflicted girls. You mix it up with a rye meal, you bake it into a hard biscuit, and you feed the biscuit to the dog. And there are a couple of ways that this folk magic practice was thought to function. So it was believed at that time that the act of bewitchment created a kind of sympathetic relationship between the witch and the victim. So, the two modes of thought with the witch cake. One held that perhaps that would cause the bewitchment to travel out of the girls' bodies and be taken into the dog. The other rationale was that by using a bit of the girls' bodies, their urine, and then having it munched up by the dog,
13:30 Speaker 03 that would cause the witch to feel her body munched up, and she would therefore release the girls from the bewitchment.
13:41 Speaker 00 Sadly, the dog simply eats the cake and offers no further enlightenment. Rather than breaking the spell and curing the girls of their devilment, the witch cake simply serves to heighten local interest in the situation. Within a day of the diagnosis, a third girl starts exhibiting the same strange symptoms. Twelve-year-old Anne Putnam Jr. is a friend of Abigail and Betty's and the daughter of one of the more powerful Salem families, who are big supporters of Reverend Paris.
14:13 Speaker 00 Anne also shows signs of possession and bewitchment, and it doesn't stop there. A fourth case now emerges, Elizabeth Hubbard, a seventeen-year-old girl who lives with the doctor who first diagnosed the witchcraft.
14:28 Speaker 00 Though she's family to the doctor, as an orphan, she lives in his house as a servant, attending to chores, cleaning, fetching water, and preparing meals. Like the similarly orphaned Abigail, who is a servant in the Paris household, Elizabeth's life is one of quiet obedience, hard work, and little attention. Suddenly, she finds herself at the heart of the drama.
14:52 Speaker 03 So if you are a child and your whole job is to obey everyone all the time, and all of a sudden, all the big, important grown-ups around you are saying, "Oh, don't worry. We're all gonna pay attention to you, and we're all gonna pray for you, and you just sit down. I know you're suffering. You're somehow in the grips of some sort of devilish distemper, and all we want to do is help you." I mean, like, how rewarding of that behavior is that kind of attention?
15:22 Speaker 00 As a young woman, rather than a pre-teen girl, Elizabeth's sudden affliction carries more weight than the others. And when she claims to recognize the demons that torment her as manifestations of people from the village, the seeds of the terrible consequences to come are sown.
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18:31 Speaker 00 As more girls join the ranks of the afflicted, racked by convulsions and haunted by spectral visitors who pinch and bite them, no one in the frightened community questions the diabolical cause. And if witches are at work, they must be rooted out and destroyed.
18:53 Speaker 00 As February nears its end, the girls' fits are common knowledge. They are interrupting sermons and causing them to fall to the ground in the streets. It's too much for a quiet, God-fearing community to bear. Someone must be to blame, and the girls find themselves under increasing pressure to talk. People want names.
19:16 Speaker 00 It's Betty who breaks first. Her father, the Reverend, may have publicly denounced Mary Sibley's use of the witch cake to identify the culprit, but he is still determined to find out who is tormenting his daughter. Betty, perhaps swayed by the furor around her, now fully believes that she has been cursed. Her sleep is disturbed, her strength sapped, and her days filled with anxiety. She confesses to her father about the divination trick with the egg and the glass. His resulting fury finally pushes her to make the first accusation.
19:57 Speaker 00 Cornered and afraid, she has no choice but to point the finger at someone, anyone, who could have done this to her. The person she names is Tituba.
20:09 Speaker 00 The enslaved woman, low in status, different in appearance, and unusual in culture, fits the bill perfectly. Besides, she's not even a churchgoer. She still holds to her Barbadian belief system, steeped in folklore and superstition. Abigail is quick to throw her weight behind Betty's claim, as are Anne Putnam Jr. and Elizabeth Hubbard. But though Tituba's fate is now sealed, the girls go on to accuse two other women from the village. Sarah Good is a homeless woman with a four-year-old daughter in tow and a baby on the way.
20:49 Speaker 03 Sarah Good is a beggar. She has not been seen at the meeting for want of clothes, which that doesn't mean that she didn't have a cute outfit to wear. It meant that she's dressed in rags that were considered indecent to wear to church. She probably has some sort of mental illness because she is considered to be kind of quarrelsome, difficult, she begs from door to door.
21:16 Speaker 00 An outsider with no one to protect her, Sarah Good is perhaps as obvious a target as Tituba. Her ragged appearance makes her seem frightful, and she often snaps at the children when they rush up to mock her.
