Welcome back to the Witch Hunt Podcast. This is the final episode in the four part series:The Evolution of Diabolical Witchcraft Belief. If you’re just joining us, we recommend checking out the previous series episodes first, though this episode can certainly stand on its own.
This completes our Evolution of Diabolical Witchcraft conversation with Professor Richard Raiswell of the University of Prince Edward Island, expert on Devil lore.
In Part 1 we began examining the critical relationship that developed between demons and witchcraft specifically in the 15th century. In Part 2, we delved deeper into how this connection became the driving force behind the witch hunts that devastated communities across Europe. In parts 3 and 4 we reveal shocking and informing details on the Malleus Maleficarum and its authors Heinrich Kramer, aka Institoris, and Jacob Sprenger. Thank you for joining us as we conclude this chilling and fascinating exploration of how demonology fueled witch persecution.
Today we conclude our series: The Evolution of Diabolical Witchcraft Belief with Professor Raiswell of the University of Prince Edward Island, an expert in medieval devil lore, with another double episode release. If you’re just joining us, we recommend checking out the previous series episodes first, though this episode can certainly stand on its own.
In this episode, part 3 of the series, Dr. Raiswell takes us into the minds and lives of Heinrich Kramer, aka Institoris, and Jacob Sprenger, the authors of the 15th century witch-hunting book, the Hammer of Witches, formally known as the Malleus Maleficarum.
This Dr. Raiswell series is essential for understanding how theological concepts about Satan evolved into specific witchcraft accusations and largely gendered persecution mechanisms that still influence witch hunting today.
The full series, in four parts, is available now wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome back to the Witch Hunt Podcast. This is episode 2 in the The Evolution of Diabolical Witchcraft Belief. If you’re just joining us, we recommend checking out Part 1 first, though this episode can certainly stand on its own.
This marks the continuation of our conversation with Professor Richard Raiswell of the University of Prince Edward Island, who previously joined us for our fascinating “Speak of the Devil” episode where we explored Satan as one of history’s most enduring and complex figures.
In Part 1 of we began examining the critical relationship that developed between demons and witchcraft specifically in the 15th century. Now in Part 2, we’ll delve deeper into how this connection became the driving force behind the witch hunts that devastated communities across Europe.
Professor Raiswell continues to guide us through how theological concepts about Satan evolved into specific accusations and persecution mechanisms. His expertise in medieval devil lore brings clarity to one of history’s darkest chapters.
Remember, both parts of this special episode are available now wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for joining us as we continue this chilling and fascinating exploration of how demonology fueled witch persecution. Both Part 1 and Part 2 are available now wherever you get your podcasts.
This new episode of “Witch Hunt” features Dr. Tabitha Stanmore, discussing her research on service magic in 14th to 17th century Great Britain with Salem witch trial descendants Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack. She explains the concept of service magic, its practices, and the difference between service magicians and witches. Dr. Stanmore also touches on the impact of religious changes and laws on magic practices. Various aspects of magic, including healing methods, divination techniques, and the use of magic in daily life are delved into. Additionally, she shares about her soon to release book, “Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic” and her collaboration on the Seven County Witch Hunt Project, which looks at the Matthew Hopkins witch trials of the 1640s. The discussion concludes with a reflection on the legacy of witch hunts and their impact on families and communities. Anyone can submit written testimony for MA Bill H.1803. Simply write a short letter stating why this bill is important to: Judiciary Committee at 24 Beacon Street, Room 136, Boston, MA 02133 or by e-mail to michael.musto@mahouse.gov.
Josh Hutchinson: Welcome to Witch Hunt, the podcast that asks how and why we hunt witches and how we can stop. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
Sarah Jack: And I'm Sarah Jack.
Josh Hutchinson: I'm a descendant of several people accused of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Hunt.
Sarah Jack: And I have grandmothers who were tried for witchcraft in Salem, Boston, and Hartford.
Josh Hutchinson: On Witch Hunt, we talk about the witch trials of old and the epidemic of witch hunts today.
Sarah Jack: Witch hunts have occurred in all parts of the world, and they've never stopped.
Josh Hutchinson: Today, witch hunts continue to occur in all corners of the globe, resulting in banishment, torture, and even death.
Sarah Jack: In this episode, we're focusing [00:01:00] on the witchcraft of the past.
Josh Hutchinson: Specifically we're dialed into the service magic of 14th to 17th century Great Britain.
Sarah Jack: Our guest, Dr. Tabitha Stanmore, tells us about her upcoming book, Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic.
Josh Hutchinson: She explains what service magic is and how it was used in the past.
Sarah Jack: Listen on for a great discussion about what types of service magic were practiced and who practiced them.
Josh Hutchinson: Dr. Stanmore even explains the methods used.
Sarah Jack: And we hear about what she is working on next.
Josh Hutchinson: So sit back and enjoy another mind-expanding episode of Witch Hunt.
Sarah Jack: We welcome Dr. Tabitha Stanmore, author and social historian of magic, witchcraft, and researcher at the University of Exeter, working with Professor Marion Gibson on the Seven County Witch Hunt Project.
Tabitha Stanmore: My name is Dr. Tabitha Stanmore, [00:02:00] and I am a research fellow at the University of Exeter, currently researching the Matthew Hopkins Witch Trials of the 1640s. But my PhD research was in service magic or practical magic in the late medieval, early modern period stretching from 1350 to 1650, which is what my first academic book was about and what the book that I have coming out this year is also about.
Sarah Jack: Does your new book have a title?
Tabitha Stanmore: Yes, it's Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic.
Josh Hutchinson: So looking forward to that. That comes out in May?
Tabitha Stanmore: It comes out in May, May 2nd in the UK and May 28th in the US. and yeah, it should be very exciting. I hope it's going to be very exciting. I've seen the book covers and I'm going to get the actual, physical copies in my hand at some point next week, which is, I just can't believe it's real, actually, it's great.
Josh Hutchinson: Excellent. Yeah. I've pre ordered a [00:03:00] copy, and I'm just waiting and waiting.
Tabitha Stanmore: Oh, that's so kind.
Tabitha Stanmore: Thank you.
Sarah Jack: What do we need to know about the time period and location of your service magic research?
Tabitha Stanmore: So my research focuses on the 14th through 17th century. So that's roughly 1350 when more records start becoming available, and so it's much easier to trace the line of magic in society from that point. And I finish up in 1650 because that is the period where the world really starts changing again in a dramatic way, and after the end of the 17th century, or even middle of the 17th century, society has changed so much that it's not a very useful comparative point anymore, especially in the location that I look at, which is England. And, obviously, 1650, that is the end of the English Civil Wars, which saw the beheading of Charles I, and the, the beginning of the Commonwealth, or, the [00:04:00] Commonwealth, the brief point where England didn't have a monarchy.
Tabitha Stanmore: So I decided it was a good point to stop because at that point we get a real, massive change in society and a massive change in the way that people were living their lives and approaching things and this kind of rise of, I suppose science isn't quite the right word, but skepticism in a new way, which means that the idea of magic changes at that point.
Tabitha Stanmore: But also, 300 years is enough to be getting on with, so 1350 1650, is a, it's a really formative period, I think, for English society, but also a really key point for magical practice in England, and where it starts, it really features very strongly in how people live their day to day lives and try to incorporate both the supernatural and religion and, I suppose, rational skepticism in their daily lives, as well.
Josh Hutchinson: What exactly is service magic?
Tabitha Stanmore: Service [00:05:00] magic is a term that has, I suppose it's relatively new. It's only about 10 years or so that we've been using the term service magic. And it's basically magic, practical magic, that was sold to people in exchange for a fee. So it's literally what it sounds like actually. It's something that you buy and sell. It's a commodity, but it's a supernatural commodity. Basically it's the kind of thing that you use in order to solve everyday problems.
Tabitha Stanmore: Let's say you've had your favorite horse stolen and you don't know who's taken it and you don't know where it's gone. You might go to a magician or somebody who has very strong sort of magical or supernatural skills and ask them to perform a spell to locate either the horse or the person who stole it, so that you can then confront the supposed thief and demand your horse back. Or maybe you'll even ask a magician to perform a spell to force the horse to return, by whatever magical means necessary.
Tabitha Stanmore: It sounds quite [00:06:00] fantastical, but it was something which was incredibly common for people in the medieval and early modern periods, becauseinsurance hadn't really been, hadn't become a widespread thing at that point. A lot of people were living in a very sort of subsisting kind of way, which meant that if you lost something that was valuable, you needed to get it back, and there weren't many other ways of doing it, and you couldn't afford to just lose something. Turning to magic and having people who had the skills to use magic in this way were very, very highly prized.
Sarah Jack: How does service magic differ from witchcraft?
Tabitha Stanmore: That's a great question. If you asked a modern magical practitioner how they differed, I would probably expect them to say that there isn't very much difference at all, because I think with terms like cunning folk or magician or witch, they're almost synonymous in most people's minds nowadays. They are people who are wise, they're people who have supernatural powers that most people don't have access to, [00:07:00] they're people who embrace the supernatural powers that other people fear.
Tabitha Stanmore: But in the 17th century, 16th century, 15th century, the service magicians and witches would have been seen as very, very different people. And the reason for that is because in the medieval or early modern mind, there was an idea that there are two sources or maybe three sources of power that you can tap into if you deal with the supernatural. The first one is religious or divine power. And that's the kind of thing that priests are using on a daily basis, because they have this incredibly powerful supernatural entity, which ultimately that's what God is. He is literally above nature, can break the laws of nature at will. And that's something that religious people, priests especially, can tap into and use in order to change the world. Cunning folk would often say that they used the same kind of power.
Tabitha Stanmore: They'd [00:08:00] say that their spells were prayers. They're calling on the divine, or they're calling on saints to make things happen. They might also say that they were using fairies or pixies or some other kind of pseudonatural, but also supernatural entity to help them do whatever they were doing, especially if that was something like finding stolen goods. Going and asking the fairies was a very common way of finding out where your stolen spoon or your stolen horse had gone.
Tabitha Stanmore: So they're using very benign practices in order to do useful things,these cunning folk, and also priests. Witches, on the other hand, were seen as people who were using dark forces to do bad, negative things. So a witch was seen as somebody who had probably sold their soul to the devil, or at least was using demonic forces, and they were using these demonic forces to do harm in some way, whether that was killing people, destroying crops, in one case making somebody's mill fall down on a completely [00:09:00] still day when it shouldn't have happened at all, and all of a sudden the mill just collapses right in front of the miller. How does that happen? There is no logical explanation. It must be demonic, and it must be somebody bearing a grudge and using their demonic power to cause this harm.
Tabitha Stanmore: So there was a very clear separation in people's minds most of the time between a beneficent cunning person and a malevolent witch. That does all get very muddied when you start looking at theologians and particularly zealous priests and especially when you get into the Puritan movement of the late 16th and 17th centuries, where priests andvery, very godly people would argue that there is no in-between.
Tabitha Stanmore: Basically, you can't have somebody who's using supernatural powers that clearly aren't being brought by God, unless they are using demons, and people like George Gifford, who was a Puritan preacher living in the late 16th century, argued very strongly that nobody who claims to be able [00:10:00] to just heal by, I don't know,just saying some words over somebody could possibly be using God's divine intervention. So they must be using demons. And therefore you do get this mixing of cunning folk and witchcraft, but for most people they would be very, very separate things.
Sarah Jack: Thank you so much.
Josh Hutchinson: I like the period that you cover, because it's so dynamic. There's so much change in it, referenced a little, the change in attitudes toward the source of magical power that a service magician might get. And, in addition to the attitudes, the laws changed. When the Acts Against Conjuration or Witchcraft came in, how did that impact the service magic industry?
Tabitha Stanmore: That's a great question, and it's super interesting, because in some ways, not very much. The Acts Against Conjuration and Witchcraft, and you've absolutely, you're right to use those terms, because they're often called the [00:11:00] Witchcraft Acts, and actually, witchcraft only gets mentioned in the second half of all of these acts, and the first part is very much about conjurations and practical service magic.
Tabitha Stanmore: So some of the things that service magicians would commonly be asked to do was healing, finding lost goods, treasure hunting, making people fall in love. And three out of those four things are mentioned in the Acts Against Conjuration. Treasure hunting was seen as a massive no no, partly because officially any gold or silver found in the ground belonged to the crown. So using magic to be able to dig this stuff up was actually stealing from the crown, which is one of the reasons I think it got mentioned in these acts. So that was very, very heavily penalized in the first act against conjurations, brought in under Henry VIII. It was actually punishable by death,as well as provoking people to unlawful love, and finding lost goods and receiving money for finding lost goods through magical meansis, name checked as very, very bad things that people shouldn't be doing.
Tabitha Stanmore: From my own [00:12:00] research, it doesn't look like anybody actually stopped doing any of these things as a result of this legislation, partly I think because some of the law, the first law against conjurations say under Henry VIII, was so harsh that even magistrates weren't particularly keen on prosecuting this because nobody wants to be sentenced to death for, digging up a field, but also because these services were just so useful.If people don't have any other way of finding their stolen horse, then prosecuting that and stamping out that kind of service just isn't going to last very long. So yeah, it didn't really stop anything from happening in that sense, but there is still a growing sense of concern about what sorts of powers cunning folk might have, because they are lumped together in the Witchcraft and Conjurations Act with witches. And then there's that question of, oh, if you can do this kind of magic, then can you also do this negative kind of magic? So that sort of brings a cultural shift. But in terms of [00:13:00] how often magic was practiced, it probably didn't change it very much.
Tabitha Stanmore: What I will say is that one of the other massive changes that happens in this period between 1350 and 1650 is the Reformation, so the change of the state religion from Catholicism to Protestantism or Anglicanism, as it later becomes. And that does spark a big change in magic, basically because orthodox or acceptable Catholic practices all of a sudden become seen as superstition.Appealing to saints, using prayers to heal, that kind of thing, they all start being seen as quite suspicious under Protestant, doctrine. at that point you start seeing priests potentially who were doing perfectly orthodox things five years ago suddenly being seen as potential magicians who are using their nefarious, popish knowledge to form spells and possibly being in league with the devil as a result of that, because obviously there's a very heavy idea among different Protestant sects that the [00:14:00] Catholics are actually in league with the devil. So that's a really interesting way that the kind of religion suddenly becomes sacrilege and therefore possibly magic, at least in the eyes of some people.
Josh Hutchinson: I'm wondering if that change influenced the number of service magician, magician service practitioners out there, because before the Reformation in the Catholic Church, you can go to the priest for certain things to have objects blessed and your home blessed. And now you can't go to the priest for that anymore. He's not going to do some of the Catholic rituals. So you have to go to somebody still. So I'm just wondering, did that have an influence maybe on increasing the number of lay practitioners?
Tabitha Stanmore: It's a really interesting question. there's some really interesting research by Francis Young, about what happened to monks After the on both before and after the Reformation, because the monasteries are dissolved. All [00:15:00] of a sudden you have a lot of very highly trained religious people who have an ability to read Latin, they understand things like exorcism rituals, they understandall the rituals that, around essentially conjuring and appeasing God. And they are released into society. Some of them obviously go to the continent andjoin monastic institutions in Catholic countries.
Tabitha Stanmore: Other ones stay in England, at which point, you know what, what does happen to them? And it's very possible that some of them did, yeah, end up going out to become magicians for hire, essentially. Whether that's how they saw themselves is debatable. I mean, probably not. But it does mean that, yeah, you do have an alternative option to this kind of like orthodox I'm sure you're all familiar with the idea of Protestant priests, that people obviously turn to for religious help, but also potentially magical help as well.
Tabitha Stanmore: And you do also see a very strong competition going on both before and after the Reformation between cunning folk and priests, with priests going, ' please [00:16:00] can my parishioners stop visiting all of these cunning folk?' They're taking away my business. Because obviously one thing that priests often did wasadminister to the spiritual needs of their community, and that includes the things like blessing fields, helping people to be fertile again, possibly by blessing water and letting people drink it, which kind of borders on superstition even for the Catholicism, but if people are going off to a cunning person instead to get this help or to get healing or spells or prayers, then it is actually taking away from both the income and the use of the church, which was dealt with in two ways.
Tabitha Stanmore: One way was priests complaining and saying, no, this shouldn't be done. We should be stopping this. We should be trying to stamp out this kind of magic. Or priests leaning into it and just selling spells themselves. Which I just, I love. I think it's really wonderful. It's got the adaptability of people and the kind of the grey area between religion and magic. But really clearly shouldn't come through in those kind of examples.
Sarah Jack: What are some [00:17:00] other primary uses of service magic?
Tabitha Stanmore: Healing is definitely the most common, by a long way. And again, before we started recording, we mentioned that everybody on this call currently has a cold, and they don't seem to be going anywhere. and that's, that's obviously true of all of history, right? There's always been sickness. There's always been annoying illnesses that can't be shifted or life-threatening diseases. And especially before the advent of things like antibiotics or vaccines, there is a sort of an endemic sickness, among the population.
Tabitha Stanmore: So a medicine isn't particularly effective a lot of the time. It's very good at treating symptoms. It's not necessarily very good at treating disease. So turning to magic again, kind of makes a lot of sense in that situation, especially when you're using prayer spells. So you're very much appealing to a higher power to say, St. Justinian, for example, please, cure my toothache.It might be the only thing that works, frankly. [00:18:00] So healing was incredibly common. That was one of the things that cunning folk were asked to do the most. Another one was protection, protection in battle, protection for sailors when they are out at sea, to protect them from storms.And I think the most touching one is the amount that magic was used in love spell in. in situations about spells used for love, whether that's making people fall in love with each other or actually breaking people up, potentially, because you're so in love with somebody and they've gone and married somebody else. What are you going to do about that? It's probably a spell that you can use to break that couple up so that you can get that person. And, yeah, again, that's a very, very common use, which was very likely prosecuted a lot of the time, because a lot of the time love magic, it's about community cohesion. It's about keeping people together, especially the number of spells that are often, directed at making a husband and wife get along better, whether that's making the husband less cantankerous or making the wife fall in love with her husband again.[00:19:00] Those kinds of things, they were often available and very simple spells a lot of the time, which kind of, again, I think shows quite how common they must have been.
Tabitha Stanmore: There's one woman in the 15th century who apparently used to wash her husband's shirts in holy water because apparently that made him meek and pliable for the rest of the week. And she must have heard that spell from somewhere. She was also sharing it with her neighbors and passing on that knowledge, which I guess isn't so much service magic. But it is a very obvious use of magic that people needed, and I don't know how many people took up her advice, but she certainly seemed to think it would work, and had been doing it for years by the time she finally got reported to the authorities as potentially not using holy water in the way it was intended.
Josh Hutchinson: One of the uses you talk about is divination. What are some of the key methods used to divine?
