Happy New Year! And happy 400th birthday (2026) Salem, Massachusetts.
In the first episode of Salem Witch Trials Daily, Josh Hutchinson previews the new series, which discusses each day of the Salem Witch Trials and searches for meaning behind the events.
Every day in 2026, we will bring you key details and discussion of the events of 1692. In 2027, we will continue to bring you the events of 1693 and beyond.
Salem Witch Trials Daily is hosted by Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack and presented by The Thing About the Salem Witch Trials and The Thing About Witch Hunts.
We’ll have more in the next episode, when we begin to look into the factors which helped the witch-hunt form and spread.
Watch Salem Witch Trials Daily Course Introduction
Links
The Thing About Salem
The Thing About Witch Hunts
People Accused of Witchcraft in 1692
Select Salem Witch Trials Books:
Bernard Rosenthal, ed., Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt
Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience
Marilynne K. Roach, The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege
Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692
Transcript
The Salem Witch Trials were America's largest and most notorious witch panic, by a good measure. In 1692 and 1693, the Salem Witch Trials produced at least 156 formal accusations, 30 convictions, and 20 executions. In fact, Robert Calef, author of one of the very few 17th century books on the trials, said accusers named more than 200 people as witches. Not all of these individuals were prosecuted, however.
Happy New Year and happy 400th birthday to the city of Salem, Massachusetts, founded back in 1626. I'm Josh, and I'm excited to welcome you to Salem Witch Trials Daily, a new series exploring the Witch-Hunt of 1692 and 1693. This , is designed as a course.
In 2026, we'll bring you a daily account of the [00:01:00] events of 1692, and next year we'll continue to cover the events of 1693 and beyond. In addition to the daily events, we'll discuss witch trial topics and debunk misconceptions. This course is for beginners first beginning to learn about the witch trials, people who know the gist of the history but want more details, and even seasoned Salem researchers who want to look at topics from different angles. You will all get something out of this series.
We will learn what factors created an environment in which the witch panic was able to happen, how the witch trials were prosecuted, and how the witch trials finally ended, among much more.
So tune in every day. You'll be immersed in Salem Witch Trials history and in-depth discussion of the witch trials and learn everything you want to know about the witch-hunt in a few minutes a day. So the events of [00:02:00] 1692 and 1693, they started in January, 1692, some point in the middle of the month, in the household of Salem Village Minister Samuel Parris. His daughter, Betty, and his niece, Abigail Williams, began behaving very strangely. There were barking like dogs and quacking like ducks and flapping around like geese, pretending to fly across the room, and nobody knew what was up with that. They seemed to be sick with some illness, but doctors couldn't diagnose what it was. And what one strange thing was that betty and Abigail were the only people in a household of eight to come down with this condition. Betty's sister, Susannah, and brother, Thomas, they did not come down with this. The parents, Samuel and Elizabeth Parris, did not come down with this. Tituba, an enslaved [00:03:00] woman in the household, did not come down with this. John Indian, however, the other enslaved individual in the house, he did eventually come down with this, but didn't get it right away when the girls did.
So as we go through January and the rest of this year, we'll continue to walk a day by day through the events of the Salem Witch Trials. So come back every day for an all new episode. Salem Witch Trials Daily is presented by The Thing About Salem and The Thing About Witch Hunts podcasts. Tune into those podcasts for even more. The Thing About Salem is dedicated exclusively to the Salem Witch Trials, while The Thing About Witch Hunts covers more witch trials and more related topics.
So we're gonna have more for you here tomorrow, when we begin to look into the [00:04:00] factors which helped the witch-hunt to form and spread. Until then, have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.
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