You know the game, right? Stand in front of a mirror in the dark, say the name three times, and wait for something terrifying to appear. Bloody Mary, Candyman—these urban legends tap into primal fears. But what if the monster you’re expecting isn’t the one you’re going to see? What if understanding monsters isn’t about what’s lurking in the dark, but about why we put it there? It’s time for The Thing About Witch Hunts podcast to go deep into the hushed shadows to speak up about monsters, folklore, and the psychology of fear because witches are monsters, and we need answers.
What makes someone monstrous?
Why do we keep these terrifying figures alive in our stories, our myths, our collective imagination?
And most unsettling of all:
Why do we treat humans as monsters?
Fear and Monsters
We fear ourselves and our capacity for cruelty, our potential for transformation into something monstrous. We fear that monsters exist and that they will come for us. Monsters are designed to trigger our fight-or-flight response, and they intersect with our deepest anxieties, cherished values, repressed desires, and greatest hopes. A good monster knows exactly where we’re vulnerable.
A goblin is a classic monster (Image: Gemini)
What Is a Monster?
A monster is whoever crosses the line. It violates our sense of natural order, breaks the rules for how bodies should look, how creatures should behave, how people should act. Monsters embody transgression. They are too big, too hungry, too powerful, too different, or too much like us in uncomfortable ways. They can be supernatural, like vampires, werewolves, demons, and ghosts or physically aberrant like fairytale giants, futuristic hybrids, and the unstoppable undead. But monsters can also be entirely human. And we do monsterize humans. When we strip away someone’s humanity in our minds, when we decide they’re beyond redemption or understanding, we create a monster.
The Classic Monsters: Vampires, Werewolves, Ghosts, and Demons
Before we talk about the monsters we make of each other, let’s look at traditional creatures of myth, folklore, and horror. Understanding what makes them frightening reveals what we fear most.
Classic monsters from scary stories and legends are designed to terrify on multiple levels. They appear scary with distorted faces, unnatural proportions, and bodies that shouldn’t exist. They act scary, moving in ways that violate nature’s laws, appearing where they shouldn’t be. They speak scarily, in riddles, with threats, or seductive lies. Monsters are fundamentally untrustworthy. The vampire offers immortality but delivers endless hunger. The fairy promises wishes but twists your words into curses. The demon makes deals that always have a catch. They traffic in trickery and scams, offering what we desperately want, while hiding the terrible price. What makes monsters truly powerful is how they intersect with our deepest anxieties, cherished values, repressed desires, and greatest hopes. The vampire in folklore and horror stories embodies our fear of being drained both emotionally, spiritually. It’s parasitic intimacy, immortality at the cost of humanity. The werewolf legend is our terror of losing control, the beast within breaking free. The ghost can’t let go of the natural world because of unfinished business, the past that won’t stay buried, or the fun of haunting the living. Demons in mythology and paranormal tales corrupt and possess, taking away your agency and self. Traditional monsters understand us better than we understand ourselves. They know exactly where we’re vulnerable, and they go straight for it.
Classic Monsters are Common Sites around Halloween (Image: Gemini)
Who and What Do We Find Monstrous?
We’re built to identify what feels dangerous, what disrupts our sense of order and safety. That’s why we find monstrosity in humanity. The person who violates our spoken and unspoken rules about how people should look, love, worship, or live becomes a social monster. Danger exists in every category, including our own. Throughout history, we’ve projected fears onto marginalized groups, turning real people into monsters through prejudice, propaganda, and persecution. The physically different, the culturally foreign, the socially divergent have always been deemed monstrous by those who wanted to diminish their power. An important distinction: actual dangerous people exist. This discussion distinguishes between them and the monsters we create from innocent people like alleged witches, past and present, innocent of harm but guilty of being vulnerable.
The Witch as Monster
Fictional Witches occupy a special place in our monstrous pantheon. They’re the ultimate transgressive figure. Women with power in societies that denied them agency, practitioners of forbidden knowledge who traffic with the supernatural. This witch is dangerous because she refuses to be controlled, lives outside set structures, knows things she shouldn’t know and is willing to harm.
Alleged human witches occupy our actual living world taking the brunt of our violence and fear. Alleged witches are family and friends, as well as strangers. They may be health practitioners, independent women, or property owners. They may have dementia, a disability, or albinism. The same human called beloved in one context becomes a witch in another. The difference isn’t in what they do, it’s in who’s afraid of their agency.
The Monster as Mirror
Monsters don’t just represent what we fear outside ourselves. In fact they reflect what we fear within. Every monster embodies some quality we recognize and revile in human nature: the vampire’s parasitic hunger, the werewolf’s savage impulses, the ghost’s inability to let go, the serial killer’s capacity for cruelty, the witch’s intention to harm. When we create monsters, we can externalize our own repressed desires, darkest impulses, and most shameful traits. We can take everything we don’t want to acknowledge about humanity and give it form through art while pretending we can defeat it “out there” instead of confronting it “in here”.
Why are Monsters Useful?
Monsters serve vital psychological and social functions. They give form to formless anxieties, let us rehearse fears in controlled environments, and create boundaries that help us define ourselves. We need monsters to:
Process collective trauma and cultural anxieties
Explore taboo desires and forbidden territories
Establish and test moral boundaries
Create social cohesion through shared enemies
Experience catharsis through symbolic confrontation
Entertain ourselves with delicious fear in safe contexts
Test faith and belief
But we also need monsters because they give us something to overcome. Monster stories can ultimately give us triumph over fear, find our courage, make us clever, or help us prevail against impossible odds.
Winning Against Monsters
When we face down the creatures of our nightmares, we have an arsenal: we hunt them with persistence, outwit them with strategy, fight them with courage, find their weakness:silver bullets, wooden stakes, sunlight, true names. We deploy protective magic, use special powers, form teams, refuse to believe, solve riddles, or uncover conspiracies. Sometimes we can redeem them, sometimes only punish them, and sometimes we expose them to authorities who will end their reign of terror.
Why We Kill the Monsters We Create
Once we’ve fully monsterized someone, a terrible logic takes hold: if they’re truly monstrous and not human, then killing them isn’t murder. It’s pest control. Complete dehumanization justifies elimination in ways that partial othering cannot.
When communities face real crises, like sickness, loss of resources, or social upheaval, they need to deflect blame through scapegoats. The witch must be permanently removed to “cleanse” the community. Fear of contamination drives the violence: the perceived witch’s evil can infect others, so elimination becomes necessary.
Public execution creates social cohesion through shared violence. The community bonds over destroying the monster together, reinforcing who’s “in” and who might be next. The killing becomes its own justification: we killed them, therefore they must have been guilty.
When the Monster Wins
Monsters have their own playbook: they scare, trick, and lie. They infiltrate, poison, possess, bully, oppress, lure, and cause doubt. They change forms, become invisible, impersonate those we trust, target our vulnerabilities, invade our dreams. Monsters and human monsters converge when they turn us against each other through triangulation, scapegoating, spreading misinformation, dehumanization, stoking fear, and exploiting divisions. Do you recognize these tactics? They’re the same strategies used by abusers, tyrants, and hate groups. The danger isn’t just in the shadows, rather it comes from positions of power and from within.
The Future of Monsters
Monsters evolve with us. Each era creates the monsters it needs, embodying its particular anxieties. Have you viewed our recent podcast episode, Ain’t Slender Man Scary? with Sean and Carrie? You should hit play when you finish this read to learn about new monsters in the digital age. No matter how much our monsters change, they’re always performing the same function in showing us ourselves, challenging us to be brave, reminding us of our boundaries, and occasionally inspiring us to redraw those boundaries with more compassion and less fear.
Fear and vigilance take their toll. Who do you need to better understand? Relief comes in releasing fear—people aren’t dangerous because they’re different. Real danger lies in actions that harm, not in difference itself. We defeat monsters by acknowledging the ones within ourselves and refusing to become them, even when we’re terrified or hurt. Every persecution began with someone deciding another human was monstrous. The monster teaches us what we’re capable of becoming.
Josh Hutchinson: [00:00:00] “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Exodus 22:18. Welcome to another episode of Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast. I’m Sarah Jack.
Josh Hutchinson: And I’m Josh Hutchinson.
Sarah Jack: In today’s episode, we are joined by Dr. Scott Culpepper to discuss satanic pacts, the Connecticut witch trials, John Winthrop, Jr., and the Satanic Panic.
Josh Hutchinson: We’re really looking forward to our conversation with him.
Josh Hutchinson: He gave a wonderful talk about the Connecticut witch trials in Sioux City, Iowa in August, and we have many follow up questions.
Sarah Jack: We’ll take you to the interview shortly. But first we’d like to share the story of a couple accused of [00:01:00] witchcraft in Connecticut.
Josh Hutchinson: Joan and John Carrington of Wethersfield, Connecticut were accused of witchcraft in early 1651.
Josh Hutchinson: Unfortunately, almost nothing is known about Joan, except that she was John’s second wife and was likely in her forties when she was killed. A little more information is available for John, who was by trade a carpenter. He was born in approximately 1602 and migrated to the new world in 1635, aboard the Susan and Ellen with his first wife, Mary. In 1650, he was fined 10 pounds for trading a gun to a Native American.
Josh Hutchinson: This was a very large sum for him as his estate was valued at a mere 10 pounds and nine shillings after debts were subtracted. Within months of the gun trading fine, the Carringtons were accused of witchcraft for supposedly entertaining familiarity with Satan and using his help to do things beyond natural human abilities.
Josh Hutchinson: The record is vague about what preternatural [00:02:00] acts the couple committed. What is known is that the Carringtons were condemned for supposed witchcraft in March 1651 and likely hanged shortly after sentence was passed down. At the time of their deaths, the couple is believed to have been raising two children.
Sarah Jack: Thank you, Josh, for sharing that tragic story of the Carringtons.
Sarah Jack: I’ve met several family researchers through witch trial social media accounts who descend from this couple. Often their discovery of the Carringtons’ trial is what introduces them to the witch trials outside of the Salem trials.
Josh Hutchinson: I can’t wait to talk to today’s guest. Shall we?.
Sarah Jack: Dr. Scott Culpepper has served as a professor of history at Dordt University for 10 years. He specializes in the Americas and British Isles with a particular emphasis on the intersections of politics, religions, and popular culture in the Atlantic world from 1500 to the present. One of his courses is Witch Hunts, Wars and Reformations. Josh and I connected with Dr. Culpepper through our witch trial social media accounts this past [00:03:00] year. When we began to launch this new podcast, we knew we wanted to have one of the first episodes with Dr. Culpepper.
Sarah Jack: Now let’s start the conversation.
Sarah Jack: We appreciate you taking this time to spend talking with us today.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you, Dr. Culpepper for coming on our show as one of our first guests.
Scott Culpepper: No, it’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Sarah Jack: We’ve enjoyed watching a video of a talk you gave in Sioux falls, Iowa, about which trials in Connecticut. We’ll link to that in our show notes.
Sarah Jack: And we have several questions about your presentation in the Connecticut witch trials.
Josh Hutchinson: We’d like to learn a little more about the origin of the witch hunts in the late medieval and early modern periods. Can you tell us how the idea of the satanic pact originated?
Scott Culpepper: Absolutely, or at least I can give you a broad outline.
Scott Culpepper: There are many questions still about the exact origins of the notion, but it seems to emerge in the middle part of the medieval period, probably around 1000 or so. And it becomes [00:04:00] increasingly popularized throughout the late medieval period. The Malleus Maleficarum, which was issued at the end of the 15th century is one of the most notorious texts, which really pushes the notion, satanic pact that witches are not just practitioners of folk magic or manipulators of regular natural forces, but the magic they unleash has got additional fuel, so to speak, because it’s empowered by a pact with the devil himself, that Satan himself is infusing their acts with diabolical magic.
Scott Culpepper: And it really seems that that sense of satanic influence in the relationship with the witch and in the activities of the witch begins to rise and really ascend to the fore from about roughly 1450 to 1800, during what’s often considered the critical age of witch trials in the early modern period.
Scott Culpepper: You really see that perception of the relationship of the witch to satanic [00:05:00] power begin to take over the narrative to become the dominant perception of healing and magic. And it’s really interesting that happens because there is this interesting sort of fluidity between say strict Christian theology and what we might call pagan or neopagan practices of the Germanic and even Roman period in popular literature and popular lore.
Scott Culpepper: You often see them marching hand in hand and Christianity often incorporating and assimilating aspects of the supernatural that were at one time more the province of pagan lore. I was teaching a British Isles class last week. We were talking about the King Arthur cycle of legends. Hey, you do you have Arthur who is incorporated by later Christian interpreters as this idyllic, ancient Christian king.
Scott Culpepper: But at the same time, he’s got this very fascinating wizard figure beside him, Merlin, who has these unnatural powers or maybe natural powers. That’s part of the discussion, what is the [00:06:00] basis for his power? And it seems often that power comes from a very ambiguous place at best. And so you’ve got that fluidity for a long time.
Scott Culpepper: And then as you get closer to the end of the medieval period, there begins to occur this hardening of the categories. And there have been a lot of speculations about why that’s the case. Some point to the reformations, both the Protestant reform movements and the Catholic reform movements, and will argue that some of the antagonism that emerged between different sides of those very furious religious debates may have helped fuel paranoia and anxiety that Satan is at work amongst the populace in a special sort of way and the witches are his agents to do so. It, becomes a way to deal with those in society who are considered to be malcontents or outliers, problematic persons who don’t quite fit the mold, and women are especially ripe for that kind of persecution, because women have their certain place in medieval and early modern society.
Scott Culpepper: They must be attached to a man. They [00:07:00] must play a certain role of deference to authorities. And if a woman in some way lies outside of that, she’s a widow or she was never married, or she’s not attached to a particular family, not under the authority of a particular man, maybe in some ways she defies the traditional deference by asserting herself in ways that her contemporaries find to be unpleasant or challenging. That makes them very ready targets for accusations of witchcraft.
Scott Culpepper: And so this whole idea of the satanic pact, this notion of witches conspiring with the devil to cause harm, it becomes a tool in many ways to address the fundamental threats and anxieties of people during this period. And so that seems to be where it arises from, this notion that theological and ideological opponents and sometimes political and social opponents are evil. They disagree with me. They go against the grain of the established social order. Therefore, they must be fundamentally evil and misguided and ultimately must be inspired and [00:08:00] empowered by Satan himself.
Sarah Jack: Thank you for explaining that very complex influence that the satanic pact has had on the course of witch trials.
Sarah Jack: My question was going to be what influence, but you gave us a really wonderful, complex explanation of their influence on the course of the witch trials. Is there anything else you would want to add to that?
Scott Culpepper: Just that it really raises the stakes in a very powerful and fundamental way.
Scott Culpepper: There’s little room for negotiation or compromise. It really makes a lot of these trials ultimate decisions about ultimate good and evil, with few shades of gray. It really plays into the hysteria and the radicalizing of these trials, because there’s little room for negotiation, there’s little room for accommodating someone when you begin to perceive that they’re an existential threat to society.
Scott Culpepper: It also removes some of that ambiguity about the nature of [00:09:00] magic, and we’ll get into this more with John Winthrop, Jr., but because he and his associates are so invested in the study and practice of alchemy, and they do have a certain appreciation for what they perceive as the ability of natural forces to enable them to perform acts that almost could be considered magical in terms of discovering certain medicines or affecting metals in a particular way or improving society, they do have an appreciation that natural forces can produce certain effects, but they’re much more reticent to label all of those effects as inherently evil. Part of what Winthrop and others will bring to the conversation is a return to a sort of mediating ground, an idea that not all forces that can’t be explained are necessarily diabolical.
Josh Hutchinson: That was excellent. I learned a lot just in that couple minutes.
Sarah Jack: I’m thinking, to o, the Old Testament books, when God is giving the Israelites the [00:10:00] law and asks them not to confer with mediums and spiritists, it’s because that then was pact with the devil. Is that right? Were these authors looking at those scriptures and seeing that it was coming from there as a pact with the devil?
Scott Culpepper: It’s complex, because the devil’s appearance in the Old Testament is very scattered. And when you get into conversations with theologians and historical scholars, biblical scholars, they’ll debate quite a bit over which passages that seem to refer to Satan are actual referring to Satan, how early you actually get the formal introduction of Satan into the biblical Corpus. So you qualify it with that, but I would say yes, that in the sense that maybe a pact with Satan or with the devil or forces of evil, as they understand it at the time that those texts are written during the early Hebrew period of the Old Testament, or also connected to [00:11:00] other gods who are also considered to be presences.
Scott Culpepper: There is a sense where you’re not always sure, in those earliest books of the Bible, to what degree, the Hebrews reject the reality of other gods versus simply saying, we have fidelity to one God, but we acknowledge that some of these other deities that people worship, they might be active forces out there.
Scott Culpepper: So yes and all of the above, it could be a perception of Satan as the primary embodiment of evil, or it’s the idea that you’re in pact with these other gods who represent forces that are anti-God. And also in that historical context, those gods would be perceived as the patrons of their enemies, as well. These would be gods who favor other states, and so there’s a political and military component there, as well. And you see that, of course, as you probably know, continue into the New Testament period where early Christians tend to see the [00:12:00] manifestations of deity that are worshiped by Greco-Romans, by other people in that larger ancient world as possibly real personages but personages who are demons impersonating gods or goddesses.
Sarah Jack: Thanks for making that little jump with me.
Scott Culpepper: Yeah, that’s fascinating.
Josh Hutchinson: We have some guests coming up in the future who have done a lot of work on Matthew Hopkins, including Malcolm Gaskill, and Matthew Hopkins was the self-proclaimed Witchfinder General of England. And he authored the book A Discovery of Witches.
Scott Culpepper: Malcolm Gaskill is a great person to talk to. He is a fascinating and well informed authority on witch trials. That will be a great conversation. And yes, we believe that book probably had a great deal of impact on the way that the leaders of Connecticut were viewing the nature of witchcraft and the way that they believe that witch trials should be conducted at the time that Alice Young was [00:13:00] executed, who of course is the first person in America who was executed for witch trials.
Scott Culpepper: She’s the first colonist who pays with her life for the beginning witchcraft hysteria. And we do think that these leaders, especially the ministers in the colony were aware of Hopkins’ work. They were reading it as part of this transatlantic exchange of ideas, and it’s very likely that they are conducting these prosecutions with Hopkins’ book in hand.
Josh Hutchinson: Now I’d like to switch over to Connecticut. We spoke in episode one a little bit about John Winthrop, Jr. But for our listeners who haven’t heard that episode, can you briefly explain who Winthrop Jr. was?
Scott Culpepper: He is a fascinating historical figure, and sadly too often overshadowed by his father’s history, because more people are familiar with the early history of Massachusetts Bay, which John Winthrop Sr. has tremendous influence over, than they are the early history of Connecticut. And I’ve encountered a lot [00:14:00] of people who don’t even have a clue that John Winthrop Jr existed, which is very sad.
Scott Culpepper: Winthrop Jr. lived from 1606 to 1676. He was trained as a lawyer. He also trained at Trinity College in Dublin. Had a career of distinguished service in England before he eventually immigrated to the colonies. At one point, he is even involved in a military expedition to go relieve the Protestants at La Rochelle, which was a very disastrous sort of expedition launched by the Duke of Buckingham under Charles I, but he even is engaged in a military exploit at one point, which doesn’t turn out well, but it’s his claim to some military experience, I guess.
Scott Culpepper: He was raised as a Puritan. I mean, he’s raised in a devoutly Puritan family. John Winthrop, Sr. certainly has a reputation as being one of the staunchest of the early American Puritan leaders. And he seems to have conveyed those sensibilities to his family. His son seems to have followed those religious commitments to a [00:15:00] degree, but he also incorporated with them a devotion to this rising fascination with alchemical science, which is personified by a lot of people during that period. Francis Bacon is one example of someone who’s a very revered scientific figure who had an interest in alchemy as well.
Scott Culpepper: There’s a fantastic text, a biography written by Walter Woodward, which really explores Winthrop’s alchemical interest and ties it to a larger European network of people who are interested in alchemical philosophies. And a lot of people associate that with primarily transforming metals into other forms, which is probably the popular way that people would access alchemical thought.