21:30 Speaker 00 The third woman they name, Sarah Osborn, just like the other two, doesn't meet the expectations of Puritan life. Though elderly and frail, her distant, odd manner makes her a suspicious character in the village. Not only that, she has a scandalous history.
21:51 Speaker 00 She was originally married to a wealthy landowner related to the powerful Putnam family.
21:58 Speaker 00 She inherited his land when he died, but before their two young sons were old enough to inherit, she married again and ceded the land to her new husband, a former indentured servant.
22:12 Speaker 00 The idea that a woman of her standing could marry so low was bad enough, but to squander the family land like that was unforgivable. With a longstanding resentment simmering between Sarah Osborn and the Putnam family, it's hardly a surprise that, when it comes to accusing witches, hers is one of the first names to fall from Anne Putnam Junior's lips.
22:38 Speaker 00 Though all different, the three women have one thing in common: they are outsiders.
22:43 Speaker 03 Though there was certainly a sense that, early on, the accusations are extended to women who are vulnerable to those accusations, to women who are out of step with their culture, who pose a threat in some way to their culture, and who are not in an economic or social position to very capable to defend themselves.
23:04 Speaker 00 The question now is what Reverend Paris should do about these fevered allegations. With the help of the Putnam family, he turns to the civil court of nearby Salem Town, the more cosmopolitan urban centre to which Salem Village is an outlined farming community.
23:23 Speaker 00 Unlike Reverend Paris, who only has the power to preach about right and wrong, the magistrates from Salem Town, John Haythorne and Jonathan Corwin, hold the authority to actually investigate and prosecute crimes, including the felony of witchcraft.
23:41 Speaker 00 Haythorn is a wealthy landowner and staunch Puritan, who sees himself as a defender of the faith. And Corwin comes from a powerful mercantile family, closely connected to the region's elite.
23:53 Speaker 00 As far as Paris and the Putnams are concerned, they are the perfect choices to lead the inquiry.
24:01 Speaker 00 On February 29, 1692, they receive formal complaints about the three women from Salem Village.
24:09 Speaker 00 Arrest warrants are issued. And the very next day, Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne are taken into custody and brought before the magistrates in the Salem Meeting House for questioning.
24:28 Speaker 00 Haythorn has made a long career of being a ruthless prosecutor. And from the start, his interrogations are aggressive, demanding that the women confess.
24:38 Speaker 00 Sarah Good, with her reputation for being quarrelsome, vehemently denies the charges. She points instead to Sarah Osborne. But when Osborne also pleads her innocence, Haythorn's attentions turn to Tituba.
24:53 Speaker 03 Tituba is questioned two times. And first, she denies it. And then they question her the next day. And there is some evidence suggesting that she was beaten in between. And in her confession the next day, a couple of important things happen. She's coerced to confess. She says that there is a conspiracy of witches in the town.
25:18 Speaker 00 Tituba's confession is extraordinary. She admits to seeing and speaking with the devil, who she says threaten to hurt her unless she harmed the children. But she goes further, claiming there is a network of witches in Salem, at least four or five, one of whom is a man. While she can't name them specifically, she identifies Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne as being the ones who are using their spirits to torment the girls.
25:46 Speaker 03 So we have Paris fanning this sort of paranoia. We have an isolated frontier community. We have adolescents living in a tremendously hierarchical and high-pressure environment. And then we have a woman with no social power whatsoever who's completely vulnerable, an enslaved worker, threatened into saying, "Yes, the accusations are true. I didn't want to be a witch, but they made me one. And I don't know how many witches there are," which introduces the idea of a conspiracy, of undefined coquions.
26:26 Speaker 00 Tituba's admission confirms everyone's worst fears. Witches are real, they're working together, and they're right here in Salem.
26:36 Speaker 00 Good and Osborn's denials mean nothing to Haythorn. They, along with Tituba, are interrogated for a full week before being thrown into prison to await trial.
26:48 Speaker 00 But with the idea of a conspiracy now taking root, the witch hunt is only just beginning. More children start showing the same symptoms as Betty, Abigail, Anne, Junior, and Elizabeth. And when they start naming new suspects, their allegations now carry a lot more weight.