Tabitha Stanmore: There are so many, and again, it's fascinating to see how much things [00:20:00] evolve and get adapted according to people's needs, and clearlythey're in trial and error with these spells. One of my favorite forms of divination, which sounds deeply impractical but I love, is the bread and knives method, and that's basically where you take a loaf of bread, and you stick two knives into the sides of the loaf in a cross shape, and then you put a peg in the top of the loaf, and then you, I think you turn it upside down, and then you hold the peg between your hands, and you ask a yes or no question, and basically the bread will spin one way for no and one way for yes. I've only found two instances of it being used. And I think, again, it's because it's so impractical. I did try it once to see if it would work. And you need some really stale bread, you need some very sharp knives, you need a very short hand, so you don't just drop it on your foot. But it's really interesting, because it's a method that is [00:21:00] replicated with different tools, but they all sort of work on the same principle, which is, you ask a binary question, as I say, a yes or no, or is my child going to be a boy or a girl, so one way for boy, one way for girl, or, I don't know. Am I going to get married soon? Yes or no? That kind of thing. And the cross shape I think is quite important, because it's again, it's drawing on that higher power and in this case, probably Jesus. And it's something which is simple, but only certain people, again, could possibly practice it, because you do need somebody who's got that sort of power within them, much like anybody could buy a pack of tarot cards today, but only some people are very good at reading them and have an affinity with them. You get the same kind of thing going on with divination methods. So as I say,the loaf and knives method fell out of popularity probably quite quickly. It appears in the 14th century, doesn't really appear in any other centuries, and mostly around the London area, as well, and doesn't seem to have spread very far after that.
Tabitha Stanmore: More common versions of the same [00:22:00] basic principle are the Sieve and Shears, which is, again, lots of different methods, but basically you take a pair of kind of sheep shearing shears or large scissors and put a sieve on top of those and then ask questions once the sieve is balanced on the top. And again, the sieve will tilt one way for yes, one way for no, and this is much more practical. You're not going to destroy a loaf of bread every time you attempt it. And you're also going to be able to, pretty much anybody will be able to use this method because everybody would probably own a pair of shears and everybody would own a sieve.
Tabitha Stanmore: The fancier version of this divination method is the book and key, and that is one that pretty much only priests used or people who had a very high level of education, because it would use either a Psalter or a Bible, and you'd place a big heavy key inside of the book. And you'd hold the book in between your two bald fists, and then you would ask your [00:23:00] question. And often if it was finding stolen goods that you were trying to find out with this method, then you would start by saying something like, 'by St. Peter and St. Paul, Tony's stolen my horse.' And if the key fell out, then that would be the right answer.But yeah, as I say, this is something that only some people will be able to do, because not everybody had access to printed works and especially not something as sacred as a Bible. And that's by St. Peter and St. Paul, you're definitely summoning divine intervention to make this work. Again, condemned by the church. Still used by the church . And again, a simpler method of that, is just taking a Bible and just opening it at a random page. And the first line from the gospel that you see is the answer to your question, which,some will call that just basic religion or just guesswork, but people would definitely see it as a very reliable form of divination, depending on the answer. So these are some of my favourite ones. I could go on about this forever as you can probably [00:24:00] tell, so let me know if you want any more.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, I'm so glad you explained the Sieve and Shears and the Book and Key. Those actually turn up in New England in the Salem Witch Trials. Both of those methods are said to be used.
Tabitha Stanmore: Yeah, it's definitely an import, that.
Josh Hutchinson: And what are some key methods of healing?
Tabitha Stanmore: One of my favourite methods, which probably wouldn't have worked very well at all, comes from the 14th century, and it's probably quite a lot older than that. And it's basically, again, very strongly religious, it involved saying a short phrase in Latin, something similar to, 'as Mary sufferedin the birth of Jesus, may this person's suffering end,' essentially, or something like that. And while saying that, you would put your fingers into the wound that somebody had sustained, and [00:25:00] make the sign of a cross. Which, given that a lot of these spells do actually have a very strong logic behind them, this one makes no sense to me, because you're just going to be opening up that wound. But I suppose the idea is that you are also inserting some sort of um, ,cleansing in it, because of the, the mercy that Christ showed, to humanity, and the idea of the cleansing of sins and that kind of thing. You might be trying to cleanse the wound by putting the power of the cross inside it.
Tabitha Stanmore: More effective methods, potentially, were ones that involved writing spells onto food, pieces of food, sometimes things like communion wafers, sometimes bread, sometimes cheese, and giving that to the sick person to eat.
Tabitha Stanmore: And I say it would be more effective partly because we all recognise that the placebo effect exists, and so that kind of, that knowledge that you are being cared for and that sort of hope that will be attached to that spell, might well be exactly what you [00:26:00] need, basically, to kind of power you through and overcome your illness.
Tabitha Stanmore: Again, it is something that not everybody could do, sometimes you need to know the right words, and some people just had a better understanding of healing and whether or not this was a lost cause, and often, spells would be combined with other healing methods as well. And that's something that you see with magical drinks, which were also given as a method of healing. Again, they would normally come with some kind of chant that you would do over the the potion.
Tabitha Stanmore: But the things that went into the potions were often things which would be very helpful for curing the disease in the first place. So things like honey, things like garlic, aqua vitae, which is a catch all term for all sorts of different sort of medical concoctions that involve a lot of different herbs. And and often these herbs would have either anesthetic effects or antibacterial effects, as well. So they could genuinely do good, even without the kind of the placebo effect or without the magic that's been [00:27:00] mixed into them.
Tabitha Stanmore: Often healing spells do combine belief, that kind of, the idea of divine power or some other kind of higher power, as well as very strong experience that the cunning person would possess and use as part of their healing. And again, you see that combination in diagnostic services. A lot of cunning healers would try to diagnose somebody's illness, especially if it was something which had come on very suddenly or was just not going away and there wasn't an obvious cause for it. They'd try to diagnose whether or not somebody had been touched by a fairy or whether they'd been bewitched by a malevolent witch. And they do this by taking the patient's belt or girdle and measuring it. And they basically measure it between their extended thumb and their elbow and see, they actually never explain exactly what they see when they're measuring this girdle.[00:28:00]
Tabitha Stanmore: But what I'm guessing is that they're seeing how much weight the person has lost,and if it has been a dramatic weight loss over a very short period of time, then often they would come to the conclusion that this person had been touched by a fairy and they had some kind of terrible wasting sickness. And in that case the cure would be to try to appease the fairies, it would be to try to drive out the curse that somebody had put on the person or try to somehow otherwise fortify the person so they could get through the illness, but they'd use this diagnostic tool to say what the illness is in the first place and also whether the person had any hope of survival.
Tabitha Stanmore: And cunning folk would choose their cases accordingly. If they didn't think this person had any chance of surviving, they would be honest about that. They'd say, 'look, I'm sorry, this person's too far gone, the fairies have got him, there's nothing I can do.' But if there was some hope that they, a person could be saved, and they suspected that it was [00:29:00] witchcraft especially, then one of the things that they would start by doing is potentially performing counter witchcraft.
Tabitha Stanmore: So a very common method for that would be to take a flask of the patient's urine, and this is from the 17th century onwards, it's not particularly common in the 16th century, but it's a continental European import into England. But yeah, you take a flask of the person's urine, you'd put pins and a piece of red fabric or potentially something in the shape of a heart into that flask and then you would stopper it up and you would boil it in the fire or bury it somewhere, and the idea is that that would cause so much pain to the person who would cast the spell in the first place that it would basically rebound and then the witch would be obliged to lift the curse, or at least you'd be able to identify who the witch was and then force them to lift the curse, either by scratching and drawing blood, because that removes some of their power, or by just [00:30:00] intimidating them until they lifted the curse.
Tabitha Stanmore: So there's lots and lots of different tools in a cunning person's arsenal.
Sarah Jack: Would somebody inquire for the services of a magic practitioner to do a curse or harm their neighbor or family or spouse?
Tabitha Stanmore: Yes, although it very much depends on the intention behind it, whether your community would condemn you as somebody who is trying to use witchcraft or not. Again, going back to the stolen goods example, it would be relatively common to say, 'oh, my horse has been stolen, I am going to go to a cunning person and get that cunning person to curse the thief until the horse comes back.' And that wasn't seen as witchcraft, because it's more like restoring justice than doing harm for no reason. And that's quite an important distinction in people's minds. Because again, if you're doing something, if you're causing harm for the right reason, then you [00:31:00] can potentially ask for God's intervention in that, you can potentially ask fairies or whatever. You don't need to be using devilish or malevolent powers to be able to do that.
Tabitha Stanmore: So yeah, so if you're using a cunning person to, even if you're causing, you want them to cause real serious harm or pain, so long as it's for a good reason, it's okay. If you're just doing it because you're just filled with spite, that's when it tips into witchcraft, which does take a little bit of moral arithmetic, but it kind of works.
Josh Hutchinson: I'm not gonna lie, when I started this research, I did not expect it to go in the direction it did. And I, it's really changed my perspective on, on the early modern period, on the witch trials, on witchcraft and people's belief systems and everything else, because it's so different to what I expected.
Tabitha Stanmore: And I didn't realize quite how much magic there was going on, until I started this.
Josh Hutchinson:
Josh Hutchinson: You talked earlier about some [00:32:00] of the healing. They would write things down on food or paper and swallow it. And what were some of the other ways that Christian scripture and teachings were used in magic?
Tabitha Stanmore: I suppose one of the most famous ways, when you think about it, is exorcism rituals, because one of the things that ritual magicians in particular, so very learned magicians who had knowledge of Latin and other sort of sacred languages, one of the things that they could do with their knowledge was repurpose Orthodox Christian knowledge,and, as I say, rituals.Exorcisms obviously are intended to conjure a demon out of a person or an item, but the same method and more or less exactly the same words can be used to conjure a demon into something, whether that is a person, [00:33:00] which doesn't happen too often, thank goodness, but much more commonly into a magic circle, for example.
Tabitha Stanmore: So, that use of scripture, again, often by priests or people who trained as priests and then left their training early so they didn't actually have to take orders or monks would use this power, in order to summon demons and bend them to their will. And the things that they use the demons for vary from incredibly noble to hilarious. For example, on the noble end there is the ability to understand the secrets of the universe and understand the nature of God. So think Dr. Faustus style. He's reached the end of human knowledge, now he wants to understand the secrets of the universe, so he summons a demon, makes a deal, and, well, he thinks that he's forced a demon to tell him all these things. And ritual magicians who were careful about their work [00:34:00] definitely thought that they hadsubjugated a demon to their will, in order to answer their questions aboutthe higher powers.
Tabitha Stanmore: On the funnier end of the spectrum was summoning a demon, or even an angel, in order to learn Latin really fast so that you could get out of your lessons quicker, or summon a demon into a magic ring to make you better at gambling. Or even, potentially, summon a demon, make them look like an incredibly beautiful woman so that you can sleep with them. Real spectrum of human interests there, all of which come down to using Christian scripture in ways that it probably wasn't designed for, but the point of this is that scripture, especially when it was written in Latin, was seen to have power in its own right.
Tabitha Stanmore: It's not almost not even just the divine power. It's the fact that these sounds, these syllables, this conjunction of words in itself is enough. You don't really need to understand it to be able to [00:35:00] use it, which actually is why in some medieval, late medieval, medical texts from the 13th and 14th centuries, you have instructions from the author saying, 'do not share this particular healing charm,' which is sometimes written down in a medical text. 'Don't share this with the wider population because they'll misuse it, because you don't have to understand it in order to make it work.' Bit gatekeepery, but in some cases you can understand why.
Josh Hutchinson: That reminds me of Harry Potter, you still have that, that Latin as magical language kind of thing in our society today. There's these magical words, abracadabra or avaracadabra, if you're a Harry Potter fan.
Josh Hutchinson: Absolutely. And I actually, that's something that always bothered me about the Harry Potter books. Like at no point do they actually learn the theory of magic. And I feel like that's a massive oversight, Yeah, they don't know how it works. They're just. They're cooking the [00:36:00] meal with the ingredients, but they don't know how it all comes together.
Tabitha Stanmore: Exactly. Yeah. It's rote learning and it's lazy, frankly.
Sarah Jack: Right now, I believe you're working on the Seven County Witch Hunt Project. Is that right?
Tabitha Stanmore: Yes, yeah it is. Yeah, so it's a three year, Leverhulme-funded research project with Professor Marion Gibson. I think it's really exciting. So we're looking at what we're calling England's mass witch hunt. So it was the largest witch hunt in England, as far as we know, and it took place during the English Civil War in the 1640s. And it's estimated that about 300 people were accused across seven counties, and of that, over 100 were executed. The thing that this project is trying to pin down is all of the details within that. We don't know exactly how many people were prosecuted, we don't know how many people were executed, we don't know the names of some of those people, and we certainly [00:37:00] don't know the backgrounds of those people either, or what kind of roles they played in their communities, or the kinds of psychological scars that the communities possibly ended up with as a result of these hunts.
Tabitha Stanmore: There's been an over focus, I think, on Matthew Hopkins, the so-called Witchfinder General, and his, co-searcher, John Stearne. And yeah, this project is trying to reorient our knowledge and our focus to look at the accused themselves and their families. So one thing I'm looking at within that, and I'd love to come back onto your podcast at some point and talk about this because I'm very excited about it, is, the children of suspected witches. Because as far as I know, we haven't, nobody's really looked into that in any detail. We do tend to look at the children of witches if they subsequently get accused of witchcraft. But, for example, we have 300 people who were accused, and almost all of those had children. [00:38:00] And we don't know the fates of those, what, did they stay within their communities? Did they end up going to prison alongside their parents? Did they carry a taint for the rest of their lives of being the children of witches? Or were they able to reinvent themselves? We just don't know. And I think that's a massive oversight and one that could tell us quite a lot about early modern witchcraft and the early modern capacity to forgive and forget, which at the moment is just a massive question mark,in our knowledge of the past.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. We definitely want you to come back and talk to us about that and anything else you want to talk to us about. We looked a little into children of the Connecticut witch trial victims. It's very fascinating what ends up happening with the families, like Sarah and I have ancestors who were accused. And so we know a little bit about what happened with our ancestors' families. And it's like you said, that trauma [00:39:00] is there no matter what the result of the accusation is. There's an impact.
Tabitha Stanmore: Absolutely. Yeah. Sorry. I definitely should have been a bit clearer about that. Within England, we don't know very much about the fates, but yeah, it's really exciting to see how much we actually do know about some of the legacies. in, in the U. S. for sure. Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating and well done for being alive now.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you. Yeah. Some of my ancestors and Sarah's, were acquitted and released and managed to recover and raise their families and everything. Others weren't as fortunate, but their children lived on and carried their names on.
Tabitha Stanmore: Honestly, the more I look into the early modern period, the more amazed I am that anybody survived it, really. um,
Josh Hutchinson: Just surviving to get born in the first place was so harrowing. Yeah.
Tabitha Stanmore: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. it's absolutely amazing. it's real testament to [00:40:00] human, I don't know, resourcefulness, hope, I'm not sure, but yeah, it's really amazing.
Sarah Jack:
Sarah Jack: And now for a Minute with Mary.
Mary-Louise Bingham: There was a woman living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, British America, indicted for the capital crime of witchcraft in 1665. She is only known to us today as Female Gleason. The reason we know of her existence at all is because her surname is mentioned in the book, Entertaining Satan, authored by John Putnam Demos.
Mary-Louise Bingham: I am sad that I have not yet found a court document stating her given name. I am also sad that her given name was not passed down through the generations. Her very being was almost erased from history. Today, I can assure you that the members of the Massachusetts Witch Hunt Justice Project are conducting the necessary research to discover Female Gleason's given name. It will be with great joy to speak her full name [00:41:00] when she is cleared for the crimes she did not commit.
Sarah Jack: Thank you, Mary.
Josh Hutchinson: Here's Sarah with End Witch Hunts News.
Sarah Jack: End Witch Hunt, a non profit 501c3 organization. Weekly News Update What impact can the United Nations Human Rights Council have? The United Nations Human Rights Council is an intergovernmental body within the United Nations system that strengthens the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe.
Sarah Jack: The work of the United Nations Human Rights Council includes promotion and protection of human rights, addressing violations and setting standards, encouraging compliance, and standards, promoting prevention, and continuing global dialogue. The preamble of the United Nations Charter states, 'We the peoples of the United Nations are determined to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights and the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women, and [00:42:00] of nations large and small.'
Sarah Jack: End Witch Hunts staunchly stands for the right of human dignity for all. We believe that this right, inerrant to every person, underpins all rights and freedoms. Harmful practices related to accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks is a violation against human dignity. End Witch Hunts implores states and individuals to uphold and protect human dignity. We all must work to safeguard individuals from torture, degrading treatment, and discrimination. We are dedicated to these principles and advocate for their universal adoption and implementation.
Sarah Jack: Witch hunts are a harmful reality that persists, and as a part of our podcast community, you play a crucial role in the collective advocacy. Thank you for tuning in, sharing our episodes, continuing the conversation with your sphere of influence, and asking leaders to take action. We must continue to cultivate the societal values of compassion, understanding, and [00:43:00] justice. It is our collective responsibility as a world community to unite against the inhumane treatment of every individual anywhere in the world, including anyone accused of causing witchcraft harm. Spread awareness. Share this information with your friends, family, and on social media. Use your voice to let others know about the urgency of combating witchcraft accusations and persecution. Support advocacy groups. You can learn all about them on our website and in our advocacy podcast episodes. Contact authorities. Raise your voice by reaching out to relevant authorities and leadership. Urge them to take swift and decisive action to ensure justice for victims and accountability for all involved.
Sarah Jack: End Witch Hunts actively supports exoneration and memorial efforts that aim to honor victims and raise witch hunt awareness. Sign our petition at change.org/witchtrials to urge the state of Massachusetts to amend legislation [00:44:00] acknowledging all Salem Witch Trial victims. Bill H 1803, an act to exonerate all individuals accused of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials, is currently being reviewed by the Joint Committee on the Judiciary in the Massachusetts General Court. They must choose to pass the bill onto the House by February 7th. Please consider submitting written testimony now as to why you support acknowledging all those who suffered in the Salem Witch Trials. This bill transcends the realm of mere legislation. It holds profound significance in the pursuit of human rights. Beyond the previously exonerated victims of the Salem Witch Trials, this bill sheds light on the vast scale of mass suffering that occurred. It represents a significant step toward rectifying this injustice and delivering more comprehensive justice. This legislation holds the power to provide more long overdue formal acknowledgement to overlooked victims.
Sarah Jack: Join the Massachusetts Witch Trial Justice Project and House [00:45:00] Representative Andres Vargas in advocating for this crucial piece of legislation. Anyone can submit written testimony. Simply write a short letter stating why this bill's important to this address, which will also be in the show notes: Judiciary Committee at 24 Beacon Street, room 1 36, Boston, Massachusetts 0 2 1 3 3 or by email to michael.musto@mahouse.gov. That's M I C H A E L dot M U S T O @ M A H O U S E dot G O V. Let's persist in elevating the voices of both historical and contemporary victims of witch hunts.
Sarah Jack: Our monthly donors are our super listeners. As a super listener, your monthly contributions make a significant impact. Visit aboutwitchhunts.com/ and easily sign up for any donation amount that suits you. Your generosity fuels the content you love.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you, [00:46:00] Sarah.
Sarah Jack: You're welcome.
Josh Hutchinson: And thank you for listening to Witch Hunt.
Sarah Jack: Visit us at aboutwitchhunts.com/.
Josh Hutchinson: And remember to tell your friends about the show.