Scott Culpepper: And that was a facet of it. They did believe that by discovering the secret formulas in the natural world they could maybe transform metals, produce better medicines. Winthrop Jr. actually engaged in a lot of medicinal production in colonial America, which is part of what [00:16:00] lent him the authority that he had in these witchcraft cases, because he was seen as one who could understand the manipulation of natural forces.
Scott Culpepper: These men and sometimes women, as well, had an expansive vision of how alchemical thought could transform the world, and they saw it as working in tandem with their Christian beliefs. Woodward goes so far as to label it Christian alchemy and talks about how these people still have their Puritan theological core, but they believe there are natural forces that can be legitimately manipulated and it’s not diabolical to do so, that in fact, it could be divinely sanctioned.
Scott Culpepper: They have this utopian vision that in some ways they can use alchemical thought to manipulate both the natural world and human societies to create a better world. And so he incorporates that vision and it may be that, it may just be his personality, who knows all the causes, but Winthrop Jr., though he is very devoted to [00:17:00] reform theology and Puritan thought, it’s a much gentler and more tolerant version of puritanism than what you see with his father. And in fact, later on, there will be tensions between the two Winthrops, both because of disagreements over the future of Connecticut and Winthrop Junior’s role there versus what Massachusetts Bay wants to see happen in Connecticut, but then also their temperaments are different as well. Their emphases are different. Whereas Winthrop Sr. could be a little bit hard nosed, he’s much more a hold the line sort of person, let’s draw the lines tightly, Winthrop Jr. Is more attuned to nuance. He’s more tolerant of difference and recognizes that things are just more complicated sometimes.
Sarah Jack: And do you think the differences between his father and himself is what was part of the reason he moved to Connecticut?
Scott Culpepper: Possibly, probably that, and then just the reality that every kid wants to strike out of their own and maybe be a little separate from their father as well. A lot of that is hard to [00:18:00] decipher because obviously they’re reticent about talking about it too openly, but it does seem like there is a different vision, and Winthrop Jr. is a very entrepreneurial sort of character as well, so it’s in his personality to strike out on his own.
Scott Culpepper: He’s about building. He likes to start new works. He likes to be involved in new initiatives. He was involved very soon after he got to the New World in the founding of Saybrook on behalf of some English Lords who had acquired some land there.
Scott Culpepper: And so that initially takes him out of the Massachusetts Bay orbit. It brings him a little bit further north. And from that point, his destiny seems to be set in the direction of New Haven and in the direction of Hartford. 1646, he founds New London, and New London interestingly enough was intended to be a prototypical alchemical community.
Scott Culpepper: New London was envisioned as an almost utopian experiment in seeing if the alchemical philosophies could be fleshed out in real life and create the kind of community that could inspire [00:19:00] and change the world for the better. And so by that point, his center of gravity is very much directed towards that part of New England.
Scott Culpepper: And so when it does come to the point where they’re debating, okay, should Connecticut be separate? And what about New Haven? Should Connecticut and New Haven be joined together? He very much has his own ideas about that rather than going along with the ideas that his father holds about those alignments.
Josh Hutchinson: That was really fascinating. I didn’t know that about New London at all. But once he got established in Connecticut, how did he start to get involved in witchcraft cases?
Scott Culpepper: It’s almost like in the Godfather Part II, where Michael Corleone says, ” just when I think I’m out, they pull me right back in.”
Scott Culpepper: It was not something that he really set out to get involved in. But he is very involved in creating medicines. This is one of the things among many other ventures that he’s connected to.
Scott Culpepper: He founds an iron works. He founds a [00:20:00] grist mill and in New London, he and his associates are working to produce better cures. And so he has seen as something of a healer and a medical expert. And that’s the context in which he’s called upon to get involved in a case that involved a woman by the name of Elizabeth Goodman, who was accused of causing these fits that were occurring that several women were experiencing, where they would just have these strange manifestations, have these spells, would often feel like they’re being afflicted by supernatural powers. This is about 1653 when all of this is happening and they call him to New Haven to help with this particular case.
Scott Culpepper: And he uses his alchemical knowledge and his ideas about the manipulation of natural forces to argue that there are other ways to produce these symptoms. So it’s really interesting how this works. So we’re gonna see this as a continuing thread. As conventional wisdom, what we often [00:21:00] hear is that the Enlightenment is what really kills off the witch hunts or not so much kills them off as ends their formal practice. Although obviously as we’ve discussed there are ways in which that’s still manifest today in other varieties and versions, but that’s ebbing of the classic age of witch hunts around 1800. Generally, we associate that with the emergence of the Enlightenment, with skeptical thinkers who questioned the existence of supernatural forces.
Scott Culpepper: And there’s truth to that. That is very true that those thinkers had a great deal of influence, but we often overlook people like Winthrop who had theological convictions and a belief in mystical practices that we would associate with almost pseudo scientific or spirituality, not necessarily hard science.
Scott Culpepper: These people from their stance could make some interesting arguments that were sometimes more acceptable to people on the ground than the arguments being made by the skeptical Enlightenment thinkers. [00:22:00] And Winthrop’s able to argue there are other ways to produce these manifestations, not saying that it’s not possible that Satan could afflict these women. He’s very open about that and very cautious to say that, because questioning it could be very dangerous at that point. But his response is, I think these manifestations are being caused by other things. I don’t think this woman is causing this through any kind of diabolical infusion of power. And so by 1655 h e is able to gain her release.
Scott Culpepper: And she is one of the first people. In fact, I believe she is the first person accused of witchcraft, Connecticut, who is not executed for the crime.
Josh Hutchinson: They executed the first seven people who were tried.
Scott Culpepper: Yes, that is absolutely true.
Scott Culpepper: So that’s his introduction to being an expert witness in witch trials. It’s not something he really savors, although he feels like he has performed a great service, and he’s glad to have been able to do that, but he finds it [00:23:00] distasteful. He, like a lot of educated people and elite people, is somewhat disgusted by the way the trials are conducted.
Scott Culpepper: The ministers oftentimes show their very worst colors at these moments. People like Samuel Stone, who is a notorious witchcraft persecutor, or prosecutor. Stone is just heavy handed. He can wedge a confession. He can get a confession from someone just to the sheer force of personality and his willingness to be as abusive as he has to be to get that confession.
Scott Culpepper: And there are other ministers like that, as well. Winthrop’s very disheartened to see these spiritual leaders acting in that manner. So it’s not something he really aspires to deal with, but as you probably already know, ultimately he is called upon to be the governor of Connecticut and to represent the colony at Hartford.
Scott Culpepper: And he actually doesn’t sign up for the job. He’s elected to it and then asked if he will do it and he ultimately says, yes, I will. Although it wasn’t something he [00:24:00] necessarily had sought highly. So from 1657 to 58, he serves his first term as governor. And then there’s a year when he is out of office, and then 1659 he is reelected. And from that point forward, from 1659 to his death in 1676, he is reelected every year. And his role as governor means that he is going to have to deal with the cases of witchcraft that arise. He’s not gonna be able to avoid it. And in fact, he’s been given a great opportunity, because with that governmental authority, he has great discretion in deciding how the tribunals are going to be made up.
Scott Culpepper: He later on, once the charter is passed for the colony, once he receives that in England is going to have some veto power over sentences that are rendered by juries. So this places him very well to have an influence on mediating and decreasing the frequency of witchcraft prosecutions.
Josh Hutchinson: You answered so many of our [00:25:00] questions.
Sarah Jack: I’m thinking who slipped him our questions ahead of time.
Sarah Jack: I was going to ask how his differing beliefs on witchcraft they’re different than some of the other powerful men, whether they’re powerful religiously or like he was, how did that affect things or his career, but you even answered that talking about his position and the power he got from his position to be able to stop some really scary things and have an impact on the direction of some of these cases.
Scott Culpepper: He was very well respected and very careful. And so for the most part, I never get the strong sense that he’s in any real danger until we get to the case of Katherine Harrison. I think right at that point at the very end, there was a moment when he could have been in some danger, but he navigates that very well. And along with Gershom Buckley he’s able to transcend that crisis, but he’s very smart. He plays it very well. Like you say, he [00:26:00] states it so carefully that it’s hard to hold anything against him, even those are inclined to can’t really indict him for the reality of witchcraft, but you get the sense that even though he affirms it gently, there’s a great deal of skepticism. And I don’t think it’s skepticism about the possibility of it happening. I do think he’s being honest there, but as you see later in some of the documents they released during the Katherine Harrison trial, I think they probably are sincere in those documents when they state that they think if it happens at all, it happens rarely because of certain conditions they believe in about the natural world, certain conditions that have to be present for that kind of diabolical manipulation to happen. So I think it does serve him well, as you say, because it gives him a platform amongst those who are desperately convinced this occult persecution is real.
Scott Culpepper: And he’s able to address it from an insider’s perspective, which seems is often the most [00:27:00] effective way to do it, or at least in the past it has been. I’m not sure it works as well today as it did in the past. It seems like in our present time, all bets are off. All authorities are questioned, but if you can find an insider who can keep that insider status and make the arguments within the community, it seems like it often has an effect.
Sarah Jack: That is what it would take. And especially some of the problems they’re having in Africa right now , because it’s so ingrained in the superstitious fear and the attacking of those they fear. They would have to have somebody like that. Someone like that could emerge, but we’ll have to see.
Scott Culpepper: One thing that’s sobering to me is that I’ve encountered missionaries and other people from the U.S. who go to those places, and they come back convinced of the reality of those things, and so it has this effect of fueling the resurgence of those kinds of beliefs over here.
Sarah Jack: The witch fear, the devil fear, the demon fear. I’m not surprised to hear that. I can just imagine, they’re [00:28:00] outside their normal environment, they don’t have their deep roots and support and scary things are happening and people are raging.
Sarah Jack: So I’m sure that’s some very scary experiences for people that are visiting those cultures, people in those cultures. It’s very scary for them too, I’m sure. I was gonna ask, how do we know so much about Winthrop Jr? Is it from diaries? Is it just from the case documents?
Scott Culpepper: It is both the case documents, which the case documents are sparse in some cases and a little more plentiful in others. There are repositories at university libraries and public archives where you can find trial transcripts.
Scott Culpepper: We’re hungry for more. At one time we didn’t even know Alice Young’s name, and then we discovered the notation that revealed her name, so hopefully there is more out there to be discovered. So you do certainly get information about his interactions with the witch trials and those accused in those documents.
Scott Culpepper: And then the [00:29:00] Winthrop family papers are in Boston, at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and both Winthrop Sr. and Winthrop Jr’s. papers are there, journals, business documents, charters. There’s a wealth of information there for anybody who’s interested in exploring that family’s life.
Scott Culpepper: Obviously Massachusetts has invested quite a bit in trying to preserve that history, especially because it spills beyond Massachusetts to other former colonies as well.
Sarah Jack: Thank you for mentioning that resource for everybody.
Josh Hutchinson: Earlier you mentioned that Winthrop Jr. disagreed with some of the trial procedures, and in your video you had mentioned one thing that was going on in the trials was bringing in spectral evidence. What were Winthrop’s views on spectral evidence?
Scott Culpepper: He took a very dim view regarding spectral evidence. And that was really one of the worst aspects of the witch trials in both Europe and the Americas, because how do you mount a [00:30:00] defense against something like that?
Scott Culpepper: Someone accuses you of afflicting someone with a harmful condition, and your response says I wasn’t there. I was at home. I was at home with my spouse. How could I have possibly done this? And the response is it was not you, it was your familiar spirit which went forth and afflicted this person. At that point, you’ve got no defense, and I think Winthrop and Gershom Buckley really ingeniously dealt with that problem. During the prosecution of Katherine Harrison, there was a petition put to them by some people who were disagreeing with how they were handling the case, asking them to explain their position and justify why someone else should not be put in charge of administering the case so that the people could be sure that things are being done well.
Scott Culpepper: And Gershom Buckley was a part of drafting the response, and a part of that response addressed this issue of spectral evidence and essentially their argument was so you see, say Katherine Harrison making it appearance. In fact, one [00:31:00] person said that Katherine Harrison’s head appeared on the shoulders of a pig and then disappeared, but they knew it was Katherine Harrison’s face, even though the pig was quite a distance down the road, several feet away.
Scott Culpepper: And the response of Winthrop and Buckley was how do you know that this was a manifestation of Katherine Harrison? Could it not be Satan taking on the guise, the form of Katherine Harrison? Which sort of stopped them in their tracks, and they’re thinking we didn’t really consider that. And so they’re able to raise enough doubt about the genuineness of these manifestations that it becomes basically a non entity in witch trials, at least in Connecticut.
Scott Culpepper: Now what’s sad is that later on the Mathers, Increase and Cotton, they become a little more open to it, and Cotton in particular talks about it being a possibly valid way to explore accusations, and of course then Salem. You get the acceptance of spectral evidence at Salem, where it’s already been dismissed [00:32:00] and made a non entity in Connecticut. You see it erupting again, as the means for ferreting out who is a witch and who is not.
Scott Culpepper: So they, I think ingeniously dealt with that and it begins to render some of the danger to witchcraft victims, witchcraft suspects in Connecticut to be less lethal. They’re still mistreated. You still have trials all the way up until 1697.
Scott Culpepper: But I think that questioning of spectral evidence really does a lot to make them less reticent to convict these people of death.
Sarah Jack: I think it probably stopped the snowballing of the hysteria, really, because I feel like the spectral evidence just built on itself, and the next person had a bigger story and a wilder story, and people would get caught up in it.
Sarah Jack: Can you tell us more about what a colonial charter would’ve been and why did Winthrop have to go to London to get it?
Scott Culpepper: They are vital to giving official recognition to the [00:33:00] existence of a colony and stating what its relationship is to the crown. They generally will state what the colony owes the crown, how the crown views its relationship to the colony and what the political structure of the colony should be as endorsed by the crown.
Scott Culpepper: If you’re gonna engage in a colonial venture, you usually want to have one in hand. Now famously in the case of Massachusetts Bay, the leaders of Massachusetts Bay secured the charter, and then they departed with the charter. Usually you leave it in the hands of the society for planning colonies or Whitehall, they have a copy of the charter.
Scott Culpepper: Massachusetts Bay took off with their charter to protect it from interference because they’re trying to establish a very what they saw as unique sort of experiment, and they don’t want the crown interfering, especially during the period in 1629 when they first departed for the colonies. Because this is the period when Charles I first is in power, he is not kindly inclined towards the Puritans, and so they do that sleight of hand, in order to [00:34:00] remove their charter for the possibility of being revoked or adjusted by the monarchy. When we get to the story of Connecticut, it’s a very complicated story, and you’d had people who had left Massachusetts Bay to establish their own settlements. There was some question about how those settlements related to Massachusetts Bay.
Scott Culpepper: You had these population centers like New Haven and Hartford, each of which had a claim to being the major settlement in the area. And in New Haven, you’ve got this venture moving towards eventually starting another university, which gives New Haven more standing down the road, and there are already whispers about that sort of venture that possibility.
Scott Culpepper: So there are a lot of complexities there. Once the charter is forged, it’s gotta settle this question of whether Connecticut is going to encompass all of that area or whether you’re gonna have separate settlements, separate colonies, one centered around Hartford and one centered around New Haven.
Scott Culpepper: Of course, they ultimately opt to combine the [00:35:00] two, which is probably a good decision in hindsight. Winthrop had to go to London to get it, because it had to be approved by parliament, had to be stamped by Whitehall. It had to have the endorsement of the king, and another good reason for his going was that the political situation was very tenuous at that point.
Scott Culpepper: By 1662, Charles II has become the monarch. He is now the restored monarch of England.
Scott Culpepper: His father Charles I had been executed by his subjects, many of whom were Puritans serving in parliament, some of whom fled the country and came to New England when Charles II became king, some of them settling in Massachusetts Bay and in Connecticut. And so Winthrop knows that he’s going to have to use all of his skills of persuasion and tact, because he is essentially asking Charles II to sign on to a colonial venture that contains regicides.
Scott Culpepper: There are actual regicides there who signed off on his [00:36:00] father’s death that he could decide to go after, could decide even to execute for treason if he chose to do so. One of those persons was Winthrop Jr’s father-in-law, who was connected to the regicides, as they were categorized by Charles II’s supporters.
Scott Culpepper: He probably would’ve had to go anyway, because that kind of negotiation really required the personal presence of the person who would be serving as governor, the person who had been serving as governor, but even more because of that, in a sense they have to make their apologies. They have to do their mea culpas to get the King’s grace because of what happened to his father.
Sarah Jack: And how would’ve he smoothed that over?
Scott Culpepper: Likely by pledging their fidelity. There are no detailed records that show that, but pledging their continued fidelity and arguing that they are productive subjects and citizens, no possibility of them repeating what happened before at this point and pointing to the high productivity of the colony, those places [00:37:00] where they’ve been very successful at business ventures, at production, at sending economic fruits back to England in various forms.
Josh Hutchinson: While he was away, things didn’t go very well in Hartford, did they?
Scott Culpepper: No. And in fact, it really testifies to the influence that Winthrop had. It would be very possible to be somewhat skeptical that one man had that much ability to check the violence of the witch trials, were it not for the fact that as soon as he leaves the lid blows off, things get very bad, very fast.
Scott Culpepper: There’s this young woman named Elizabeth Kelly who begins to fall into a very deep illness, and it proves to be a fatal illness. And she alleges that she sees one of her neighbors, Goody Ayers, who is coming in to torment her while she’s suffering from this sickness. And at one point Goody Ayers comes to visit her, having heard the rumors and walks over [00:38:00] and says, “child, you know that I’d never come to harm you.”
Scott Culpepper: But it’s against her later, they say, oh, she has come to in the flesh, do what she had been doing in the spirit. And so Elizabeth Kelly’s charges spark a renewed fervor for witch hunting. And soon you have things really moving outta control. Another woman, Anne Cole, also falls ill, and she makes similar accusations, and the people that are accused by her, some of them ultimately become the ones that are executed once more for this crime.
Sarah Jack: The aspect of sickness and finding a reason for it and deciding it must be supernatural, is that tied to people being judged also? It’s interesting to me that they wanna blame another resident, a neighbor, or a family member for sickness.
Scott Culpepper: It’s very sad and sick that it’s so dangerous to be a healer during this period.
Scott Culpepper: And maybe we could even compare it to some of the dangers that [00:39:00] doctors and nurses confront today, sometimes. They are sometimes blamed when things happen that are beyond their control, and we understand better the forces they’re dealing with now. During this period, the early modern period, there’s still so much that’s a mystery about medicine, about what makes someone ill, why people die, about childbirth.
Scott Culpepper: One of the crazy things that happened during this round of witch trials is that when Elizabeth Kelly dies, they have her body examined by a man who’s supposed to be an expert. Had Winthrop been there, he probably would’ve been the one to examine the body, and he examines her body, and he notes several things as signs of diabolical manifestations that we know today are just normal features of a body that is beginning to decompose, but he very authoritatively pronounced this a case of diabolical influence based on his perceived expertise, which was very lacking.
Scott Culpepper: So midwives, they’re in a very [00:40:00] dangerous position. When someone loses a child, of course, objectivity flies out the window. Very often the midwives are subject to being blamed for the death of an infant, even if they do everything they can, because they’re grasping for someone to blame for some reason.
Scott Culpepper: And you really have this whole position where if you believe that God is sovereign, and God rules all things, then you’re confronted with two possibilities. Either one, God has allowed this to happen for some reason, or two God’s enemy satan is somehow subverting things. And really, I don’t know that gets you out of your theological and intellectual bind there, because if you say God is sovereign he is sovereign even over Satan, but for a lot of people, that was a comfort, if they could introduce the activity of Satan there then they found a way to maybe get around the idea this is just something that happened. Rather, they have someone to blame. They have a reason for it.
Sarah Jack: And then [00:41:00] the people that they’re accusing, they’re right there, so there’s a thing that they can blame.
Scott Culpepper: And so many of these animosities are feeding off of previous issues as well. In a lot of cases, you discover that there have been disputes about land boundaries or there have been personal fallings out that then later on animate people’s desire to find someone to blame. They have people already ready at hand who they have resentments toward.
Josh Hutchinson: I know in Hartford, they executed a total of four people. You mentioned a couple of them in the talk we’ve been referencing in Sioux City. One that I found interesting was Rebecca Greensmith. What can you tell us about her confession?
Scott Culpepper: She is an interesting character. She was the primary person that Anna Cole cited as being the one that caused her illness, and Rebecca Greensmith was rough hewn, and she was very blunt. She’s [00:42:00] exactly the kind of personality that is ripe for accusations of witchcraft.
Scott Culpepper: Because as we were talking about earlier, she is one of these women that defies the standards of deference. She is not going to be basically talked down to, and she will talk down to you if you try. And that doesn’t play well in this society at this time. They brought her in, and they interrogated her. Samuel Stone was a part of that interrogation.
Scott Culpepper: And at first she seemed to be holding pretty fast, and she was fairly defiant, but after a little while, she broke, and when she broke, it was just like a flood of things began to issue. She named at least seven other people, one of whom was her husband, Nathaniel, and he also is going to go to the gallows with her. He will be executed as well.
Scott Culpepper: Two of the others were Mary Barnes and Mary Sanford. They’re the other two victims who were executed in this Hartford panic that breaks out in the early 1660s. And it’s really a fascinating thing. The [00:43:00] first person in America to make such a confession was a woman named Mary Johnson, who was the second person accused and executed after Alice Young.
Scott Culpepper: And the psychology of it is just fascinating. You live in an environment where you’re constantly told that you were born in original sin, that you are inherently bad. You’re inherently sinful. And so when they start accusing you of these things, and that sense of depravity is so complete, like that theology is probably one of the ones that most focuses on human depravity, and it is hard to find optimistic views of human potential there. It’s present in some forms of reform theology, and it can be very present, but very often, especially in puritanism, as it was being practiced in New England, that sense of condemnation is very overwhelming. You have to have a very powerful sense of God’s grace to balance it to have any kind of healthy sense of self.
Scott Culpepper: And so you get these people who are [00:44:00] raised in that environment, and you get somebody like Mary Johnson, who was guilty of some things, guilty of theft, guilty of adultery, things that actually were cited as crimes or sins, and then you start telling her she is a product of diabolical influence, and you’re always left wondering when you read these confessions to what degree they’re saying these things to save their lives and to what degree they have decided I’m bad in this way. Maybe I’m bad in every way. I’m sinful in this way. Maybe what they say about me is true. I’m always left wondering when I read them, how much of this is someone desperately trying to save their life? And how much is this them falling prey to that idea that because I’m sinful, maybe I’m even worse than I think I am. Maybe what they say about me is true.
Josh Hutchinson: That’s a really fascinating point. I know that also came up a lot in the Salem accusations. People started to question whether they were really witches, because they did sin in other [00:45:00] ways.
Scott Culpepper: One of the most interesting confessions ever I think is the confession of Tituba in the Salem trials.
Scott Culpepper: She is an epic storyteller and she really delivers a confession that’s blood curdling, and that it touches all the points the Puritans wanted to hit. And I’ve always wondered. I still am fascinated by it, and I wondered to what degree she believed what she was saying and to what degree she’s saying, this is what these people want to hear, and I will give them every bit of it because things are very dangerous right now.
Sarah Jack: I was thinking about Mary Esty’s petition, how it came near the end of the executions, and her confidence in her spiritual spot was so different. What she was able to articulate is very different than what happened when these other victims were tortured and pressured and threatened and scared and intimidated.
Sarah Jack: And she got off and then was brought back in, and still, she, wrote [00:46:00] that. So it’s just such a swing to the other side, then the way some of these other women found a place to put their feet.
Scott Culpepper: Imagining the strength of character, the fortitude that it would take to stand up against that constant pounding and maintain your innocence, knowing that maintaining your innocence, telling the truth is probably the surest road to condemnation.
Josh Hutchinson: When Winthrop Jr. returned from London, is he the one who stopped the Hartford panic?
Scott Culpepper: He is. In fact, again, you could doubt, or you could be skeptical of how much influence he as an individual had were it not for the fact that when he leaves things just immediately go to an insane level and upon his return very quickly things begin to be restored to their more peaceful setting that he had been able to bring things to earlier the 1660s.
Scott Culpepper: When he returns there’s one woman Elizabeth Seager who is being tried at that point, and it was very possible that she could have been executed [00:47:00] along with the others, because she was accused along with them. And it only waited for her to be formally condemned and executed for her to die and immediately upon his return. Winthrop gets involved in that case. He questions the basis by which the evidence was gathered to convict her.
Scott Culpepper: And ultimately she is freed and she does survive. She, like a lot of others do have to leave. And one critique you can make of the ebbing of the witch trials in Connecticut is that sometimes in order to secure their survival, you do have to exile people. This is what happens to Katherine Harrison as well.
Scott Culpepper: Winthrop does secure her survival, but it’s at the cost of her having to remove somewhere else. Course once all your neighbors have accused you of witchcraft and vandalized your livestock and attacked your home, you’re probably okay moving at that point. It’s probably okay to relocate.
Josh Hutchinson: My next question is about Katherine Harrison. How was it that Winthrop Jr. was able to intervene and spare her life?
Scott Culpepper: This one to me is the [00:48:00] most interesting of all, and in a sense, this is the apex of Winthrop’s involvement with the witch trials. After that, the precedents he set seem to hold, even in the future prosecutions that occur leading up to 1697. It is in a way the make or break moment, because it’s here that you see the most resistance to the path that he has forced and the example that he is setting.
Scott Culpepper: You do see a minority of colonists organizing to try to overturn Winthrop’s will and that of the court.
Scott Culpepper: .Katherine Harrison was a very fascinating person. She had started out fairly poor, at a middling stage, and then she had married into a very prosperous family, and then her husband dies in the mid 1660s, and he leaves a bequest to her and to her children, which is pretty significant. It makes her a very wealthy person. It makes her one of the more significant landowners in the area. And whether it be that, whether it be complications from her personality. I It seems to be a little bit of both. There were some people that seemed to [00:49:00] resent her holding that status as a woman, even after she put a lot of the inheritance from her husband in trust for her children, administered by friends of the family, people who are men, there’s still a lot of criticism, and it seems like she had some bad relationships with some people in the community.
Scott Culpepper: Those people accused her of levying curses and attacking their livestock through supernatural means. And the stories just mushroom. Spectral evidence was at the heart of a lot of it. And ultimately she is confined to prison. Tried twice. She is imprisoned in 1669. She is tried. She is ultimately released, and then she is confined to prison again, 1670 and 1671.
Scott Culpepper: And so she has to undergo a second trial, and the pushback really occurs when that second trial happens, because a lot of people were insisting that Winthrop was wrong to influence her release, that his questioning of the spectral evidence and his questioning of the [00:50:00] basis of her condemnation was misguided.
Scott Culpepper: And it’s at this point that those forces that are opposed to Winthrop seize the opportunity to try to undermine his authority. They will actually send a petition to Winthrop and the court stating that Winthrop and Gershom Buckley, who is the local minister and one of h is very close friends and associates, also a person who is sympathetic towards alchemical beliefs, that they should both step aside and that other individuals should be empowered to try the case, because there were questions about their impartiality. And ultimately the way that they address this is that Gershom Buckley drafts a deposition of sorts that is a response to both the petition and to questions that have been submitted by people that were curious about their methodology for exploring witchcraft accusations. And in that document, which I’m sure was a collaboration with Winthrop and others as well, he covers some specific areas. As we talked [00:51:00] about previously, the validity of spectral evidence, he covers the practice of accepting the testimony of only one person as an indicator that a spectral event has occurred. After this, it’s going to be the standard that at least two people have to witness an event at the same time in order for it to be validated.
Scott Culpepper: And that becomes a pretty good way to secure the acquittal of many accused witches from that point up until Salem. For the most part up until Salem, nobody claims, hey, we’ve seen a spectral manifestation en masse. Of course, Salem ends up destroying that defense, because all of the young girls together claim to be witnessing supernatural manifestations in the courtroom.
Scott Culpepper: But in Connecticut, it’s a pretty powerful defense because they’re able to avoid two people being able to claim that they had witnessed this kind of spectral event. So it’s a moment when they’re able to define some precedents for the future that [00:52:00] render those trials still uncomfortable, stressful, terrifying for those who are accused, but not lethal from that point forward in Connecticut.
Scott Culpepper: So it really is a make or break moment. And it’s sad because Harrison had lived in the community at Wethersfield. Even though she is freed, she essentially has to leave the community, and she later goes to Westchester, New York. It doesn’t sound like things were a lot better there for her. We don’t have firm records about the rest of her life. We’re not even completely sure about her death. Some say it may have been in 1682, but it looks like she signed away the custodianship of her fortune and of her children’s part of that to others, in order to protect herself against accusations of mismanagement and to tamp down some of those fears of what this woman who’s outside the normal boundaries of society might do with her inheritance.
Scott Culpepper: I’m very excited that the Connecticut [00:53:00] Witchcraft Exoneration Project is pursuing the exoneration of those who are accused. It’s time. It’s well past time, and I’m glad to see similar things like that happening in places like Scotland, in Massachusetts. I hope it continues, because the very least we can do is remove the stigma from these people. And I think it’s great that as part of that, this educational work is happening as well.
Scott Culpepper: It’s exciting to see that happening. And I hope more people will start to explore this history, because it both reveals some important stories that we don’t need to forget for their own sake, because it involves real human beings who suffered and who’s hardships and whose experiences need to be remembered.
Scott Culpepper: But also because it speaks so powerfully to our own times, because as much as we would like to think that we are beyond these things these things just go underground and then they emerge again, or they manifest in other forms, and we always have to be alert to their [00:54:00] reoccurrence.
I’m working on a project right now that centers around the satanic panic era from the mid sixties to basically I’m gonna carry it up to the present day.
Scott Culpepper: It’ll probably end formally in about 2016 or so, but I’ll have an epilogue which carries it up to the present time, and it is very much connected with these conversations we’re having about the witch trials, because the more you explore the Satanic Panic, the more you start to recognize the same tendencies, the same sorts of delusions, the same styles of propaganda, the same accusations in different ways.
Scott Culpepper: You look at the witch trials, and you’ve got accusations of women diabolically influencing the health of children through the agency of Satan and you think, oh, we’re well beyond that. Fast forward to the 1980s, and you have the McMartin preschool trial, where people are digging up the grounds, looking for hidden tunnels where Satanists have been attacking children and engaging in all kinds of sadistic acts.
Scott Culpepper: As much as we would like to think we’re beyond this [00:55:00] history, it is very much present. And part of what I explore in that project is not only how it affected popular culture at the time, but how it continues to have a ripple effect. As recently as the last two or three years, you’ve had things like Pizzagate and you’ve had QAnon conspiracies.
Scott Culpepper: And so much of this is old wine in new wine skins. It’s like the old stuff in new forms, basically repackaged for a different age, but still drinking from the same.
Sarah Jack: We are really looking forward to hearing more about that, and when you are ready to come back and have that conversation, we’ll be right here.
Josh Hutchinson: We want to thank you for being on the show. It’s really been very educational and eye opening.
Scott Culpepper: Yeah. Thank you very much. I’ve enjoyed it. It’s been fun to talk, and I’ve enjoyed seeing things that you’ve posted on Twitter and the conversations back and forth. So it’s fun to put names with faces.
Sarah Jack: I really appreciate this [00:56:00] conversation. I learned a lot, and I appreciated you fielding some of my extra questions.
Scott Culpepper: Yeah. Thank you very much.
Josh Hutchinson: And thank you. It’s been great talking to you.
Sarah Jack: It was so nice to meet you.
Scott Culpepper: Same here. Nice to meet you too. All the best with the podcast and everything else as well.
Sarah Jack: Thank you.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you.
Josh Hutchinson: Now it’s time for more on the witch hunts happening now. Take it away, Sarah.
Sarah Jack: Thank you, Josh.
Sarah Jack: Which hunts happening in your world.
Sarah Jack: Who can intervene?
Sarah Jack: This segment is about real people targeted, abused, murdered, or in danger of death due to witchcraft superstitions today and those who can intervene. In previous episodes, I discussed how witch hunts are human rights violation and that many African countries are currently in the midst of actual witch hunts.
Sarah Jack: Do you recall the name of the organization that works to stop the toleration of witch accusations and hatred in Nigeria? It’s the Advocacy for Alleged Witches. [00:57:00] Recently, Leo Igwe, the AFAW’s vocal advocate, tweeted asking United Nations leaders and organizations that purport to grow worldwide leadership and empowerment for women why they remain silent on which persecutions of women in Africa.
Sarah Jack: He asked them publicly and even states he has been trying to collaborate with these groups to take a proactive approach, but with no success. Keep asking, Leo. During this episode, we discussed with Dr. Scott Culpepper why John Winthrop, Jr. was able to change the course of the Connecticut witch trials and end the witchcraft executions in the 17th century.
Sarah Jack: We acknowledge that, like the American colony witch trials, it may take inside power and leadership within these modern witch hunting communities to disrupt the aggressive behavior.
Sarah Jack: We also are experiencing a long wait, and damage is done to the innocent while we watch and wait, let’s support all innocent people being targeted by superstitious fear, by acknowledging and sharing their stories. Please [00:58:00] use all your communication channels to be an intervener and stand with them. Share what you’ve learned here.
Sarah Jack: When you tune into the latest episode of Thou Shalt Not Suffer podcast, we will break acknowledge the latest witch-hunt happenings in your world.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you for another informative news segment, Sarah.
Sarah Jack: And now we’ll hear from Tom Mattingly and Jami Milne of Ballet Des Moines about their upcoming ballet Salem.
Tom Mattingly: I have always loved ballet as a vehicle for storytelling, and I think that there can be so much left to interpretation with the subject of witchcraft and that interpretation lends itself really well to ballet. So what I’ve done with Salem is I’ve taken inspiration from the historical events to create a fictional story, one that could have happened during the time, but isn’t necessary a recreation of actual events.
Tom Mattingly: Fear itself is very powerful, [00:59:00] and when we are led by fear rather than reason, there are horrific consequences.
Tom Mattingly: The character of fear is very important to this ballet. Fear is played by one of the male dancers in our company, and he is not a townsperson of Salem, but he is a constant presence and influence on the entire cast, so he really interacts a lot with the girl. The girl is the one who is making the accusations of witchcraft. She feels fearful from the pressures of the people around her, and especially her father, the preacher, to continue accusing and testifying against the people of Salem.
Tom Mattingly: The Salem Witch Trials has always been a captivating subject. One of the main reasons I chose the witch trials for a ballet is because I knew it was something that would capture people’s attention.
Tom Mattingly: I hope that people are moved by what they see and think about how they view others, if they’re viewing others [01:00:00] with kindness, with the benefit of the doubt, if they’re giving a chance to these people that they don’t know. I hope that they are inspired to learn more about the Salem Witch Trials themselves.
Tom Mattingly: It is a fictional story that I’m creating, but every element is based on historical fact. A lot of it is different people from the past kind of combined into become one character, like the Mathers with our preacher. There is one character who attempts to defend his wife, who has been accused, and he himself gets accused of witchcraft and demonic possession. Even down to the costuming, it’s going to be a modern reinterpretation but based on the strict puritan dress codes of the time with the muted colors, being covered up, those natural fibers, no lace, no ribbons, very much bare bones, utilitarian in a lot of ways.
Tom Mattingly: Same thing with the set design, too, of these furniture pieces that can be used in many different configurations [01:01:00] so that our meeting house can serve as a place of worship. It can serve as the home for the trials themselves in the courthouse. Our set even has a different modular design to become the gallows when one of the characters is hanged.
Jami Milne: Tom and I were talking just this last week, and he said, “everyone knows the end of the story here. There’s not a surprise, because we all know the Salem Witch Trials and what happened.”
Jami Milne: I don’t want anyone to forget the power of a somber ending and this idea that great change can come, feeling so emotionally disrupted that you have no choice but to think differently upon leaving. And I think that will really be the power of audiences walking in the doors and then leaving with very different emotional state.
The music for Salem will primarily be Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.
Tom Mattingly:Rite of Spring is typically the story of ritual sacrifice, [01:02:00] and in a way, I feel like that’s what happened with the Salem Witch Trials. It became this ritual of accusations, trials, and hangings that just continued over and over until it was finally put to an end. And it’s an amazing score. It’s difficult as a dancer, because it’s difficult to count and the melodies are so surprising, but the overall effect, I think, is incredible, and it takes this kind of animalistic quality. And the dancers are really able to embody it, especially in these group scenes at the church or at the gallows. It’s really moving.
Tom Mattingly:Salem will be performed at the Stoner Studio Theater in downtown Des Moines, October 20th through the 29th.
Tom Mattingly: Tickets can be purchased at balletdesmoines.org
Josh Hutchinson: And now we bring to you special interview with Michael Cormier and Myriam Cyr of Punctuate4 about Saltonstall’s Trial, a play about the only judge who quit the Salem Witch Trial’s Court due to concerns about the nature of the [01:03:00] proceedings.
Josh Hutchinson: If you’re in the Boston area, please attend the stage reading on Thursday, October 27th at 7:00 PM at the Modern Theater in downtown Boston. The reading will be followed by a talkback with Marilynne K. Roach, author of The Salem Witch Trials and Six Women of Salem, and the presentation is brought to you free of charge by the Ford Health Forum at Suffolk University. Visit punctuate4.org for tickets.
Michael Cormier: I am an amateur historian about the Salem Witchcraft Trials, been for a very long time. And I kept in my reading, coming across the name Nathaniel Saltonstall. And of course, Haverhill, Massachusetts has the name Saltonstall all over it, because that’s where the family started, very famous New England family.
Michael Cormier: And every time I’d read about him in the books, it would have maybe a paragraph that would say that he was [01:04:00] appointed one of the nine judges on the trials. And of all those judges, he was the only one who quit in protest over the conduct of the trials. So I was always wondering what would make this man do that when nobody else did?
Myriam Cyr: And then the story is really about how this judge is going to be taught by the women who were accused to see the truth, as opposed to the fake news that was being put forward. And what’s amazing about the play is that it speaks so much to cancel culture and fake news and what is truth and what is not truth.
Michael Cormier: And it highlights the Saltonstall family as a family that’s being immersed in this whole tragedy from the point of view of the powers that be. Because Nathaniel Saltonstall was a Harvard graduate and grandson of English [01:05:00] aristocracy. He was he was a well connected man.
Michael Cormier: He didn’t have to do what he did, so the struggle has a lot to do with, are we part of this whole community? Do we protect those people who are helpless? Or are we this upper crust of the Puritan society, and therefore we’re gonna go along with the program no matter whether they’re right or wrong.
Myriam Cyr: The play has a lot of drama, and it’s very exciting, and it’s a little bit like a, who done it in certain parts.
Myriam Cyr: And so it’s a very entertaining evening, and we see the witches on trial, the accused on trial. So we’re very excited to share it with the public, and what’s really exciting is that we have really all through all the steps of this process, we have kept checking in with the public as to what worked and what didn’t work.
Myriam Cyr: So we’re very excited and we can’t [01:06:00] wait to see people’s reactions to it.
Myriam Cyr: We do have three Elliot Norton Award winners that are part of the cast and who are lending their voices to this and sometimes stage readings can be even more exciting than plays themselves because as a member of the audience, you can imagine what all of this will look like, because you really have the words to rely on and the images that in the powers that these words conjure and it is, it’s like a spell. It’s like entering a spell. And there’s gonna be music, and there’s gonna be sound effects and but it will be very exciting.
Myriam Cyr: Saltonstall’s Trial can be seen at the Modern Theatre in downtown Boston at 525 Washington Street, Boston, 7:00 PM on October 27th, which is a Thursday, and [01:07:00] there will be a talk back afterwards with Marilynne Roach, who’s the author of Six Women of Salem and is very famous. She was interviewed on Jon Stewart, and she’s one of the world’s leading expert on the Salem Witch Trials.
Myriam Cyr: If you go to punctuate4.org, you will see a button that says reservations, and it will lead you to where you have to go. And also it’s a free event. And that is thanks to the Ford Hall Forum in Suffolk University who are sponsoring us.
Sarah Jack: And thank you everyone for listening.
Josh Hutchinson: This has been Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast.
Sarah Jack: Visit thoushaltnotsuffer.com for show notes and transcripts, and to learn how you can support us.
Josh Hutchinson: Follow us on Twitter @thoupodcast, Instagram @thoushaltnotsuffer, and Facebook @thoushaltnotsufferpodcast.
Sarah Jack: [01:08:00] If you have questions or feedback, email us at thoushaltnotsufferpodcast@gmail.com.
Josh Hutchinson: Like ,subscribe, or follow wherever you get your podcasts.
Sarah Jack: And if you like the podcast, please rate and review.
Josh Hutchinson: And tell your friends and family about Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast.
Welcome to Witch Hunt, an immersive journey through the intriguing and often misunderstood world of witch trials, both historical and contemporary. Each episode of our podcast peels back the layers of history, mythology, and cultural impact of witch trials, shedding light on how these events have shaped our understanding of justice, morality, and the supernatural.
Join us as we explore fascinating tales of witch hunts from the ancient to the modern day, delving into the societal, religious, and psychological factors that fueled them. Our podcast features expert interviews, in-depth analysis, and compelling storytelling that bring to life the complex narratives surrounding these trials.
‘End Witch Hunts News,’ a segment of our podcast, highlights ongoing global efforts to combat witch hunt practices and the challenges involved. Additionally, our popular ‘Minute with Mary’ segment uncovers lesser-known facts about historical witch trials, providing listeners with unique insights and perspectives.
Witch Hunt is more than just a podcast; it’s an educational and thought-provoking experience that invites listeners to reflect on the echoes of the past in our present world. Whether you’re a history buff, a folklore enthusiast, or someone intrigued by the interplay of belief and society, this podcast offers something for everyone.
Join our community of curious minds as we unravel the mysteries of the past and understand their impact on the present. Subscribe, listen, and engage with us as we journey through the shadowy realms of witch trials and their enduring legacy.
Happy Halloween has begun on our show. Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast hosts The Ordinary Extraordinary Cemetery podcast in a conversation around death and omens. Guest podcasters Jennie Johnson and Dianne Hartshorn share their research around burial rituals and animal signs. We discuss how omens and signs are interpreted in different ways by different cultures. Why is death feared by some and celebrated by others? Join us for our first haunted talk of the 2023 spooky season.
[00:00:06] Josh Hutchinson: Hello, and welcome to Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
[00:00:11] Sarah Jack: And I'm Sarah Jack.
[00:00:13] Josh Hutchinson: How's your fall going, Sarah Jack?
[00:00:15] Sarah Jack: I am so excited it's here.
[00:00:17] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, you ready for Halloween?
[00:00:20] Sarah Jack: Yes.
[00:00:21] Josh Hutchinson: I'm still working on putting my costume together. How are you doing in that department?
[00:00:28] Sarah Jack: I have all of it. I'm going all out for Sally this year.
[00:00:33] Josh Hutchinson: Sally?
[00:00:34] Sarah Jack: The nightmare before Christmas. She's not a witch, but she does have a bad vision, and she needs to warn Jack. So it actually goes with this episode, because she's sees this vision of Christmas and then it goes up in flames.
What do you have to get together for your Halloween costume?
[00:00:59] Josh Hutchinson: I decided this year I'm going to go as both a pirate and a witch and be a pirate witch. So I need a pirate ensemble and a witch hat and a cape and like a wand and a cutlass and a zombie parrot.
[00:01:19] Sarah Jack: That's awesome.
[00:01:21] Josh Hutchinson: So now I'm actually thinking of maybe becoming a space witch.
[00:01:26] Sarah Jack: Oh,
[00:01:27] Josh Hutchinson: honor of Starfield. I definitely want to do something witchy this year. And speaking of Halloween, we're so happy to speak with Diane Hartshorn and Jennie Johnson from the Ordinary, Extraordinary Cemetery Podcast.
[00:01:43] Sarah Jack: I had followed their podcast for a year before I had any idea that I could possibly be podcasting myself. So they're one of the first podcasts that I followed on social media.
[00:01:57] Josh Hutchinson: That's great. We'll be talking with them about omens, signs, portents.
[00:02:04] Sarah Jack: Welcome Dianne and Jennie, co-hosts of the Ordinary, Extraordinary Cemetery, a podcast that explores old cemeteries and the stories of the people buried in them. It's history. It's spooky. And they share great photographs and extra history on their wonderful social media. Be sure to find them today. We're so happy to have you guys visiting with us today. I'd love to hear more about you.
[00:02:30] Dianne Hartshorn: I'm Dianne Hartshorne, and it, we've been doing this for two, two, three years on the 8th of October, and how we got together was by sheer accident. Jennie and I were both in this Facebook group in regards to a tombstone restoration class that was going to be taking place up in Leadville, Colorado, and we just started chatting back and forth, but the class got canceled, and this was right at Covid October of 2020, and she just reached out to me and said, "Hey, would you like to do this with me?"
And I'm like, "oh my gosh, I have never done this before. I don't know." So I asked another friend, I go, "what do you think?"
And she's, "if it doesn't work, you can always not do it."
I'm like, "oh, okay."
And then, so I don't wanna sound cliche, but the rest has been history.
[00:03:25] Jennie Johnson: That's okay. She sounds cliche. I know. I completely threw her off when I had asked her to do our podcast with us, because I didn't even know what I was doing when I first said, "let's do a podcast." So I just wanted to be able to put out more information about cemeteries. I love digging up the stories of the people that are buried in them, especially people that aren't famous. There's a lot of like TikTokers and Instagrammers and stuff that do famous graves, and they talk about who those people are. And so that's easy to find, but there wasn't really anything out there for the stories about just the everyday people, but they had an impact on their communities or their families.
And that's what started our podcast. I had been doing a bunch of research about the cemeteries up near Central City in Colorado, and I, so I had all this research that I had done, and I didn't know what to do with it, and I didn't want to write a book about it. So I said, "let's just do a podcast." And because Dianne has a lot more preservation information than I had at the time, and she'd been doing it for a long time, I wanted her to join me so she could talk more on that part of the subject on how we do the preservation and taking care of headstones. And because I was just starting to learn that at the time, so I needed somebody that had more experience with that. And that was Dianne. So that's how we got together and started the Ordinary Extraordinary Cemetery Podcast.
[00:04:49] Dianne Hartshorn: Yes.
[00:04:50] Jennie Johnson: And yeah, we're super excited.
[00:04:52] Sarah Jack: I'm so glad that all came together. You're filling a really important need.
[00:04:57] Jennie Johnson: Yes, it and interestingly, like Dianne said, we started our podcast in 2020. It launched in October, and there was one other podcast out at the time that was doing cemeteries, and that was Tomb With a View podcast, but Liz has a different approach generally to how she covers cemeteries. She does a lot more with the architecture, stone carvers, not quite as much about the stories like we do. So we've actually, both podcasts have covered some of the same cemeteries, but from different viewpoints. So that's been really interesting.
But, with the exception of that podcast, there weren't any others out there about cemeteries that weren't paranormal related. And I was looking for something that wasn't par I mean, I love a good ghost story, don't get me wrong. And I watch ghost hunters and I watch kindred spirits and all of that, but I wanted something that had more of the history and the real stories about the real people. And since it didn't exist, I decided I should create it. So that's how we got into the whole world of podcasting, creating what wasn't there, which I think you guys have done very well with your podcast, too. There's definitely podcasts where they've done episodes on witchcraft here and there, or they've talked about the same, like we've talked about the Salem Witch Trials, but like the fact that you guys really delve into so many of the stories about witches and all of that is fascinating to me. And you created what wasn't there.
[00:06:20] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, there's definitely no other show like it in the States. There is Witches of Scotland. That's the only one that's really, like our format kind of that does witch hunts specifically.
[00:06:39] Jennie Johnson: And you've covered some stories that are lesser known, too, for the witch. I mean, you've covered some more well known ones, as well, but there's a lot of, there's a lot of witch stories out there and witch hunting that happened that people don't always realize was part of history, and you guys have covered some of those really brilliantly, which is great because again, it's something people want to know more. I think there's a lot of people that want to know more about it but don't know where to find that information. And you guys have done an excellent job presenting that information.
[00:07:10] Sarah Jack: Thank you so much. There was even more out there available for us to share than I had any comprehension of. So I'm so glad, though, that we've created this catalog of experts and researchers, and if someone does want more information, there's just so much. They probably don't even know where to start at this point, 'cause we have so many. But yeah, I'm really glad that all the information has come together and new stuff comes to us every week. I'm sure you guys experienced that as well.
[00:07:41] Jennie Johnson: Oh yeah.
[00:07:41] Dianne Hartshorn: Yeah.
[00:07:41] Jennie Johnson: Dianne has said it time and again, we've learned so much from what we thought we knew when we started, to the things that we've learned, especially from our guests and things.
[00:07:50] Dianne Hartshorn: And just.
[00:07:51] Jennie Johnson: Blows our mind.
[00:07:52] Dianne Hartshorn: In American history, there are so many stories that when we first started this, it was like, I didn't learn this in school. I didn't learn this in school. And it's and it seems and Jennie's really good at finding those stories that we basically weren't taught in school. So we, they're, they're fascinating. It's so much better than what we have been taught. And that's why we love sharing that, because there is just so much more out there that we need to know.
[00:08:21] Jennie Johnson: They're nuggets, they're like little gold nuggets that we find and then we can expand on those and, hopefully, our listeners have learned some things, too, but I know, and I know, and I've seen it even on stuff that we post on our social media, because I will post stuff there that doesn't make it into our podcast episodes, but just other interesting tidbits about stuff, and I've had plenty of people comment, "oh my gosh, I never even knew this, didn't know this was there, or I've been to that cemetery, but had no idea that this person was buried there." So that's always a lot of fun to see the impact that what we're sharing with everybody has on them.
[00:08:59] Josh Hutchinson: I like that you emphasize the real stories of real people. It's important for people to be remembered for who they really were.
[00:09:10] Jennie Johnson: Yes, and it gives us, I think sometimes. And again, this was where the paranormal ones get away from it. And in those podcasters and sometimes shows and stuff, you forget in a cemetery when they're trying to make it creepy and scary and all that, you forget that those people that are buried there lived like lived real lives and they had emotions and they had children and they had jobs and they had good things happen to them and bad things happen to them.
And I think people forget that sometimes when they just want to tell a good ghost story and that you lose sight of, what I say, the humanity of it, but these were all real people and I, if we can find their stories and remember them, I think that makes it so much better. And you can still have the ghost story there, too. That's fine, but just put the humanity back in these cemeteries. And when people go to visit, then hopefully that makes them stop and think when they're looking at particular graves about who that person might have been when they were alive and what they might've been doing in their lives. That and certain things that parallel our modern lives, too. So I like having that comparison.
So today we brought for you guys, and I was so excited when you reached out about this. So the reason we get to be on your show today is because you had reached out about a post I had made a while back that had a crow in the cemetery, and I had quoted the movie The Crow about crows leading souls to heaven or something. I don't even remember the exact, I should know the exact quote, I've seen that movie a million times, but that's how we got here today.
So we did some more digging into death omens, and this was actually good timing for us, because we had talked about doing something similar on our own podcast with this for October, because we do get a little spookier in October than we do the rest of the year.
But I went into digging up some omens and some taboos that are somewhat connected to cemeteries, more often connected to death itself. But death means different things around the world. Every culture has its own connection with death, and some cultures actually celebrate it, others fear it.
Like, it's interesting when you start to dig into death and burial rites and those kinds of traditions, how different cultures treat death. And then the omens that have come about, which a lot of them, or at least the ones that we looked at for today with you guys, we were able to connect to, in a lot of cases, witchcraft and witches, and that's how certain stories have happened. And then you end up with the big witch trials, especially the further back in history you go.
But so we thought we'd start out by defining an omen. I actually went and looked up the actual definition of omen and the actual definition of taboo. So an omen is an event regarded as a portent of good or evil, and it has prophetic significance. So that's an omen.
And then a taboo is a social or religious custom prohibiting or forbidding discussion of a particular practice or forbidding association with a particular person, place, or thing. Like I said, the one that had interested you was the one about crows, and crows and ravens together, in different cultures, they almost cross over as far as what they signify, but crows often in a lot of cultures can mean illness or death is coming if you spot so many of them together, they're in a certain configuration or whatever, but there are other cultures that think of crows as guiding souls to heaven, like the souls can, or whatever heavenly body. And with ravens specifically, so there's Norse tradition that ravens delivered messages to Odin between the dead and the living. So they And Odin was their biggest god out of all their gods, and so ravens had that significance, but you see it in other things, but the other reason crows and ravens and even vultures get a bad rap, especially when you see them in cemeteries, is because they are scavengers, that's how they eat, so they're attracted to any place where there's going to be dead bodies, because that's going to feed them, and I think a lot of their like scariness of people attached to it is because you've seen them on battlefields after in the past, especially you have all the dead from the battles and those birds come almost immediately and start helping themselves. And cemeteries, I'm sure they can smell things that, even though the bodies are generally buried or in the crypts or whatever, they can still smell death. So they tend to hang out in those places. So they get a bad rap, I think. Unfortunately.
[00:13:53] Dianne Hartshorn: And do you think through literature and the gothic romance era that, with our boy Edgar, that he that sort of just warped maybe more of the I don't want to say maybe more the spiritual connection with the crow and then that crow became that omen, that spooky creature that is bad and instead of good. And because in some of the Native American stuff, a crow is not looked upon as evil or foreboding.
[00:14:24] Jennie Johnson: Yeah. Especially Native American cultures, crows are generally a kind of a revered animal. It's more of a, from like an English and Irish.
So this day and age with people having so much access to the internet and being able to look things up, I think this is where cultures cross sometimes. You get omens that seem really scary or significant from one culture that crosses over to another culture. And I think people will look at that and go, "Oh, that's really interesting." So that's what started all this was the crows.
[00:14:56] Dianne Hartshorn: Then you get our precious little black cats in there as well, too, as being omens. And Jennie and I personally know that black cats are freaking awesome. And I think the other thing with death omens and that is learning and respecting and appreciating different cultures and their death and burial practices, because Jennie mentioned here, the Navajos and the Native Americans, they would have their own very specific rituals involved with, death and that. And then since, unfortunately, that some of their practices may have been looked upon as being pagan or primitive, it wasn't really respected by the people who came to settle this land and actually they would take the body and bury it away from living areas. And in a way we followed that, where cemeteries started moving from the churchyard out away from the community. Next, I think a lot of that had to do with, that was valuable land.
And I think a lot of it is when we learned a lot through, like, archaeology and all that with burial practices, but then I think when people do that, they have taken away the sacredness when they discover things and then they don't quite understand maybe what was left there that may be looked at as being very primitive, where from the Native American's perspective, it might've been something very, very sacred at now lost because we didn't understand it.
[00:16:41] Sarah Jack: Such a devastating point because you mentioned, you know, the lens of the settler, the European settlers, here was we don't understand their culture and their practices, so it's witchcraft or it's evil. Their practices were very sacred to them. It's so unfortunate when cultures don't recognize what is sacred to other cultures just because of fear.
[00:17:05] Jennie Johnson: And you have to think, too, so going back like to the Navajos specifically, they actually, and I think it's still true today for, especially for those who've really been able to go back to practicing their own traditions again. They have a fear of death, because they, and it's more, it has to do with like your spirit or your soul getting trapped here in, on earth, rather than moving on to where it's supposed, wherever it's supposed to go afterwards.
And so a lot of their burial practices have to do with making sure that soul gets contained or gets sent into the right place, because you don't want that, because if the soul gets trapped, it's not going to be the kind, loving, respectful person that it was in life. It becomes something very twisted and dark.
And so you don't want that trapped soul here. So they, one of the things they do that I know the European settlers found very odd and weird, when somebody died, if they died inside their hogan, which is their traditional sort of house, if they died with inside the hogan, they would actually burn the hogans afterwards. Nobody else was allowed to move into them or live in them, because again, you could be trapped in there with an angry spirit that didn't get to move on to where it was supposed to go. So that's one of those kind of practices. And there were other tribes that did that.
The Apache did that, as well. If you had somebody who died inside of a place, you got rid of the place, you didn't keep it, you didn't move on and use it again for somebody else, which again, from the European standpoint, when they came, that just was like mind blowing to those people because you would inherit things, and you would move on, and you would move into those places, but that's not how that those cultures thought of that. It became very sacred to help that spirit not be trapped and to move on and go where it was supposed to go, so I find that interesting.
But at the same time, there's other cultures. So there are the Malagasy peoples, they are from Madagascar. The Malagasy is like the big term for all these tribes that are in the Madagascar region, and they have African and Asian heritage mixed together. That's what the Malagasy are, because of where they're located, but they have a practice called, and I'm hoping I don't butcher this too much, because it's a kind of a tricky word, but it's Famadihana and it's, which translates roughly into the turning of the bones.
Every five to seven years, they have this practice, where they open up their tombs or their vaults, and they actually remove their deceased ancestors, they redress them in fresh burial garbs, and they have them out, and they eat and drink and dance and have this whole ceremony, because they're honoring their ancestors, and then they put them back inside their tomb, but they put them upside down in their fresh garbs. They put them back upside down, so like on their heads quite literally, because it closes the cycle of life and death when they do that, and then they close it all up for another five to seven years, and then they'll do it all over again.
But they have a very strong belief that they're the deceased ancestors are that connection, those physical bodies are sort of their connection between the earthly realm and the spiritual realm. And they have a lot of practices that border on Christianity and other practices, because they took up with some Christianity. So they have certain beliefs that they follow a very Christian thing. So they do believe in like God and stuff, but then some other practices can go beyond that. And so this is one of those things where I know people from other cultures would be like, "why are you dancing with your dead relatives?" But it's because they're intervening on their behalf. Those dead relatives are intervening with God on the behalf of the living, and so they have a very close connection with death, and they don't view it quite so fearfully or negatively as like other cultures do.
So it's similar to what they do, you know, for Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead celebrations that they have in parts of Mexico and parts of South America where they're honoring their ancestors and the love and the life that they had. It's that same sort of celebration. So again, depending on where you're at in the world, the connections to death are very different. But I think it's really cool.
[00:21:28] Dianne Hartshorn: Yeah, because what was, you know, Halloween, became All Souls Day. All Saints Day, we have lost, I think we've lost a lot of that, because I believe All Saints Day and All Souls Day, or I may be saying it backwards is more of a Catholic ritual belief. So when trying to get away from that, then they made that stuff evil, and sort of, I don't wanna say they warped Halloween because, and then I think here in the States, especially with death and mourning, we want to forget it and get over it so, so quickly 'cause and not even put out there that we are in mourning or this you know, whatever around that. Because I have a friend who's, who grew up in the Philippines, and when her mother died, they don't bury in big, elaborate, expensive caskets and that, and her mom was placed in a shroud into a crypt. I mean, she has since moved her mom to another cemetery and that could be part of the reason, but what was interesting was when she was flying back home, and I think, and I didn't know how this came about or how she got her or anything, um, she had mentioned to the stewardess or somebody, it could even have been before that she was, you know, returning home after her mom's death, and somehow she ended up being given a black pin that she could pin to her blouse.
So basically it was like you know, going back into the Victorian age of how it was almost an elaborate display of mourning. I don't want to say they turned it into a trend, but you know, it was just like everybody, it was very, I don't know, I don't want to say romantic, but they sometimes took things to the extreme, where I mean, my friend was able to wear that pin home, and they signified that she was in mourning,, and I think she was supposed to wear it for 40 days and she signified that she was in mourning so that way she didn't, people honored that and I think with some of these omens and that they have been warped because either we don't understand them, or we don't, we try to push death so far away that we forget it's basically, unfortunately, an everyday part of life.
[00:23:57] Jennie Johnson: Yeah, there's, especially in Western cultures like ours, death is more feared than it is revered. And that's a little scary to people. In creating some of these omens, when it relates to things that people see, to the animals that are around, to all of those things they, I think it tries to help people maybe process death a little bit differently and either to use it as a warning to be like, "hey, stay away from the cemetery, stay away from sick people, stay at whatever, because you're going to die, this could be bad."
And then again, a lot of things go back to our fear of witches and witchcraft, especially European cultures, because in Europe, witches were horrible for centuries. Like we were after them for forever. And so there's all these things that relate back. And now I think in a more modern age, I think a lot of people look at these things, and they laugh it off, and it's not as scary or upsetting anymore, but for a long time, that was the warning of if you see this, if you see the crows and the ravens hanging out in the cemetery, you're going to be the next one to die type thing. And there's a lot of those kinds of omens, especially related to animals, which I find interesting. The birds, owls are another one that a lot of cultures are afraid of. It's interesting because with owls, a lot of the fear around those for the omens comes from a lot of South American cultures. If you hear it, if you're hearing the owls hoot, that could mean death within your household immediately. Like if an owl comes and sits on your rooftop and starts hooting, that's an omen of death, like, headed in your direction, which I find so fascinating, because I love when the owls come and hoot.
But also, you know, black cats, if they cross your path, you're supposed to die.
And well, I would be dead so many times over at this point, because I've had black cats forever in my house. And, uh, that omen has never come true for me, so.
[00:25:59] Dianne Hartshorn: No, they're the best cats. I'm sorry.
[00:26:02] Sarah Jack: One of the things that popped into my mind is how the finality of death is, like, immediate for a lot of the Western culture here in America, and we're, like, trying to shut the door and move on, mourn privately. We're all still trying to figure out the stages of grief and where we're at, you know. We don't have these practices that walk us through those, and then what I'm learning from you is that a lot of these cultures, it's just like a new phase of the relationship, and they continue their connection to them, even in death. They're not shutting that door.
[00:26:36] Jennie Johnson: There's a lot of the cultures, life and death are very intricately connected, and most cultures have some sort of a belief in some kind of afterlife. And it's, and even Christianity, the goal is when you die, you're going to go to heaven or you'll go to hell or where there's somewhere you're going to go and continue on, but a lot of cultures have that sort of afterlife belief or a reincarnation belief is another one that they have. So even if your physical body is no longer being useful, you still have a soul or spirit that's going to go somewhere. And I think for most cultures, the beliefs that they built around that was to help people through the grieving process and not to shut it out and say, "yes, you can be sad that physically this person no longer sits next to you at the dinner table, but we know they've continued on into this other world, and they're doing the things in this other world that they did in life."
You go back to the ancient Egyptian cultures and the way they buried their dead with all the grave goods and things they were going to need to continue living their life in the afterworld. They gave them their food and their dishes and their clothing and all those things in the thought that you're going to need it in the next life, and so I do think we as Western society became more fearful of death and a lot of that goes back to certain things, too, like all the different plagues that ran through Europe and the way people died horrible, tragic deaths. The black plague was a nasty disease and it was very scary to watch people die. And it would happen so fast. Somebody would get sick and be gone within a day or two, and it was very terrifying to watch people die like that. And so I think a lot of our traditions in Western culture then stem from things like that. Like we've become fearful.
And then there came a time where all of a sudden we had to be very stoic and serious about death. And even still, as you mentioned, people are uncomfortable with the idea of death. And when somebody dies for somebody else, like people don't necessarily know what to say, feel like they should say something or what to do, because there's not necessarily something you can say or do to make somebody feel better about a loss of a loved one. There's not always words there, or there's very empty words. So then people get uncomfortable, then they don't want to be around the person who's just lost somebody because they don't know how to act or what to say. And then the person who's actively grieving then goes into this, "oh, I have to just put it behind me, and I have to move on, because nobody's going to understand this."
And again, by creating omens or taboos about death, then in our brains, it gets stuck there that this is, this is wrong and we can't think like this. And we have to just move on, even though we know logically grief can last a very long time. It can take years to get over losing somebody, and there shouldn't be a time limit for how long somebody grieves. You should just be allowed to be sad and still live your life.
But if you can make a connection with your deceased loved ones in some way, I think that's very helpful to a lot of people. And like you said, there's a lot of cultures, they, death and life are interconnected and you have to have one to have the other.
So yeah, I was having fun researching some of the other ones. So some of the other omens that we came about that have to do with animals, I thought this one was interesting cause I'd never heard of it, but white horses, especially in Europe, this was especially European, but if two white horses are pulling a hearse, hearses when horses still used to pull hearses, a death will occur in the town within a month. Also, if you saw a white horse at night, that could be an omen of death coming for you.
[00:30:24] Dianne Hartshorn: I wonder if it's from revelations, because it talks about the white horse.
[00:30:30] Jennie Johnson: Oh, it could be. That's true.
Snakes are another one that people have a lot of weirdness around when it comes to, because snakes creep people out anyway.
[00:30:40] Dianne Hartshorn: Yeah, they don't have to have omens, they're just creepy.
[00:30:42] Jennie Johnson: They're just creepy, but a lot of that relates back biblically, though, since Lucifer is said to present himself as a snake, and then, of course, that got tight, so then snakes can bring death and sickness and other curses, and they can be used by witches to do their bidding and be horrible and nasty, so snakes are another one, and bats were the other. Bats I thought were interesting, and of course there's the association with bats because of vampires and Bram Stoker himself is the One who really was like, our vampires turn into bats. That's how they fly around and get around without being noticed. But they've been in other cultures where vampires aren't necessarily a part of their culture. Bats are still considered to be bad luck, especially if you see them flying around in the daylight. Because they're nocturnal creatures. So if you're seeing them during the day, that, oftentimes it means somebody's going to die right away in those kinds of cultures. It's more likely the bat has rabies at this point, or some other illness that bats can get.
[00:31:46] Sarah Jack: Did you, in your research, did you see any ways that people believe that they can get out of a bad omen?
[00:31:54] Jennie Johnson: You know what? It's weird, because I was trying to look that up, and I wasn't finding a lot on that. There are a few cultures that do have you can cast a counterspell and things like that, or you go visit your shaman or your witch doctor, and they can be the ones to cure you of that omen.
In those cases, you have to have some form of payment, though, oftentimes, or something for trade, again, depending on the culture and where you're at. But that's, those were the only ways I was coming up with that could counteract these bad omens. Otherwise, most of them are like, yep, this is going to happen, so prepare yourself. Be prepared. You're dying, or somebody is dying, and I'm sure a lot of that also stems back, you could have seen a bat flying around during the day 300 years ago. And somebody probably died within that week, because people just died more often and at younger ages, because healthcare wasn't as good, so they started making those connections like, "oh my gosh, I saw a bat on Monday and now my grandma's dead on Tuesday, because that bat was flying around in the daytime." But yes, there are a few cultures where there are ways to fix it, but you usually have to have some form of payment or something to get that fixed.
[00:33:07] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, I was really curious about that, because we've talked about countermagic before and protective magic, how people use amulets and rituals or put things around the house to ward off this and that. But I guess it depends on how you interpret the origin of an omen. I was thinking if an omen is a sign from the gods or God, then you probably can't do a whole lot to counteract God's will through a prayer or something, but maybe for in certain cultures, where you sacrifice to appease a God, maybe that's a way to get out of an omen.
[00:33:50] Jennie Johnson: And that does come up in a few of them. The other thing that you'll find more often is what you've mentioned is protective charms. And so there's a lot of charms that people have come up with over the centuries, things to wear, foods to eat, herbs and stuff that you put around your home or across your threshold, using salt is a big one that goes back to a lot of things. Salt protects you from witches and bad spirits and demons. And salt is highly functional for that kind of stuff, in addition to making your food taste better. So there's a lot more of the protective type of charms to prevent things, bad things from happening if you happen to come across one of these animals or whatever.
But yeah, it's more of the protective thing rather than the once it's happened. Like you said, if it's the god's will, whether it's the Christian God or any other god, then that's, you just have to prepare yourself and be ready to do what, whatever that god was wanting at that point. They make themselves well known for that.
[00:34:51] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, we were reading about omens and portents in colonial New England. In Puritan society, everything basically was a sign of God's favor or displeasure, and if God was angry with you, you're supposed to take your medicine, and, uh, correct whatever you were doing.
[00:35:17] Jennie Johnson: And with the Puritan belief in predestination, where God has already decided whether you're going to heaven or hell, you don't know that, God knows that. But yeah, it made it very hard to break away sometimes from the idea of certain things. If you were going to go to hell anyway, why be good? Or, if whatever, but I do find that belief really strong and they did, everything was assigned from God in the Puritan ages.
And that, during all their various witch trials, when they, when the accused were being accused, a lot of them had, part of that accusation was whatever familiar that they had. And a lot of times it was either some sort of a bird, a cat, rats were another one I think you would quite often see. So then, those just over time, and even once those beliefs got put aside and we got more scientific about stuff, those types of stories stuck with us as humans. And we, and then you have like our Victorian authors, like Edgar Allan Poe, who used all of those in their stories and in their writings. And so again, in our psyche, that all now sits in our brains as being very scary and dark and or ritualistic, depending on, again, what it is. And we see a lot of that.
[00:36:37] Dianne Hartshorn: Especially had those strong beliefs, and they had the the control of church, they, even if it didn't make any sense whatsoever, people couldn't question it, because if they questioned it, then they probably would be accused of being a witch because they questioned it. So it just was easier to perpetuate the story that continues. So yeah, it's easier sometimes just to go along and not say anything than try to make real sense out of some of these omens.
[00:37:10] Jennie Johnson: We were talking about protection and stuff, and this kind of goes back to some cemeteries. So something some people would do in cemeteries, and even before cemeteries became cemeteries as we think of them now, trees held a big belief for, certain trees held certain types of beliefs of protection, especially. And so graves were put under certain trees or near certain trees or trees were planted on top of graves for the very reason of protecting against all these other omens that are out there.
Yew trees are a big one, willows, the silver birch, all of those trees have a lot of important symbolism in protecting against the evils of death or evil spirits. Yew trees are specifically like a symbol of immortality. And for a long time in European customs, a lot of times they would carry yew branches on Palm Sunday to church instead of having, like now we use palms, but a lot of times they would use yew branches.
Or they would carry them during a funeral too. It was part of the funeral ritual. They would have them. In Ireland, yew was the coffin of the vine, wine barrels were often made of yew because it imbibed the wine with good juju, it was good. I don't know if it actually made the wine taste better or not, but it apparently helped protect the wine from bad things. And so they used yew for that.
The willow tree, which is one of my favorite trees, it's gone back and forth being a good tree and a bad tree. It depends on the season, a lot of times the Victorians, actually slightly before the Victorians, they started using yew trees as a symbol of mourning, and you will see them a lot on graves and headstones, because they are sad and they're weeping and the weeping willow is what we get from that.
But it can also be like, there's other traditions, and if you've ever read any of the Lord of the Rings books, the trees have a lot of issues in there, but the Willow, Old Man Willow in the first Lord of the Rings, in the Fellowship, he's quite sinister and evil and dark and has a dark spirit within his tree, so willows, like I said, they've over time have gone back and forth from being a good tree and a not so good tree, but they are very often associated with death, and you will find them a lot in cemeteries or burials will have been put beneath them.
And then the other one I really thought was fun was the silver birch tree, which for a lot of, if you're Wiccan, a lot of them look at that as the Goddess Tree or the Lady of the Woods. And it's associated with light and new beginnings, love, and fertility, so it has a very good symbol. It's a tree that can protect against evil spirits. So you'll find that one sometimes near graves, because it's protecting the deceased from the evil spirits who might come to, to, claim those bodies. And it's a much happier tree than the willow tree. And I didn't find any evil connotations connected with the silver birch tree, other than they used to like to use birch branches for like whipping your children and stuff. Or they would whip, if whipping became your punishment in town for something, because they believed that using the birch branch would help drive out the evil that was making you be naughty.
[00:40:30] Sarah Jack: Wow.
[00:40:30] Jennie Johnson: I thought was interesting. I do have some stuff about insects. I always think it's interesting, because I know a lot of people will see like butterflies or dragonflies as a good omen, you know, when somebody's died, and then you see it land on their headstone. Or even if you're out somewhere and you see one and somebody has recently passed, a lot of times we will associate those particular insects with like the soul of the person coming back in that.
But butterflies, again, this is culture to culture, so different. Some cultures, butterflies, especially if they're black or they have a lot of black in their wings, represent trapped souls that have been trapped within the butterfly, which is not necessarily a good thing to them.
But then other cultures look at it, because of the way a butterfly transitions into a butterfly and their cycle of life with the cocoon and going from the caterpillar all the way up to the butterfly. A lot of other cultures use that as a representation of death. The same way our life was sort of our caterpillar phase and then death becomes your butterfly phase, and your soul is free and it can fly away to heaven or wherever as a butterfly. And I thought that was a very beautiful, more poetic way of looking at it.
[00:41:48] Dianne Hartshorn: Cause the omens have all been taken as something as being evil for whatever reason, I'm sure it had its purpose at the time for whoever came out with what the omens signified. But what if we took those, all these evil omens, turn them into something positive, like the butterfly? I could see in a way that it was black and that but when I have seen butterflies at the cemetery, it's a sign from the person that has passed. So it'd be interesting to change, to flip the omens into something, but then they wouldn't be omens anymore.
[00:42:24] Jennie Johnson: Moths kind of have the same thing. It's funny, cause moths freak a lot of people out more so than butterflies, even though they're related. But they're seen as rebirth, resurrection, changing. And because moths are drawn to light, like actual moths are drawn to actual light, there's a lot of associations where the moth is leading a soul from darkness into light. So the soul, they're like saying, "okay, follow me. Don't get away from the light. Follow me into the light."
Unless you're in Latin America, and then they're bad, because moths come out only at night type thing. So then they're a bad omen down there, but a lot of other cultures look at moths as a more positive thing. And, it's, again, the transformation from one form to another when you die. And so I kind of like the whole leading it, leading your soul into the light and it's that guide so you don't get lost along the way.
When I was doing our research for this, things are passed down word of mouth, grandparent to grandchild. And a lot of times, because a lot of cultures do revere their elders, like their elder elders, they're the ones that had the wisdom. So these, whether they're omens or whether they're signs of protection or whether they're a good sign, like they help it. It's the older generations that held that wisdom and made sure that it got passed on to the next generation. Their hope was that somebody within that generation would continue on with those beliefs and pass them down again. And of course they change over time, too.
[00:43:49] Josh Hutchinson: I was thinking about how there are good omens and signs that people embrace, things like rainbows. I was thinking, and this might blur the line between what's an omen and what's good luck, what's a lucky break, because finding a penny might be interpreted as good luck, or finding a four leaf clover, but, or it could be a sign that, you found this four leaf clover, is that a sign of something? I don't know, but I think we still have a lot of those in our society today.
[00:44:29] Jennie Johnson: Oh, for sure. Yeah, and like finding the penny, finding it face up is better luck than finding it tails up, that type of thing. When it comes to coins, there's actually a lot of coins that get left on graves. Most of the time it has to do with the military significance. Each one of those coins has a significance, like if it's a penny, you're just saying thank you for your service. If it's a nickel, you knew the person, and the higher up you go, if it's a quarter, that means you served with them during combat type things. So they have those representations, and so there are a lot of times, especially in military graves, you'll find those coins and it's a sign of respect to leave them.
So don't steal the coins off the graves, because then that becomes a bad luck sign if you take the coins away from the graves. Same thing with rocks. Rocks are more of a Jewish tradition. Leaving a rock on a grave symbolizes you were there to visit them. But I have seen plenty of rocks on graves that are not Jewish, because I think a lot of people like that. It's a comforting thing for them to say, "I was here, and I want you to know I was here." Whoever the deceased is, it's your way of saying, "I was here." So again, not removing the rocks that got left on graves. I know it bothers some people, but leave them, leave them.
[00:45:44] Dianne Hartshorn: It's a sign of respect. When you know what it is, and you've like laid the coins on the military headstones, or, rocks placed, it's just something, I keep using the word sacred, because for me, a cemetery is sacred, and that's why we don't do paranormal stuff.
[00:46:04] Josh Hutchinson: I wanted to point out that we've been back to Salem and at the memorials there, people leave coins, flowers, of course, rocks, crystals, seashells are really popular. Because we don't know where most of those people are buried. So because they weren't allowed in the cemeteries. So people leave these tributes behind.
[00:46:32] Jennie Johnson: We had a guest on who was telling us about the cemeteries in Galveston, and there's one particular grave, the woman who's buried there, she was murdered on Mardi Gras, during a Mardi Gras celebration, and it's become the tradition after their Mardi Gras parade, a lot of people will go visit her grave, and they leave all their beads, so her headstone is covered in the beads that people have left over the years, and Kathleen was, our guest, was saying the only time they remove them at this point is if they break, like the actual beads break or whatever, they'll clean up the broken beads, but they pretty much leave all the other ones that get wrapped around her headstone there because it became, and this happened back in the 1880s, but it's been a tradition since then to visit that grave and leave all those beads for her, which I think is really special. Yeah. And she doesn't get forgotten this way.
She had come to America from England and married a not so great guy. And she was actually granted a divorce, because the judge was like, yeah, you shouldn't be married to him. He's horrible. And she actually ended up getting custody of his two daughters that were not even hers biologically. And unfortunately his jealousy got the best of him, and he was the one who murdered her later on. But her story could have been one of those that kind of got lost and forgotten, but because of when it happened and where her grave is located, nobody, people go in and they respect it, and they visit her and they say, "hey, we're still thinking about you for 150 years later. We haven't forgotten her."
So that is one of the good things about cemeteries is you will see a lot of stuff on and around graves, because people are trying to remember. There, if the Central City cemeteries here in Colorado, those were, the majority of them were mining families or whatever, and there's a lot of children's graves, and there's a lot of people who still, they may not have any actual connection to them, they may not be descendants or whatever, but I will see, especially on the children's graves, people will still leave a lot of toys and other little knickknacks for the kids, because they're just so sad about the idea of losing a child, and so those graves, if you're ever up there wandering around, you'll see a lot of little stuffed animals and toy trucks and things that have been left by people who have zero connection to the families there, but they just are touched by the fact that it's a child's grave and they want to honor that child's short little life, however long it was, which I always find very sweet.
[00:48:50] Sarah Jack: And now for a Minute with Mary.
[00:49:01] Mary Bingham: Imagine someone living in colonial times who learned differently and simply could not follow the status quo. Imagine the life of Jacob Goodall, Giles Corey's healthy, robust servant who's only downfall was that he was considered to be simple-minded. Instead of exercising patience with Jacob, one fateful day, Giles beat him with the thick end of a stick, striking him harshly about 100 times. A shocked Elijah Kibbe, who witnessed the event, ran to Giles and told him to stop.
Not only that, but Giles' son in law, John Parker, struck Jacob with the side of a bed. Soon after, on June 28th, 1676, Jacob Goodall, being bruised and swollen all over, succumbed to his injuries. Giles Corey was not charged with murder, because Jacob did not die right after the initial beatings. The only punishment Giles received was to pay a fine and reimburse the witnesses. What a slap in the face for Jacob, to say the least. John Parker received no discipline by the court for his atrocious actions towards Jacob. Though he may have learned differently or may have other mental health issues, Jacob did not deserve to die such a cruel death. No one does. Rest in peace, Jacob Goodall.
Thank you.
[00:50:39] Sarah Jack: Thank you, Mary.
[00:50:41] Josh Hutchinson: Now, here's Sarah with End Witch Hunts News.
[00:50:51] Sarah Jack: End Witch Hunts, a nonprofit 501(c)(3), Weekly News Update. Thank you for following along on our weekly news. How's your advocating going? Have you found your platform to share about the modern day witch hunts and sorcery accusation violence crisis happening today in your world? You can start being an advocate by sharing witch attack victim news articles, research, or social media posts. Share your favorite international advocate episode with your circle of influence today. Go back and listen to any of our informative international advocate episodes and then write a post on your social media in your own words about what can be done to help end witch hunts. Keep getting more comfortable with the subject by sharing it and talking about it.
Congratulations to writer Laurie Flanigan-Hegge, director Meggie Greivell, and puppet artist Madeline Helling of Light the Match Productions on the new play production Prick. Prick, inspired by the Witches of Scotland campaign, will now be premiering in London this January. This creative play tells the story of folks who were witch trial victims in Scotland. Prick traverses magic and memory, fact and fiction, past and present. Give them a shout out on social media and help spread the word about this exciting news. If you missed it, go back and listen to our conversation with the creators of Prick on episode 47, "Prick, A Play of the Scottish Witch Trials." Congratulations, friends.
Get involved. Visit endwitchhunts.org. Learn about the projects. To support us, make a tax deductible donation, purchase books from our bookshop, or merch from our Zazzle shop. Have you considered supporting the production of the podcast by joining us as a Super Listener? Your Super Listener donation is tax deductible. Thank you for being a part of our work.
[00:52:40] Josh Hutchinson: Thank you, Sarah.
[00:52:42] Sarah Jack: You're welcome.
[00:52:44] Josh Hutchinson: Thank you for listening to Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast.
[00:52:47] Sarah Jack: Join us all spooky season.
[00:52:50] Josh Hutchinson: Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and drop us a review.
[00:52:55] Sarah Jack: Visit us at thoushaltnotsuffer.com.
[00:52:58] Josh Hutchinson: Remember to tell all your friends and family and everybody else you meet about Thou Shalt Not Suffer.
[00:53:06] Sarah Jack: Support our effort to end witch hunts, visit endwitchhunts.org to learn more.
[00:53:11] Josh Hutchinson: Have a great today, a beautiful tomorrow, and a happy Halloween.
Welcome to our 40th episode! Enjoy a great conversation with Epoch Preservation’s Rachel Meyer. Epoch, a business on the North Shore of Massachusetts specializing in the preservation of burial grounds and their artifacts, has worked repairing grave sites broadly in Massachusetts including in Gloucester, Ipswich, Newbury, Salem, Revere, Saugus, Groveland, Methuen, Peabody, West Roxbury, and at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead Cemetery in Danvers. You have enjoyed Epoch’s Facebook live worksite tours, and you probably have heard Rachel on other podcasts, so you know that you are in for a treat! There is so much to take away from her gravestone preservation expertise and personable and engaging education style. We also connect historical social injustices to our advocacy questions: Why do we witch hunt? How do we witch hunt? How do we stop hunting witches?
[00:00:20] Josh Hutchinson: Welcome to Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
[00:00:25] Sarah Jack: And I'm Sarah Jack.
[00:00:27] Josh Hutchinson: Today's guest is Rachel Meyer of Epoch Preservation, a business on the North Shore of Massachusetts specializing in the preservation of burial grounds and their artifacts.
[00:00:39] Sarah Jack: She gives us the scoop on cemetery maintenance.
[00:00:43] Josh Hutchinson: Learn about gravestone repair.
[00:00:46] Sarah Jack: What is her connection to the Salem Witch Trials?
[00:00:49] Josh Hutchinson: Learn about her experience working the Rebecca Nurse Homestead cemetery.
[00:00:56] Sarah Jack: And how she looked after the Charter Street Cemetery, the old burying ground in Salem.
[00:01:02] Josh Hutchinson: And the Riverview Cemetery in Groveland.
[00:01:04] Sarah Jack: I'm gonna give it to you straight. You're gonna hear why there's better options than grave rubbing.
[00:01:10] Josh Hutchinson: And we'll talk a little about cemetery etiquette.
[00:01:14] Sarah Jack: Epoch has worked in Gloucester, Ipswich, Newbury, Salem, Revere, Saugus, Groveland, Methuen, Peabody, West Roxbury, Hampton, New Hampshire, Somersworth, New Hampshire, and at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead Cemetery in Danvers. You have enjoyed their Facebook live worksite tours. You probably have heard Rachel on other podcasts, so you know that you are in for a treat. I love this interview, because there is so much to learn from this type of important work. And anytime a local shares experiences, you get a closer look than anyone else can give.
What is the meaning of the name of your company?
[00:01:58] Rachel Meyer: Oh, I wanna quiz you. How do you say the name of our company?
[00:02:04] Sarah Jack: Epoch.
[00:02:06] Rachel Meyer: Oh so we, when we became a business six years ago, almost to the day we asked our friends on social media, "what should we be calling ourselves? What should we name our new business?" And they had a million ideas, and all of them were taken. And Josh and I were out swimming at the marina and I was like, I don't know Josh, we gotta come up with a name. And he said, "how about Epoch?" And I said, "I don't think that's how you say that word." And so we contacted our friend Brendan O'Brien. He does Rumney Marsh and Revere, and we said, he's an English teacher, and we were like, Brendan, how would you pronounce E P O C H? And he's in America it's epoch and England, it's epoch. And so we chose the name loving it, obviously means like an era, a time of your life. We're both in our forties, so this is but one era of the things that we've done in our lifetimes, is one of the best eras or epochs.
But we knew all throughout that we were going to have a little bit of, is it epic or epoch? And people pronouncing it both ways and neither way is wrong, and we don't get offended at either. And we actually giggle and I nudge him. I'm like, "see, you chose it. This is awful." But it was a good name, and it was the only one that wasn't taken of the thousand names that we Googled and tried out, you know?
[00:03:29] Sarah Jack: Yeah, I love it. I called you Epic for several years, and then I heard some folks say it the other way, so then I started saying it the other way, so I've called it both.
[00:03:39] Rachel Meyer: Yes. People tell me they have arguments in their household over it, and when they finally get me on the phone, they're like, how do you say your name, and one spouse loses and one wins. So I love it.
[00:03:52] Sarah Jack: That's awesome.
[00:03:52] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. No, it's a great name.
[00:03:55] Rachel Meyer: Thank you.
[00:03:56] Josh Hutchinson: And how did you get started in cemetery preservation?
[00:04:01] Rachel Meyer: It's almost like I, I got started in two bursts. The very first thing I did in a cemetery was I was in Hamilton and I was looking for the gravestone of my own great-grandfather, and I found out he was an unmarked grave in a veteran's lot. So I went through all of the necessary paperwork with the veterans to get him a marker. So this will be the first time that doing something in a cemetery was planted in my brain.
But then I was working as an administrator at the Sargent House Museum in Gloucester, and I was doing NaNoWriMo, but not in November because I don't ever have time in November, which is, for people who don't know, is writing a novel in a month, and I did it, but like the very last part of it was set in a burying ground in Gloucester. So I googled historic burying ground, Gloucester, and this was like nine years ago. And it brought me to First Parish on Centennial Ave. in Gloucester. And we couldn't even walk in. The weeds, I didn't even know weeds grew this tall, but they were up to my shoulder. I'm five seven, and we had to wade through them just to get to the main part of the cemetery. And the main part, you couldn't get anywhere near the gravestones. There were like a lot of syringes and trash back there. And then later, within probably like a week, we found out that there was a whole cemetery even behind that, a small, Victorian era cemetery that was so overgrown that you couldn't see the entrance, you couldn't see any of the gravestones. It was like poison ivy floor to ceiling, when it grows in big vines.
And so I came home, and Josh was painting the house, and I was like, "Josh, we gotta at least get a weed whacker and like weed whack some paths so people can get to the gravestones." And then before I know it, I'm like quitting my museum career and saying I'm full-time going to save gravestones. Took tons of classes, just gained experience the hard way, and now, two years into that project, I was like this is a good time to stop. I'm not independently wealthy. I do need to work. And we also don't live in Gloucester. We live in Ipwich, so it was like a 40 minute drive and I was doing it full-time. So when I started, there wasn't a cemetery commission, and we were able to, out of the volunteers that we recruited, have a cemetery commission for their city.
So we handed the project over to them, and I don't have to do anything. I check in every once in a while. If I see the grass is becoming a little unwieldy, I might make a phone call and say, "hey, I didn't give two years of my life for nothing." But but I pretty much never have to do that. It looks beautiful. They're doing a great job.
So that is the very long story of how I got into cemeteries. And then after that project. I was like, I'm never doing this again. That was so hard. And I had to make people angry at me, cuz I had to call people and tell them, you're not doing your job well or you're neglecting things, and that's never fun. I still have to do things like that sometimes, and it's awful.
And I was just done until about six months later, I wasn't anymore. I went up to Newbury, and I saw the condition of their cemetery. And that one's owned by a church. It's a beautiful cemetery. It just needed, it needed help. It's a very small congregation. They can't manage it. It's giant, and it's it's tied with Dorchester as like the oldest burying ground in the state. And so I think it dates to 1632. And I called them and I said, "can I just like volunteer? I've been a volunteer all this time." And they're like, actually we have a grant. Would you be able to become a business? And Josh and I were like, "who else has this knowledge? Of course, let's become a business." And then those conversations started about names, and the social media that you guys might follow.
[00:07:59] Sarah Jack: That is awesome. So we, we were gonna ask you how much of your job is landscaping, but it sounds like it depends on how they've been able to take care of it before you get there.
[00:08:11] Rachel Meyer: None anymore. So those were self-driven projects, where if we weren't gonna do it, no one was gonna do it. It was more than a part-time job just being out there whacking back Japanese knotweed, which is ridiculous. It was like a acre and a half of Japanese knotweed. And if you know about that plant, it does not go away. Man what's that monster where you cut off its head and two more grows? It's that.
But now people really just hire us to repair their gravestones. If somebody's hiring us to repair their gravestones, they probably already maintain their grounds, so luckily we don't have to do that anymore, because I don't know if I could do that anymore. It's hard work.
[00:08:49] Sarah Jack: We recently have been to an old burial ground in Connecticut, and it had those poison ivy vines in a lot of spots and it's scary. It's like, "that's poison ivy."
[00:09:01] Rachel Meyer: Yeah. I giggle because I have, in this picture in my mind of Josh who's actually sensitive to poison ivy, I am not sensitive to poison ivy. I can touch it without any really repercussions. I hear that can change. But I have this visual memory of Josh literally, as sensitive as he is, like pulling these vines outta trees. He had poison ivy. Nothing too crazy, but just always, it's a, I should send you photos so that you the visual is impressive.
[00:09:31] Sarah Jack: Wow. So it's was coming with the job for him.
[00:09:34] Rachel Meyer: Yeah, I mean he has a landscape background. He was an organic, he has like a certification, organic lawn care and stuff like that. So he already had an idea of how to do things. But me and the other volunteers that jumped on board were like, "oh my goodness, I feel like I'm cutting through a jungle." but it was exciting when you would find something, and it was exciting when someone would contact you and say, "hey, that picture you posted is my grandmother." Cuz these weren't long dead people. We were finding people's like grandparents. And people were getting very emotional cuz they hadn't been able to visit in 20 years.
[00:10:12] Sarah Jack: Wow. That's wonderful.
[00:10:14] Rachel Meyer: Yeah, it's a really good feeling. I highly suggest it for anyone.
[00:10:18] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, I'm excited about the region that you cover, because I have a lot of ancestors in the cemeteries that you work in. Like I saw you were working in Groveland recently, and my grandfather's sister and mother and grandparents are all buried there in Riverview Cemetery. I've got a lot of people in there.
[00:10:42] Rachel Meyer: You're gonna have to privately tell me their last names. Two years ago we repaired probably like 15 gravestones of varying ages. This year we're repairing 126, and there are varying ages. They're not just the very old ones. They're also like semi newer, too. Good chances you, some of your family may have made it into our list.
[00:11:03] Josh Hutchinson: Oh yeah. Yeah. I'll definitely have to touch base with you on that.
[00:11:07] Rachel Meyer: We'll plant flowers for them if they're yours.
[00:11:09] Sarah Jack: Wow.
[00:11:10] Josh Hutchinson: Aw, thank you. That'd be so sweet.
[00:11:12] Rachel Meyer: Yeah.
[00:11:14] Sarah Jack: How do your ties to the local history enrich your work?
[00:11:18] Rachel Meyer: So my family goes back in Massachusetts to the Mayflower. We're also, as we talked about, witch trial descendants, also Quaker descendants. We're descended from Cassandra and Lawrence Southwick and their son, I think it's Daniel, who was told he was gonna become enslaved with his sister, and then no one acted upon it, thank goodness, but otherwise I wouldn't be here.
Anyway, so I have family in all of these little burying grounds I work in, but I don't really think very much about it, because, to me, the reward is doing things for other people. No, no matter what burying ground I'm in I'm probably gonna have at least one or two people in it, just going back that far.
But I'm aware when something, they're like, there are certain names I keep in my head, and when I see them in the burying ground, I'm like, oh, there's a Chase. Let's, let's make sure to tell everyone we fixed that gravestone for sure. And there's a Southwick and here's, especially the Chases. I'm very fond of my Chases.
But so I'm fully aware of it, and I think part of my original feelings of we can't let our cultural heritage die, no one else is doing this, I'm gonna do it with my own hands was a dedication to my own ancestors who made it so I exist, and our predecessors that make it so our governments and our towns are here.
You know, It's meaningful, but it's not really at the forefront. We don't use that information to decide what we're gonna repair. Our decisions are based on walking into a cemetery, seeing what's broken, and just fixing what's broken. We don't do a lot of research on who it is, cause we don't have time to. We're very prolific as a business. We leave it to the historians to tell us whose gravestone we just repaired. And I love it. I love it when I'm like, we just repaired this whole lot of Kimballs and I'm descended from the Kimballs, but I don't know a ton about them. And we'll have four or five people being like, "oh, they're my people, and this is all of these vital records," and they just floods through the comments. And I love that I have such smart people around me that can inform me and make it exciting for me, cuz I'm giving them a gift, but they're returning it right back.
[00:13:44] Sarah Jack: Yeah.
[00:13:46] Josh Hutchinson: I enjoy hearing you mention these names, because I have the same names in my family.
[00:13:52] Rachel Meyer: Yeah.
We look a little alike. Not that anyone can see us, but I also have a beard and mustache. Take my word on it.
[00:14:02] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, no. I'll have to connect with you offline about some of these names you're dropping, because I have the same people in that area. Getting back to it, how else are you involved with history and preservation?
[00:14:18] Rachel Meyer: So I serve on our local historical commission. And I think sometimes my views can be, I'm so outspoken that every time I mention I serve on the historical commission, I have to say, "but I'm not speaking as a historical commission member." I've been warned.
So we live in Ipswich. So I'm on the Ipswich Historical Commission, and most people in history know that Ipswich has the largest number of first period houses in America, which is phenomenal. We wanna protect them. The reason why they're there is cuz we were actually poor, a poor town at one point who couldn't build new houses. And so now, like any other municipality, we're facing a lot of new building and stuff that we need to handle with care. So that's why I got involved with the historical commission.
But we've been doing, since I joined, I have to admit that I joined with a mission and when people say, think Rachel joined with a mission, I go, "no, but I did." I knew what history wasn't being told. It bothered me. I know in general, outside of Ipswich, I take on a lot of, not take on, no one asked me to do it. I get in my head that I want to repair a lot of like African-American gravestones, and there's no one really to point them out, like with the gravestones of our white population you might have locals who know they're descended from them and will say, "maybe give this some attention." But that doesn't really happen so much with the black community, because often they don't know they're descended from these really important people.
And so outside of our work as a business, I take on these pro bono projects for Howard Street segregated section, or right now we're working on getting Marblehead a couple gravestones for some important, I don't know how to describe them. Joe and Lucretia Brown, they were tavern owners, but they were also possibly black governors. We had Negro election day here where people voted black governors. But anyway, not to get too off topic. I just wanted to give you some background about the things that interest me.
So when I joined the historical commission, I had it in my head that we talk a lot about colonial stuff, which is something that obviously makes us important, but it's not all that happened. And I wanna tell history in a comprehensive way. So in my time at the historical commission, which has been short, we have put up a plaque for a millworker strike that happened here, where a young woman named Nicoletta Pantelopoulos was shot by police, and so the plaque is to her. We adopted Indigenous People's Day.
Off topic, but also surprisingly in the same vein, we put up a plaque to the writer John Updike, who I think in some ways, because of the scandalous nature of his writing, was also being pushed out of the mainstream for some reason. And recently we renamed a park that didn't have a name after Jenny Slew, who was the first to sue for and win her freedom from slavery. I hedge on it the way I say that, because there were other people I've learned that sued for and won their freedom based on them being indigenous. It's hard to know how exactly how to word her role, but she definitely set the precedence for others to sue and for the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts. It's just incredibly important to me that we're not just telling the history that brings in the tourists, that we're telling the history that is right to tell, too.
[00:18:03] Josh Hutchinson: What time period are we talking about with Jenny Slew?
[00:18:07] Rachel Meyer: Yeah. So she's early, right? Sometimes when we think about slavery, we're thinking about the 1800s, cuz we're thinking about slavery in the South. But she actually won that case in 1766. And I've heard some scholarship. I'm not a historian, I'm gonna let you figure this out. I heard some scholarship that maybe her great grandmother was Dorcas Hoar. She was white on her mother's side, but I am 100% not a historian. I'd like to know more about why people think that, because it speaks to this idea that persecution is handed down not only in the black community, but possibly in the white community, too.
[00:18:50] Sarah Jack: I like it, because there's more story to tell over the generations, different stories. Like you said, you've got going from witch trials into slavery, there's a lot of story to tell there.
[00:19:01] Rachel Meyer: When I got up and spoke at the select board as myself, not a representative of historical commission, I said that this story is like the perfect show of intersectionality. We have somebody who is being forbidden to sue for her freedom, because she's owned by her husband, and then she's also enslaved.
But also, she proved that her, because her husband himself was enslaved, it wasn't a legitimate marriage. So now she could sue. There's a lot of injustice going on in that story that's a little bit different than some of the stories you normally hear where somebody's born into slavery. This was a woman in her forties, and there's a lot to unpack there, because the reason she won her case was because her mother was white.
It's it's a lot. And then you have somebody like Ma Betts coming around, shortly after her. And you're like, she was up against a hard legal battle. It's, yeah. I don't know. I'm amazed by Jenny Slew's story and it's so complicated.
It was the first time I had heard this theory, too, and I was like, and it was well into the naming of the park. It didn't factor into it at all. And then I heard this, I heard, it was a little lecture given at Salem State, and I was like, whoa, this makes a lot more sense now how she ended up in this position. That makes me feel even more protective of her, that we share witch trial ancestry.
[00:20:37] Josh Hutchinson: What are some of the things that you do to repair broken stones?
[00:20:42] Rachel Meyer: Yeah, so there's a series of rules that we have to follow. So it's the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Historic Preservation. And they're similar to the same rules that you need to follow if you're restoring a house. Things need to be aimed to be reversible. They need to be similar in material to what you are replacing or restoring, the least invasive methods you can use.
So everything that we do is in keeping with those standards. There are sometimes stones that are so hard to repair, but you're like, no, I need to use this particular type of mortar. So the repairs that we do, we used to do a lot of stone cleaning when we started out, and in fact, if somebody wants to start out doing this, I suggest stone cleaning.
We're judicious in the stones that we clean because we didn't wanna clean anything that had an underlying condition that we didn't know how to treat.
So we also piece together gravestones, even if they're a hundred pieces, because most people will give up on gravestones that are, that seem unrepairable. But we actually kinda consider it a challenge. And it's not, no disrespect to the people buried there, but sometimes if it's bad enough, we refer to those gravestones as Frankenstones, because they're literally a hundred pieces held together with mortar, and they're not the prettiest. It's the original gravestone. Somebody could replace it at some point if they wanted to, but the grave is still marked.
So then, apart from just, from repairing them, we can also document sites. We do a lot of stone assessments, where we do a careful history of the burying ground and make maps and go stone by stone and photograph them and take careful notes of their condition and how we'd repair them and get people budgets and help them come up with a plan to move forward.
Sometimes we have a plan to move forward. Sometimes we're just being given 10 gravestones, and someone says, "can you repair these 10?" And we don't go through that whole process, but sometimes we really get to dig into a site and learn its full history, and we walk away feeling really part of that site.
And practically we wrote a book on it, and you can find it at any historical commission. It's cool cuz I'm not a very good writer. You should have read my NaNoWriMo novel. It's why you don't, you're not seeing that novel published. But instead of seeing me work in cemeteries.
[00:23:09] Sarah Jack: I don't believe it. I was wondering what D2 is.
[00:23:14] Rachel Meyer: D2 is a quaternary ammonium solution. In olden days, like with olden days, we're talking 20 years ago. In ye old days, when I was in my twenties, people would just take a couple gallons of water and put like a tablespoon of ammonia in the water and clean gravestones with that. It's not advisable, cause people tend to go a little heavy on the ammonia.
And so D2 is a quaternary ammonia compound. So it works by, so we clean the gravestone with really just water, skewers, gentle brushes, and then we spray the D2 on afterwards, and it gets into the pores and it works over time with the rain to clean any of the biological growth out of the pores of the stone and also lightens the color of it.
If you go into a graveyard and you see some glaring white gravestones, it was probably recently treated, that growth will grow back in probably five years. You'll start four or five years, you'll start seeing like a little bit of a green haze and at that point what you do is you mix the D2 one to one and you do a maintenance spray, and that'll stop you from having to scrub it again, cuz it's, cleaning a gravestone mechanically isn't something you wanna do over and over again. It's kinda like gravestone rubbing. You don't wanna keep interacting with a gravestone over and over. It's not good for it.
[00:24:28] Sarah Jack: I had seen that you have a recommendation what people can do to capture images instead of gravestone rubbing. Do you wanna talk about that?
[00:24:37] Rachel Meyer: Yeah, sure. I think this is like one of those divisive topics. It was never, it's never meant to shame somebody who grew up doing great. Like I get a lot of comments that are like, I've been doing this since I was a child," and I'm like, "I'm not mad at you." We didn't have cell phones then. We didn't have this ability to capture everything in front of us in real time.
So you know it, it's okay, but if you want these to last for another few hundred years, that practice has to stop. So what we like to do is on a sunny day, we take a full length mirror with us to the graveyard, and you can stand quite far away from a gravestone to catch the sun. And we reflect the sun back onto the gravestone, and we can create different shadows using the mirror. It's really cool. If you go on our Instagram, you can see a lot of these shots that are like, that's because we used a mirror on them.
I was also recently taught this really cool technique by our friend Andy Perrin. A few people have showed, there was another lady. It's her Instagram is Where the Dead Lie. If you go on, you'll see all these awesome like 3D renderings. And she sent me some from Old North that you could 3D print. So a friend of ours is starting to 3D print these gravestones from her renderings. But if you have an iPhone, you likely have Lidar on your iPhone, which does an amazing job. I don't. I am one of those uncool people that has a Galaxy Note 1000 wherever we are in the chain. But you can still take like dozens of photos around the gravestone and create just with your cell phone, a 3D rendering of a gravestone. The possibilities are absolutely endless. And then we have this friend, Andy Perrin. He takes those 3D renderings and he's come up with a process where he can put them through some software that he's created, that at some point I hope he sells to the public, that makes it incredibly easy to read these gravestones. They almost look like x-rays. They're like works of art. They come out so beautiful. There are other options besides repetitive gravestone rubbing, and it's, I always feel bad when people are like, "but I teach gravestone rubbing, but, and I teach to do it the right way."
And it's there's not a right way to do a gravestone rubbing on a gravestone that's just been conserved. You're pushing on it. The materials we're required to use are soft. Enough people do that, our mortars are gonna crumble out. We saw that a lot in Salem where people would repeatedly sit on gravestones, and the conservators, who did work probably a year and a half before, all their mortar was crumbling out from the repetitive interactions from the public. We really don't like gravestone rubbing it. It's not we don't like gravestone rubbers. They're okay. It's just the act that we don't really like.
[00:27:30] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. I've been to Salem years ago in October to the Charter Street, and that was before they put in the crowd control. And yeah, people were just walking all over off the path, sitting on things, leaning on things, and overall very disrespectful. And I'm really glad that they limit access now. It's been very helpful, I think.
[00:28:00] Rachel Meyer: I think most people who know me from that time because, so at that time, you're describing a few years ago, I was the stone conservator for the City of Salem. So I did stone conservation work in all five of their historic burying grounds. I worked for the DPW, and they had never had an on staff stone conservator. They invented the job for me and my fir, so I, I'm waiting for the groans to hear this. So I'm from the area, and my very first job as a teenager was at the Salem Wax Museum, and I worked there for two years. And by the way, I had the most fun, like it was the most, it was the most fun, regardless of how people feel how they interpret history.
My boss was actually really fun. I really liked him. But it's right next to Charter Street Cemetery, so I've been watching that cemetery very closely since I was 16 or 17 years old, working right next door to it and progressively as Haunted Happenings got bigger, it just became wild, people going in there in costumes. Most people that went in there actually commented to me that they thought it was a movie set. They didn't understand it was a real burying ground.
And so when I worked for the cemetery department, I was in there all month one October, and I nearly lost my mind. Like I flipped out. And at this point they had a little bit of crowd control going on when I was there all month. But I was like yelling at people left, not yelling, trying to politely tell people, don't sit on that tomb, do you mind staying on the path? A million different little things. And I felt like I was being some sort of a nag and ruining people's tours, but that wasn't the intention. The intention was that the tourism in Salem was unmanageable for our historic resources, and we needed to dial it down given that it's an actual burying ground and not a movie set.
So I went on, not a rampage. That sounds worse than it is, but I contacted the media. I gave a proposal that they didn't even want at the cemetery commission that they kept saying, "this is above your pay grade." And I said, "these are my ancestors, and I'm its gravestone conservator." It would be like being in the PEM and being an art conservator and seeing somebody throw paint on a painting and having to just sit there and not say something because it might upset the tourism industry or something.
And as you can tell from photos and coverage of tourism in Salem, it hasn't affected the tourism industry to show respect to Charter Street Cemetery. It was constant, people putting candles on gravestones and letting the wax run and parts of the wall falling into the graveyard and me having to put it back up over and over again.
I don't know if I was part of this discussion about the new welcome center, but I think that I had left that job the second season, because the conditions were hard. It's not like the other towns where I work in, where it's nice and quiet and I can think. There was a lot of, there's a lot. I don't know how to say this politely. Salem isn't the usual, it's not the usual place we work. It's different, and it can be chaotic and hard if you're in a cemetery.
But shortly after I left, they made that agreement with the PEM to put a welcome center in the historic house. And we've taught a couple workshops there since. And it was absolutely beautiful. I loved doing it, and I loved seeing how much quieter and respectful it is. And there were certainly still people being disrespectful of the staff that's working there. So no one, none of your listeners are going to be doing that, but if they know people who are, tell 'em to stop it, cause you know, there's no reason to come into somebody's town and visit their historic resources and be rude to the people protecting them, which happens a lot. And those people are working hard. That visitor center's open year round, even in the cold. That's amazing.
[00:32:12] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. I'm so glad all those changes have been made though, for all the reasons you said. The first Hutchinsons that came to America are buried in there, and I was there this last May, and it was just night and day different from October seven years ago. So part of it's seasonal, I know, but just the changes and how access is controlled. It was so good.
[00:32:40] Rachel Meyer: It's become less seasonal. Like I was there in January, I live like 25 minutes away, and I'm from there. So I was there in January, and there were a ton of tourists, and that's not usual. And I'm not sure if it's because of the sort of end of the public health crisis that people are like, "let's get out to Salem year round."
But I was actually very surprised at how many people were there in the dead of winter and it was very cold. So I think their tourism is only amping up more and more. So those conversations about how to protect our cultural heritage and the cultural heritage of the people we've been ignoring, not just our cultural heritage, but the cultural heritage of the black, the indigenous people of Salem, is a conversation that needs to happen continuously, and luckily I serve on a lot of boards and commissions where I hear that work being done.
I don't see Salem's tourism going down, and I don't see the parts that we all groan at that are offensive going away, but maybe we can amplify the things that aren't offensive and the things that do warrant our respect. And maybe that'll drown out a little bit more the other stuff that we're all like, "oh, did I really just see that?"
[00:33:58] Sarah Jack: Thank you so much, Rachel.
And Josh and I'm not gonna speak for Josh, but I and Josh, we really agree with you. We support that, all of that. I was wondering what people need to do to take care around gravestones, but then I'm also wondering, are there any other old habits that people need to stop doing?
[00:34:22] Rachel Meyer: So beyond the gravestone rubbing, I don't like seeing people sitting on tombs. They're a lot more delicate than you think, and sometimes the damage to them isn't immediately obvious. Sometimes you're creating micro cracks in the stone and then water's getting in and heaving and it's, it, sometimes you are starting the damage and you don't see it immediately, but it, the damage happens over time.
Just picnicking on top of tombs. I'm actually a big fan of picnicking in some, I like when people picnic in cemeteries. I like when people use cemeteries. I don't necessarily like it if people are having like a yoga class in between the stones, and people are trying to visit their ancestors.
But we have a local graveyard here in Ipswich that has this like stairway that goes, it's treacherous. It's like a famous stairway right up the center of Old North, and people just run up and down the stairway all day long. And I think it's the best thing. And because I can't do it, sometimes when they get to the bottom, I like to heckle them and say, "is that all you got in ya?" Whatever. I have to amuse myself.
But there, there are a lot of behaviors that some people mind and others don't. I don't mind. There's very little that I do mind. It's literally just interacting with the gravestones in a way that is gonna wear them out over time or somehow disturbing grieving people or dancing on someone's grave or stuff like or wearing gigantic dinosaur costumes into a burying ground and in an old cemetery in Salem, that'll bum me out. I don't mind if you're dressed as a flock of bees, but you can't even see out of that dinosaur costume.
[00:36:01] Sarah Jack: That dinosaur costume is like my favorite thing to see every year. I don't wanna see it in a cemetery, but I cannot wait to see that thing coming down the sidewalk every year.
[00:36:11] Rachel Meyer: Imagine being at the entrance to Charter Street, and the people have to be like, "sorry, you have to take off your dinosaur costume." What a shock. Like I wonder who's in there. It's like peeling away a skin, somebody should dress as a nesting doll, just have another dinosaur costume.
[00:36:30] Josh Hutchinson: Wow. What are maybe some misconceptions that people have around graves and gravestones?
[00:36:38] Rachel Meyer: I don't find them morbid. When I'm in a, I don't feel a morbid feeling at all. I feel more a feeling as though I'm at the beach. It's like a calm, almost spiritual feeling that you get when you're near water is how I feel surrounded by all of this carved slate and these majestic trees and moss and birds and foxes and whatever. I don't find it morbid compared to listening to the news or being out in the world in general and hearing people fight. I think that they are in a way maybe reminders that we're going to die, of course, but they're also reminders of how much longer we get to live than they did. A lot of these people didn't make it through infancy.
And maybe they're a reminder of how grateful you should be about our medical advances and not having to walk 20 miles to the meeting house every Sunday, or whatever it may have been for them. So for me, that's probably the biggest misconception is that they're depressing. How about you? Have you heard any ideas that you're like, "ugh?"
[00:37:57] Josh Hutchinson: I wanted first to just comment off what you just said. I find them very relaxing places. Most of the time you go to a cemetery, it's very quiet and people are, it's like a outdoor library, just the way that people usually approach a cemetery with respect and quiet voices and you can't get a whole lot quieter and more peaceful, I don't think, which is appropriate being a place of rest.
And yeah, I just think about the people and the history and their stories, and that's what I think about, not ghosts or I'm gonna feel a chill when I go to the grave sites. It's not anything like that's not. That is that dark tourism. I don't get that kind of feel at a cemetery at all. I just feel so peaceful, even when I'm looking at my own ancestors. That's such a profound feeling of a connection with them. I enjoy being in cemeteries.
[00:39:09] Rachel Meyer: Yeah, I think you touched on something that is a misconception probably about us as people is that we are really into the occult. But we don't, I tell people I don't wanna disappoint people who are like, "tell me about all the ghosts," and I'm like, "no, my, my family, even the dead ones don't wanna talk to me." They don't wanna interrupt my work. They don't want me to drop a stone on myself. They're just not talking to me. Very occasionally I'll, I don't mind a ghost story if I know it's about a fictitious person, but I don't like perpetuating this idea that anybody's family isn't at rest, even those that are 400 years old.
I definitely have friends who do paranormal investigations, and I couldn't love these people more, and we just don't talk about it. People just assume that a lot of creepy things happen while we're in cemeteries. And actually, I feel very spiritually alive in cemetery, more of a connection to my own spirit there than ghosts or anything like that.
So I don't know if this is a New England thing. So here, our local culture, it isn't enough to have something historical happen. So say you say Giles Cory was pressed in the general vicinity of Howard Street Cemetery. You can't end it there. That's not culturally what we do. You have to follow it with, "and he roams the cemetery forever," so which is half adorable. I don't know. It doesn't bother me as much, as long as people aren't passing it off to, I don't know. It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be such a gimmick, the witch trials.
But there have been times. I worked in Howard Street Cemetery repairing a gravestone, and there was this white rat that came through. It was super friendly, like it was clearly someone's pet who got loose, and I called the police. There's probably a log of police calls that I've made in Salem that are half lunacy, but I called the police to see if they could get me a cage, because I was surrounded by my tools. I couldn't abandon them to find a way to catch this white rat that was clearly a pet, and it disappeared behind a gravestone. But I told everybody it was Giles Cory's familiar in that. I nearly named it Giles Cory, but I know that's not true. It's just a little dark gravestone conservator humor, but I'm definitely a citizen of the North Shore with my strange little, let's add on "and he wandered the halls forever." I'm from here.
[00:41:40] Sarah Jack: That's great. Yeah, I I love spending time in cemeteries. My father is in one now, so I go for a different reason. I look around him, and I think of all the stories. I know his story, and then I think about what are these stories around him, and that's really one of the things that I'm curious about when I'm visiting.
When we were in Connecticut last month doing a speaking tour with Dr. Leo Igwe, we went to an ancient burial ground in Windsor. And man, I just, I could have spent hours there just looking at the names, whose grouped together, what do these stones look like? What year were they? What do they say? And I love the fun stories, too, the lore, but I want the actual stories to be pulled out and talked about, too.
What can we learn from looking at stones and what do they tell us? What stories do they tell us?
[00:42:38] Rachel Meyer: Yeah, so I'm more of an art conservator than a historian. So for me, a lot of these people, you can tell their stories in other ways. The ones that actually have gravestones, where the ones that don't you, they're hidden and lost, but you can usually interpret their story by looking at a house or something else.
One thing that people don't talk about in the general vernacular are the actual artists and carvers. So those are the people that I really try to push to the forefront, because you haven't heard these names before. You don't understand how they're connected and what a gentle little web it is. How some of them married into each other's families, and that's why we have all these generations and why some people seem to carve in the same sort of style and with the same material and others carve in another with slate, or you know, those are the faces that I'm trying to get out there, the talent.
Even with contemporary gravestone carvers, it's really important for me to push them and promote them and say, "hey, these people are doing great work." Because they're gonna end up in graveyards where the focus, and rightfully so, is on the person, on the gravestone. But all that art is going overlooked, and some of those gravestones are pure art. Some of them of course are mass-produced in the sense that they were carved ahead of time, and someone came in and bought them. But some of them are specific to the person buried there. And it's not easy carving slate. I've tried, that's not my future.
There are lots of people who give tours of the history, but I'm obsessed with the stone carvers and their artwork. If somebody off the street could name one gravestone carver, like they can name one painter, I'd feel like I did something. I don't, I'm not holding on hope.
There's quite a heritage of stone carvers specifically here in Ipswich, where John Hartshorn lived, and there's a lot to know and a lot to learn and I'd love to tell you all about it. But this would have to be a four hour long podcast.
I went through Old North Burying Ground, I think it was two days ago, with some teenagers from a summer program here in Ipswich, and they were teenagers that kind of did just like people go up and down the stairs in the middle. They did a little bit of that without looking around before, and a couple of them were just absolutely captivated, being allowed to take their time to observe the artwork on the stone. And I had one of the kids read the entire inscription on the Reverend Nathaniel, I can't remember his last name right now, but I had her read the entire inscription, and where she made mistakes, I pointed out, you're making that mistake, because we no longer use the long s we no longer say AET. We no longer shove weird letters in weird places cuz we forgot them or we now spell words the same way each time instead of spelling them five different ways on the same gravestone. It was really fun just to have a kid try to read a gravestone and say, "you're not having trouble because there's something wrong with you. It's because this is outdated. And yeah, there are two years on that gravestone. Why?"
It's a blast to fully engage a young person in this. It's not always easy to get young people to put down their devices, but these kids were so smart and so funny and so engaged and curious and asked so such great questions that I think we need more of that, less tours, less I'm gonna tell you what's important about this cemetery and more self exploring with young people, allow them to walk around. I gave them flags, and I said, "I'm gonna let you just wander around for 10 minutes, and I want you to put a flag next to the gravestone you wanna talk to me about." And then we just went around, and I asked all their questions and we explored it further. So it was really guided by them, and I think we need more of that, letting young people explore their own enthusiasm and curiosity, rather than telling them what we think they should know. Maybe I lost my calling as a teacher.
[00:46:51] Josh Hutchinson: Oh that's great. And so they were interested in the art then?
[00:46:57] Rachel Meyer: They were interested in a little bit of everything. They had the same questions that I probably would've covered if they didn't ask them, like, why does this gravestone so small, and why does it only have initials? That's called the footstone. They had really smart questions. I noticed that the name on this one's the street I live in on. Do you think they're related? You know it, their questions were fantastic, and it opened up a lot more conversations and a lot more actual engagement from them than if I was telling them what was important about that burying ground.
[00:47:27] Josh Hutchinson: And talking about the art, I love to view how it's changed over the ages, how those, the symbology has evolved is very fascinating to me. What's can you tell us about that? About what are some common motifs and how have they changed?
[00:47:49] Rachel Meyer: It changes obviously with our culture. I think early on people weren't really going to come back and visit too often. So we had embedded fieldstones. We didn't have a lot of access to carvers. So people would take fieldstones that they find, and they would put 'em upright and they'd put 'em in rows and that's how they would mark graves. That's likely how Rebecca Nurse's grave is marked. That's how George Jacobs' grave was marked. And so then gravestones came into being when we got some stone carvers. Not all the stone carvers were particularly good. Some of them were just like like struggling to put some names on a gravestone. That's probably the 1660s. We have some fieldstones that are actually carved, but they're not carved with motifs, and you can't read them cuz there's not a lot of contrast between the carving and the stone. And then you go into the winged skulls and the crossbones and the you better behave yourself cause and don't get too full of yourself thinking you're gonna live forever, cause you're not, you're gonna be just like me someday.
And then into sort of around like the late 1700s around the Revolutionary War, we start chilling out a little bit. We start carving on marble, and sandstone was around during slate, too, but we don't have as much of that as is in Connecticut. In Massachusetts, we have a little bit, but not a lot. But here, Massachusetts, around the Revolutionary War you really start getting into marble, and there's overlap, there's still slate, but it starts becoming willows and urns and the things that you are feeling now when you go into a cemetery. Serene motifs.
Not a huge amount of originality. There are some carvers of willows and urns that definitely stand out to me, like Benjamin Day with his stout columns and very finished, almost presidential that he has these columns on both sides of the gravestone and just feels very formal, and they're beautiful, but they don't really vary from gravestone to gravestone.
And then, of course, contemporary gravestones can run the gamut from playful to as boring as you could imagine. It's almost like some people are still like, "I'm not that into gravestones. I'm just going to get the name on there and mark the grave." And then some people are hugely creative. Some people still use slate and marble.
You were saying that you had lost your father. When I lost my mother during the pandemic, I didn't have any choices for gravestones. I got her a flat granite plaque. That's what we were allowed to have in this cemetery. It meant a lot to me, not because the gravestone itself was special, because it's not, not really. I tried to make it a little special, but because I managed to get her a gravestone when everything was shut down. And I, I wonder sometimes that people are like, so find a grave has different like virtual cemeteries. So she's in several virtual cemeteries for covid deaths. And I wonder sometimes are people gonna see the date on that gravestone and think her daughter really tried, or are they gonna say, "Rachel's a gravestone conservator and got her mom the most boring marker on the planet?" Which wasn't the intention, it was just to mark her grave, for me to have that peace of knowing she wasn't in an unmarked grave.
And as off topic as that, that is, I think that we have to keep in mind that not everybody has money, and not everybody can do large monuments. And it's not a choice sometimes. There are still people in unmarked graves, and I wish that I could start a nonprofit that would help people to afford marking graves, because you see it all the time, people doing GoFundMes. It's incredibly off topic, but I feel like we're going back to people not being able to mark graves.
[00:51:43] Sarah Jack: I actually, I have two friends that passed 11 and 10 years ago, and they have unmarked graves, and I was so shocked that could happen. I wanted to go visit, and then I found out that the family hadn't been able to give them any type, and it is, it's shocking.
[00:52:02] Rachel Meyer: And there should be a minimum, right? There should be a minimum thing that a family should be able to count on. Taking away the idea that some people want like green burials and stuff like that, the bare minimum of dying on this planet, if it is your spiritual belief to have a grave marker, should be getting a grave marker. That shouldn't be a thing for the rich.
So I don't know how to make a nonprofit, but I just feel like there's a need there for people to, even just, there are a lot of vampire stones out in the world. I call them vampire stones, which is somebody couldn't afford to put the death date on it, but it has all the other information, as though they never died.
And you, I don't think that family should have to worry about if your mom and dad didn't have life insurance, that nags on you, having a family member in an unmarked grave. For some people that really bothers them. I don't know how to solve it, but maybe I'll spend time doing it.
[00:53:00] Sarah Jack: We'll try to put our heads together with you on that, but, and I don't feel like it is totally off topic. I think those struggles that are happening right now, people need to have their eyes open to it. And also, when you go back to those that were executed as witches, we don't have graves for them.
[00:53:20] Rachel Meyer: Or enslaved people.
[00:53:21] Sarah Jack: Yes. And enslaved people.
[00:53:24] Rachel Meyer: Yeah, that's the importance of memorials and memorial markers. Like a memorial marker can be placed in a cemetery even if you don't know the person was buried there, right? That was the conversation I was having today about the Bradbury grave in Salisbury. I was under the impression it was a replacement, and when I had looked at it to begin with, I knew there was no evidence that there was a actual burial of the Bradburys there. It was a footstone. There was some fragments that identified them as the broken footstone of their son. So there's no evidence that they were buried there. So nothing was done wrong. I was just trying to find out what changed. Was there new evidence? Is that why we're calling them replacements?
But they are memorial markers. And of course she wasn't hanged in the witch trials. That's not why she's in an unmarked grave. But I also think that all of these memorials that we set up, the one next to Charter Street, the one over in Proctor's Ledge, the one out in Danvers, they serve a purpose for people who can't visit a grave, and the park for Jenny Slew, maybe it won't. I don't know if it'll mean as much to the community that we're hoping to engage as we hope it will, but it's a place to go. I don't know. I don't know how to do right by everybody, but I feel like it's a step in the right direction.
[00:54:45] Sarah Jack: Absolutely.
[00:54:46] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, we're definitely with you on the memorials, because we talk to a lot of descendants of witch trial victims, in particular, and they don't have any place to go if there's not a memorial, because you don't know where the person was buried, if they were buried at all. It wasn't marked. So we have no idea, and people go to visit these towns where their ancestors were from, and only to find out that there's no marker for them.
[00:55:20] Rachel Meyer: Or it's something funny, like I went to Amesbury. I don't know the family, so I don't wanna, I'm not trying to insult them. I went to Amesbury to see where Susannah North Martin lived, and there was a monument, like a tiny little boulder monument with a plaque on it, but it was like underneath a basketball hoop.
But recently, I think they named a stretch of the highway that went across her property after her. So whenever I drive by through that, I'll be able to say, "hey, Susannah, how you doing?"
[00:55:50] Sarah Jack: And you're a Susannah descendant.
[00:55:52] Rachel Meyer: I am. It's so funny, I was talking to someone how we're so proud of the accused that we're descended from, oh, proud may not really quite be the word, but we definitely gather around them, but we don't gather around the accusers that we're descended from. And there's a lot of, all of that, like in any given descendant of the accused, there's probably an accuser close by. Yeah, I don't mean to laugh, but it's human nature to rally around the person that the injustice and not own the fact that you also come from the part that you don't wanna look at. And maybe we should be looking at both.
There was a ancestor in my line from Ipswich, and when I found her on Ancestry, Ipswich was literally spelled I P S W I T C H, just to like call. It was cute. It was whoever put that up, their way of being like, hey, and I think she accused someone. I feel like her first name was Rachel. You would probably know a lot more about this. She accused someone, because her baby was sick, and then this person came around and the baby got better, and then when the person left, the baby died. She accused a local of witchcraft. I'm not sure it was anyone who hanged.
I actually live pretty close to what was called the old jail, but probably had no relation to the witch trials at all.
[00:57:05] Josh Hutchinson: You made a really good point about how we have accusers in our lines, and we tend to not talk about them as much, but we need to, because we need to understand why the witch trials happened, and you understand it by thinking like the accusers would've thought, what were they afraid of? And you have to understand where they were coming from or else you don't understand why it happened.
[00:57:31] Rachel Meyer: Yeah. And the witch trials is different than other sort of social atrocities where there's a very clear definition between two groups, and one group is doing a thing to another group. This is one group doing this to themselves. And I know there's a million reasons why. I'm pretty sure I've heard most of them throughout my life from ergot to more serious things like mental illness and sexism and land disputes and just sticking out.
I think, in my family, I feel like a possible thing that isn't talked about as much is Quakerism. Like my family is very Quaker going up to Susannah North Martin and being a descendant of the Southwicks. Cause it hasn't gone unnoticed to me that she was, that they were named as caretakers of some of the Southwick children. So I wonder sometimes I hear a lot of theories about it, and I know not every case is exactly the same, why they were accused, but I wonder if people aren't paying attention to the fact that it became illegal to go after Quakers only three years before the witch trials. I think people may like underplay how hard it was to actually be a Quaker, too. They were so disruptive.
I don't take myself very seriously. Maybe that's another misconception.
[00:58:48] Josh Hutchinson: You're not stoic and kind of numb to everything.
[00:58:55] Rachel Meyer: I think some people think I should be more stoic, but yeah. You can only be you.
[00:59:01] Sarah Jack: That's right. And only you can be you. Nobody else can.
[00:59:05] Rachel Meyer: That's true. Do you wanna talk about the Rebecca Nurse Homestead Cemetery?
[00:59:10] Josh Hutchinson: That would be amazing. Yes.
[00:59:11] Rachel Meyer: Yeah. So I'll give you a little background about how we got to working there. Dan Gagnon, who is literally one of my favorite people, contacted us and said, "someone said that you repair gravestones. He didn't know this, but years before, someone said there might be a gravestone in our basement."
And I was like, "do tell," but several years later, Dan said, "we actually have quite a few gravestones in storage and it's time to get them out of our building." And I was like, "okay, let's do this." And so he went for a grant with Essex National Heritage, and they got it, but I wasn't sure they were going to get it, because it was the beginning of Covid and everything was shut down.
And I was like, there's no way that this is a priority to anybody right now. But I don't remember what month it was in, but they were like, "no, you got the grant. Come start working" in like July. And like we were talking about, my mother had just died. So Dan doesn't know how precious he is to me. So not only am I working in a burying ground that has ties to the witch trials, so my ancestors, I'm able to break away from just the awfulness of what was going on in the world and do all of these live videos and engage with people in there who are stuck in their homes in this really exciting way. And I hope that the people who are watching them felt like they were getting the gift that we were trying to give them. But if you go back to our Facebook page, if you go to the beginning of when the pandemic started, so summer of 2020, you'll see tons of live videos of us digging, of the things that we found, of us putting gravestones together, of us trying to entertain people in any way we knew how.
But we were hired to repair. We've repaired almost every gravestone in that cemetery. And when we got digging and got underneath some of the gravestones, someone had taken all the foot stones and threw them under the gravestones to support them, and they weren't corresponding with the gravestone that they were in. So we were like pulling together this puzzle. Like we would be in one of the Putnam, underneath John Putnam's grave, and we pulled out like four or five footstones from other graves and running around trying to figure out whose footstone that was. Sometimes they were broken and we put tons of them back into place. There are still some that we had to bury that maybe we could repair at another time. But the, just the amount of lost gravestones we found on top of also returning all those gravestones that they had in their storage. It's like a different, completely different place than it was when we started. And so then year two, we were hired back to just finish up a few different projects there. And we had a grant from the local cultural council, very small grant, but I feel so protective of that graveyard.
I wonder sometimes what Dan thinks of me. So one of the things that I do is when I make art and then so sculptures and then I make molds of my art and when I mix too much material, I'll pull that material in the molds and I end up with all these magnets and artwork and all of this, and every year I drop off like a couple dozen magnets at the Rebecca nurse homestead for them to sell as fundraisers, whether or not they want them. I just do it anyway. So if you go into their gift shop, you can probably buy some of my magnets from graveyards. But I'm also like fiercely protective of the burying ground.
At the beginning of every season, I email Dan. I'm like, "how did everything hold up? Any, cuz trees fall during storms?" I'm sure you've been to their homestead, and the cemetery is unprotected on three sides, so any wind would brush right through and could take out a repair, since we have to use really soft mortars. But everything's been holding up so far.
We had to re-repair Phineas and Ruth Putnam's gravestones, cuz they were really low breaks and then there was a wind storm and it knocked them right over. So we had to redo those. We just come right out and maintain them and no one needs to ask us, because I want everything to be perfect there. I want people to feel as proud as I feel going in there. I don't see myself stopping feeling protective over that burying ground until I'm just not able to do it anymore. But I think about it all the time, and it's my first thought, "have they opened for the season?" I want everything to look good for the visitors. I would never charge them another dime. It's important and special to me, and here are my magnets that you didn't ask for.
[01:03:50] Sarah Jack: As a Rebecca Nurse descendant, I'm so grateful for what you did there and hearing about your care for that land and those memories and those graves, it's very touching to me. I visited for the first time just under a month ago, and it was a brief visit. We were there. Dr. Leo Igwe was gonna be speaking in the meeting house, and we had just, I don't know, maybe 20 minutes before, and I got to walk through the field, go into the cemetery, and I can't wait to be back. I would love to be able to just sit there and soak it in. I was really taken by the trees, as well, cuz they're just so huge and, but everything was perfect, what you've done there has left it perfect. It was beautiful. Everything looked so wonderful. Thank you for that work.
[01:04:44] Rachel Meyer: That place smells good. The pine, it just, every once in a while we work in a burying ground that just smells like a car air freshener tree. And that's one of them. You just go there, and you're like, this is amazing. Dan feels strongly that Rebecca Nurse is buried at that cemetery, and I don't disagree with him.
I haven't read a lot of, I haven't retained, I should say, a lot of the documents around her burial, but, so there are actually a series of embedded fieldstones in a row and I feel, that's how we buried our early dead, so I feel strongly that those embedded fieldstones are early burials. You don't know whose they are. I can't say which one would be hers, but it makes field of someone who you were trying to conceal. Then the cemetery growing around them when it became a little bit less scandalous and unlawful to have these burials. But you can tell these embedded fieldstones, because they are in a line and one even has an embedded fieldstone footstone.
Like I was told George Jacobs' grave was found over near Hollywood Hits in Danvers is that his bones were found in between two embedded fieldstones, which tracks. That makes plenty of sense. And then they were disinterred, and they were put into storage and then reinterred in the Nurse Homestead with the new gravestone.
So what I know of early burying in New England, burying those very early people, you see it in slave graves, too. Like we're, we just did a gravestone assessment in Lynnfield, where we uncovered a section for people of color in the back, and there were embedded fieldstones there. We found it on a very old map. We weren't digging through and finding people, but it's, it tracks with trying to hide, either trying to hide a burial, somebody not getting enough respect, or there just not being a gravestone carver in town yet, so I wouldn't doubt if one of those sets of embedded fieldstones down at the cemetery are hers.
[01:06:55] Sarah Jack: Thanks for talking about that. When you talked about feeling responsible, protecting the burials there, I just find that so interesting. When I look at her whole story over these centuries, people have felt that way, her descendants, the community, to her history. There's so much that we know of her, so much that we have of her because people have taken responsibility for that memory. I find it very interesting how that just, there's so many different ways that comes into play when you look at her story and then when I hear you speak to that, too, I'm like, that's really interesting. It's very amazing. .
[01:07:41] Rachel Meyer: She died with my 11th great, I think it's 11th great grand. They died on the same day. That means something to me. There's also something about Rebecca Nurse, where she is impossibly wholesome in a way where it's not that other people weren't, but with some of the others, other people accused, you get it. You're " she spoke up, she was a little different. She owned things that she shouldn't have been allowed to own per that time in history or whatever it was." But Rebecca Nurse, it's like that's just weird. She was clearly not somebody I would accuse of witchcraft. I don't mean to laugh about that, but maybe I'm the kind of person I would accuse of witchcraft, but I look at her so pious and attending church and doing good, taking in people's kids, like why would you accuse her? Am I correct in saying that she was originally found innocent and then found guilty later?
[01:08:37] Josh Hutchinson: That's absolutely correct. She was acquitted. And then Justice William Stoughton, the Chief Justice, instructed the jurors to reconsider. He had misinterpreted something that she said. When another accused person came in, she said, "oh, you brought them in. They're, they were with us." And she meant that they were another prisoner, but they're like, oh, she meant that they were another witch.
[01:09:10] Rachel Meyer: That isn't the only thing that I've worked on that was connected to the witch trials, that some of the things that I work on, I'm thinking about just the people who would be like, haha, you said the wrong thing. I worked on the gravestone of Sheriff John Harris here in Ipswich. We found very little of it, so we had to just put it in a tiny base. But, I think he was somebody who carted people from Ipswich to Salem during the trials.
And then there's a strong connection at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead, because it feels like a complete picture. You have a house there and all the history there. But there's a lot of people who were accused in all kinds of burying grounds around here, including also people who played some pretty nefarious roles in those trials that you're like, cool. I was over at Abbott Street Cemetery giving a tour. We've been talking a lot about restoring Abbott Street Cemetery with Historic Beverly, and we were over at the Reverend John Hale's gravestone, which is carved by Nathaniel Eames, is this really dramatic slate stone with these wings that, it's just unbelievably dramatic.
And I had read the Modest Enquiry that he wrote after the trials, and it was my first time reading it and I'm so on the fence about Reverend Hale, cause I feel like I'm reading this, and part of me knows he's doesn't believe in witchcraft, like a big part of me is this is a member of my congregation that was accused and let's, I'm just gonna have an aside with her and see if maybe we can work this out.
And you're reading that pamphlet and there are times as a first time reader where you're like, "and say it. There's no such thing as witches. Say it." But he never says it. And he's talking about spectral evidence, and it's like literally painful that in his time it's hard to be like, is he kowtowing to those that he answers to? Or is he believing what he's writing but not being able to really go the distance? Because the way he's speaking, it's as though he clearly didn't believe in the whole thing, but he feels only allowed to say we don't believe in spectral evidence. I don't know. As a first time reader, I got a certain, just a real feeling of letdown about that pamphlet. Go all the way. Come on, Reverend Hale. You can just say it. And he just didn't say it. There are all these middle people that weren't bad, but they were also like not helping completely, you know?
[01:11:48] Sarah Jack: And now for a minute with Mary.
[01:11:59] Mary Bingham: Most men in colonial America were farmers by trade and designated a portion of their farm, usually by a corner lot, to bury their loved ones. This was almost certainly so for Rebecca Nurse and John Proctor. I will return to their stories in one moment. Generally speaking, the body of the deceased was laid out at home no more than two days after the death. Mourners would come, pay their respects, and drink some liquor specifically set out for them. Then they would congregate outside the house until it was time to carry the oblong wooden coffin to the burial ground. It depended on the length of travel from the home to the burial ground as to how many sets of bearers would carry the coffin.
Usually the elderly men carried the cloth that covered the coffin, and the first group of younger men carried the coffin a designated amount of time before another set of younger men took over for relief. The burial was simple, without symbols, and in silence. Messages from the mourners were attached to the frame on which the coffin rested. Those messages were removed before burial, and in some cases were published.
The penalty for the capital crime of witchcraft in the colonies was hanging. The bodies were then cut from the gallows or the tree and thrown in a nearby crevice. It was confirmed by a ground penetrating technology circa 2017, before Proctor's Ledge was confirmed as the hanging site, that no human remains were there.
So let's go back to 1692. What most likely happened is the families came in the darkness of night to bring their loved ones back to their farms to be buried. In the case of Rebecca Nurse, she was eventually excommunicated from her congregation. Thus she would not have a proper burial. Tradition states that her family did in fact come later for her remains and return them to her property. No historian of which I am aware has argued against this tradition. We all believe with almost 100% certainty that Rebecca is buried on the beautiful burial ground on her property.
Most likely this was the case for John Proctor, as well. In John's case, there was a document that Emerson Baker and Kelly Daniel found at the Peabody Historical Society where Proctor descendants described where on his property he was buried, by a stonewall near what is today the high school in Peabody, Massachusetts.
George Jacobs' remains were found on his property. He was eventually interred at the Nurse family homestead in that burial ground. For more information on the memorialization of Rebecca Nurse and George Jacobs, please listen to the following Thou Shalt Not Suffer podcast episode titled "Dan Gagnon on the Salem Witch Trial victim George Jacobs, Sr." For more information on the burial of John Proctor, please listen on YouTube to "America's Hidden Stories: Salem Secrets." Thank you.
[01:15:38] Sarah Jack: Thank you, Mary.
[01:15:40] Josh Hutchinson: Now here's Sarah with End Witch Hunts News.
[01:16:00] Sarah Jack: End Witch Hunts, a nonprofit 501(c)(3), weekly news update. Thou Shall Not Suffer podcast records in the United States, but is important to us that we connect and partner globally as much as possible with all communities around the world. Witch-hunt violence has and does continue to impact every corner of the earth in some way. The world grows more connected, and we must collaborate collectively to end witch hunts.
Dr. Leo Igwe, director of Advocacy for Alleged Witches will be going on a speaking tour of the Scandinavian countries in August of 2023. If your group is interested in hosting Leo, please inquire as soon as possible. His speaking topics include blasphemy, freedom of religious belief and humanism in Nigeria, advocacy against witch persecution, and critical thinking in educational reform in Africa.
We had the pleasure of hosting Leo this past May for a speaking tour on his advocacy against witch persecution presentation in the United States in New England. You can view his May 15th Salem Witch Museum presentation on the Salem Witch Museum website. See our episode show notes for the direct link. When you host Leo, you'll be enriched by his conversations and presentation content. He is a relatable expert that is exceptional at engaging his audience and communicating the urgency of his presentation topic with facts, on the ground experience, and familiar scenarios that help attendees connect to what he is teaching.
We had the pleasure of hosting him at three historical museums, a university, and the Connecticut state capitol. Holding these events with Leo grew and benefit both Leo's and our organization's social and professional network in a powerful way. Be creative and consider how one of his topics could fit your organizational events and social justice work. Please use your social connections to support him, and bring him to your Scandinavian community this August. It will not only bring diverse education to your event, hosting Leo supports his important social justice work, and amplifying his work impacts men, women, and children living in our world now who need global advocates.
The Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration Project has started to collaborate with individuals and organizations in discussion about a future Connecticut state witch trial victim memorial. This would not be in place of local community tributes for the individual victims like Alice Young, Goody Bassett, or Mary Barnes, for example. To join us in the early stages of brainstorming and recognizing what descendants and Connecticut residents would like to put together to pay tribute and educate, please contact us now.
Thou Shalt Not Suffer podcast supports the global efforts to end modern witch hunts. Get involved. Financially support our nonprofit initiatives to educate and intervene. Visit endwitchhunts.org to make a tax deductible contribution. You can also support us by purchasing books from our bookshop, merch from our Zazzle shop, or subscribing as a Thou Shalt Not Suffer podcast super listener for as little as $3 a month at thoushaltnotsuffer.com. Keep our t-shirts available on zazzle.com in mind when you start to get excited about Halloween 2023, and buy some fun wear. Sport one of our awesome shirts, and introduce people to the podcast or one of our projects by leaving your house looking cool.
[01:19:21] Josh Hutchinson: Thank you Sarah.
[01:19:23] Sarah Jack: You're welcome.
[01:19:24] Josh Hutchinson: Thank you for listening to Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast.
[01:19:29] Sarah Jack: Join us every week.
[01:19:31] Josh Hutchinson: Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:19:34] Sarah Jack: Visit at thoushaltnotsuffer.com.
[01:19:38] Josh Hutchinson: Remember to tell your friends about the show.
[01:19:41] Sarah Jack: Support our efforts to End Witch Hunts. Visit endwitchhunts.org to learn more and to give a tax exempt donation.
[01:19:50] Josh Hutchinson: And please rate and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening to us. That will help us out significantly.
[01:20:01] Sarah Jack: Thanks for taking the time to do that.
[01:20:04] Josh Hutchinson: Have a great today and beautiful tomorrow.