27:05 Speaker 00 One of those now named is Martha Corey. She and her second husband Giles have been full church members in Salem for some time. But Martha is still an outsider to many, and one of the more scandalous women in Salem. Known for her sharp tongue and strong will, Martha upset the community when, during her first marriage, she gave birth to a baby boy whose skin tone more closely resembled that of a Native American than of her white-skinned husband.
27:37 Speaker 00 In Salem, adultery is scandalous enough, but to commit it with a non-white man is an outrage of an entirely different order. She was kicked out of her marital home, leaving her legitimate son with her former husband.
27:52 Speaker 00 Despite later remarrying to another longstanding Salem farmer and landowner Giles Corey and becoming a church member, she remains the subject of much gossip.
28:06 Speaker 00 To make matters worse, she's been heard dismissing the girl's fits as nonsense, and mocking the idea of witch trials. That alone is enough to pick her out, as the next person Anne Putnam Jr. indicts. By mid-March, Martha Corey is arrested, her husband Giles will also be accused within the month. Then, there is Rebecca Nurse. At seventy-one years old, she is a much-loved pillar of the community, a pious elderly woman with a large family. But she has also been locked in a longstanding dispute with the Putnam family over land. As such, it's unsurprising that Anne Jr. now points the finger at her too.
28:49 Speaker 00 Next to fall under suspicion is Bridget Bishop. Unlike Nurse, she has always stood apart from Salem's strict Puritan norms. Twice-married, she often wears a bright red bodice, rather than the somber blacks of the other women. She owns a tavern, and holds drinking parties late into the night. What's more, she has been suspected of witchcraft before. By late April, the jail cells are full, but more suspects are being arrested daily, including the former Salem minister, George Barrows. The sheer scale of the crisis is threatening to overwhelm the local magistrates.
29:30 Speaker 00 Salem needs a fast-track legal process to see these people brought to trial. In May 1692, Governor William Phipps establishes the Court of Oyer and Terminer, meaning "to hear and determine." Presiding is Chief Justice William Stoughton, another staunch Puritan, he is deeply convinced of the devil's power. He is Harvard-educated and studied theology in England. Now he is Lieutenant Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and a hugely respected political figure. Alongside his magistrates, he will be guided by a body of jurors, predominantly landowners from Salem and its environs.
30:16 Speaker 00 But these are no ordinary trials. Evidence is scarce, relying almost entirely on the so-called victims' testimony. And the girls, who also sit in to watch every trial, make absolutely sure there is no doubt in the judges' minds.
30:34 Speaker 03 They would examine the afflicted girls. So they would take a statement from an afflicted girl. They would say, "Oh, goody so-and-so sends her shape in at night to torture me." And so then that witch would be summoned, and the judges would say, "This girl says that you send your shape in at night to torture her. What do you say to that?" She would say, "Oh, I don't know anything about that. That wasn't me. I didn't do that." But then, in the course of her speaking, the group of afflicted girls would respond. Their bodies would shake. They might scream. They might say that they saw a yellow bird sitting on a rafter. They might say that they feel like they're being pricked with pins.
31:16 Speaker 00 The girls repeat the performance at every examination, sometimes collapsing in apparent agony and claiming to see witches' familiars, like a bird, a dog, or a wolf, or spectral versions of the defendants themselves, who choke, prick, and stab them.
31:33 Speaker 00 The courts, absorbed by these dramatic scenes, accept this so-called spectral evidence as fact.
31:42 Speaker 00 The first to stand trial under this new system is Bridget Bishop. Sure enough, when she is brought out, the girls begin their routine, collapsing in fits. When Bridget speaks, they claim her words cause them physical pain.
31:57 Speaker 00 Even so, when the judges press her for a confession, Bridget defiantly denies any wrongdoing.
32:05 Speaker 00 But then comes the damning testimony of her neighbors. They claim she's cursed their crops, killed their livestock, even appeared as a ghostly specter in the night.
32:16 Speaker 03 Witches come along and make butter not come together. They make beer go bad. They make a cow stop giving milk. You know, they make a pot fall and break. Like, it is so small. It is so domestic. It is so about food, or health, or family. It's meager, the kinds of crimes that witches are accused of committing. And it's because of the difficulty of scratching out an existence for most people in the 1690s.
32:50 Speaker 00 But in Salem's Cauldron of Fear, these otherwise small acts take on new significance. They are the life-changing curses of an agent of the devil.