Sarah Jack: Support our effort to end witch hunts. Visit endwitchhunts.org to learn more.
Josh Hutchinson: Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.
An engaging conversation on Halloween history and traditions, witchcraft, horror films, jack-o-lanterns, ghosts, zombies, the Satanic Panic, and more. We welcome back the podcast’s inaugural historian guest, Dr. Scott Culpepper, a historian, storyteller, author and Professor of History at Dordt University in Sioux Center, IA. After listening to this episode, be sure to return to episode 3 where he kicked off our historian episodes last year discussing the Connecticut Witch Trials in depth.
[00:00:10] Josh Hutchinson: Welcome to a haunted episode of Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
[00:00:18] Sarah Jack: And I'm Sarah Jack-o'-lantern.
[00:00:22] Josh Hutchinson: We're talking about the history of Halloween with Dr. Scott Culpepper.
[00:00:26] Sarah Jack: Lore and the history.
[00:00:30] Josh Hutchinson: Find out why we do certain things that we do every year at Halloween time and find out where the holiday came from.
[00:00:39] Sarah Jack: What might have they been up to centuries before?
[00:00:45] Josh Hutchinson: What is Samhain? What did they do at Samhain? Did they do human sacrifices?
[00:00:51] Sarah Jack: If this episode was a neighborhood for trick or treating, we hit every house.
[00:00:57] Josh Hutchinson: Full size candy bars for everyone.
[00:01:00] Sarah Jack: All Souls Day, All Saints Day, Hallowtide, Day of the Dead. You'll hear a little bit about everything.
[00:01:09] Josh Hutchinson: Yes! Where do all these different Halloween things come from? Where did we get jack-o'-lanterns from? Who is this Great Pumpkin I've been hearing so much about?
[00:01:21] Sarah Jack: What kind of things do people get up to? Why is Halloween rebellious?
[00:01:27] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. Why is Halloween a night you get to act out? We'll talk about the origins of the word Halloween itself. Where did that even come from? We'll learn how Halloween became an American thing.
[00:01:43] Sarah Jack: Even though we're excited about Halloween and exploring its history, you can't talk about much of it without witches.
[00:01:57] Josh Hutchinson: Yes, we do talk witches a lot in this episode, and Scott gives some great information on the connections between witchcraft and Halloween, and we talk about the Satanic Panic at the disco.
[00:02:16] Sarah Jack: Did you say at the disco?
[00:02:18] Josh Hutchinson: Yes. We talked about the colors, the candy, the costumes.
[00:02:24] Sarah Jack: Hollywood and movies.
[00:02:26] Josh Hutchinson: Yes, there was some discussion of Halloween favorites. Be thinking about yours when you hear our questions.
[00:02:36] Sarah Jack: It was so great to have Dr. Culpepper back. When Dr. Culpepper talks history, you can picture it.
[00:02:44] Josh Hutchinson: I know you're going to have as much fun with this episode as we did.
[00:02:48] Sarah Jack: We did have a lot of fun in this episode.
[00:02:52] Josh Hutchinson: So grab that bag of candy that you were thinking you were going to give to the trick or treaters and pop some kettle corn, drink some apple cider, and settle right in.
[00:03:06] Sarah Jack: Welcome back, Dr. Scott Culpepper, Professor of History at Dordt University, who holds a PhD in religion with an emphasis in historical and church state studies from Baylor University. He specializes in Europe and the Atlantic world with a particular emphasis on the intersections of politics, religions, and popular cultures. You will enjoy what he has to share.
[00:03:28] Josh Hutchinson: What is your favorite Halloween tradition?
[00:03:32] Scott Culpepper: Ah, I think the whole haunted house thing. I just like to go in as an adult. I like to go into the haunted houses and be scared a little bit, but then I also like trick or treating. It's hard to put that second, but that's up there as well. Two of my favorite traditions.
[00:03:49] Sarah Jack: Awesome. And what is your favorite Halloween candy?
[00:03:53] Scott Culpepper: Ah, Nestle Crunch, which is my favorite candy overall.
[00:03:57] Josh Hutchinson: Okay. So when you're trick or treating, you'd look forward to getting that in your basket.
[00:04:04] Scott Culpepper: Absolutely. Yeah, it was always fun as a kid, and then as a dad, to get to go along, do the ride along, and my kids like Nestle Crunch okay but it's not their favorite, so I was able to assist and then get rewarded with Nestle Crunch. It was always great.
[00:04:19] Josh Hutchinson: Oh, that's perfect. That would be dangerous for me to be assisting anybody with trick or treating these days. We always have enough candy just at the house to give out to the trick or treaters.
[00:04:32] Scott Culpepper: I don't think we ever ate all of ours. We had so much. Not that we didn't eat more than we should, but I can remember it being around in the house for months after.
[00:04:42] Josh Hutchinson: What is your favorite Halloween movie?
[00:04:45] Scott Culpepper: Oh, that's a good question. I think just because it's a classic of classics, Halloween, the original Halloween, and I like it just because of the atmosphere. It is very evocative of Halloween in middle America. And it's funny because, of course, it was filmed in California. We actually went to visit my daughter and we were in Los Angeles, and we went and saw the house, Michael Myers' house that was in the film, and we saw the yard next door, which was supposed to be Laurie Strode's house, the realty house. And it's crazy. It's just like in downtown Pasadena. You go around the corner and you've got California, palm trees all around, but you've got this one little street where they create the illusion of middle America.
[00:05:29] Josh Hutchinson: It's funny how they're able to do that with a place like Pasadena. I know that's used in Back to the Future, Dr. Brown's house was in Pasadena.
[00:05:39] Scott Culpepper: Yes.
[00:05:40] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. So I've been by that one.
[00:05:43] Scott Culpepper: Yeah, it's been so impressive on our trips out there to go to the studios and all that and just see the magic of movie making. You've always known about it, but to actually see how they transform these spaces and just bring you into a very different reality from the place that you're actually in, it's just incredible.
[00:06:00] Sarah Jack: That's awesome. And do you have a favorite Halloween topic?
[00:06:06] Scott Culpepper: That's a good question. Witches, obviously, which is the topic that kind of draws all of us, the associations of Halloween festivals and ritual and lore with people's assumptions about witches and witchcraft and all of that. I like ghost stories, and so that's one of my favorite things, as well. And of course, being somebody who studies the Reformation and the fallout from both the Protestant and Catholic Reform movements, it's fascinating to me how there are very powerful influences, which we'll probably talk about later, stemming from that period into at least the precursors of what we now call Halloween.
[00:06:45] Josh Hutchinson: We are excited to announce the Massachusetts Witch Hunt Justice Project, which seeks recognition of all of Massachusetts' witch trial victims.
[00:06:56] Sarah Jack: According to the available research, the colonies of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth took action against at least 211 different individuals.
[00:07:06] Josh Hutchinson: Past legislation has focused on the 30 convicted during the Salem Witch Hunt, plus Giles Corey, who was pressed to death with stones. Legislation to date has not included 180 other individuals prosecuted by Massachusetts.
[00:07:26] Sarah Jack: The Massachusetts Witch Hunt Justice Project proposes that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts restore to good standing those convicted of witchcraft and issue an apology to all who were accused and suffered the consequences of accusation.
[00:07:41] Josh Hutchinson: This effort follows on the heels of the exoneration of Elizabeth Johnson, Jr. by Massachusetts in 2022 and the exoneration of 34 individuals by Connecticut in May, 2023.
[00:07:53] Sarah Jack: We welcome individuals, schools, and organizations to be a part of making this project a success. Please visit massachusettswitchtrials.org to find out how you can volunteer.
[00:08:05] Josh Hutchinson: Lend your voice and effort to speak for people like Tituba and little Dorothy Good, both jailed during the Salem Witch Hunt, all but forgotten to history.
[00:08:14] Sarah Jack: These memorable victims, and many more, deserve to be formally recognized by name as innocent victims of Massachusetts witch trial history.
[00:08:24] Josh Hutchinson: Sign the petition today. The link is in the show description. Thank you.
[00:08:29] Josh Hutchinson: There doesn't seem to be a lot of knowledge generally about the origins of Halloween. Has the fear of Halloween hidden the knowledge, or is that from some other? Why do you think it's obscure?
[00:08:46] Scott Culpepper: I think so. And not even so much that it's obscure as we have legendary ideas about where Halloween comes from. Probably most people have heard the term Samhain, the ancient Celtic festival, which supposedly is one of the precursors of Halloween. And a lot of people are aware of that, but they have a lot of folkloric sort of concepts of what that is, and rightfully so, because we really don't know much about what that festival was. Yeah, I think that is definitely one barrier to people learning more about the past of Halloween, and the legend that it's primarily a pagan holiday has really obscured the fact that it's got those very strong Christian roots and origins. Especially fundamentalist Christians, they'll go off on the pagan rites, and maybe even Greek and Roman rites if they're a little bit better read, that may have been precursors to Halloween, but they don't acknowledge the very deep roots of the observance in the history of the church and the church's attempt to convert pagan peoples in the early medieval period. So definitely, yeah, I think fear, suspicion, and then just the willingness to accept legends that may not actually have had very little to do with the development of the holiday really obscures people's knowledge of the true origins.
[00:10:07] Sarah Jack: Yeah, I think the legend aspect of things is so interesting. That makes me think about, specifically, Goody Bassett. She's such a legend to her community, and they really love the legend, and they are starting to embrace her as a person, too. But I think that also, Halloween of course is such a massive thing, but the legends are such a cherished piece and some people that, it doesn't matter to them necessarily. It's not important to them to enjoy it, what's historic and what's legend. And I was chatting with my sister briefly about Halloween questions, and one of the things she said was, "what's myth and what's the history?"
[00:10:48] Scott Culpepper: Yeah. And that is such a good question, because so much of what we think we know about the world is entangled with mythologies, and we all have our personal mythologies that we embrace. So it really is, it's a tricky thing. And sometimes the myth is enriching, the myth is empowering, the myth serves a good purpose.
It's always important to try to, as accurately as possible, I think, get to the historical roots, but the mythology has its own impact that's worth appreciating, as well. It's interesting in the history of modern paganism and modern Wicca, modern forms of witchcraft. That's, of course, very different from the accusations that were made during the early modern period. But early on in the early 20th century, you had scholars of folklore, like Margaret Murray, who were talking about legends of ancient rituals, and they constructed this whole framework of what people might've been practicing out in the groves and out in the forest and all that. And a lot of that inspired modern forms of Wicca and contemporary witchcraft.
The reality is probably none of that was actually going on, or at least very little of it. And the people who were accused of witchcraft, as you say often on the podcast, during the early modern period and later, these were people that had no thought of practicing real witchcraft. At the most, they may have been involved in some forms of folk magic or superstition.
So it's interesting in terms of the folklore, the mythology, looking at that duality as well, how you've got this contemporary movement that has really made the concept of witchcraft cool in our culture now, and its associations with Halloween today make the idea something that's more culturally acceptable, but they're grabbing onto, in some cases, the very folkloric stories that led to the accusation of these people that were so violently mistreated in the past.
[00:12:36] Josh Hutchinson: You mentioned Samhain. Can you explain what that is?
[00:12:41] Scott Culpepper: It is. It's an ancient Celtic festival that was practiced around the time of the end of October, about the time that we now celebrate Halloween, and it marked the transition from the days of light to the time of darkness. It seems like in a variety of different ancient religious systems there was an attachment of the religious system to the cycles of agriculture, as you would expect, because most people's lives depended very much on that cycle operating successfully and that ties you to the mystical forces that foster the earth, that whatever deities you believe in, they're expressed through those natural cycles and through natural phenomena.
And so the idea was you're getting to the end of the cycle of growth. You're entering the time of harvest when things need to be as perfect as possible for you to have a good crop to last through the winter. And you're entering the time of darkness. Days are going to get shorter. The nights are going to get longer until, of course, finally, you get to the winter solstice, when you have the very longest night of the year. And so it's seen as a time of death and a time of pending rebirth, so to speak, as you're entering into the winter months.
And so from what we know, Samhain is a celebration of that, an expectation of what's to come and an honoring of what happened in the past. It seems like they were probably ceremonial rituals with bonfires, maybe people bringing some of the produce that had been harvested in those fall months, and just crying out to the gods for a good winter and fruitful times to come in the future.
And so it's very much marking that point of transition. It's one of several observances throughout the year that marks the point of transition. Having said that, that's what we know, but there's so much we don't know about exactly what happened.
And one of our struggles to understand a lot of the ancient Celtic religions of the British Isles is the fact that most of the information we get about them is mediated through other people, particularly the Romans. And the Romans had all kinds of reasons to exaggerate and to misrepresent what was being practiced. People like Julius Caesar, Tacitus, many other Roman historians, they'll write about the people of the British Isles and they'll record the actions of the Druids, who were said to be the priestly class among the Celtic peoples of the British Isles, and they'll talk about human sacrifice. They'll talk about the resistance of Celtic peoples to the Romans. And so you get these very enticing images of Celtic peoples worshiping out in the groves with the sacred trees and all of that, a lot of which probably is based on accurate information to some degree, but then you get a lot of things about ritual sacrifice and all that as well that we're not nearly as sure about.
We do appear to have some archaeological evidence of people dying violently in some parts of the British Isles, and so the scholarly community is very divided about the degree to which there might have been human sacrifice, and if there was, in what way or what context it operated. Most scholars that I've seen would argue that where there were sacrifices or offerings, they typically were animals or they were the produce of the earth, the things that had been gathered during the harvest, more so than human sacrifice. But there is still an ongoing debate about there being pockets where human sacrifice was practiced.
Now, of course, for the Romans, this is the kind of thing that they certainly wanted to magnify and amplify. They're overcoming these, what they would view as twisted cultures, uncivilized cultures. And then with the transition of the Roman Empire to being a Christian empire, you get a lot of Christian leaders who are willing to sign on to those legends, as well, because again, they're Christianizing these people who are uncivilized, who are practicing violence against others. And so it's something that got a lot of legs.
We really don't know all of the specifics, but at least those are some of the things that we know about the traditions of Samhain.
[00:16:51] Sarah Jack: Thank you so much. I'm learning a lot. I knew I was going to. I love it.
[00:16:57] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, and you also mentioned that the holiday has Christian origins. Can you tell us about the origin of the word Halloween?
[00:17:06] Scott Culpepper: Yes. It's very interesting. You've got these different observances that mark not only the transition of the seasons, but also there arises this belief that that period is a very liminal time, because you've got that transition from greater light to greater darkness. And part of that liminality is the idea that the barrier between the living and the dead becomes more permeable.
There were Roman festivals that were practiced around May 13th that sort of venerated the dead, those who had gone before, and even posited the idea that the dead might be in contact that night. Samhain seems to have had an element of that as well, where the power of the ancestors is invoked to try to help increase yields in the future, to preserve the people over the course of the long winter months.
So when you move into the early medieval history of the church, a lot of officials are wanting to reach out in a variety of ways to pagan peoples, people who practice the old religions, and bring them into the Christian fold. And one way they do that is by trying to adopt and then co-opt, transform practices that are very popular amongst them.
And one of the things they'll do is to move that festival that in Roman culture happens around May 13th or May 16th to the end of October. And during that point of transition from the greater light to the greater darkness, they will set aside the observance on November the 1st of what's called All Hallows Eve. And the idea behind that initially was to celebrate the saints, because during the early medieval period, the concept of sainthood is beginning to rise in prominence in the medieval church. And so first and foremost, they set it as a day to celebrate the saints and the way the saints, through their great actions, have set aside treasury and merit for people. That whole sacramental system is developing within the Catholic church.
People are also having a need to acknowledge their own ancestors, as well, not just the sort of super sanctified Christians represented by the Saints, but people that are dear to them, as well. And so they'll also eventually create another day, November 2nd, which is All Souls Day. All Hallows Day is set aside to commemorate the Saints. November 2nd is set aside to commemorate others who have gone before. So October 31st becomes known as All Hallows Eve, the day before All Hallows Day. And eventually it gets transformed from All Hallows Eve or Even to Halloween, the compound word, it gets all incorporated together.
That cycle really becomes popular by the end of the 12th century. It goes through a period of evolution, but we see pretty good evidence that by the end of the 12th century or the 1100s, it's very well established. There were some monks that were headquartered around Cluny in France in the early 900s who began to be very taken with that whole cycle. And so the Cluniacs especially helped to popularize that so that by the end of the 1100s, it's a pretty central part and pretty widely accepted observance within the Catholic Church.
[00:20:25] Josh Hutchinson: Is there a relationship between Halloween and the Day of the Dead?
[00:20:32] Scott Culpepper: There is, and again it stems through the Church, because so many of the areas that commemorate the Day of the Dead, especially in Latin America, Spain, Italy. These are places that are very heavily Catholic influenced, and it's an interesting sort of joining of popular folklore and Catholic tradition.
So definitely, I would say they stem from many of the same roots, and I think you see that, especially in the fact that some of the rites of Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, and Carnivale, in parts of Latin America, they're similar to things that are done on the Day of the Dead. They have a similar purpose, commemorating those who have gone before, especially in cultures that believe in purgatory, praying for those you love to advance through purgatory well.
So yes, definitely there are affinities there, and it's just a great recipe. It's a great mix. As we were talking about earlier, Sarah said the importance of acknowledging mythology and the richness of it. We try to draw these hard barriers, these hard lines, especially in a lot of contemporary cultures, and the reality is it's all a big soup flowing together. It's the Christian traditions, it's the pagan traditions. Once all of that arrives in North and South America, it's the traditions of the Native peoples there, as well. You see like, say, the Virgin of Guadalupe. She is so much an amalgamation of Christian and Native conceptions. In many ways, she's a combination of the Virgin Mary and conceptions of an Aztec goddess forged together. It's interesting how that soup of mythology, folklore, just blends together and creates these traditions.
[00:22:12] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, that's really intriguing, the connection there and the merge of those two.
[00:22:21] Sarah Jack: And I really love the soup metaphor, just because, thinking of the cauldron.
[00:22:26] Scott Culpepper: Yes. Yes.
[00:22:27] Sarah Jack: but
[00:22:28] Scott Culpepper: I saw a special a while ago, I think it was produced by the History Channel, where they were talking about the legend of the witch, how it began to arise in the late medieval and early modern period. And they noted the fact that these are primarily women who are being accused of witchcraft, and her tools are born of the domestic sphere. And they talk about the ordinary household broom and the ordinary household cauldron that is used for cooking and how that becomes incorporated into the legends as the tools of the witch, because those are the tools that women would have used in that culture.
[00:23:02] Sarah Jack: What is Hallowtide?
[00:23:04] Scott Culpepper: Hallowtide is that whole sort of sweep of events, that whole cycle from the very end of October through the beginning of November. And it's just a time of commemorating death, rebirth, new life, and of course is very central to the background of what eventually is going to become our celebration of Halloween.
[00:23:27] Josh Hutchinson: And when did Halloween come to America?
[00:23:31] Scott Culpepper: It comes pretty early in the sense, and I, to kind of preface that, it would be important to talk about where it stood in the British Isles, especially, but in other parts of Europe, too, about the time that the American colonies began to come together. The Reformation had really affected people's concept in the British Isles of Halloween and how its origins played into current politics and culture. You'd had the reform movements, the Protestant Reformation. You'd had the answering Catholic reform movements within the Catholic Church.