33:05 Speaker 00 When a search of Bishop's home reveals handmade fabric dolls, a kind of effigy known as a poppet, the case is sealed. Whether the dolls were planted, as Bridget swears they were, is irrelevant. The court has all the evidence it needs.
33:23 Speaker 00 The verdict is swift. Bridget Bishop is found guilty of witchcraft, and on June 10, 1692, she is taken to Gallows Hill and hanged.
33:34 Speaker 00 She becomes the first to be officially executed in the Salem witch trials. She will by no means be the last.
33:43 Speaker 00 As the trials get into full swing, neighbors turn on each other, drawing on distant memories of past disagreements to add weight to the afflicted girl's wild claims.
33:55 Speaker 03 If years later Sarah Good were on trial as a witch, and I were brought up to testify, I would say, 10 years ago, Sarah Good came to my house and asked me for bread, and I sent her away, and she said I was gonna regret it. And later that day, I broke a trencher.
34:11 Speaker 00 These personal testimonies and old grievances now count as vital evidence against the accused. But at the same time, some defendants are so well-loved that their friends and neighbors refuse to watch on without standing up and testifying to their good nature. Rebecca Nurse is one such case.
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36:06 Speaker 04 You know, it's the time of the year when I'm always on the lookout for fresh fall options for my wardrobe. And I think I just found my new favorite sweater at Quince. It's the Cotton Fisherman Crew. It's relaxed, it's cozy, but yet still polished. It's one of those versatile pieces you can wear everywhere, to the office, out running errands, or a night out with friends. And as we head into the holiday season, this is definitely one I'll be adding to others on my list. See, Quince focuses on high-quality staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14-karat gold, and Italian leather. All timeless, versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become everyday favorites long after the holidays. Their cashmere sweaters start at just $60, and the lineup doesn't stop there. They have premium down jackets, wool outerwear, and cashmere accessories.
36:51 Speaker 04 Everything you and your loved ones need to stay warm and look put together all season long. And when it comes to gifting, Quince has a lot more than clothing. Think fine jewelry, leather bags, hotel-quality bedding, chef-grade cookware, and five-star luggage. Basically, plenty of ways to find something special for everyone on your list. So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com and get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Still available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know what short history of it's the best way to support the show.
37:32 Speaker 00 It's June 29, 1692. The meeting house in Salem is packed to the rafters. The whole village has turned out to see what will become of old Rebecca Nurse. One of her neighbors presses inside, waiting nervously to learn her friend's fate. Though it's uncomfortably hot in here, there's a cold malevolence, too. A silent, baying for blood that's become all too common in Salem since these trials began. The girls are all gathered in their usual place in the makeshift courthouse. Looking at them now, Rebecca Nurse's neighbor sees something hard beneath their youthful expressions.
38:14 Speaker 00 Not fear, but a hint of the power they hold. Murmurs swell and then die as Rebecca Nurse is led in. Heavy shackles weighing down her frail limbs, her simple dress hanging loose on her thin frame. She is a grandmother, a woman of God, a matron among them. She doesn't belong here.
38:42 Speaker 00 And though many in the room are here to support her, the girls react immediately.
38:47 Speaker 00 Anne Putnam screams as though burned. Abigail screams that the devil is beside her. Another girl wails that Rebecca's specter is pinching her.
38:58 Speaker 00 A ripple of doubt and uncertainty washes through the crowd.
39:02 Speaker 00 Standing before the judges, Rebecca pleads her innocence, her voice clear and strong despite her age and terror. And then, one by one, others step forward. Some condemn her, but many have come in her defence. More than thirty-nine of them, the neighbour included, have signed a petition swearing to her good nature. And for once, the ground swell of support seems to be giving the jury pause for thought.
39:33 Speaker 00 They retire to deliberate, and by the time they return, Rebecca looks fit to drop.
39:40 Speaker 00 Even the afflicted girls have fallen into silent anticipation. And then comes the verdict.
39:47 Speaker 00 Rebecca Nurse is declared not guilty.
39:54 Speaker 00 For one glorious moment, the tension breaks. Sense has prevailed. Relief washes over the neighbour, over everyone who supported Rebecca, over everyone except... the girls. Their screams fill the silence, as they double down on their fits, collapsing in convulsions, clawing at their skin, grabbing their throats, claiming they see Satan himself smiling.
40:22 Speaker 00 As the room erupts in chaos, the mood among the magistrates shifts. This is worse than anything they've seen so far.
40:30 Speaker 00 So now, William Stoughton, the chief justice, addresses the jury, telling them they may reconsider.
40:39 Speaker 00 A hush falls. The jurors whisper among themselves before turning back to Stoughton.
40:47 Speaker 00 This time their verdict is shouted: guilty.
40:54 Speaker 00 As she is condemned to hang, the old woman's protestations are swallowed by the noise of the crowd. Her neighbour stares on helplessly. She spoke out and prayed that reason would prevail. But now, as they lead Rebecca away, she says nothing. Because if she dares speak out, she could be next.
41:26 Speaker 00 On the 3rd of July, Rebecca Nurse is led into the meeting house again, this time for her public excommunication. A woman of strongly held beliefs, she is certain that going to her judgement before God after being cast out of the church will mean eternal damnation. To her, it's a fate worse than death.
41:49 Speaker 00 A little over two weeks later, she and four other convicted women, the beggar Sarah Good included, are carted through the town past cheering crowds, all the way to the execution site.
42:03 Speaker 00 Even in her final moments, Rebecca Nurse remains composed. "I am innocent as the child unborn," she says, as the noose is prepared. "But must go to what I am called."
42:17 Speaker 00 Sarah Good, whose baby has by now been born but tragically did not survive, remains defiant to the last. When Stoughton calls on her to admit her guilt before she's hanged, she sneers at him.
42:31 Speaker 03 She says, "I'm no more a witch than you are a wizard, and if you take away my life, God will give you blood to drink."
42:42 Speaker 00 And somewhat prescient those words are, because William Stoughton will go on to die of a hemorrhage a few years later. But not before more are hanged by his hand in Salem.
42:55 Speaker 00 Für die sogenannten Wächtern gibt es keine Vergeltung eines schnellen Todes. Ohne geeignete Galle sind sie für Minuten lang, langsam versträngt durch ihre eigene Gewicht.
43:06 Speaker 00 Nach dem Exekution rettet Rebecca Nurse's Familie ihre Körper in der schmalen Grube, wo sie gefasst wurde, anstatt sie zu verlassen, auf ihrem Familienland. Es ist ihre Vertrauen und Exekution, die die größten Schockwellen durch das Dorf sendet.
43:23 Speaker 00 Wenn eine böse, Gottdämliche Frau wie sie nicht sicher ist, ist niemand sicher. Wo wird das alles enden?
43:31 Speaker 00 Das Sommer 1692 sieht die Gerichte weitermachen. Aber obwohl die angeklagten Opfer immer noch die Gerichtsruine leiten, in den Füßen fallen und behaupten, die Spektren der Opfer zu sehen, kriegt es Angst.
43:45 Speaker 03 Es gibt diese Eindruck nachdem Rebecca Nurse hängt, dass einige Menschen gar nicht glauben, dass es passiert ist, dass sie es wirklich getan haben. Es ist nach diesem Punkt, dass die Anklagen beginnen, aus dem Kontrolle zu schlagen.
44:03 Speaker 00 Jetzt, statt nur Outsider und Ausländer, sind die Opfer prominent, aufregend und respektierte Mitglieder der Gemeinschaft.
44:12 Speaker 00 Im August sendet der Gericht John Proctor, ein wuchtbarer und ausgesprochen Kritiker der Gerichte, und notwendiger Feind der Putnam-Familie, zu den Galle. Er hängt mit drei anderen Männer, inklusive des Precher George Barrows, der den Leuten stürzt, indem er die Geburt des Herrn vor dem Schlaftag recitiert, etwas, was für eine Wächterin als unmöglich gesehen wurde.
44:36 Speaker 00 Die Menschen beginnen zu fragen, ob die Gerichte so einfach diejenigen, die Einfluss und Ressourcen haben, gefährden können, dann vielleicht ist das nicht ein gerechtes Purge nach allem. Vielleicht ist es etwas etwas mehr politisch, mehr über den Weg von Rivalen, Gegnern oder Feinden zu entfernen, als über den Kampf gegen den Teufel in Salem.
44:57 Speaker 00 Einige prominenten Familien sind jetzt in Angst oder Vertrautsein geflohen, während die Zwängen von Ungerechtigkeit stärker werden. Aber obwohl die öffentliche Vertrauen in den Prozess anfangen zu zerfallen, sind die Gerichte noch nicht ihre Schritte getan, und sie sind vor der Erklärung ihrer nächsten Opfer in der schrecklichsten Weise.