In the British Isles, especially, Halloween is suspect because of its Catholic associations, which is interesting. Now it's suspect because of its supposed supernatural or demonic associations. At the time, it was suspect because they rightly saw it as a very Catholic sort of observance. And of course, Protestants reject the idea of purgatory. And so the entire premise of this in many ways, and also they reject saints. So the whole premise of this cycle of days is a problem for them.
And so they very actively campaigned against it. Protestantism as it comes to the fore in England is somewhat puzzled about how to deal with it. Under Henry VIII, they really didn't do much about it because he was a very pragmatic sort of reformer. With Edward, his son, he tries to ban observances of Halloween, and then of course with his sister, Mary, they go the other way. Mary tries to revive it because of her Catholicism. Finally, under Elizabeth, Protestantism gains control of the conversation, and Halloween is less often commemorated.
But then at the very beginning of the 17th century, in 1605, you get the infamous Gunpowder Plot, where Guy Fawkes tries to blow up the Houses of Parliament, and immediately after that, the year after Guy Fawkes is executed for that crime, you get the birth of Guy Fawkes Day. And so during the 17th century, a lot of the things we associate with Halloween, they're being practiced as part of Guy Fawkes Day observances, and it's an interesting patchwork quilt where you see Guy Fawkes being magnified, the Guy Fawkes Day celebration in some parts of the British Isles. And in those pockets where Catholicism is stronger, you see still Halloween or at least those sort of pre-Halloween observances still practiced.
And it's interesting, because a lot of the customs are the same for both. They'll have their cake and eat it too, so to speak. For instance, one thing that's practiced in the Catholic tradition at the time of Halloween is that poor people would go to the homes of people who are a little bit more affluent, and they would ask for offerings to pray for the souls of those who had gone before, those who are in purgatory. So if you're a poor person, you go to a family and say, "if you give me something, I will give prayers throughout the rest of the year for your family members who have gone on." Of course, Protestants are not open to that theology, but it becomes a way still of gathering alms. And so here you see the incipient origins of the idea of trick-or-treat, the idea of people coming for candy.
So I go into all that as background just to say that it was in a very interesting place in the British Isles. And so when colonists first came to America, they brought that with them. If you had more Protestant immigrants, they're going to tend to commemorate Guy Fawkes Day more in that Protestant tradition. If you're a Scotch-Irish immigrant, you're from the Highlands or whatever, and you're more Catholic in your orientation, you'll probably practice some of those older versions of Halloween folklore, Halloween observances. But it's interesting because some of the customs were the same all around. Looks like it really begins to get a lot of attention from people like Longfellow and Hawthorne in the 19th century. Robert Burns had been writing about it in his Scottish poetry in the late 18th century. It's being practiced, it's part of the custom.
Probably about the mid to late 19th century is when it really starts to get traction in American culture. I've heard some people refer to the Civil War and say that the large number of dead coming out of the Civil War may have given an impetus to this obsession with the dead, with commemorating the dead, with the idea of the veil between this world and the next, as that's also the time when spiritualism is really popular in American culture, probably in part because of all the deaths that were suffered during the Civil War and people's desire to get in touch with their loved ones. So that seems to be the moment when it becomes more popular, although it's a very different sort of celebration then than it's ultimately going to become.
[00:28:19] Josh Hutchinson: What would it have been like around the end of the 19th century?
[00:28:25] Scott Culpepper: Very interesting, very different, but you can see the beginnings, the contours of what we do now in it. You had this whole tradition, of course, of the gift giving, people coming and petitioning for gifts, and that was still a present thing.
There was this tradition of the Lords of Misrule in the early modern period, where people would also play pranks. It was a time a lot like some of the other festivals, too, like Carnival, where you had this inversion of the social structure, where people could pretend to be something else, and you would have people put on masks and basically pretend to be something other than they were. They could dress like a lord or a lady.
And sometimes people would engage in pranks that were quite cruel. They would damage property. There were instances in the early modern period where people challenged each other to go and to mock a witch as a way of essentially trying to control malevolent powers in the area. So some poor woman is going to be beset by people accusing her of being a witch. And a lot of those sort of customs continue, probably carried by Irish and Scottish immigrants into the late 19th century.
You get a lot of pranks during Halloween, and it begins to get out of hand, so much so that by the time of the Great Depression, there are people who are concerned that there's too much vandalism, too much rowdiness, the holiday has gotten very out of control, and so it's during the Great Depression that retailers and other culture producers begin to work to transform the holiday.
They basically set out to tame the holiday, and one of the ways they're going to do that is by making it a more child focused event. They'll take some of these customs, such as coming and asking for favors to be granted, trick-or-treat, and they'll start to encourage the idea of giving candy to those who come, people coming just to seek gifts for nothing in return, as a way to pacify those who might engage in more socially unacceptable behaviors, and this actually came from a custom where people would sometimes pay folks off that they thought were going to engage in rowdy behavior. In the 1910s, 1920s, some people who want to protect their property, they would pay folks off. And so this is a way of taming that, making it more culturally acceptable.
[00:30:57] Josh Hutchinson: And you talked about how Halloween was frowned upon by the English Reformation movement and was somewhat vilified as this Catholic practice. When did it begin to be vilified as demonic or satanic?
[00:31:14] Scott Culpepper: Probably I would say a more modern vintage because in the 1950s and early 1960s, it was a fairly mainstream sort of holiday. American culture had done a really good job of making it a cherished family observance. And that seemed to be very widely accepted. I've seen a lot of people give tremendous credit to the Great Pumpkin episode of Charlie Brown as a way to mainstream Halloween, which I'd never thought of. I watched it every year as a kid and never thought about the fact that this was a very representative presentation of what people do on Halloween to a culture that may not have been as familiar with it as we would think.
Also, they talked about Disney cartoons. Donald Duck had several episodes where he was featured with his nephews trick-or-treating. And so they're mainstreaming these practices through these cultural artifacts, and it seems very innocent and fairly well regarded. You had people dressing up like the Wicked Witch from Wizard of Oz, and nobody's really batting an eye.
The hostility seems to have really arisen powerfully during the late 60s and early 70s when you've got this whole series of upheavals associated with the counterculture, a lot of older people's mistrust of young people. You've got things like Anton LaVey founding the Church of Satan and some people having concerns about what that is and how exactly it's going to influence the culture, so it seems that is the point where you have a little bit of a tipping point where you've got concerns about demonic activity.
I'm sure you could find evidence of, especially fundamentalist groups, even as early as the 1950s, are criticizing the idea of people dressing as witches and things like that. That's a perennial thing in American culture, but it really gets legs in the 60s and 70s, anxieties about where culture is going, things changing, some people think too fast. And then these legends that persist that are universal, that have always been there, as well. They're meeting the moment.
Really goes into overdrive in the late 70s, early 80s, with the development of Satanic Panic. You've got Michelle Remembers, Michelle Smith, and Lawrence Pazder released this memoir where she claims to have recovered memories of satanic ritual abuse, which were later demonstrated to be completely false. And so you get this whole movement concerned about satanic covens in the hinterlands practicing satanic ritual abuse.
You get things like in a 1982, this Tylenol scare where you had several people that actually did die from tainted Tylenol in the Chicago area, a case which is still open. It's still never been solved, and, associated with that, you started to get accounts of Halloween candy being tampered with. There may have been one or two instances where that actually happened, but as one historian said, we don't know if it's a case of the chicken or the egg. We don't know if somebody did that at some point in one isolated case and it started something or if that was a reaction to the legends that grew. And where there has been demonstrated evidence of any tampering with Halloween candy, it was in the case of a family member doing that to children in their family because of issues they had because of problems in the marriage and just a lot of emotional issues, and so it's within that family. It's not someone setting out to do this to strangers, but the legends really grew during the eighties, and that's when you get this full-fledged belief among at least a minority of the population that Halloween is a demonic time, a time when Satan is at work and evil things can happen and evil people are trying to harm the innocents.
[00:35:12] Sarah Jack: And is that about the time that the theories about the witches' Sabbaths became inaccurately passed and affected legends around alleged witchcraft in the modern period?
[00:35:26] Scott Culpepper: To some degree. They've always had their cycles. They are very prominent at certain times. As you so well know, the early modern period, which was the big age of very intense witchcraft hunts in Europe, and then the cycle in America with the Connecticut witch, trials with the Salem Witch Trials, and that never absolutely goes away at American culture.
It goes into hibernation. But as you talk about all the time, it's still there. It's always in the background informing and creating accusations and false understandings of who people are. Like we said earlier, Margaret Murray's work, the folklorist in the early 20th century, did a lot to prompt people to speculate about whether there weren't actual rituals going on on which the witchcraft accusations were based.
For a while, people were really intensely into studying that possibility, and it was a big fixture in academia. And that's a great illustration of the fact that academia is not perfect. We struggle towards the truth. We try to understand the evidence as best we can. Sometimes that means eventually we have to let go of pet theories. And that was one of the ones that was let go of pretty much by the early seventies. Most scholars would acknowledge by then there's no real evidence of any major organized movement that would have rightly been identified as even a revival of what was perceived as ancient pagan worship. That's all mythology, but the cycle of belief in it, it just ebbs and flows.
It's very powerful in the early 20th century, very powerful in the 60s and 70s and 80s. And what's so interesting is the interplay of different groups. This is not just the creation of fundamentalist Christians, although they certainly are going to thrive off of it and they're going to incorporate it quite a bit. But Hollywood's obsessed with that, as well. You've got Rosemary's Baby. You've got lesser known films. When Sharon Tate was killed tragically by the Manson family, one of the things that some outlets showed were stills from a picture that she was in called Eye of the Devil a few years ago, and they alleged that Sharon Tate was involved with a satanic cult. She wasn't. She had been in this movie, and they were stills from that movie. The Exorcist, which William Friedkin just died this week, that was the director of that film. The Omen. Just a lot of interesting cultural artifacts that connected with those fears and anxieties and then connected with Christian theology, as well. And some groups just really use those to highlight.
And so the template they've got for like the satanic groups and Rosemary's Baby, the satanic coven there in the uh, apartment building where she lives, the practices that you see on TV, they're crafted and shaped by those legends. It just grows like a snowball.
There's a scholar named Joseph Laycock who has done some work on Dungeons and Dragons, and he's done some work on the Satanic Temple. He's got a book coming out later this fall that he wrote with someone else. I'm not sure who his coauthor is, but they are looking at how Hollywood films have shaped religious practice in American culture, and they're looking at films like The Exorcist, and they're going to look at The Conjuring series, and they're talking about how the exorcism ritual in the Catholic Church changes in many ways, and people's expectation of what it can do and what it is, changes because of The Exorcist, because of this cultural product that is created by Hollywood entrepreneurs that are just wanting to entertain people but has a very real impact over religious practice.
And so I see those legends of witches sabbaths and all that as serving the same role. It really through those different forms of media conditions what we expect, how we see the past and the rituals of the past.
[00:39:24] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, it's amazing how pop culture can influence people's behavior.
[00:39:30] Scott Culpepper: Yeah, it's incredible. And both positively and negatively, because on the one hand, you've got the continuation of these terrible misconceptions about what women may have been practicing in earlier times and this idea of the witch as a malevolent figure. But then you get to the 90s, especially the late 90s, and you get this whole collection of media products that are celebrating the power of the witch.
Even in the 60s and 70s, the notion of the witch or the liberated woman is transformed into this idea of a woman who has power, a woman who has agency. And that's probably part of the kickback against the notion of witchcraft and Satanism, as well. People who were threatened by second and third wave feminism, they often linked witchcraft, especially modern witchcraft like Wicca to women undermining the system or whatever. And in their attempts to do that, of course, they often misrepresent contemporary practitioners of Wicca by using the old tropes. They associate them with the old, legendary behaviors of witches in the past. But you get a refurbishment of the image of the witch, you get Buffy the Vampire Slayer with Willow, and you get movies like The Craft, and increasingly Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and it becomes something that's actually cool in American culture.
And it's a double-edged sword. You guys have talked about this really well on the podcast in the past. On the one hand, it's created this new religious tradition, and it's very empowering for many women who are part of practicing it. On the other hand, it does muddy the waters when it comes to trying to assess the harmful legacy of witchcraft trials, because you never want to accept the illusion that was cast by their persecutors that these women were guilty of anything. And there is a tendency within those revived pagan religions or neo-pagan religions to want to find connections to the past and want to say these women must have been proto-Wiccans or whatever, which, as we all know, does a disservice to their memory, because more than likely they were not guilty of anything but just being different sometimes in a society that didn't tolerate difference well.
[00:41:50] Megan: Hello everybody, this is Megan, and welcome to Tea Time Crimes, the true crime podcast that explores women's stories under the lens of murder and mayhem. Each week my co-host Alana and I delve into the psychology of killers, the strength of survivors, and everywhere in between.
[00:42:07] Alana: Wait, what? I thought this was a tea podcast.
[00:42:09] Megan: Oh yeah. And Alana is left completely in the dark for each episode. So join us every week for a fascinating case with Alana's fresh perspective and a comprehensive yet accidentally comedic tea review.
[00:42:21] Alana: I bring the tea, and she brings the crimes.
[00:42:24] Megan: Find us wherever you listen to your podcasts.
[00:42:27] Alana: Tea Time Crimes, out.
[00:42:31] Josh Hutchinson: It's amazing how few references there actually are in the colonial witch trial records to actual magical practices. The appearance, at least, is that of all the people accused of witchcraft, like a very small minority were doing some kind of magic, and the rest had probably nothing to do with it at all.
[00:42:56] Scott Culpepper: And it's amazing when you look back at those kind of practices. Those women are noted for doing that because they ultimately get involved in these witchcraft accusations. But how many other people were doing things like that? That was not as well documented. What kind of folk superstitions did people practice every day that just didn't attract the attention of the authorities, because they weren't on the margins or they didn't fit the profile?
[00:43:20] Sarah Jack: Yeah, and I've had a question recently and some of this conversation is clarifying it for me, but it I feel like interested in understanding in the last 300 years or less, how did we as a American culture forget what those ancestors, six, seven, eight generations back, what their symbols of protective magic were that they had hidden in their home? Like, how did we become confused about images? I also think about how Hollywood or fears associated with the devil vilified specific symbols, like really boldly for generations and generations, but the actual, historical protective magic that many people had passed down, we are surprised now when we're finding them in these historical buildings and during research.
[00:44:20] Scott Culpepper: Yeah, symbolism has changed so much through the centuries. You look at something like the swastika, which was a part of Hindu belief at one point, and then it became incorporated as a Christian symbol, and then reversed and transformed, it becomes the symbol of antisemitism and Nazi Germany, and of course, very rightfully becomes so notorious.
The pentagram is now so tied to occult activity and Satanism in American popular cultures, but there are times it was incorporated as a Christian symbol. There've been times when it was used simply to highlight the elemental forces of nature in alchemical beliefs. So yeah, the transformation of those symbols is just incredible, and it is amazing how we lose contact with their meanings even within the span of one lifetime, much less over the course of decades or centuries.
[00:45:11] Sarah Jack: There's other things that have just endured for centuries, but other stuff falls away.
[00:45:18] Scott Culpepper: Yeah, and there's a temptation to want to tie that to institutional sponsorship or protection, and that is some of it, especially Christianity. The Christian church has been a very powerful preserver and negator of cultural elements, depending on the need. But at the same time, you get these interesting symbols that survive despite that, ones that have been suppressed and others that have been pushed forward have gone by the wayside, so I guess the institutional sponsorship or protection is part of it but it's not the whole story. It's complicated.
[00:45:53] Josh Hutchinson: I want to talk about Halloween symbolism a little. And part of that is I'm wondering about things like the origin of the jack-o-lantern and where we got the colors for Halloween. It's generally orange and black, maybe a little purple thrown in. Can you explain some of the origins of those traditions?
[00:46:16] Scott Culpepper: Yes, definitely. There was a custom during the nights when the bonfires were lit and people were doing these commemorations for the dead of putting a light in the turnip so that people could walk along and light the path as people are progressing through the woods or whatever. And that evolves into jack-o-lanterns in the early modern period as a more durable and a bigger sort of product to carry that light in. There was a legend about a guy named Jack who was so bad that he went to hell and the Devil decided he didn't want him in hell and so he ejects him from hell and condemns him to walk the earth. And he gives him, as a small comfort, a light to light his way as he walks the earth, and supposedly that's in a pumpkin. So that was one of the folklore streams that fed into the origin of the jack-o-lantern, as well.
The colors, black obviously from the darkness of the night, and associations with the supernatural, maybe even the malevolent supernatural. I think the orange probably arises from the continuing central place of the jack-o-lantern in the celebrations. And so black and orange just naturally arise from the incorporation of those symbols. And then the purple, I don't know, it's not quite as easy to say. It matches well and that may be one aspect of it. And that seems to be a more contemporary addition, the purple and sometimes the green, as well. You're seeing like some green, which I assume may have something to do with the stalk of the jack o lantern.
Those have been incorporated more recently. It's worth noting that a lot of that different innovation has come in the last 30 or 40 years, where you have Halloween lights, which has led to a further embracing of those colors of Halloween. And part of the reason for that is because the kids that enjoyed Halloween in the 50s and on through the eighties, they have now become the adults with kids of their own. The holiday has become a very adult holiday once again. It's come full circle. It's still very kid friendly, but it's very adult focused, as well.
It's like a billion dollar industry now every year. And a lot of that is adult costuming, not kid costuming, and the lights and all that as well. So I think part of that's commercial. The colors have become embedded, and then they've expanded on them, as well. They become a little more creative with the palette so that they can create better products.
[00:48:44] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, I remember as a younger adult how important Halloween was as just a festival and a time to have a party, and everybody dresses up. The adults all embrace the costuming very much. And yeah, then you just do the traditional Halloween things, but in an adult setting.
[00:49:09] Scott Culpepper: That draw to be someone else, to be something else for just a little bit, it's pervasive in our culture now. We see it not just at Halloween, but cosplay, things like Comic Con, Renaissance festivals, and the LARPing that's associated with those now, just that pull to be able for a little bit to be somebody else, to be somebody we admire or to be the monster. I heard one historian say it's fun to put on the mask of the monster, because the idea is if you're the monster, then the monster can't hurt you.
[00:49:41] Josh Hutchinson: A thread that's come up in this episode so far has been the subversive nature of Halloween, flipping things on their head. You talked about the power structure being inverted and people costuming to be the wealthy, but there's also that costuming to be the scary, and yeah, it seems like almost a night that you want to get a lot out of your system.
[00:50:09] Scott Culpepper: Yes. And that's not only tied to Halloween, but that's tied to the Guy Fawkes traditions, as well. As you probably know, one of the things they have done is burn a figure in effigy, and it started out as Guy Fawkes. Now it's everybody. You're not really somebody significant in British politics if you haven't been burned in effigy on Guy Fawkes night. Almost everybody gets that treatment at some point.