45:24 Speaker 00 It's September the 19th, 1692.
45:28 Speaker 00 In a scrubby field opposite the jail, a young man in his twenties strains as he carries a heavy rock towards where a small group stand in a half-circle, watching solemnly as a most macabre spectacle unfolds.
45:44 Speaker 00 Flat on his back, on the dry, bare ground, is a farmer in his early eighties, Giles Corey. His arms are splayed, and across his chest lies a rough plank of wood. On top of the splintering board is a pile of heavy rocks. Because Giles has been accused of witchcraft, and for forty-eight hours now, Sheriff Corwin has been demanding a plea from him.
46:12 Speaker 00 Every time Giles refuses, another weighty stone is added to the board. The aim of this awful torture? To literally press the plea from the suspect.
46:28 Speaker 00 Now Sheriff Corwin stands, angrily leering down at his suspect. With a frustrated nod, he tells the young man to add the rock to the pile.
46:39 Speaker 00 It lands with a sickening thud. The youth winces at the impact, the wheeze of the old man's frail lungs as he struggles to draw a breath. He can see, they can all see, that Giles Corey can't take much more.
46:54 Speaker 00 His skin is pale grey, his lips vivid blue.
47:00 Speaker 00 Sheriff Corwin leers over him to once again demand a plea, and as Giles opens his mouth, the young man silently prays for him to just give him what he wants, to get this terrible ordeal over with.
47:14 Speaker 00 But instead, the old farmer's eyes flash with fire, and all he says is, "More weight."
47:24 Speaker 00 Corwin bares his teeth, livid. They all know the way this is going. If Giles is tried, he'll be found guilty and his considerable estate will be seized. But if he doesn't plead at all, he can't be tried in the first place.
47:40 Speaker 00 Giles knows he's going to die either way, but this defiance of his is the only chance he has to ensure his sons will inherit his estate.
47:50 Speaker 00 It's an intolerable prospect for the sheriff, who has been getting fat recently of the property of those tried for witchcraft. He wants Giles' land, and he'll do whatever it takes to get the plea that will guarantee it.
48:06 Speaker 00 As the young man prepares himself for the grim task of adding another rock, he's surprised to see Corwin raise a hand to stop him. Perhaps the sheriff has had enough.
48:18 Speaker 00 But no. Sneering with menace, Corwin slowly raises a foot, then steps up onto the board.
48:28 Speaker 00 Standing astride the rock pile, he sways, shifting his weight deliberately, again demanding a plea.
48:36 Speaker 00 There is a collective gasp from the small group of onlookers. Someone utters a prayer, and the young man looks away, unable to bear witness to this cruelty any longer.
48:56 Speaker 00 Brutal as his killing is, Giles Corey dies with no conviction of witchcraft to his name. His estate is shared among his sons, and spared from the grasping hands of Sheriff Corwin and the state.
49:11 Speaker 00 Importantly, his defiance leaves a sour taste in the mouths of his accusers.
49:18 Speaker 03 Everyone in his community would have known who Giles Corey was. He defied the court's ability or authority to charge him, so he refused to enter a plea. He refused to recognize the court's authority over him.
49:36 Speaker 00 After the hanging of the much-loved Rebecca Nurse, the pressing of Giles Corey is a watershed moment in terms of the villagers' attitude to the trials.
49:46 Speaker 00 And yet, the gallows are still claiming victims.
49:53 Speaker 00 Three days after the pressing, on September the 22nd, seven women and one man are hanged on Gallows Hill. Among them is Giles Corey's wife, Martha, who had refused to attend the previous trials, called the girls liars and spoke out against the whole notion of witchcraft. Now Martha dies alongside Mary Easty, sister of Rebecca Nurse, who begged the court to see reason. With them are six other innocent souls.
50:31 Speaker 00 With their execution, the Salem death toll rises to 22. Nineteen hanged, two perishing in prison, and one crushed to death by stones. More than 200 souls have been accused, their lives shattered beyond repair, betrayed by neighbors and abandoned by friends. Many are still awaiting trial, and some have already been found guilty and nearing execution. But the scale of the death toll and the extent of allegations are becoming too unwieldy for the wider community to stomach.
51:06 Speaker 00 Among those growing uneasy with the trials are Increase and Cotton Mather, two of the most influential ministers in New England.
51:15 Speaker 00 Cotton, young and eager, is a defender of the court's work. In fact, he's even working on a book, Wonders of the Invisible World, in which he argues that witches are real and that spectral evidence can and should be admissible in court. But his father, Increase Mather, is far less certain.
51:35 Speaker 00 The sheer number of executions horrifies Mather Senior. This is no longer justice, but chaos. He publicly condemns the use of spectral evidence, saying, "It were better that ten suspected witches should escape than that one innocent person should be condemned."
51:54 Speaker 00 He appeals to Governor Phipps directly, urging him to put an end to the madness.
52:01 Speaker 00 The governor has recently been away on a brutal military campaign in Quebec as part of King William's ongoing war against the French. Now, on his return, he finds his colony in the grip of chaos. His special court has executed dozens of people, often on nothing but the frenzied claims of children.
52:23 Speaker 00 But instead of purging Salem of evil, the process has left it hollowed, afraid, and divided.
52:31 Speaker 00 Something has to change. And change it does when, finally, suspicion reaches into the home of the governor himself.
52:43 Speaker 03 Apparently, it is only after the organizations reached the governor's wife that they were finally stopped, that they reached too high. Their reach exceeded their grasp. But also because it seemed like it was just, it wasn't coming to any kind of conclusion. Like, it was no longer making sense, in a way. It was too expensive. It was affecting too many peoples, attracting too much attention. And so, by that point, there were a couple hundred people in prison. I mean, like, a substantial percentage of the population, and that's not counting the people who had already been put to death.
53:22 Speaker 00 First, Phipps halts the use of spectral evidence, acknowledging that it has led to miscarriages of justice. Without these intangible, unreliable allegations as evidence, the court has very little on which to convict. Cases quickly fall apart. Trials collapse.
53:43 Speaker 00 Then he disbands the Court of Oire and Termina completely, removing the authority of the judges, many of whom have been far too fervent in their pursuit of witches. In its place, the governor creates a new court to review the cases, effectively ensuring that no more innocent people are condemned. The executions are over, and the panic fades away.
54:07 Speaker 00 And yet, even as many are questioning the validity of the whole process, some still argue that they have done the right thing by the community of Salem.
54:17 Speaker 03 So Cotton Mather publishes his account, Wonders of the Invisible World, justifying what they have done, trying to claim that Satan came to Salem and that they dealt with it and that it was this horrible tragedy and travesty, but the community solved the problem. Well, a couple of years after that, a skeptic named Robert Khalif published More Wonders of the Invisible World, which was his takedown of Cotton Mather's account of the Salem witch trials. So very early on, there is a debate over the meaning of this crazy thing that had happened.
54:50 Speaker 00 Khalif's book lays bare the cruelty and mistakes of the trials. But amid his criticism, he also calls for accountability, urging the people of Salem to learn from their mistakes.
55:12 Speaker 04 You know, it's the time of the year when I'm always on the lookout for fresh fall options for my wardrobe. And I think I just found my new favorite sweater at Quince. It's the Cotton Fisherman Crew. It's relaxed, it's cozy, but yet still polished. It's one of those versatile pieces you can wear everywhere, to the office, outrunning errands, or a night out with friends. And as we head into the holiday season, this is definitely one I'll be adding to others on my list. See, Quince focuses on high-quality staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14-karat gold, and Italian leather, all timeless versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become everyday favorites long after the holidays. Their cashmere sweaters start at just $60, and the lineup doesn't stop there. They have premium down jackets, wool outerwear, and cashmere accessories,
55:57 Speaker 04 everything you and your loved ones need to stay warm and look put together all season long. And when it comes to gifting, Quince has a lot more than clothing. Think fine jewelry, leather bags, hotel-quality bedding, chef-grade cookware, and five-star luggage. Basically, plenty of ways to find something special for everyone on your list. So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com and get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. It's now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know Short History of. It's the best way to support the show.
56:51 Speaker 00 In the years that follow, some, like one of the magistrates Samuel Sewell, publicly acknowledge their role in the trials. He writes a heartfelt apology, admitting that his judgments were wrong and that the trials were a grave injustice, although he stops short of saying that witchcraft does not exist. Another significant apology comes from Ann Putnam Jr.
57:15 Speaker 03 Ann Putnam Jr. winds up being the accuser who was the most fatal. She accused the most number of people who wound up being put to death than anyone else. She stands up in front of her congregation and says that she wants to lie in the dust for the part that she played in the witch trials. And at that time, when that happens, she is in her mid-20s and she's still unmarried, so it suggests that her life has kind of gone off the rails because of her involvement in this thing.