And yeah, in American cultures as well, we see masks that look like our political leaders or look like pop culture leaders, and people like to dress up like them. And sometimes they'll do it in a mocking sort of way. It's an inversion. I get to be this powerful figure for a night, either as a show of admiration or as a way to poke fun at them.
[00:50:54] Josh Hutchinson: And now Halloween's become the the fall version of Christmas, in regards to, you talked about the lights being put up and the decorations all over the yard. It's a very Christmassy almost co-opted a holiday. I can't think of too many holidays where you go that all out to decorate.
[00:51:17] Scott Culpepper: Absolutely. It is, what is this, August 10th, the day that we're recording, and I just went to what formerly was a very well cherished store that sold products for bath and for smelling good and all of that at one point. Rest in peace. And literally, rest in peace, because now it is a Spirit Halloween, and I just went on August the 8th, so they are already open, and they are active. Like you said, it's like the Christmas season, it starts, it's a three month affair now, at least.
[00:51:51] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, we saw people celebrating Summerween this year.
[00:51:56] Scott Culpepper: Oh, wow.
[00:51:57] Josh Hutchinson: Doing, like it was the middle of the summer, dress up and do jack-o-lanterns and things like that.
[00:52:04] Sarah Jack: It's a jack-o-watermelon, wasn't it?
[00:52:07] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, they were doing watermelons, yes.
[00:52:10] Scott Culpepper: Oh, that's great.
[00:52:12] Josh Hutchinson: Summerfy, or whatever.
[00:52:14] Scott Culpepper: I interact with a lot of horror movie fans and a lot of agents as well that do, they try to represent horror novels and other works for publication. When they get to October 1st, they'll release their schedule of the movies that they're going to view that month. They've got all of their favorite Halloween films and 31 days, 31 movies. It's amazing how many people are doing that now.
[00:52:39] Josh Hutchinson: Wow. Yeah, I've actually found myself starting earlier and earlier in the year to watch the classic horror movies and the new horror movies. It seems like by Labor Day, if not even earlier than that, people are getting geared towards Halloween.
[00:53:01] Scott Culpepper: There's this email service that I think operates out of Substack. It's called Dracula Daily. Yeah, Dracula famously is an epistolary novel made up of letters and journal entries. This service sends you an email for every day there's a dated entry in Dracula. And so you start with Jonathan Harker's journal, which starts in early May, and they'll send you an email throughout the summer. And so it covers the whole story, Jonathan's experience, the voyage of the Demeter, and all of that. And then it picks up with Mina and other characters. And pretty much from early May until early November, they will send you an email every day there's an entry in the journal. And so you're following the story in real time throughout the summer and into the early fall.
[00:53:47] Josh Hutchinson: Wow, that's like half the year.
[00:53:50] Scott Culpepper: Yeah.
[00:53:51] Sarah Jack: I love that.
[00:53:53] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, we love the dedication that we see among Halloween fans.
[00:53:57] Scott Culpepper: Yeah. It's neat.
[00:54:00] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah.
[00:54:02] Sarah Jack: I've been curious, the last three years or so was so affected by the pandemic and sickness and that first fall when towns were canceling the trick or treating. And then I loved some of the creative ideas people had, shooting candy down these long pipes down their stairs and I think some of that's gonna stick around and it's so fun to, you know, have your bag at the bottom and it comes shooting down but I'm wondering, you know, are people going to have like just so many parties they can't get to all of them this year, and what other ways is it possibly going to surge larger because we're not being held back as much?
[00:54:49] Scott Culpepper: Absolutely. I think we're seeing what a huge community gathering place it is, that it is a great moment for bringing people together and fostering community and, yeah, I agree. I think we're going to see even more of that. And it was really cool to see the creative ways that people tried to deal with it during the pandemic.
We left candy out for people where they could drive up and just take it. And that's not quite the same, but it was neat to see the resilience of people overcoming those horrible barriers that we were dealing with.
[00:55:21] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. And I know that last year was a record year in Salem for October visits. They had over a million people come in the month of October, and it's a town of 40,000 or something. And yeah, I could see it getting even bigger this year. Seems like as many people as will fit in Salem will go there.
[00:55:48] Scott Culpepper: That is Oh My Bucket List. I may be crazy because it sounds really busy, but I would love to go to Salem and Halloween at some point. That sounds like a lot of fun.
[00:55:59] Josh Hutchinson: I was there in October probably seven years ago. And yeah, it was just this whole carnival atmosphere to the whole city.
[00:56:10] Scott Culpepper: That's another of those strange aspects of all this. I've had some people, as I've been working on the Satanic Panic book that I've been researching, who have said, you've been really good at highlighting the dangers of this kind of thought, and the terrible consequences, but don't forget that one of the reasons why this became such a cultural phenomena is that for some people, it was fun because they enjoy being scared. And that's one of the interesting things about the whole Halloween mythos and all of the mythologies that go into it, as well. As some of it has caused great harm and there's no doubt at the same time, we love it. We love to scare ourselves, and I think sometimes even the people that act most offended in culture and do some of the terrible things, there's a part of them that kind of likes being scared. They like the notion that they're engaged in some great crusade, light versus darkness or whatever, and so you see that really in those festivities, in those celebrations. We, even those of us who know that these dark legends are not true, we still enjoy scaring ourselves with them this time of year.
[00:57:16] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, I really buy into the movies when I'm watching them. You can't help but get caught up in the emotions, and the fright is part of that. Why do you think people are so attracted to horror?
[00:57:33] Scott Culpepper: At one point, I was reading this book by a lady named Judith Flanders, a scholar named Judith Flanders, called The Invention of Murder. And she was talking about why we love murder mystery so much. It seems contradictory because we're reading stories about violence being done to somebody, and why is that comforting for us to read on a rainy night? And for her, she said, there's some comfort in it because it's happening out there. It's not happening right in front of you. It's a fantasy world that you can go to where these terrible things are happening, but at the end of the day, you can come back to your normal world, your normal life.
And I think there's something to that. I think we like the thrill of it. It's the same reason why people love roller coasters. We like to live on the edge, but in safe ways, we like to experience a little bit of that adrenaline rush, but in a way that preserves our life and limb, that's not dangerous to us.
I've always loved ghost stories, and I'm not a believer in ghosts, but I enjoy the mystery, the thrill. It just really pulls me in. That's probably my favorite type of horror story is a good ghost story. M. R. James or Edgar Allen Poe or whoever, it just really just enjoy the fascination, the gothic settings that it just transports you to another world.
[00:58:54] Sarah Jack: Yeah, I agree. I'm also a ghost fan, especially ghost children, if they're good or bad. I just love that element. When they're meddling in, whatever the storyline is for good or bad in one of my favorite films that may have that in it, is The Devil's Backbone, if you haven't seen that.
I really enjoy that one. I think another reason people enjoy reading and watching horror, it can be for that ending. Sometimes it isn't great, but sometimes you see the villain defeated or you see the person who's been running or suffering come out on top or win. And that's one of the things I like about it, but I'm a zombie fan.
[00:59:42] Scott Culpepper: Oh yeah.
[00:59:42] Sarah Jack: My very favorite thing to start the Halloween season with would be the original Night of the Living Dead and then follow them all through. There's someone's going to survive, maybe, there's that chase. Yeah, that's me.
[00:59:57] Scott Culpepper: It's worth mentioning, I just heard about this summer, the papers of George Romero are now at the University of Pittsburgh, and they're developing a whole wing of their academic library devoted to the study of horror. We're gonna see some good things hopefully come from that, the study of the horror genre.
[01:00:14] Sarah Jack: That's great.
[01:00:16] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, I like that. Yeah, there seem to be more academic conferences. We see things on the artist formerly known as Twitter that, different academics posting conferences about folklore in pop culture and horror in pop culture, doing, starting to do studies around that.
[01:00:40] Scott Culpepper: It's funny, connected to what Sarah said about the way that pop culture both reflects and shapes what's going on the ground. It's funny to me, some of the strident Catholic opposition to movies like The Exorcist and The Conjuring series, because the Catholic Church never looked better. You do have that whole conflict of light versus darkness, and nine times out of ten in those stories, a Catholic priest is the one who's coming to save the day. And so it's funny the discomfort that some Catholics feel with those films because there's never been a better sort of vehicle to make Catholic leaders look more heroic and Catholic ritual look like a symbol of light and hope.
[01:01:23] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, I'm thinking based on what you and Sarah have said, I'm getting, horror as it's this safe outlet where you can watch what is your worst fear, and then somebody's overcoming that fear, and that's rewarding.
[01:01:41] Scott Culpepper: Yeah, I really love the ability of horror to make such profound social commentary. Just like a Night of the Living Dead, or Psycho, or you name it, there's so many horror films that are so much deeper than just the surface level story, that really make some profound social commentary about the human condition, or current political trends, and you really see that reflected when you go watch some of these films and then you put 'em in their historical context or books or whatever. I really appreciate that fact that you create these fantasy worlds where you do have these horrors that people are facing and they end up saying something about real life as well, that whole concept that J R R Tolkien talked about of escaping to reality, escaping to a fantasy that teaches you something about real life.
[01:02:32] Josh Hutchinson: You've mentioned a number of books during this conversation. Do you have any others that you recommend our listeners read to learn more about Halloween?
[01:02:43] Scott Culpepper: I think there's some really great ones out there. One of the best. It's published by Oxford Press, and it's one that I actually looked at a little bit for our conversation. It's by Nicholas Rogers, and it's called Halloween: From Pagan Observance to Party Night, which is a fantastic title, and it's an Oxford title, so those are usually very high quality scholarship. And there are a lot of others that you can find, as well, that are written at a more popular level, but get at the story behind the story, as well.
[01:03:17] Josh Hutchinson: I've been reading that book, and it's very fascinating insights into the origins of Halloween and how we got all the traditions.
[01:03:27] Scott Culpepper: Someone else who's really good at almost all the holidays is a scholar named Stephen Nissenbaum, and he's written extensively on Christmas, on Halloween, and he's written some of Witch Trials as well, so the audience would really enjoy his work.
[01:03:43] Sarah Jack: That's a really good suggestion. And when you start to use the lens that we're using today to look at Halloween, just across all the types of observances and seeing the influences and the individuals that were influencing and what was influencing them, that's so important, and that carries over to looking at the witch trials and the documents, how those were formed, what was informing those people. It's all really important to start dissecting and looking, what was shifting through these times and impacting the beliefs and the fears and.
[01:04:25] Scott Culpepper: It really is a neat form of detective work. I mean, you're sort of like a historical detective reading all these different layers of tradition and folklore, historical record, and then trying to discern the reality of what was happening and not just the reality of what actually transpired, but the reality of what people thought about what was transpiring as well and how that affected their actions.
And I think Thou Shalt Not Suffer is a great vehicle for Thank you. Putting people in contact with those primary and secondary sources, as historians call them, like giving them the chance to look for themselves. And one of the great things about the world that we're in right now is that so much of it is being digitized. So it is really awesome to go to an archive, there's nothing quite like it, and actually touch a document that historical figures touch. So I would definitely recommend that if anybody ever has the opportunity, but also if you can't do that, so much of it is at our fingertips, and even more so every day. So it's an exciting time to be interested in any form of historical study. And in this field especially, because it's just taking off right now, the study of the past of witch trials and coming to grips with that history. It's a really good time to explore the facets of that history.
[01:05:44] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, we had the opportunity this last spring in May to go to Connecticut to what was known as the Connecticut Historical Society at the time, I think it's now the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History but we were able to see Reverend Samuel Parris sermon book the original book with his handwriting in it, and that was so amazing, and we saw a couple other documents from Connecticut Witch Trials, the originals, and yeah, there's nothing like that experience.
[01:06:19] Scott Culpepper: That tactile contact with the past is just incredible. That I touch something that these people touch that you've been reading about. Just, yes, it's just a great experience. I'm glad you had a chance to do that.
[01:06:33] Josh Hutchinson: It was so exciting. Just, I was stunned when I saw what they had out displayed for us because we met, it was basically a delegation of us and Dr. Leo Igwe went there to get some information on the Connecticut Witch Trials. And the people there had put all these things out on display just for us. And it was, when I saw Samuel Parris's notebook and they told me what it was, I about fainted.
[01:07:04] Scott Culpepper: Wow. That's amazing.
[01:07:07] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, it was so cool, but I like you talked about how these things are also available digitally so anybody from anywhere can access, say the records from the Salem Witch Trials. There's a lot from Connecticut Witch Trials online also. So I encourage readers definitely read the primary sources, and if you want to know how to find a primary source, just get in contact with us and we'll let you know.
[01:07:37] Scott Culpepper: That's great.
[01:07:39] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. Next, I'd like to talk to you about what you're working on right now and what's next for Scott Culpepper, beginning with what are some of the courses that you're teaching this year?
[01:07:55] Scott Culpepper: I teach a wide variety, because my institution's a fairly small college, so you do a lot across the spectrum, but this fall, I'm teaching our basic introductory civilization course, and then I'm teaching a course on Latin America. Next spring, I'm teaching the second part of Civilization, and I'm teaching a course that used to be called Renaissance and Reformation, but I got my hands on it, and I've changed the title to Witch Hunts, Wars, and Reformations, and so that one will be very heavy on witch trials. We'll do a witch trial simulation and be looking into that history, so I'll be teaching that one.
And another one that is really going to be fun. I've done it one time before, but we're going to make some tweaks to it. It's like an immersive simulation course where we do three historical simulations. There's a consortium, a group of people that works out of Columbia University and Barnard College in New York called Reacting to the Past. And they create these large scale historical simulations that play out over the course of about three weeks. And I'm going to do that class. I haven't decided what three simulations we're going to do. I know one of them is going to be India on the eve of independence in the 1940s. Last time we did something on the Wanli emperor succession crisis in China and something on Rwanda during the period of the genocide. So that was a really good class for just immersing people in the history. We may do it a little bit different. It may not be just international topics. So I'm looking forward to that one as well. That's what I'm going to do over the course of the next year, as far as teaching.
[01:09:29] Sarah Jack: That's exciting, powerful stuff.
[01:09:32] Scott Culpepper: It's a lot of fun. I enjoy exploring it, and students are great. They really get engaged with it. As far as writing and research goes, I'm still working on the Satanic Panic book, and I am talking with and working with an editor at a publisher. I shouldn't announce yet who it is, because everything hasn't been signed and sealed yet, but hopefully I'll know something for certain about that soon. And he has been really good to help with that and to open new avenues of exploration. So I'm pretty excited about that.
And I'm interviewing a lot of people connected to that, both historians and scholars of religion who have worked on the topic before, and also people who are actually involved in it. That's really getting underway. I'm doing more of those in connection with the work.
So at some point, I'd like to take those and package those in either a podcast form or some other outlet. Podcast is what I'm thinking. Maybe do some of these interviews and cut them and put them out there for public consumption. Because like we were saying earlier, so much has already been done that people are not aware of. So it would be great to put some of this information in a forum that was accessible to people if they have an interest in exploring this stuff, that's something I'm thinking about as well.
[01:10:47] Josh Hutchinson: That sounds like a really interesting and informative program.
[01:10:53] Sarah Jack: I can hear from what you're saying how you had a vision of what you wanted to be able to review, research and give, and you're seeing how there's these other layers and bigger ways to get it out there. That's exciting. Absolutely
[01:11:09] Scott Culpepper: It's opened up a lot of worlds that I didn't even know were there. And one thing I want to try to do, I've been trying to be more conscious of this as I've been working the last month or so, is to document the process as well. Like you were saying, it's really fun, and it's really interesting how this comes together, and I don't know that a lot of people really know much about that process from conception to your finished idea. You just see these books spring forth fully grown. So one thing I'd like to do as part of the road to publishing this is release videos or audio connected with the process and maybe write some blog articles as well about how I did this and what I thought about it in the beginning and then, like you were saying, the ways in which that was reshaped and changed as I got deeper into the research. So hopefully it can do that. I've started putting aside those tidbits so that anybody who's interested can see the ingredients that went into the mix, as well.
[01:12:07] Sarah Jack: It'll really maximize the outcome and the influence of the work. That's great.
[01:12:12] Scott Culpepper: Hopefully so, definitely.
[01:12:15] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, definitely be listening and watching whenever you put anything online, especially if you're interviewing people that have been involved in the Satanic Panic, that just really, intrigues me.
[01:12:30] Scott Culpepper: Yeah, the people that you can get to talk have got really interesting stories to share. And there are some people you have to let it go because they will never speak, but it's surprising who will. And it's fun to get some of those insights.
[01:12:45] Josh Hutchinson: Thank you for listening to Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast.
[01:12:49] Sarah Jack: Join us next week if you dare.
[01:12:52] Josh Hutchinson: Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:12:55] Sarah Jack: Visit thoushaltnotsuffer.com.
[01:12:58] Josh Hutchinson: Remember to tell your friends and family and trick-or-treaters about the show.
[01:13:04] Sarah Jack: Support our efforts to end with Hunts. Visit endwitchhunts.org to learn more.
[01:13:09] Josh Hutchinson: Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.
Esteemed Historian, Folklorist and Author Owen Davies talks about his upcoming new book release: Art of the Grimoire: An Illustrated History of Magic Books and Spells available Oct, 10th. Every culture and every period has magic. Learn about the global history of written magic and how it has evolved in conjunction with religion and science. This episode continues the message and questions: Why do we witch hunt? How do we witch hunt? How do we stop hunting witches?
Emerson Baker enchants us in this ineffable discussion on Early New Englander and Puritan folk beliefs, protective magic and the safeguarding of the execution grounds for the Salem Witch Trials, known as Proctor’s Ledge.
Pour your best beverage and sit back to take in this insight packed episode. Dr. Emerson Baker’s mastery of these topics are revealing, invaluable and instructive. You will walk away enlightened and excited to have a better understanding of the fear that gripped this culture. We have some laughs and heartfelt conversation while focusing on key facets of the witchcraft traditions of the 17th century. We connect past witch trials to today’s witchcraft fear with a discussion answering our advocacy questions: Why do we witch hunt? How do we witch hunt? How do we stop hunting witches?
[00:00:00]
Josh Hutchinson: Welcome to an exceptional episode of Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
Sarah Jack: And I'm Sarah Jack.
Josh Hutchinson: Today we have the privilege of speaking with the esteemed professor Emerson W. Baker of Salem State University, Salem Witch trials expert. We get to talk to him about counter magic, material culture, protective magic, the Gallows Hill Project, which located the actual site of the 1692 Salem Witch Trials hangings,[00:01:00] and we'll hear a lot of great stories from him and learn about what kinds of objects were used to protect a home from magical invaders or invisible, spiritual, witches, demons, spiritual threats. We talk about objects found hidden in walls of colonial homes. We talk about protective magic. We talk about marks made on walls to protect the entrances, especially, doors, windows, chimneys, wells.
Emerson began his career as an archeologist, and he loves studying material culture. In fact, he teaches two classes on material culture.
We'll learn about the room in his house [00:02:00] that contains a gateway to hell. We'll talk about whether these beliefs constitute superstition, and we'll talk a little bit about our modern superstitions.
And then we'll talk about Proctor's Ledge, learn about the oral history of the location of the hangings and the oral history of the secret burials of the unfortunates who were executed. We'll get to hear Emerson's dedication speech from when they dedicated the Proctor's Ledge Memorial to the victims.
And throughout our conversation, it just comes out that Emerson is a local, feels like he's from Salem, and gives you the local [00:03:00] tour of the location, the history, his stories are evocative. You listen to it, and you feel like you're actually there in that time and place.
Sarah Jack: And now Josh will tell us about the innocent victims of the Salem Witch Trials.
Josh Hutchinson: The following individuals died as a result of the Salem Witch Hunt.
Sarah Osborne died in jail May 10th, 1692.
Bridget Bishop, hanged June 10th.
Roger Toothaker died in jail June 16th.
Infant Good died in jail before July 19th.
Sarah Good, Susanna Martin, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Wilds, Elizabeth Howe, all hanged July 19th.
George Burroughs, John Proctor. Martha Carrier, George Jacobs, Sr., John Willard, [00:04:00] hanged August 19th.
Giles Corey pressed to death with stones September 19th.
Mary Esty, Samuel Wardwell, Alice Parker, Mary Parker, Martha Corey, Ann Pudeator, Wilmot Redd, Margaret Scott, hanged September 22nd.
Ann Foster died in jail December 3rd.
Lydia Dustin died in jail March 10th, 1693.
Sarah Jack: Thank you Josh for helping us to remember the victims.
Josh Hutchinson: You're welcome. I think it's important to know their names and what happened to them, and to never forget and work as hard as we can to avoid repeating our mistakes.
And now it's my privilege to introduce Dr. Emerson W. Baker, professor of history at Salem State [00:05:00] University, Salem Witch Trials expert, and author of A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience.
Emerson Baker: I'm first and foremost still consider myself to be an archeologist more than anything else, but it's with a, I would say, with a small a. And so I spent over 40 years now studying material culture of one form or another. And what's really fascinating is the different ways that you can look at the material evidence of the past to even look at witchcraft in ways that I think we're only recently realizing.
Frankly, when I was in college, one reason I decided I could actually maybe make a career into this was through material culture and archeology when I realized that there are so many things about Early America that we don't know, that maybe we have all these documents that have been studied to death. Look how long we've had available, in one form or another, at least most of the Salem Witch Trials transcripts.
So what's the new way to look at the past and something like Salem? One answer to that is material culture. So specifically we're [00:06:00] talking about things like material objects left behind, poppets, or what we colloquially call voodoo dolls, or witches bottles and other things used to ward off evil, horseshoes, old shoes, carvings essentially what we'd consider to be the graffiti in old houses.
When we first purchased our old home here in Maine about 25 years ago, it's only a little over 200 year olds, it's built about in the 1790s. Okay. After the Age of Witch Hunts, in theory, we found an odd carving in the wall. At the time, I thought it was some board kid on a rainy day, took out a jackknife or a compass and made this unusual little design.
And then only a few years later did I realize that nope, no. In fact, that was counter magic. So long way of answering that, Josh, is it can take lots of different forms. And what's exciting about it is only really in the past, really maybe 20 years or 30 years, have scholars even begun to realize that some of these weird things that they find on archeology digs or in old houses or old churches [00:07:00] is not there by accident.
Sarah Jack: Why is it important to understand the early modern New England Puritan worldviews?
Emerson Baker: In special relation to that material culture. What's I think the most important point that I would make is several, but one is what we are seeing in here regularly are evidence of what we would call white magic, right? And well in some degree, some would say, would say maybe even black magic. What it really talks about is the fact that early New Englanders, be they Puritan or whatever faith, have these underlying folkways and folk beliefs, which in many ways are pre-Christian, indeed really anti-Christian, right? And that, in fact, if the minister knew what they were doing, he would be rather upset.
And the same time, it goes along with the, and I'm sure you folks are well aware of these things, but the differences between black magic and white magic and how they were viewed. And we all know this, because we've all watched the Wizard of Oz, and we know we have the wicked witches of the east and the west. And of course, if you didn't know that they were wicked they're dressed in black. [00:08:00] And then you have Glenda, the beautiful, dressed in white, good witch from the north who's there to help Dorothy and help her find her way home, and to some degrees here's the problem. Cotton Mather and Increase Mather would say it doesn't matter, because even though Glenda's a good Witch, she's still a witch, and she's still invoking the dark powers of Satan to try to help Dorothy, right?
And so when you are using counter magic, even if it's to ward off witches, it is not God that's helping you. All that you really should need is praying to God and God will hear you and hopefully answer your prayers and will protect you from evil. As opposed to though, but when you are doing things like using witches bottles or horseshoes or things like this, you are, whether you mean to or not, you are invoking dark powers. You were invoking Satan.
So the simple fact that you have material evidence of witchcraft demonstrates these underlying folk beliefs in white magic, or really the idea of cunning women and cunning men that we assumed were there, but you don't have a lot of evidence of it, because, again, not many of these folks wanna get up in front of the congregation and announce the fact that, by the way, [00:09:00] afterwards, I'll be leading a charm circle next door or something, because it's going to get them in trouble.
So that's one important thing. But I think maybe, to me, the bigger issue is the continuation of belief. When you're dealing with old houses, and you find things like shoes buried in the wall or horseshoes buried under the sheathing or other things like this or carvings like daisy wheels, hexagrams, which is what we found in our house.
They can be incredibly difficult to date, because if you're in a house like ours as it was built in the 1790s, that daisy wheel could have been carved in 1790 when the people arrived, or frankly, it could have been carved maybe a year before someone sold the house to us. But at least you can know, for example, and a house is built in 1790 that we're talking like a hundred years after the Salem Witch trials.
And people still have some kind of belief and fear of supernatural and of witchcraft. And so it speaks to that continuation of belief, and particularly to me, it talks about the changing nature of belief and also the ways to stop witchcraft, right? People, many people, and I know you folks know better, many sort of members of the puplic would [00:10:00] just say, "wow. So the Salem Witch trials, those were the last Witch trials. So after that, people stopped trying witches, because they stopped believing in witchcraft," and no, absolutely not, right? Nothing could be further from the truth.
They stopped the witch trials, because they realized it was, well as Increase Mather said, I'll sort of paraphrase, "better that 10 witches live than one innocent life be shed." The point being that we cannot, it's so hard to be sure that we actually have a witch as opposed to an innocent person. And the fact that, of those 19 people that died, the Mathers would tell you, I'm sure, they were all guilty. Cotton Mather would say, "absolutely." Increase would say, "I hope so."
So the problem is, if after 1692, the courts have pretty much decided that they're not gonna be able to successfully try witches, especially when Massachusetts says we can't use spectral evidence, which again, frankly was, thank God.
How are people gonna protect themselves from witches, when they still know that they're real? And what you really have to go to is the home security system of colonial [00:11:00] America, which is counter magic, right? You have to protect your house with things from boughs of greenery under the threshold, horseshoes over the threshold.
I think what we see evidence is of, like, people finding other ways to try to protect themselves against witches and against Satan. And to me, the fascinating thing there is, again, it's not just houses from the 17th century. It's not just things before the Salem Witch Trials, it's houses that weren't built until the late 18th century or the 19th century.
And, in fact, a few miles from where I live here in York, Maine, and down in Elliot, there was a house museum, which was built in 1896. And when they were doing some work on it a few years ago, what did they find in the attic? But in the attic, in the louver, they actually found a bottle with a pentagram on it, scratched into the side, probably a witch's bottle. And a couple other things, too, that were clearly counter magic. We are talking about something that took place almost in the 20th century, where those beliefs continue to some degrees. And in fact, it really continued to some in that way today, too.[00:12:00]
Think of the horseshoe, right? To us it's become a symbol of good luck. But if you start pushing harder on that, you can tie it directly back to the belief that it was protection against witches. And you see them showing up in the records of some of the witch trials, particularly, the Morse case in about 1680 in Newburyport. A neighbor comes in and scolds the family for having a horseshoe over the door. And he says, "this is basically witchery and superstition." And he takes it down and then they say, "but the next day, our neighbor Goody Morse who never came in the house, all of a sudden she came in. So you see, it was warding off witches, cuz everybody knows she's a witch." To me, it's a fascinating way to try to tease out those beliefs, cuz the problem, of course, with studying witchcraft is for the most part, right? Again it's not tangible, right? It's intellectual history per se.
And to be able to find a horseshoe buried in the wall of an old house and it's not, and it never served any purpose as a barn, you can say, and we find these on my archeology sites, we say, "boy, if you find a horseshoe on a barn, it means one thing, you find a horseshoe about where the threshold of a house was, that means something very different."
Josh Hutchinson: My [00:13:00] parents several years ago purchased a house in Arizona that had a horse-themed room with a big horse mural on one of the walls, but they found a horseshoe in there, and so they hung it above the mantle, purely decoratively. A friend came over and said, "you've got your horseshoe upside down. You're letting all the magic out, or the good luck out." And that was five years ago or so.
Emerson Baker: And there's all sorts of debate over that as to whether it needs to be upside down or right side up. There's all sorts of stories about where that belief comes from, but one aspect of it seems to be that iron artifacts, in particular, believe to have magical properties. And again, if you go back to medieval Europe, iron was a pretty amazing thing, right? And particularly sharp iron objects. So horseshoes, maybe not in that sense, but, so for example, the same room of our old house here that we found the daisy wheel or hexafoil, which again is a counter magical symbol [00:14:00] carved into the doorjamb inside that room. When work was being done, we had to pull up the floor, cuz the sills were rotting. Buried in the wall of that house, we found a broad ax that was 200 years old and razor sharp, still complete with the handle. You could have gone out and hewn wood with it. And the same thing too, like in witches bottles, where you usually find nails or pins. So iron is a pretty amazing thing. It's considered to be magical.
And then also too sharp iron objects, again, are one direct way to ward off evil. So when you, again, like when you just finding that ax buried in the wall wouldn't be one thing, but when you find it in comparison with other things. And then when we pulled up the floor in in that room, what else did we find? We found that was the old laundry room in the house cuz there was a well under the floor.
Evil seems to me is not all that bright. Evil tries to get into houses kinda through the openings, through the doors, windows, the chimney. And we could have a long talk about different kinds of spirits, this could have been your Christmas show, either [00:15:00] evil or nice coming down the chimney.
But think about this. What room would you be worried about in your house if you were worried about evil coming in? How about the room that has the direct passage down into hell? Through the well, right? Again, these things and if you look at old houses, I would say, too, the other thing to me that really is fascinating about this is if you look at most old New England homes built certainly before 1800 and maybe before the Civil War, you almost invariably will find some form of magical slash superstitious kind of protection, be it a horseshoe or some carving, even one of these different types of, if not a daisy wheel or hexagram, maybe a Marion mark or was known as a demon trap, all kinds of things like that. And the issue is until people started to think about this again, like maybe 20 years ago, people said, "boy, the carpenters made this odd mark here, didn't they?" Yeah, no, they didn't.
Sarah Jack: And would've it been like the husband that would do it? The wife?
Emerson Baker: These are the kinds of things. Here's the problem again, no one writes down in their diary, "today the wife and I carved the hexafoil in the barn door to keep evil out of the [00:16:00] barn, because old Bessie hasn't been milking really well lately." We really don't know.
It probably could have been any adult member of the family. And for lots of different reasons. My former grad student, Alyssa Conary, and I just published a really short piece in a new book on Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Portsmouth in 101 Objects. And we published a piece on the the daisy wheel or hexa foil that's in a partition room upstairs at the Jackson House. Now, the Jackson House was built in 1664 or so in Portsmouth, but the upstairs room was divided in the 1710s. So again, we know this has to be an 18th century piece.
But in this case, we know that the room, one side of that room, the partition was occupied by a member of the family who had mental illness we would call it today. But at the time, in the 18th century, mental illness was the belief to be something that Satan sort of inflicted people with. So in this case, some member of the family, well-intentioned, member of the family, and again, we don't know if it was a brother or sister or aunt or uncle, were trying to protect that member of the family from evil. And I suspect it would be, it could well be any member of the family who's trying to look [00:17:00] out for them.
But these are the kinds of things that we just, we're still trying to figure out. And sometimes you can figure out by maybe who was living at the house at a certain time as who would be, but it's, I'll tell you, Sarah, it's a brave, new frontier. If people are interested, they can start studying their houses and others, and then looking at the house history and trying to figure out when and how did this get here?
Josh Hutchinson: We probably don't know then if they had a little ritual to go along with placing the object or the mark.
Emerson Baker: No, but I think you're on the right track there, Josh. I'm assuming it's not something where you just randomly do it right. If you're considering that you're like blessing and protecting the house, one would assume there would be some kind of ritual with it you know, It'd be really, be interesting to try to sort some of these things out. I just came across a talk. I think we must have been an 18th or 19th century like magic book that was just found down in the South somewhere. Have you heard about this? There's a talk being given about it.
And so I'm thinking, like, to what degree would people have had known spells and charms or would've had [00:18:00] access to physick books or those sorts of things to aid them. And again, in England too, they're beginning to find more of these sorts of things, and they go later into history than one might think into the 18th and 19th century.
I think, too, as these are things that would not have been done, again, like offhand and lightly, would've had a probably a degree of ceremony to it as well, too, right?
Josh Hutchinson: You'd think they'd at least say some words along with it.
Sarah Jack: Do you think they would've mixed maybe a prayer with the magic symbol to cover both ends?
Emerson Baker: That is a really wonderful question. I wish I knew. I will tell you this. I think a lot of these times these things are deliberately hidden. My favorite example of this is the Zerubbabel Endicott house down in what's now Danvers. And I actually have the artifacts from it in the in Storm of Witchcraft. But when that house was being disassembled by Richard Trask, and they had to make, they were in the seventies, it was the old, this is governor Endicott's grandson, it's a Harvard graduate, I believe, right? He was a doctor, Zerubbabel Endicott. [00:19:00] And he built a house in the 1680s. And, unfortunately, it had to be taken down in the 1970s when they were putting in a new shopping center and a supermarket in Danvers.
But in this case, the owners of the new plaza there allowed Richard Trask and volunteers from the Danvers Alarm Company to disassemble the frame. And it's actually reassembled today, as you probably know. That is the Rebecca Nurse Farm that is actually, they've reassembled it as a as a barn. And that's where the visitor center is. And you can go in there and see what they found. What they found when they took down the house, they took down the sheathing, the outer boards over the frame, and then nailed to the frame under the sheathing, they found a horseshoe on one side of the doorway, and on the other side was a three-pronged eel spear trident, which we would also know as the Devil's Pitchfork.
So here's a sharp iron object that has associations with Satan. So the interesting thing is, in these cases, as I mentioned, is because these were hidden under the sheathing of the house and only the Endicotts and maybe their carpenter [00:20:00] would've even known these things were ever there.
And so on the same time when Reverend Parris came over to have dinner with the Endicotts, he would've had an enjoyable dinner. And the Endicotts, when he left, they probably kind of of smiled and said, "you know what? He didn't even realize he was walking through a threshold that had magic in it, and good thing we buried into the wall cuz otherwise he would've spent the evening giving us a lecture." Because, again, white magic. But having said that, too, I think it's clear, and if you look at some of the work, oh, like David Hall's work, really, of looking like a sort of folk magic within Puritanism, some of his writings.
I think while Reverend Parris would've shuttered the thought of this even being in the house and would've been unhappy with the thought of any kind of prayer there. Who's to say what even God fearing Puritan families might have done in any effort to protect their home? So it's certainly not beyond the realm of reason.
I keep on still waiting and hoping that we'll find some kinds of diaries or something that might give us some insight into this, into how some of these, what the spells were and how they might be used and what relationship they [00:21:00] might have to the Christian faith of these folk. To me that's why it's fascinating, and to me, at least, a physical manifestation of it gives you evidence that this stuff really was taking place, and it's not just something we're making up.
Sarah Jack: Finding somebody's writing about it would be fantastic.
Emerson Baker: There is the only and there is one, it's a very famous image, at least in these circles. There is, oh, it's like a print from late 16th century German print of Walpurgisnacht, I think, the Witches Night. It shows the house that's torn down, really, and nothing's left of it except for the hearth and the fireplace and the chimney. And you have, guess what? You have all kinds of marks carved into it. Again, too, it's see it's real. But again to what degrees is someone going to want to commit to that in writing for posterity? Probably not likely, but again, maybe you can find something in a wall sometime or something that the curse or the chant that was put in there, cuz we do know that people had these sort of rituals, again, like using of poppets. We know in the Salem Witch trials transcripts, there are what, five or six of the people testify about the use [00:22:00] of poppets, including several that are using them as counter magic. The one woman even, who said, they say, " so well here, you might have poppets" and says, "oh yeah, absolutely, because I use it to get back at that witch. He's trying to get me."
Of course, this one woman I'm talking with is Reverend Higginson's own daughter, and he says that she might have been having some mental difficulties of her own, which is the reverend's excuse for it. But at the same time too, she sees it the best way to protect herself from witchcraft is to take the offensive, right, with poppets. They're used as evidence against Bridget Bishop, right? Where the carpenters say, "yeah, I've always wondered about her, cuz like 10, 11 years ago when I was working on her house and working on the foundation in the basement, found puppets in the holes in the stone foundation," right? And as I like to point out, that's one of the reasons that Bridget Bishop was one of the first, I think was the first one to be tried, because the case against her was so very strong. The crown's attorney was no fool. He knew he wanted to go from the strongest cases first. Even though people talk about 1690s people being executed for [00:23:00] witchcraft, I really think that if they'd presented the Bridget Bishop case before a court in London, sadly, she probably might have lost her life, too.
And again, by our standards, it's, "okay, so you say you saw a poppet there 10 years ago. Where is it? Do you have any evidence of it today? Can you show it to me?" And you'd say, "what?" But at that point, they would, by our standards of the day, it was the King's Justice and it was English common law, but not quite as we'd recognize it. But I really think that kind of testimony, again, made under oath, and if you're lying, you're gonna be eternally damned in hell. To make that kind of testimony, it would've probably might well have gotten someone executed in London in 1692, I think. Combined with the other complaints about all the things that Bridget had apparently done to people over the ensuing 10 or 12 years.
Josh Hutchinson: You've mentioned that the well in your house, the wells were like a gateway to hell. Why would they believe that?
Emerson Baker: It's a large hole that goes directly into the ground, right? And in that sense again, it's an any [00:24:00] opening to the house. Is dangerous. And this the, probably you've seen this, the famous illustration from Saducismus Triumphatus where he shows the demons flying around a house and trying to get in an attic window, right?
Again, if you consider that the demons are minions of Satan, Satan controls the underworld, it makes perfect sense to think that they're gonna, why bother trying to come down the chimney and we just have to come up from hell and just come right into the place? And how are you going to protect that? And in fact, again, if you read some of the literature, particularly in England and books like, Keith Thomas's work and others, they will talk to you about the magical power of wells. Look at again, today, what's the tradition? You know, there's old well, throw in a penny and make a wish, right? So again, wells have always considered to to have some sort of perhaps supernatural power to them. In the back of your mind, you said, "oh yeah, it's a wishing well." Be careful what you wish for, right?
Josh Hutchinson: I guess they work both ways.
Emerson Baker: Yeah. And that's frankly the way it is with a lot of these things about magic. Ouija boards, of course, are classic example of [00:25:00] this that are really, the 17th century it was divination with sieve and shears. It's basically the, yes, no, which way it falls is to answer the question. But again, it could be this could be used for good purposes to try to help people find lost objects or things like this, or it could be used for, more dubious ones, like, "what's my future going to be like? Am I going to marry the handsome farm boy next door?" Those kinds of things, which of course is again, is an element of course in Salem in 1692, but of course has been way overplayed.
The Crucible unfortunately, does a real bad number on this. Arthur Miller maybe is America's greatest playwright, but maybe one of its worst historians, right? In fact, no, we cannot attribute Tituba to practicing Voodoo and doing all this fortune telling. Because as my friend Mary Beth Norton, I think, has proven pretty thoroughly, is that, yeah, we only really only know of maybe one of these afflicted girls who had anything to do with sort of fortune telling and that it really does not seem to have been, there's no real evidence, contemporary evidence, that it was important to the witch trials, except to say that we do know that [00:26:00] Cotton Mather was dead set against it, and that it did seem to be very much the rage in Salem and Massachusetts in the 1690s.
Oh, and by the way, most interestingly, of course, is that when Mather writes his biography of William Phipps, he does talk about an old fortune that had been written for Phipps that was found in his sea chest, which is a really interesting thing for Mather to write, considering it's really more of a hagiography than a biography. Cotton Mather was the ultimate spin doctor of the 17th century, and here he is admitting it in a published history that, yeah, Phipps, he toyed with fortunes, as well, but then he says, but he didn't pay any attention to it. Or for something like, but he had didn't ask to have it done, he's trying to dismissing it.
When you think of what Massachusetts was like in the 1690s, people were really concerned about the future. Was it a good idea to be communing with dark spirits to try to find the future for you or the colony? No, not at all. But you can understand in those uncertain [00:27:00] times why people would really be concerned and want to know what was going on.
And it's that you really have so many bad things going on in the colony. What does this say about the future of the puritan experiment, about that city upon the hill? And so, to some degrees, again, I even see that sort of interest in fortune telling is fitting right in very much with people's fears about really the decline of their society and everything they believed in.
Josh Hutchinson: We talked to somebody who said that during the pandemic, the sale of tarot cards went up, while people were staying at home wondering about the future.
Emerson Baker: Wow. That would make a lot of sense. If you look at what factors create Witch Hunts, and I don't know if you've read Wolfgang Behringer's witch hunts book, I can't remember the exact title, but basically his world history of witch hunts. If you haven't, really good book. And of course, Behringer's German historian who's actually I think at Cambridge or Oxford, maybe, or London. And he's an expert on two things, and they closely intersect, right? But one is witchcraft, and the other's history of weather. [00:28:00]
And what he really says in this book is two things usually go wrong to cause witchcraft, witch hunts. One is historically bad weather. And in a pre-modern society, historically bad weather means crop failure, means famine, means death, means inflation. People can get by that as long as they have the other thing. And that is a strong government that they believe is there to help them and look after them. Because if they do that, they know that, okay, the king's gonna make good. He's gonna find food for us, we're gonna be okay. But if you have that central government that you don't trust, don't believe is going to help you. Yeah. Cause a problem.
And of course, the other factor that we had in Massachusetts in the 1690s, as well, yeah, pestilence, disease, epidemic. In 1690, Massachusetts is hit by a smallpox epidemic. And it's the most unfortunate named person maybe in the witch trials, Martha Carrier, right? Because it [00:29:00] is her family who are the ones that are believed to have carried smallpox into Andover, killing several members of their family, as well as others that may have singled the Carriers out for, shall we say, special attention that led to the witchcraft charges.
So in this sense, too, I think about this, right? When I think about witchcraft and belief again in supernatural, if you think of things like what we faced during the epidemic, historically bad weather, lots of concerns about stability of government, combined with epidemic. And especially, too, for our society, because here's the deal, folks, we all grew up thinking that we were gonna live long, healthy lives unless something really horrible happened. That we had antibiotics, and we had almost no one died in childbirth anymore. And unless something really horrible happened we probably would live really old lives, and all of a sudden all bets were off. And I think it caused a lot of people to turn into some really interesting ways. And I'll just say, I think, the historians of the next generation will have a really interesting time writing the [00:30:00] history.
That old Chinese curse, "may you live in interesting times." It, honestly, it's really when you think about this I always wondered, is this a story, and what it might be like to live through something? Not that I wished it, but what would it be like to live through something like the Black Death where all bets are off, where you don't know if you're gonna be here tomorrow? If you don't know if your family is going to be, how does that affect your daily life? How does that affect your faith, your faith in government, your faith in the medical community, your trust of your neighbors? Really interesting thing and to some degrees, again, in many ways, a light. People have always asked me about why do you talk about outbreaks of witchcraft, right? Why do historians seem to be fascinated with comparing witchcraft and its spread to a contagion, to a disease. And I've never really tracked down the origin of who was the first to make that analogy, but it certainly seems to be something where you can certainly trace its growth, and it will spread, can spread like a disease, unless it's stopped. And as we see in a place like Salem, can be incredibly contagious.
What's fascinating to me by it [00:31:00] is the variety of objects and belief and the fact that as the physical manifestations, and also too, that you actually can read in the 17th century accounts efforts to make it, right. Like in in my earlier book, The Devil of Great Island, which is about the bizarre stone throwing devil who's supernaturally assaulting the debauched Quaker tavern. Again, that's a whole different show. It's not like in Salem Village, where they're trying to make the witch cake, but in this case, what they're trying to do is they're boiling urine up with some other things and trying to put it into a witch's bottle. And of course, what happens in the meantime is the stone throwing demon starts throwing rocks down the chimney of the house, which breaks the vessel that they're trying to cook. So you imagine you have this hot urine spattering all over the hearth, which as I like to think would've probably warded off far more than evil, right?
This is not superstitious belief. I get so upset when people talk about people in the 17th century, saying, "oh, how stupid, how superstitious could they be to believe this stuff?" Because in fact, these were God-fearing Christians, many of them college educated, and that everybody believed in witches in the 17th century, kings, [00:32:00] ministers, popes, governors, you name it, because witches were real. They're in the Bible, as you folks know, thou shall not suffer a witch to live. And even, too, there is a science to a lot of this stuff, and you see it in Thomas Brattle's letter, some of these things, the idea of the evil eye or the fact of the curse and the witches and the touch, right? The touches test.
And those are essentially, and the same thing too with the the urine, and the idea being that when a witch casts a spell, they take some of their evil and it gets transmitted to the victim and then to some degrees then. But then when a person who was afflicted by a Witch would urinate, some of that evil would come out in the urine. So that if you can find ways to harm that urine, you can harm the witch. So in this sense, in some degrees they didn't, they obviously didn't understand electricity at the time, but in some degrees, if you think of, if you think of in the 17th century, them thinking of spells being cast and evil being sent into people almost like electricity, some sort of invisible force.
Again, just so may, maybe that's the way to leave it, Josh, is like to say that these aren't crazy people that are just boiling urine up for the, cuz there's nothing else to do on it. It's a boring Saturday night [00:33:00] in Salem, so let's boil up some urine and bake a loaf of witch's cake with some of the dog's urine and have a good time. No, these are people who are, these are desperate times with people who are looking to the remedies that the leading scholars of the day and thinkers are offering them as to how to protect themselves from evil. And I guess to me, what's the fascinating about it is to some degrees is like how little we know about that today, but in large part again too is because, if you think about this, there's lots of things in our society today that are clandestined, that are not accepted by the government for various reasons or by your neighbors that you have to do in quiet. Those sorts of stories are ones that never seem to get written down.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. I wanted to just comment a little bit what you were saying goes back to the importance of understanding the worldview because you have to understand that witchcraft was real to them. Not a superstition. It's just an ordinary part of their world and could happen at any time, and I think that's important to think about.
Emerson Baker: Give you the brief version of the [00:34:00] last page or so of Storm of Witchcraft, where I say, so supposing there is a terrible evil out there, and you know that it's out to get you, but you don't know who it is or how to make them stop, how to round them up, and the government is doing their best to help you, but frankly, this evil doesn't have to be present to harm you. It could destroy you and your family and your faith and your government from miles and miles away, right? Essentially, if you swap that 17th century word "witch", and this very distinctly with the 17th century and no cast, no aspersions at all to the modern Wiccan faith, which is a very different thing. But if we think of that 17th century witch in league with Satan trying to kill people with Satan's powers and swap that word "witch" for "terrorists" today, I think you have a much better understanding of the difficulty 17th century society faced when evil could be in any form and could strike at any matter.
And ever since [00:35:00] 9/11, I think every time you hear a siren go off or a large explosion, if it's just one, you don't think too much about it, maybe somewhere back in the back of your mind, right? But then if you hear a second siren or a second explosion, or you see a large, black cloud, oh boy, I think your mind takes you to some of the darkest places possible. You're absolutely right. This was their belief system, their knowledge, and it's all part of that. And just like our modern world with where our fears come from, too. So yeah. Sobering stuff, it really, this is heavy duty stuff, witchcraft and fears and the unknown. And witch hunts, right.
Josh Hutchinson: And then to say that we're not superstitious today also strikes me as funny.
Emerson Baker: Yeah. I like to point out in the good old days when the Patriots were in the Super Bowl, like just about every year I, as long as they were leading, I refused to get out of my chair. And I still attribute one or two of their losses to the fact, like at halftime I really had to get up and go to the bathroom, but [00:36:00] then again wait, you really think you have that kind of power? Yeah, no, I guess I don't. I think we all have various traditions, superstitions, whatever, habits? They're deep down, buried inside sometimes. But you put a society and individuals under pressure, and they start coming out, don't they?
Sarah Jack: Yeah, we've just started talking between us a little bit about that. Where's the line between ritual, tradition, I really try to understand, so we're not gonna reflect back as it as if it's superstitious, but in our modern time, superstition, it's very important to people. So it's like really hard to get to, to ask people to not look through their superstitious lens at what we view in the past is superstitious.
Emerson Baker: And believe me, working in Salem for almost 30 years, superstition is a fact of life.
Josh Hutchinson: And one thing that's helping us understand the fear that people experienced in the 17th century is [00:37:00] understanding the fear people experience in places like Nigeria and South Africa today, where they're still accusing people of witchcraft.
Emerson Baker: I wanna listen to that episode. There was the Salem Film Festival, I think it was it last year? They had a a really powerful film about witchcraft, a documentary about witchcraft in Africa, that the parallels to Salem were scary. I'll just leave it at that.
Sarah Jack: it is alarming.
Josh Hutchinson: We spoke to a South African activist for last week's episode, and he was talking about the parallels that he listens to our show and he hears us talk about early modern witch trials, and he's like, "that's so much what we've got going on here." And then we spoke to Leo Igwe of Nigeria, and he said that in Nigeria we're where you were in the early modern period, as far as witchcraft goes. [00:38:00] So they both see the parallels to our history.
Emerson Baker: And a lot of it, too, it sounds like, is jealousy over land ownership, which again, Boyer and Nisenbaum 101 kind of stuff.
Josh Hutchinson: Sarah, do you want to take us into the Proctor's Ledge?
Sarah Jack: How did you get involved in the project to identify the location of the hangings?
Emerson Baker: Well, this goes back a long ways. There were a number of us who had worked on documentaries, several documentaries on the Salem Witch Trials that our good buddy Tom Phillips filmmaker was involved in, and Elizabeth Peterson, who of course at the time ran just the Witch House for the city of Salem and now runs the Witch House plus Pioneer Village plus the Charter Street Burial Ground. The two of them and then a few of us, myself, Marilynne Roach, Ben Ray, and also my buddy Peter Sablock geology and geo archeologist at Salem State had, most of us had worked together on a couple of these documentaries, and when Elizabeth actually had gone back and was doing some of [00:39:00] the reading, including some of Marilynne's earlier work, said, "hey, I think the city of Salem owns the execution site of the witches in 1692, and it's like the trashed backyard where everyone throws their garbage and walks their dog. And could we find out if this is like the real site? Cuz if it is, the city should do something about it." And Tom's going, " yeah, and we should actually make a documentary about this." and we all said, "Sure. Absolutely." And this was back around 2010. Of course, the long story short is again the site was never really lost. Okay. I think the city of Salem had a collective amnesia from the summer of 1692 onward, doing their best to forget this site.
Much as I think the actual site of the courthouse they actually destroyed when they built the MBTA and buried it right down Washington Street in Salem. Was that deliberate? Not necessarily, but did anybody object when they did it? Yeah, probably not. There's a lot of shame in Salem to this day over what happened in 1692, frankly, shame over [00:40:00] the commercialism over the witch trials that has replaced it. So I think Salem did this best to put this place out of its mind. But bottom line is as early as Elizabeth knew. And we all knew it, and again, Marilynne had done previous research on this. As early as 1901, Sidney Pearly had said, "hey, the site is not the top of Gallows Hill," which was one of the believed sites. It's a long debate as to where Gallows's actually was. And we can talk about this, cuz, frankly, there are almost no 17th century documents that talk about its in specifics. It seems to be almost like a taboo subject, even in 1692. But throughout the 19th and early 20th century to this, really till recently, there had been multiple sites that were considered. Was it the top of Gallows Hill? Was this lower spot on Gallows Hill, known as Proctor's Ledge? Was it over on Mack Hill, which is like the next hill over. And you could make cases by and large for any one of a number of those.
But finally, Sidney Perley, who's and to me is really the hero of this story an local antiquarian and historian who did [00:41:00] amazing work as an antiquarian, while also being a successful lawyer and raising a family. And I really, back in the days before, not even laptop computers, but even photocopy machines to transcribe and understand all the records and publish all he did as much is truly amazing. And he wrote numerous articles on Salem's history. He wrote a history of Salem, and in it in 1901 he wrote it, this piece, in 1901, which first said, if you look at all the evidence, it seems pretty clear that Proctor's Ledge is the spot. This lower piece on Gallows Hill, which of course as we know, today is really between Proctor and Pope Street and Boston Street, right behind the Walgreens, which of, ironically, of course, Walgreens motto is the corner of happy and healthy. But it's not only the location of the executions, but it's also where the Great Salem Fire broke out in the early 20th century.
Anyhow so we started, basically we started, Elizabeth said, why don't you guys all, we asked, we'd all do our research. Elizabeth and Ben and I, who were all historians of the witch trials and had been for a long time, independently [00:42:00] looked at all the evidence, went back and read Perley, looked at his evidence, looked at other documents, looked at depositions and things that Marilynne had pulled out in particular.
And we all spent a year or two chewing through the data individually and then came together and we agreed that, yeah, we all believe that based on all the factors that Sidney Perley was right. And in fact in 1921, he had published a much more definitive article locating the witch trials and what we really, we used, had to use. It is one of these sorts of things where if there's no direct evidence, again, like you don't have anybody saying, "so we took the people up to the execution site and it was such and such." No, all you have is a couple really of the writs for execution by the sheriff, saying, yes "I took Bridget Bishop to the place of execution," very vaguely.
You have a couple of distant eyewitness accounts, if you will, maybe, of what might have happened on that day. But if you triangulate three or four lines of evidence, if you take what surviving documents you have, if [00:43:00] you take the oral history and tradition of the area, in the families of the victims and the neighbors there, and three or four other different types of evidence, you can triangulate and really come into the fact to the location of the site.
And I can talk more about that. But the first thing I just wanna say is that bottom line is, ironically, even though this was named one of the top 10 archeological discoveries of 2016 by Archeology Magazine, that is discoveries in the world, we have said from day one, we did not discover anything. We only confirmed the evidence that Sidney Perley had made public that frankly, the Proctor family probably knew forever and had been lost. And our job was not to find anything. Our job was to make sure that the site was never, ever forgotten again. Because in fact, from Perley's time on up to about 2000 or so, about every 10 or 20 years, there'd be an article in the local paper, in the Salem [00:44:00] News or something saying, " oh yeah, someone says that we're, it's the wrong place. And it isn't way up here at the top of the hill. It's down here at Proctor's Ledge." And I'm more than happy to talk in any aspects of that, Sarah, what do you, ask away?
Sarah Jack: No, that was very wonderful. You're hitting so many of our questions, it's fantastic.
Emerson Baker: It's almost like I've talked about this before.
Sarah Jack: Did you do any analyzing of the ground?
Emerson Baker: Yeah. That was really important. One reason I brought Peter Sablock and his wife, Janet, are now retired, but at the time were professors in the geology department of Salem State and, maybe more important than that, they were friends and neighbors. They live near my wife and I here and are close friends and also partners in crime on archeology science, where they would do the geo archeology and the soils work for me.
And when they started talking about Gallows Hill, I immediately said, "I gotta get Peter involved in this." Because once we had the evidence that the people were, we were pretty sure this was the site, that was the time for Peter and his geology students from Salem State to go do some work on this site. And I'd like to say even before Peter and his folks were out there, [00:45:00] this was the worst kept secret in Salem, that there already were tour buses that went through that street and said, "here's the burial site and the execution site." And because again, too, there are enough sources out there from Perley and even more recently, at least one of the guides to Salem talks about this , and there's a sort of a bad photo evidence. In that sense, it's a good bad photo. It's deliberately vague, so you couldn't say exactly where it was. I think we realized right off the bat that if this was the site, it wasn't going to be enough to say the site. And I'll say this, nothing if no other reason than because yeah, this is Salem.
And probably the first question is this, "how do you know?" The next question is going to be, "where are the bodies?" I don't mean to be grim about this, but this would be the fascination. And we kept all of our work pretty much to ourselves, and Peter and his students went out there and worked off and on for a couple summers doing work in the backyard there on the city-owned parcel of land. Elizabeth was our link to the city, and the city kind of knew what we were doing, but we kept a very low profile. And when anyone asked, [00:46:00] Peter and their students gave this sort of standard archeologist, geologist answer, when people would ask what you're doing a little, maybe a little white lie, but you'd say something like, "oh, septic work." Which usually immediately people lose interest and say, okay have fun with that as they hold their nose and walk away, most of 'em, at least. There were some folks that, some of the locals who knew, cuz they knew the tradition, but they were very good at protecting the site, as well, too.
But we really knew we had to find out, okay, this is the site. Can we come up with the exact site? Was there a gallows here? Are there, in fact, any burials here? And we had to know that well before announcing this, because we had to know what we were up against. Because we knew as soon as we announced, the site would be overrun with tourists. And frankly, also people who wanted to pay honor to the victims there, as well.
Peter and his crew were out there, and over several years, they did various different types of evidence, particularly ground penetrating radar, which tells you how much soil is there, what the nature of the soil is to bedrock. He did ground penetrating radar and soil resistivity, which measures the conductivity of the soil, which basically can tell you how compact the [00:47:00] soil is and how wet it is, which tells you if it's been dug up and is really good at locating things like grave shafts.
You never think about this until you go out and dig a hole. When you put back the soil, you always have a difficult time getting it all to fit back in the hole. So issues like compaction, locations of walls or wells or things like that or graves will show up through either radar or through soil resistivity.
And what Peter and his crew found was up on the Proctor's Ledge was called Proctor's Ledge for a reason. And that is because there was almost no soil up there and that the deepest deposit he found was a shade less than maybe right around two feet. So that there really was no place to even really bury people. And of course, there's the account by Calef in 1700, where he writes about supposedly being present at the execution on August 19th or in the aftermath, describes it pretty well. And he describes, oh, George Burroughs' hand and maybe someone else's leg being shown, [00:48:00] sticking outta the ground in some sort of like hastily buried grave. We'll say this soil there were so shallow we don't think anyone could have been buried there successfully. And frankly, even if they had been, the soil was so completely perturbated through, disturbed that is, through earthworm and natural root action and natural processes. And there was such wet ground because of close proximity to ledge that there would've been absolutely no evidence of any bones whatsoever.
So that was really important work, but we also, too, then started combining that with, okay, then where would they have buried the people? Was it possible that they were buried there short-term, yes, possibly. And the first thing you find out is that on the executions on August 19th, the weather was so hot that they had to get the dead underground almost immediately.
And we, how do we know this? We know this from Samuel Sewall's diary who Sewall one of the witchcraft judges in at least the version of the diary that survives today. And I often wonder about this, right? He talks about attending every funeral on the planet and all these sorts of things, but almost nothing on the witch trials at all.
[00:49:00] But, in fact, during the execution of August 19th, Sewall, like the other judges, are back home, and Sewall's in Boston, and he writes in his diary within a day or so of that, about a friend of his dying. And he says, it was so hot the friend died in the morning, and the weather was so hot the body would not keep. They buried him before sunset. So that is to say, I could certainly understand why they might have thrown people in a crack in the rocks or whatever, and just thrown some dirt over them temporarily. But what we found out more so in studying this was that it seems pretty clear that the families came and removed their loved ones under covers of darkness.
There are traditions that survived in three of the families, ones that have really strong family traditions, right, the Proctors, the Nurses, and the Jacobs, of their loved ones being brought home for burial in the family burial ground anonymously. Only the family would've known where they were. Because again, the [00:50:00] neighbors would've gotten upset that you did what? So those traditions persist. And in fact, of course, George, the remains that we believe might have been George Jacobs were actually dug up in the 19th century, and then again, what I think in the 1970s when they put in a subdivision in Danversport. And were eventually, thanks to the work of Richard Trask, were reburied in 1992 at the Rebecca Nurse Farm with a replica gravestone.
So we know that from those families and that we think, and a matter of fact, we actually figured out pretty much where John Proctor was buried too, I think, at least originally, on what had been the only land that he owned in 1692, which was not even where his house was but was, it was down Wall Street even further. But we also put this together with the oral traditions in the people who lived in that neighborhood in Salem. And, interestingly enough, it was a largely that neck of the woods with families like the Popes who were Quaker, which is a really interesting twist, cuz about 10% of Salem's population at the time were Quaker.[00:51:00]
And we know from the accounts that were first written down by, I think, a grandson of the person who was there in 1692 that heard the families or knew the families were coming to retrieve their executed family members and went out to help them. If you think about 1692 Salem, very little source of natural light, where noise carries a long way. If you're living fifty or a hundred yards from Proctor's Ledge, which these people were, at night you'd see the light, and you'd hear the noise when they started to dig, and you'd know they were there. And we know in this case that several of the local families, mostly apparently the Quakers, went up and helped the families retrieve their loved ones, get them onboard probably small, little rowboats, because at that time you could row a boat all the way up to the site. It's right along what's now a canal. As a matter of fact, with a really bad flooding, they had last, what was it, a week or two [00:52:00] ago, that area there, which is now along the street there, was all flooded. You could have come in and wouldn't have had to carry a body more than probably a hundred feet to get them to water, put them in a rowboat, and quietly row away. And in this case, with both the Proctors and the Nurses and the Jacobs, they could have rowed to within probably a short distance of where these folks were buried, going up, following the tide along the coast and up into rivers and streams.
So armed with that kind of tradition, as well, once we knew this, there's no evidence of any bodies being up there. The oral tradition says we know where they were buried. And again, it's hidden and largely lost to time. Once we know that, then we felt it was safe to actually go ahead and make the announcement, and we did that in early January 2016. And again, we knew months before this, but we, let's just put it this way, we weren't gonna announce this during Haunted Happenings, were we?
Uh, let's wait until January, when the ground is solid and there's no tourists in town to speak of, and we can [00:53:00] control the narrative and let people know that there really is nothing there. I'll say this, people still didn't believe us. And that spring, we know at least one person who came and knocked on the door of a fellow who's a former actually fire chief in Salem who's retired and whose family had lived in the house, it was the first house built really on Proctor's Ledge in the early 20th century. He was the one who knew the tradition, knew the story well. In fact in the 1970s, he was out working in his yard, and a big, black limo pulls up. And this driver asks, "can you direct me to Gallows Hill?" And he points, and then he points up the hill to the water tower. And then the people in the backseat roll down their windows, and it was John Lennon and Yoko Ono. As he said, "it was the Beatle. It was the Beatle," because it turns out, yes, he found out later on that they were in Boston for a concert at the Garden that week. And Yoko is very interested in the world of pagan lore, and so she wanted to see the site, [00:54:00] at which point I've said, " no, for you guys, it's over here in my backyard." But nope his lip.
But having said that, so this person came up to his house, I think with a shovel, and said "hey, can I dig in your backyard?" And Tom said, "no, you can't." He said, "that's okay. I think it's public land over there that the city owns, and I'm gonna go dig over there." He said, "no, you're not, as long as we have a police force in Salem." But see, so this is the level of belief, right? Where and again, I'm saying like no one goes to Gettysburg with a shovel and says, "where can I dig?" What on earth possesses people to think it's okay to do this? So the good news was that we really don't think anybody is buried there, that there is nothing to look for. And the other good news is that, yeah, the site, people keep their eyes on it, and the police do regularly drive that route.
Josh Hutchinson: That's an amazing story.
Emerson Baker: The whole episode was an amazing story to me, I guess in part because so I didn't realize how important and big a story it would be. And frankly, actually, we were told by [00:55:00] people, "don't bother with the press conference. Just send a press release out to like the Globe and the Salem News and maybe they'll pick it up."
That was Monday morning. By Wednesday, I was being contacted by the media worldwide. My younger daughter was off at college at the time, and she texted me Wednesday night, I think it was, and said, hey, they'd made me the spokesperson for this thing. I didn't really want it, but I was cold, and I had other things to do. It's January. She said, "Dad, you and Gallows Hill are trending on. I think it was Wednesday, actually. I was on Fox News at midday, too. And like the interest in this was amazing and frankly, to me, it was overwhelming, because I had no idea just how important this was to how many people.
I don't like to admit this, because I think people think this is why I got involved in it, but I found out in the middle of writing Storm of Witchcraft that Roger Toothaker was like my ninth great uncle. And that's not why I got involved in this, but what it points out to the fact is, if your family's been in New England for more than a generation or two, you're probably related to someone involved in the trials. What I will say is to me, I took it maybe because I work in Salem and study this stuff, that wasn't unfinished business to [00:56:00] me, but it turned out it was to lots of people. And literally when I was on, I had a four minute spot on the midday news on Fox nationally on that Wednesday, I think it was.
And I checked my voicemail later that day., And it was full. It was full with what I would consider to be testimony by people, mostly elderly members of their family, who wanted to thank me, to thank the city of Salem, for what we were doing. They considered this sort of the injustice and unfinished business, and that we were righting an old wrong, and they wanted to come. I got voicemail from pretty much all over North America by people wanting us to know when we would be building a memorial and dedicating it, because they wanted to be there, because this was important to them. Again, it was important to their family.
And you just didn't realize how important this was when people would say that they basically considered this something that had worn heavily on them ever since, and in many cases, sometimes these people, sometimes they'd known since they were kids they were descendants. Other times, they'd only found out when they got old and started doing [00:57:00] genealogy. But you see this, and you may, folks may have seen this, if you visit the original Witch Trials Memorial in Salem, the 1992 Memorial, where they have the benches for each person, when you go and visit, you often see remembrances left to the individual victims. And it can be things from good luck pennies to roses to quartz crystals to notes. And the notes can be, you read them, and they really hit hard. Same sort of theme of, I remember one for for Giles Corey, were like it was a ninth or tenth great descendant saying, "we have not forgotten you. We love you. You are a member of our family. We remember, we honor you, for we know what an injustice this was." It's really powerful stuff. It really is. And again, to me, that's why I said we had to make sure that the spot wasn't ever forgotten again.
Josh Hutchinson: I've been to that memorial a few times, and I've seen all of those things that you describe. People put flowers on every, single bench and pennies, and I [00:58:00] saw a couple of notes there one time and, yeah, candles, you name it.
Emerson Baker: And you get same sense frankly of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. It's a sacred place where you can reach out and be in touch with those people. And we tried to build a memorial that was reflective of that at Proctor's Ledge, as well, too. I should add, too, on the Proctor's Ledge story, that Mayor Driscoll and her staff were wonderful. When we all sat down with her, the whole team, and told her exactly what we found, we had no idea what her reaction was gonna be or the city's. We were a bunch of four historians trying to figure out how on earth we're gonna raise the money to memorialize the site. And from the start, mayor Driscoll said, who by the way now has been sworn in as Lieutenant Governor Driscoll of Massachusetts, so good for Kim, we're sorry to be losing her in Salem, but glad she's our lieutenant governor. Amita said, "no, Salem must do this. The city of Salem must properly commemorate this site. This is our business, right? This is our duty." And they took that very seriously. And [00:59:00] at which point it took us another over a year or so to get a memorial built, because then we had to start talking with the neighbors, because no one who bought a house, and you're in the backyard of six houses, as well as a Walgreens, none of those people bought in thinking that they had a mass execution site in their backyard. How do you deal with that? But also the fact realizing that again, this is an important site. The other piece of that, too, is no one wants to turn this into another tourist attraction. We don't want a stand popping up next door, Sarah, selling what I describe as fried dough and vampire fangs, right?
How do you mediate this? How do you make it a place where people can come and pay their respects? Cuz believe me, when those 10th great-grandchildren from Arizona or Canada make the trek to Salem, they want to visit that site. The other memorial is nice, but it's got nothing to do directly. It's only association with the witch trials is that it was an empty piece of land that was there when they were getting ready for the tercentenary. But the execution site is really that kind of hallowed space to them. And so we [01:00:00] mediated on that.
And again, the neighbors, we tried to come up with a low impact way, so it wouldn't bother the neighbors too much. But that'd also be a site where people who were in the know could come and go. And to this day, if you look in all of the Destination Salem materials, the official Salem tourism maps and things, the site is not listed, again, out of respect to the neighbors and frankly out of respect to the victims but that people who want to know can find it and can go there and pay their respects and take in the sense of the place and the enormity of the events of 1692.
But again, like the other memorial, I think it tends to be, it's understated, granite, not a lot going on. Martha Lyon, landscape architects, really talented, has done a lot of work in Salem, and helped us out like a Charter Street, and I think put together a really nice, very much fitting memorial even the way is how do you deal with the site when, essentially, it's all uneven rocky ground that is not easily accessible. Certainly not handicap accessible. So essentially we made it like viewing it from essentially just the sidewalk really. And to do that, and I think it turned out really well, [01:01:00] I really do as a proper way to balance all those sort of competing interests in Salem and to have a place where people could go and commune with the victims and, at the same time, not be a tourist trap, right?
My team asked me if I would say, the dedication ceremony, if I would say a few words on behalf of the team. And of course, we dedicated it on July 19th, 2017, quite deliberately the date of the first mass execution on that site. We really weren't sure we could get it ready for June 10th for the execution site of Bridget Bishop. So we went, we wanted, make sure we had plenty of time so we did it on July 19th and ended, I hoped that this could be a, I'll read the last paragraph so to you.
"Finally, it's my sincere hope that today marks a new chapter in how Salem treats the witch trials. We became the Witch City in 1892 on the bicentennial of the trials. While done largely for commercial reasons, I see it as Salem's self-imposed scarlet letter. The term Witch Hunt is synonymous with Salem, and it stands a symbol of persecution, [01:02:00] fanaticism, and rushing to judgment. But with that title also comes responsibilities. From this time forward, I hope that residents and visitors to Salem will treat the tragic events of 1692 with more of the respect they are due. We need less celebration in October and more commemoration and sober reflection throughout the year, for there are tragic lessons to be learned from this story. So our job is to make sure that this site and what happened here is never, ever forgotten. Only through actions like today, where we acknowledge and confront a troubled past, can Salem truly become the city of peace."
And of course, as you probably know, Salem is really short for Jerusalem, city of peace.
Some of my friends tell me that I was maybe being too optimistic, that maybe the city taking ownership for this and doing these things and commemorating the site was an opportunity for a new start. But they haven't seen too much change. I guess I [01:03:00] tend to be more optimistic, which I tend to be usually a pessimistic, my friends would tell you, pessimistic, glass half empty, kind of guy. But in this case, I really think this is an opportunity for Salem to more regularly and vigorously confront that past.
And I'm hopeful that we'll continue to do so more and more in the future. Cuz I really do think that Salem is a place where people tend to be less judgmental, more forgiving than most other cities. And to some degrees and think, a lot of people have come to Salem, right? Damien Echols, one of the West Memphis Three, come and move to Salem not long after he got out of prison. And we talked to him about this, why did you do this? And he said, always loved Salem and fascinated with it. But also, too, this sense of this is a place where you know what it's like to judge people too quickly and too harshly. And that you seem to understand that we need to accept people as they are. Again, I'm optimistic that Salem is a place where people can do that.
Sarah Jack: We share that optimism with you, even though [01:04:00] we are not local. We have that general optimism for the world to start to understand witch hunts better, why they happened, why they continue to happen, and what we are supposed to be doing for each other.
I share that same optimism with you.
Emerson Baker: As I mentioned at the top, really when I talk about this, more and more, I'm not talking about history. I'm talking about issues of social justice, of scapegoating, rushing to judgment, judging people because they look, act, or speak differently than we do.
How do we define what's normal? And how can we learn to accept others and be tolerant of others? And I think, too, the problem is, honestly, in our society today, people of all walks of life, all political persuasions, we tend to very much get into our own bubbles, right? And we're reaffirmed, because the people, most of our friends and neighbors and coworkers are in the bubble with us. And I think this is particularly bad, right, during the epidemic. But it's but what [01:05:00] about those people that don't think about like us, right? No they don't live around here. They're not one, no. Yeah, they are. How can we have some open dialogue and really try to look and try to find some common ground here? So I appreciate what you folks are doing to try to explore those issues and wish you all the success in the world in getting people to think about this in really thoughtful ways.
Josh Hutchinson: Now here's Sarah with an important update on the witch hunts happening now.
Sarah Jack: End Witch Hunts News.
Thou Shalt Not Suffer Podcast is a project of End Witch Hunts movement. End Witch Hunts is a nonprofit organization working to educate you about witch trial history and working to motivate you to advocate for modern alleged witches. You'll not find our message sensational or amusing, confusing or muddied. When we talk about the witch, we are stating that the deep-rooted elemental fear of her guided the destruction of the lives of ordinary women and children in our world history. [01:06:00] That the consternation of misfortune today and continued misogynistic behaviors sustain the hate of the witch, driving a violent crisis that is so unbelievable in numbers. Today, mob style witch hunts target and brutally take down ordinary women and children in 60 nations. You heard that right. 60 world neighbor nations have witchcraft fear violence and murder threaded into their communities now.
Here's an excerpt from the most recent published report released this month at the United Nations Human Rights Council's 52nd session. But don't just catch what I highlight now. Please go to the podcast episode description for the link that will take you to the full report. Take time to read the report and share the information with your circle of influence. From the report:
"Women have been disproportionately affected, including older women, widows, women with disabilities, and mothers of children with albinism. Data on respective [01:07:00] human rights violations is under-reported, incomplete, and diffused across various entities. The secretive nature of such incidents makes it even more difficult to track them systematically. While data is hard to source, at least 20,000 victims across 60 countries were reported between 2009 and 2019.
Reportedly, accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks take place more often in conflict and post-conflict situations, areas affected by natural disasters and environmental degradation, regions with economic and public health crises, and settings where internally-displaced persons and refugees are found, including reintegration initiatives.
Conflict, instability, intercommunal hostility, and an absence of State authorities have reportedly increased the occurrence of such practices. In some countries, accusations of witchcraft have been identified as the most dominant triggers for the outbreak of intergroup armed violence.[01:08:00] In others, militia have used young girls in the frontline of combat, believed to have the power to intercept the projectiles of firearms in their skirts, while older and better equipped militiamen, even with automatic weapons, were placed in the line of combat further back. In some countries, being labeled as a witch is tantamount to receiving a death sentence. The various forms of violence related to accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks are often committed with impunity, related to the victims' fear of reprisal and the lack of a law enforcement response. Perpetrators include individuals, such as relatives and local community members, and in some instances government security forces or non-State armed groups. Sometimes belief in witchcraft is spread across all sections of society, affecting also police officers and judges. That reportedly results in an unwillingness to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators."
If you are becoming more familiar with witch trial history, you'll immediately sense that witch fear is being applied in the same ways today that it [01:09:00] was in the past. The same ways. Just like now, in the past, being labeled a witch was often a death sentence, but always a virtual brand, marking families for generations with scrutiny and demoralized futures. It is not a historic crisis.
Start talking about this. This information must become common knowledge and of importance to the whole world. It is your responsibility to talk about it. Remember when the Connecticut witch trial history was minimized and overlooked, not widely known as a significant part of witch hunt history? Now we must work to include the modern witch hunt horror in the everyday witchcraft conversations. We are the ones that should and can integrate this topic as an expected consideration when addressing the witch hunt phenomenon.
Please support us with your donations or purchases of educational witch trial books and merchandise. You can shop our merch at zazzle.com/store/endwitchhunts, zazzle.com/store/thoushaltnotsuffer, and shop our books at [01:10:00] bookshop.org/endwitchhunts. We want you as a super listener. You can support Thou Shalt Not Suffer Podcast production by super listening with your monthly monetary support of any amount. See episode description for links to these support opportunities. We thank you for standing with us and helping us create a world that is safe from witchcraft accusations.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you, Sarah, for that important update.
Sarah Jack: You're welcome.
Josh Hutchinson: And thank you for listening to Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast.
Sarah Jack: Join us next week.
Josh Hutchinson: Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Sarah Jack: Find our other great episodes at thoushaltnotsuffer.com.
Josh Hutchinson: Remember to tell your friends, family, associates, and neighbors about Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast.
Sarah Jack: Support our efforts to end witch hunts. Visit endwitchhunts.org to learn more and donate.
Josh Hutchinson: Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.
[01:11:00]
Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack present historian Maya Rook. She is a cultural historian, educator, and host of Illusory Time and Salem Oracle, and a yoga and meditation instructor. We discuss Salem Witch Trials folklore, divination, and magic facts in depth, along with the pop culture portrayal of the witch. Find out what can be known by the records about accused witch and slave Tituba. What is Sympathetic Magic? Was Counter Magic being used? We also look for answers to our advocacy questions: Why do we witch hunt? How do we witch hunt? How do we stop hunting witches?