57:47 Speaker 00 In 1702, the Massachusetts General Court declares the trials to be illegal and overturns the convictions of those sentenced. In 1711, nearly 20 years later, a formal act of restitution is passed to compensate some of the families of those affected. Both the apologies and the exoneration come too late to heal all the wounds, but the end of the trials at least marks the last ever execution for witchcraft on US soil.
58:26 Speaker 00 What will never be known for sure is why the girls making the allegations continued to do so, even as neighbor after innocent neighbor went to the gallows. Through a modern lens, we might see their actions as driven by a particularly vindictive, adolescent herd mentality. But without sharing their genuinely held fear of the occult, a true understanding of their motivations is impossible. Even so, historians and psychologists now suggest the girls may have suffered from mass psychogenic illness, a subconscious response to the terror, stress, and religious anxiety of Puritan New England.
59:11 Speaker 00 The Salem witch trials did not end with the final execution. They live on, woven into the fabric of history as a cautionary tale. In the 1950s, Arthur Miller's landmark play, The Crucible, immortalizes the hysteria, using it as an allegory for the hunting down of communists, so-called McCarthyism, at a time when accusations could destroy lives.
59:36 Speaker 00 Even the term "witch hunt" has become synonymous with obsessive judicial persecution, a reminder of how panic and power can override common sense, even legal processes. And though similar trials continued elsewhere in the world, the events of 1692 stand apart from all other witch hunts.
59:58 Speaker 00 Caught in a unique confluence of factors, Salem became a perfect storm of fear, faith, and frontier violence, and lives on as a stark reminder of how fragile justice can be when paranoia takes hold.
1:00:17 Speaker 03 The Salem witch trials is a historical anomaly that we somehow cannot let go.
1:00:24 Speaker 03 And the reason that we can't let it go is because it requires us, in America anyway, to question some of the assumptions that we like to hold about ourselves. It challenges our wide-held belief that we exist to support religious freedom, for instance. It makes us question the fact that we nominally say that we are committed to helping disempower people in our communities. You know, it is a moment where 19 people were put to death by the state, following rigid and strict legal principles in a gross miscarriage of justice. And, you know, it occurs at this origin point for the country where we live today.
1:01:16 Speaker 00 Next time on Short History, we'll bring you a short history of VE Day.
1:01:24 Speaker 06 The generations who lived through that time, they saw things that we can only imagine now, and they learned things. They learned the importance of standing up for freedom and not backing down and really standing by democracy. They learned what racism leads to. They saw it. If you don't stand up to racism and bigotry, it ends in the concentration camps. They saw this, they knew that, but we have to remind ourselves of it every day. That's what VE Day teaches us, I think, to stand up for democracy, to stand up against racism, and to stand together with our allies, rather than constantly sowing discord amongst each other.
1:02:05 Speaker 00 That's next time.
1:02:10 Speaker 04 You know, it's the time of the year when I'm always on the lookout for fresh fall options for my wardrobe. And I think I just found my new favorite sweater at Quince. It's the Cotton Fisherman Crew. It's relaxed, it's cozy, but yet still polished. It's one of those versatile pieces you can wear everywhere, to the office, out running errands, or a night out with friends. And as we head into the holiday season, this is definitely one I'll be adding to others on my list. See you. Quince focuses on high-quality staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14-karat gold, and Italian leather. All timeless, versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become everyday favorites long after the holidays. Their cashmere sweaters start at just $60, and the lineup doesn't stop there. They have premium down jackets, wool outerwear, and cashmere accessories.
1:02:55 Speaker 04 Everything you and your loved ones need to stay warm and look put together all season long. And when it comes to gifting, Quince has a lot more than clothing. Think fine jewelry, leather bags, hotel-quality bedding, chef-grade cookware, and five-star luggage. Basically, plenty of ways to find something special for everyone on your list. So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com and get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Still available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know what short history of it's the best way to support the show.
1:03:36 Speaker 01 Witness the beginning of the revolution.
1:03:38 Speaker 02 Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.
1:03:41 Speaker 01 Filmed for IMAX.
1:03:42 Speaker 02 Make them remember you.
1:03:45 Speaker 01 The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, November 20th, rated PG-13.
Previous The Egyptian Sphinx Next VE Day Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated