The Thing About Salem concludes our exclusive three-part series with Ben Wickey as we explore the modern implications of his debut graphic novel More Weight: A Salem Story in Part 3. With the book released September 23, we examine why this Salem Witch Trials story resonates powerfully with contemporary readers.
Wickey discusses Salem’s modern identity and how his work addresses the town’s complex relationship with its tragic past. We explore the visual challenges of depicting historical horror, his artistic influences including Alan Moore’s impact on his creativity, and why he chose a mature rating for responsible storytelling about historical brutality.
What aspects of the 1692 witch trials feel most relevant today? We discuss modern witch hunts, the importance of authentic historical narratives in pop culture, and how Wickey’s ancestral connection influenced his approach to Salem’s psychological darkness.
This final installment reveals why critics are calling this an “appalling masterpiece” and how More Weight will reshape how we understand Salem’s legacy for future generations.
Keywords: Ben Wickey, Salem modern relevance, More Weight final review, contemporary witch hunts, Alan Moore influence, Salem today historical horror
The Thing About Salem continues our conversation with Ben Wickey in Part 2 of our three-part series about his groundbreaking graphic novel More Weight: A Salem Story, releasing next week. This installment focuses on the heart of Wickey’s narrative: the psychological transformation of Giles Corey.
We explore Corey’s devastating journey from testifying against his wife Martha to his defiant final moments uttering “more weight” as stones crushed him to death. Wickey reveals his meticulous research using historical documents and his innovative dual-timeline narrative featuring Nathaniel Hawthorne interludes that bridge past and present.
As a Mary Easty descendant, Wickey discusses the emotional weight of bringing his ancestor’s story and Salem’s broader tragedy to authentic life. We examine how he balanced historical brutality with responsible storytelling, his striking use of color and its absence, and why maintaining historical accuracy was crucial to honoring the victims’ memory.
This is essential listening for anyone interested in Salem Witch Trials history and how graphic novels can illuminate our darkest chapters.
With his highly anticipated debut graphic novel “More Weight: A Salem Story” releasing, Massachusetts-born author Ben Wickey joins us for an exclusive pre-launch interview about this Alan Moore-praised “appalling masterpiece.” The Edward Gorey Award-winning artist’s first solo work tells the harrowing tale of Giles Corey, the only person pressed to death under stones during the infamous 1692 Salem Witch Trials.
What makes this upcoming graphic novel release extraordinary? Beyond Wickey’s stunning and unmatched visual storytelling that brings historical horror to visceral life, he is a descendant of Salem Witch Trial victim Mary Easty, bringing deeply personal perspective to this decade-long project that Publishers Weekly compared to “From Hell.”
We explore the pre-release excitement, Wickey’s meticulous research using historical documents, and his innovative dual-timeline narrative featuring Nathaniel Hawthorne interludes. Using the graphic novel format, Wickey cuts through pop culture mythology to restore the genuine horror and humanity of Salem’s history.
Discover how Corey transformed from testifying against his wife Martha to defiantly uttering his final words “more weight,” and why this Salem witch hunt story will captivate readers everywhere.
Not all witch trials were the Salem Witch Trials. To truly understand the infamous Salem Witch Trials of 1692-1693, we must examine the broader context of witch hunting that swept through colonial America. This episode explores the extensive history of witch trials in British North America that preceded and influenced the Salem events, revealing how witch hunts affected dozens of communities across New England and beyond.
Key Topics Covered
The Context Behind Salem
Why Salem didn’t happen in a bubble
European influence on colonial witch trials
How English writings shaped Salem court decisions
The role of European witchcraft tales in accuser testimonies
Pre-Salem Witch Trials in New England (1647-1691)
Connecticut Witch Trials
Alice Young of Windsor – First execution, May 26, 1647
How the Goodwin children became the model for Salem’s afflicted
Witch Trials Beyond New England
Virginia
First accusation: Joan Wright (1626)
William Harding conviction (1656)
Grace Sherwood, “Witch of Pungo” – water ordeal trial (1706)
Maryland
Multiple accusations investigated
Rebecca Fowler execution (1685)
John Cowman conviction
Maine, New Hampshire & Vermont
Goody Cole trials across jurisdictions
Massachusetts Bay control influence
Salem’s Wider Impact
The 1692-1693 Salem Witch Trials affected numerous communities:
Andover
Boston
Maine and New Hampshire territories
Connecticut spinoff: Katharine Branch case (1692)
Episode Highlights
First witch trial execution in colonial America: Alice Young, 1647
Total colonial witch trial scope: Over 65 indictments across multiple colonies
Geographic spread: From Connecticut to Maine, Virginia to Maryland
Timeline: 45+ years of witch trials before Salem
Legal precedents: How earlier trials shaped Salem procedures
Resources & Further Learning
Check out the hosts’ companion podcast: The Thing About Witch Hunts for deeper dives into European witch trial history and modern witchcraft persecution worldwide.
SEO Keywords
Salem Witch Trials, colonial witch trials, New England witch hunts, Alice Young witch trial, Connecticut witch trials, Massachusetts witch trials, Goody Glover, Cotton Mather, Grace Sherwood, Hartford Witch Panic, colonial America witchcraft, pre-Salem witch trials, New England history, colonial justice system
The Thing About Salem podcast explores the real history behind one of America’s most infamous events. New episodes dive deep into the social, legal, and cultural factors that led to the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-1693.
What caused the Salem Witch Trials? It wasn’t moldy bread, mass hysteria, or girls dabbling in magic. Join hosts Josh and Sarah (whose ancestors lived through these events) as they uncover the real forces that created one of America’s darkest chapters.
What You’ll Discover
The Real Causes: Multiple explosive factors that turned Salem into a powder keg
Political Chaos: How governmental instability set the stage for tragedy
Community Tensions: The deadly mix of wealth gaps, frontier trauma, and religious conflict
The Spark: What actually triggered the first accusations in January 1692
Modern Relevance: Why these lessons matter for recognizing witch hunts today
Key Topics Explored
✓ Belief systems that made witchcraft accusations believable ✓ Political upheaval following the revocation of Massachusetts’ Royal Charter ✓ Controversial judicial decisions like allowing “spectral evidence” ✓ Economic anxieties from King William’s War and previous conflicts ✓ European witchcraft beliefs that influenced New England thinking ✓ The snowball effect that made accusations spiral out of control
Why This Episode Matters
Learn the complex, interconnected causes behind one of history’s most misunderstood events. Discover how fear-mongering, scapegoating, and abandoning rational thinking can lead entire communities astray—and why these patterns still matter today.
Perfect for history buffs, true crime fans, and anyone who wants to separate Salem facts from fiction in just 15 minutes.
What happens when your only defense against a death sentence is a handwritten letter? In 1692 Salem, petitions became lifelines for the accused, their families, and entire communities caught in the witch trial hysteria.
In this episode, we explore:
Mary Easty’s remarkable final petition that prioritized saving others over herself
The creative legal strategies colonists used to challenge “spectral evidence”
How torture was used to extract confessions (and documented in writing)
The economic reality of having family members imprisoned for witchcraft
Community petitions that reveal the social chaos engulfing entire towns
Why some people recanted their confessions—and what that tells us about coercion
From character witness statements to desperate pleas from prison, these historical documents reveal the human cost of mass hysteria and the courage it took to speak truth to power with nothing but ink and parchment.
Plus: The meaningful modern connection—how middle schoolers in 2022 successfully petitioned to clear a victim’s name, and why there’s still a bill before Massachusetts legislature today.
Perfect for history buffs, true crime fans, and anyone fascinated by how ordinary people navigate extraordinary circumstances.
Keywords: Salem witch trials, historical petitions, spectral evidence, Mary Easty, colonial justice system, Massachusetts history
The thing about witch hunts is what happens after can be just as revealing as the hunt itself. After 20 executions and over 150 arrests, Salem had a serious PR problem on its hands. How do you explain away one of colonial America’s most notorious legal disasters? Simple: you control who gets to tell the story.
But here’s the thing about cover-ups—they rarely go according to plan. Join us as we dive into Salem’s messy aftermath, where the real question wasn’t who practiced witchcraft, but who was willing to admit they’d been wrong. Because the thing about truth is it has a funny way of surfacing, even when powerful people are trying their hardest to bury it.
Josh and Sarah tell the TL;DR version of the story of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-93, where 156 people faced formal accusations and over 1,000 became entangled in a legal system that had lost its moral compass. They examine what transformed a small Massachusetts community into the epicenter of mass persecution, from the unprecedented scale of the proceedings to the types of people targeted. This wasn’t just colonial paranoia—it was a perfect storm of social tensions, legal failures, and human frailty that contemporaries recognized as extraordinary even by their own standards. The hosts discuss why Salem continues to captivate us centuries later, serving as both historical cautionary tale and enduring reminder of how quickly justice can derail when fear takes the wheel.
Is Superman your Salem Witch Trials cousin? Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No, it’s a descendant of a Salem Witch Trials victim.
[00:00:00]
Josh Hutchinson: Mary Bradbury was supposed to die on Salem’s gallows in 1692, but she pulled off the greatest vanishing act in witch trial history. Centuries later, her descendant Christopher Reeve would make another kind of magic, convincing the world that superheroes are real. Welcome to The Thing About Salem, where we discover that the real superpowers were in the family tree all along. I’m Josh Hutchinson, and I’m descended from several people involved in the Salem Witch trials, including victim Mary Esty, accused witch Mary Osgood, minister Francis Dane, and accuser-turned-defender Joseph Hutchinson.
Sarah Jack: I am Sarah Jack. I’m also a descendant. Mary Estyand Rebecca Nurse are my ninth great grandmothers, and they were sisters who were both executed in 1692.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, and guess what? Sarah and I are distant cousins because of [00:01:00] Mary Esty.
Sarah Jack: And our friend Mary Bingham is also a Mary Esty descendant.
Josh Hutchinson: And we had no idea about that when we met each other and started this show.
I find that incredible that the three of us wanting to speak for our ancestors came together to work on exonerations, not even realizing that we were gonna have the connections. And you may have connections, as well. Dr. Emerson Baker says there are probably a hundred million descendants of the people accused of witchcraft in the Salem Witch trials, let alone everybody else who was involved in the Witch trials in other roles. We are just two of these people. You may be, as well. If you are, let us know.
Sarah Jack: I think that is really powerful to realize when you consider how recent those witch trials really were, 1692, less than 400 years ago, and here we are [00:02:00] at over a hundred million descendants.
And there are other Witch trials, of course. Salem’s not the only one, and you might be descended from someone involved in a witch trial in Connecticut or Europe or some other place. And we’re interested in knowing about those connections, as well, if you wanna share that on our Patreon.
There are descendants that come from other witch trials in Boston. I had a 10th great grandmother, Mary Hale, who stood trial in Boston, and then her daughter and granddaughter were then tried later in Hartford, Connecticut. So a lot of us are descendants of women who were accused of witchcraft.
Josh Hutchinson:
Sarah Jack: One group of descendants that has come together for centuries, in fact, are descendants of Rebecca Nurse and Mary Esty. Their parents, William and [00:03:00] Joanna, came over from Great Yarmouth, England and had several children, and there is a Towne Family Association, and there are thousands of descendants, and we have a Facebook group, there are family reunions, and there’s a lot of those cousins who tie back to several of the siblings. I myself go back to both Mary and Rebecca. It’s so interesting to, look at all those family lines in the Towne Family Association. Back in the nineties when I was growing up, it was still your family who gave you an idea of your family history. Many of us had family historians, and I had one of those, her name was Darlyn, and she did research by writing cousins and going to archives and visiting [00:04:00] cemeteries. And I had a high school assignment to build out a family tree, and so she was the first one I went to on that side of my family, and she gave me one of these handy little, typed up pedigree charts, and at the very end it says, Rebecca hanged in 1692. That didn’t really mean much to me back in the nineties,but that’s the first time that I knew Rebecca Nurse’s name. I hadn’t read The Crucible. I wasn’t familiar with that story. It came from my own family history, just on a loose piece of paper of typed genealogy, and that was the beginning of this story.
Josh Hutchinson: One day, I was at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead, when I was 16 years old, with my family. We had gone to my grandfather’s hometown of Danvers, Massachusetts, which used to be Salem Village. And so we were wandering around [00:05:00] the property of the Rebecca Nurse Homestead, and in the cemetery area, there’s a marker to Rebecca, but there’s also a little marker, a stone that lists the names of the people who defended Rebecca in a petition that was submitted to the court.
And I was looking at this marker, and I saw my name on it. It said Josh Hutchinson. I was very sure it said Josh Hutchinson. Until I looked at the picture closely that I had taken of it, and I saw a little apostrophe, and it said JOS apostrophe H Hutchinson. And so I did some digging in family history materials and found out that there was a Joseph Hutchinson, who was my 10th great-grandfather, and he was involved in the Salem Witch Trials, and that was his name on that marker.
So that meant that he defended Rebecca [00:06:00] Nurse, who, as it turns out, was his neighbor. They were cattycorner to each other, their properties, so they would’ve been close. And that’s probably why he came to her defense, because he probably knew her pretty well.
There’s a funny story about Joseph Hutchinson. He had donated the land for Salem Village’s first meeting house, but he got mad at the minister, Samuel Parris, and he fenced off the meeting house so nobody could come in and go to service. And of course, everybody was irate, and they tore up the fence and went to meeting anyways.
And Joseph Hutchinson, another interesting thing about him is that, as I said, he was an accuser turned defender. He was one of the four men who filed the first complaints against [00:07:00] Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba.
So he was part of this process of getting the whole witch trial episode underway, but then later he appears to have changed his mind, because he defended Rebecca by signing this petition and also by testifying in court against one of the accusers of Rebecca, pointing out how she had contradicted herself and was basically lying. And today you can visit Joseph Hutchinson’s land anytime you go to see the Witch Trial Victims memorial in Danvers, that’s Joseph Hutchinson’s land.
And as we’ve said, Sarah and I are both descendants of Rebecca’s sister, Mary Esty. She was special in that she wrote a very strong petition urging that no more innocent blood be shed. She [00:08:00] knew that it was her time to die, but she didn’t want anybody else to suffer the same way in the witch trials because if she was innocent and she knew it, then she was sure that others were innocent as well, and suffering needlessly.
Sarah Jack: But she firmly believed that she had to be respectful and not question authority. I can’t imagine what that conflict is like when your life is on the line. So she used her energy to beseech them to really consider who they were convicting, because, like Josh said, she knew she was innocent and she didn’t want anybody else to to die who was innocent. And unfortunately, as we all know, many, many more people have gone on to die because of witchcraft accusations.
Josh Hutchinson: We were able to visit the place that she hid from [00:09:00] her second arrest in 2023. We were able to visit that spot andwe had that experience with advocate Leo Igwe, who is with Advocacy for Alleged Witchesof Nigeria. I bring this up, because as a descendant of Mary, her petition is one of the things that drives me to speak about the modern witchcraft accusations. Being in the place where she hid and visiting it with an advocate who’s on the ground every day trying to save lives from these same witchcraft accusations, it’s something that I think of very regularly, and so I appreciate that I had that experience. I’m also really sad to be able to have an experience like that and for it to be something that’s so critical.
It was really powerful to be with him on that trip [00:10:00] and take him to the monuments and memorials so he could pay his respects, because he doesn’t have that opportunity in his own country where these things are happening every day. There’s no place to go in remembrance of the victims yet.
Another one of my ancestors I mentioned at the beginning is the minister Francis Dane of Andover. He was the senior minister in the town, and this was the town that unfortunately had the most accusations of any community in Massachusetts or in New England at all in the Salem Witch trials. It outdid Salem plus Salem Village combined by a good margin.
Andover wasn’t a very great big town. 500 some people and about 45 or [00:11:00] of them were accused of witchcraft. Many of them were related to Francis Dane. So I bring him up, because of all these connections he has through his own descendants and his wife’s sisters and cousins and things. He had 28 members of his extended family accused of witchcraft in 1692, 28. There were 156 people total accused of witchcraft that we know for sure, may have been more, but 28 is a big chunk of that for one family. His wife was Elizabeth Ingalls, her sisters and nieces, and everybody that she was connected to basically got accused and not exactly sure why, but probably because one of her relatives was Martha Allen Carrier, [00:12:00] the Queen in Hell, as she was said to be by Mary Lacey Jr, who accused her of that, of receiving that rank from the devil. Martha Allen Carrier. There’s Abigail Dane Faulkner, Mary Allen Toothaker, and who was the wife of Roger Toothaker, who’s an interesting character because he was a unwitcher,so he was trying to reverse spells and also to inflict pain and death on witches. And then there’s Elizabeth Johnson Jr, who was recently exonerated in 2022. And many, many more. As I said, there’s 28 of them.
And then beyond the witch trials, 12 of Francis Dane’s 20 grandchildren married into other Andover families that were involved in the witch trials, many of them being related to accused people, but a few of them actually being [00:13:00] related to accusers. Who were you gonna marry after the witch trials were over? It was probably somebody that was involved, because pretty much everybody in Essex County seems to get involved, especially in Andover.
Sarah Jack: We opened today thinking about Christopher Reeve, and as a human, he really proves that heroism isn’t about superpowers, but he’s also a symbol of superpowers. We want you to think about perseverance. We all take different, poignant things away from the Salem Witch Trials. It’s so complex, there’s so many layers, and there’s a lot of positive things to pull out, but we wanted you to think about perseverance today, that the gift of every Salem descendant is carried by the perseverance of our ancestors, but you don’t have to share those bloodlines to share that lesson. Salem teaches us about the price of silence, the power of [00:14:00] standing up, and the importance of questioning authority. Please don’t be as polite as Mary Esty was.
Josh Hutchinson: Those aren’t genetic traits. They’re human traits. And please come join us on Patreon. We’ll have a chat there about this episode, and you can tell us about your family stories and tell us what you respect and admire about your ancestors.
Sarah Jack: Show us your support by liking and subscribing at our YouTube channel, in our Patreon community, in our Facebook posts. If you’re on LinkedIn, share our work there.
Josh Hutchinson: We can’t promise you’ll be faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but you’ll have a great time. That’s patreon.com/aboutsalem.
Sarah Jack: Join our organization, End Witch Hunts, live on [00:15:00] World Day Against Witch Hunts to learn from leading experts about the survivors of witchcraft accusations in Ghana outcast camps.
Sunday, August 10th, End Witch Hunts Events is bringing together specialists from Amnesty International, the Sanneh Institute, the Total Life Enhancement Center Ghana Action Aid,and Songtaba for a crucial discussion on supporting survivors of witchcraft accusations with a special focus on women and children in Ghana’s outcast camps.
Josh Hutchinson: The World Day Against Witch Hunts isn’t just about history. It’s about understanding a crisis happening right now. Vulnerable people, especially women and children, still face violence and exile due to witchcraft accusations in communities that desperately need our support.
This is your opportunity to learn directly from researchers, advocates, and organizationsworking [00:16:00] directly in these communities to address their needs. Events are happening globally to honor this day of remembrance and education, please share the event details with your network.
Sarah Jack: You can register for free at endwitchhunts.org/day. Attending this event will help you gain insights that can help turn awareness into meaningful action.
Josh Hutchinson: Because understanding and then starting an important conversation is where meaningful change starts.
Sarah Jack: Hear the special expert panel Sunday, August 10th, 2025 at 5:30 PM GMT. That’s 1:30 PM EDT. Find the link to this free online webinar at endwitchhunts.org/day.
Christopher Reeve proved that heroism isn’t about superpowers—it’s about perseverance. That’s the gift every Salem descendant carries, but you don’t have to share their bloodline to share their lesson. Salem teaches us about the price of silence, the power of standing up, the importance of questioning authority. Those aren’t genetic traits—they’re human ones.
Hosts Josh and Sarah explore their own ancestral connections to the trials and reveal how descendants of Salem’s victims number in the millions today.
On the night of May 20th, 1692, between about 8 and 11, Mercy Lewis was reportedly bewitched so badly that six eyewitnesses described it as if death would’ve quickly followed and said that she could not continue long in this world without a mitigation of those torments.
Sarah Jack: Mercy
There were men attending to Mercy, but she couldn’t speak, so they sent for Elizabeth Hubbard so they could find out who was afflicting Mercy.
Josh Hutchinson: But once Elizabeth Hubbard arrived on the scene, she and Mercy began having alternating fits, that one was afflicted while the other was well, and so one could speak while the other was in a fit. And so eventually they revealed that Mary Esty was the one that they saw coming to afflict them in her spectral form, and Mary Esty had only recently been released [00:01:00] from jail because the afflicted girls didn’t agree on whether Mary’s specter was the one that was hurting them.
So Esty’s specter supposedly brought the devil’s book to Mercy Lewis and threatened to kill her by showing her a winding sheet and a coffin. This, the men took to be a grave threat, meaning that her death was imminent. In fear, they rode to Salem Town to get a warrant for her arrest in the middle of the night to wake up the magistrates and say, Hey, we need to arrest this woman and get her back in chains so that her specter is not roaming any longer. So they rode to Salem, got the warrant, rode back with the constable, arrested Mary Esty, and took her back to the jail, and got all that done sometime between the [00:02:00] start at eight and 11 and midnight, this imposing deadline that seemed to be in place on Mercy Lewis’s life.
Sarah Jack: She lived, but she still had afflictions.
Josh Hutchinson: Yes, and poor Mary Esty went to jail and stayed there for four months before her trial in September. Welcome to The Thing About Salem. I’m Josh Hutchinson.
Sarah Jack: I am Sarah Jack. We are descendants of Mary Esty. Did that sound like hysteria to you?
Josh Hutchinson: Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines hysteria as behavior exhibiting overwhelming or unmanageable fear or emotional excess.
Sarah Jack: Hysteria is not the most accurate way to explain the Salem Witch Trials. Though the Salem Witch Trials are considered a witch [00:03:00] panic and there was certainly widespread fear, we cannot diagnose clinical hysteria from a distance of 330 years, and accusers definitely were not all hysterical all the time.
Josh Hutchinson: The Salem Witch Trials proceeded through orderly legal channels, and months went by before the first trial. And during all this time, there’s no reports of any extrajudicial actions, any vigilante style justice, or people just taking the law into their own hands. And also the non-afflicted witnesses and accusers were quite composed in court hearings, as were the jury members, and of course, the judges seemed to be of sound mind the entire time.
Sarah Jack: Hysteria has turned into a buzzword when it comes to witch hunts. It’s just an adjective. It’s a description we just throw [00:04:00] on there. But when we label any witch-hunt the result of hysteria, it is a way of not accepting what causes a witch-hunt and not accepting that we’re capable of the same injustices today.
Josh Hutchinson: We still have the same emotions. There’s the same kind of quick spread of fear that happens when scary situations arise in our society. The quick spread of the panic in 1692, it was a function of several things happening in the colony at that point in time. There was economic uncertainty, there was war, political uncertainty, religious strife and uncertainty, and the list goes on, so many stresses on people’s minds at that time that when they found an enemy they could pin all of this uncertainty and disarray, basically, [00:05:00] on, they went with that enemy.
Sarah Jack: So you know, all of these conditions, the economics and war, and politics and religious and social, and every other factor that went into the Salem Witch Trials, those are things that just regularly happen during human history. You could look at any period of time and you’d see similar things going on in societies, and it’s just when there’s a big enough combination of all of those factors that panics happen and witch-trial-like behaviors occur. So today we call those things witch hunts when we recognize them, but so often we don’t.Since 1692, there have been several moral panics. We’ve had them recently in our world. I don’t have to say what they are. You’re thinking of them [00:06:00] right now and we need to recognize it. Reactions to injustice can be extreme, because injustice is an extreme negative experience. It doesn’t mean the reaction’s hysteria, and we need to recognize that it’s ordinary human behaviors that responsible for those panics.
Now the affliction stories are colorful. They were modeled over and over, over decades and through other hunts for witches, colorful and imaginative, but not hysterical. You know, sometimes we feel hysterical or we see someone we love have a really extreme response to a trauma and we might say it was so bad we were in hysterics. But that’s a generalized description. [00:07:00] Shock, anger, sadness, fear, those are the things that we need to pull the threads out on and look at to honestly reflect on the Salem Witch Trials.
Salem wasn’t the only witch panic that happened in New England, so these things happened periodically. Salem of course, dwarfs the others in its absolute scale, but fears like this came up many times in New England, and it’s crucial to understand that they weren’t all merely an irrational outburst of hysteria. They were actually profound panic born from deeply held beliefs and very real societal pressures. The colonists genuinely believed in the existence of witches and their diabolical powers, as did pretty much any Christian at the time. They viewed these powers as an existential threat to their community and their faith.[00:08:00]
Extreme fear is fear. It can cause panic, but the hysteria isn’t what would propel the judicial conviction of an accused witch.
Josh Hutchinson:
Salem
began in mid-January when Betty and Abigail began displaying the first symptoms. Late February, they were diagnosed as being under an evil hand, a witch cake was baked to test who was the first witch, and the first accusations were made on February 26th. So March 1st, you get the first arrest, legal examinations, and incarcerations, but it’s not until June 2nd that there’s the first trial. So this is five months between January and June that the children are ill. The illness is spreading through the village and then surrounding communities. Somehow they allow five months to go by while they’re supposedly [00:09:00] hysterical this entire five months before they have the first trial of a defendant.
Sarah Jack: It is obvious that the events are just too complex to simply write off to hysteria and move on. Moving on afterafter labeling it hysteria is one of the reasons that we’re, generation after generation, still trying to figure out what’s going on. If we stop labeling it as hysteria, that’s one point. Now I’m not gonna go hunt who’s using the label still and criticize you, but just think about, if we take that word out of there, it leaves more space for talking about the story of our ancestors. More nuanced and sophisticated explanations help us to learn lessons from these witch trials, and the way people reacted then is just how we react to fears now. Fears about immigration, terrorism, nonconformity to gender [00:10:00] norms today, those reactions. It’s us. They’re humans. We’re humans. Same reactions.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, and we started this episode with the story of Mercy Lewis accusing Mary Esty of imminently planning to murder her. Even this midnight horse ride illustrates that people went through legal channels, even when they were at their most frantic.
Sarah Jack: The Salem Witch Trials were a human reaction to great fear during a time of stress and uncertainty. And when we consider that, we can have more empathy for both sides, for accusers and the accused, I even think this hysteria label kind of takes the humanity out of the accusers, and we really need to recognize what they were experiencing also.
Josh Hutchinson: And it’s so important just to recognize how ordinary the people and the emotions [00:11:00] involved in the witch trials were. They’re us, we’re them, people haven’t changed that much in 333 years, so we need to know and acknowledge that they had the same feelings and fretted about the same things that we do, and so reacted in ways that we react to things still today. So we’re much closer to thinking like the people did then than we choose to believe.
Sarah Jack: It is so true. You know, the United States is celebrating the, 250 years of independence and we act like that was, just yesterday. Well, 1692 was just a few generations before that. So if we can identify and recognize ourselves in the founding fathers of the United States, then we can do the same with those who were [00:12:00] founding the colonies and hunting witches.
Josh Hutchinson: And it’s true that the afflicted people were energetic and noisy and just got wild in the court sessions, but in between attending the hearings against the accused, they were reported to have behaved normally. Thomas Brattle, in a letter to an unnamed clergyman, wrote that, “many of these afflicted persons who have scores of strange fits in a day, yet in the intervals of time are hail and hardy, robust and lusty, as though nothing had afflicted them.”
And so he tells about here about the chief justice giving the jury their instructions. “He told them that they were not to mind whether the bodies of the said afflicted were really pined and consumed, as was expressed in the indictment, but whether the said afflicted did not suffer from the accused such afflictions as naturally [00:13:00] tended to their being pined and consumed, wasted, et cetera. This, said he, is a pining and consuming in the sense of the law.”
Hysteria, while possibly affecting individual witch trial accusers at specific times, is not a satisfying explanation of why witch hunts occurred in the past or why they’re occurring today.
The hysteria explanation leaves open the possibility that witch hunts happen randomly whenever a person or group is hysterical. They understate the factors that contribute to witch hunts, the social, economic, political, religious and cultural factors, the emotional stresses and fears, the familial and neighborhood strife, the sudden disaster that serves as the impetus for the hunt.
To address witch hunting and in the future, we have to understand the ordinary human emotions and behaviors involved in the hunts. We are who [00:14:00] we always were. We’re as capable of witch hunts as any people at any time in history.
America has seen numerous moral panics, including the Red Scare, the Satanic Panic, over the years. But rather than citing hysteria as the cause of these more recent panics, historians and other researchers reason that societal pressures caused these panics. So why do we insist that the witch trials 300 some years ago were the products of hysteria, when we know that people today are involved in the same kind of panics? Let’s be realistic and address the human factors that lead to widespread human rights violations during periods of panic.
Sarah Jack: We’d love to chat with you about this in our Patreon community. Come say hi and tell us what you think of hysteria. I.
We kick off with a midnight ride that would make Paul Revere jealous—except instead of warning about the British, townspeople were frantically summoning help for a girl supposedly being tortured by a witch’s specter. But before you roll your eyes and mutter “mass hysteria,” consider this: What if the Salem Witch Trials weren’t the product of unhinged women with wandering uteruses (yes, that’s a real historical medical theory), but rather ordinary people responding to extraordinary fear in disturbingly familiar ways?
Join us as we trace witch panics from Springfield to Hartford, uncovering a pattern that’s less “crazy town” and more “calculated legal proceedings.” We’ll explore why dismissing these events as hysteria might be the most dangerous mistake we can make—especially when the same human behaviors that fueled 17th-century witch hunts are alive and well in. Spoiler alert: We’re not as evolved as we think we are.
Fair warning: Contains references to wandering uteruses, midnight rides, and uncomfortable parallels to contemporary society.
We look at the reported use of oomancy—egg divination—allegedly preceding the Salem Witch Trials. The discussion centers around a haunting account from Reverend John Hale about an afflicted girl who used an egg and glass to divine her future, only to see a coffin appear in the reflection. This ominous vision allegedly led to her eventual death, serving as what Hale callously called “a just warning” about dabbling with divination.
The hosts explore the ancient origins of divination practices, tracing them back thousands of years to early civilizations. The episode examines various divination methods documented in Salem records, including the sieve and scissors technique, key and Bible, and other techniques for fortune telling. Several fascinating Salem cases come to light, including Samuel Wardwell’s admitted fortune telling abilities and Dorcas Hoar’s reputation as a local fortune teller who specialized in predicting the deaths of men. The hosts share intriguing testimonies from neighbors who witnessed these practices firsthand, revealing how common divination was in 17th-century New England communities.
Throughout the episode, the hosts address common myths about Salem, including the popular but inaccurate image of girls gathering in circles for magic sessions. They also explore the mystery of which afflicted girl Hale was referring to in his account, as her identity remains unknown to this day.
Join Josh and Sarah as they uncover the surprisingly relatable human desire to glimpse the future, one cracked egg at a time. Connect with them on Patreon at patreon.com/aboutsalem to continue the conversation about Salem’s divination practices and their modern echoes.
You’ve heard the theory: ergot-poisoned rye bread caused hallucinations that sparked the Salem witch trials. It sounds so logical, so scientific, so… wrong.
When the afflicted girl Elizabeth Hubbard accused alleged witch Sarah Good of witchcraft through spectral torture – pinching, pricking, and demanding she sign the devil’s book – was she describing a fungal poisoning? Or something far more complex?
Join Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack as they finally address one of the most popular silver bullet “explanations” for the Salem Witch Trials. They’ll show you why this tidy medical explanation crumbles: convulsive ergotism is actually a syndrome with a constellation of symptoms and variables.
This episode will sharpen your critical thinking. The ergot theory’s problems show us how easily we can be drawn to explanations that sound scientific but don’t actually fit the evidence and why we need to dig deeper than the theories that simply make us feel better about difficult history.
In Salem, people were hanged based on crimes no one else could see.
In Salem, accusers claimed to see the ghostly “shapes” of their neighbors tormenting them from miles away. These spectral attacks left real bruises, real terror, and real questions: Could the Devil impersonate innocent people? Why did Connecticut reject this evidence decades earlier while Salem embraced it with deadly consequences?
From midnight visitations to courtroom chaos, discover how testimony about invisible crimes became the most dangerous evidence in American legal history.
The shadows cast by Salem’s trials reach far beyond 1692—and the question of what we’re willing to believe based on what we cannot see remains as relevant as ever.
One month in, and we’re finding our rhythm with The Thing About Salem podcast.
Running two weekly podcasts keeps us busy, but dedicating one entirely to Salem has been a blast. We’re enjoying the focused approach, and each week brings new aspects of the story to life.
Our First Four Episodes
The Thing About Tituba started us off with the real story about the “witch cake” and how it set everything in motion. We started to separate the documented facts from the legends that have grown up around Tituba.
Salem Witch Trial Judges Played with Poppets examined how judges brought poppets into the court proceedings and experimented with their power. Be sure to catch the extended cut on Patreon.
Why The Crucible Never Gets Old examined Arthur Miller’s play and its continued relevance. We discussed how its themes connect to modern culture and society.
Dining with the Devil in the Pastor’s Pasture explored how accusations evolved from simple claims to elaborate stories being accepted as evidence. These witches’ sabbath tales marked a significant escalation in the 1692 trials.
What We’re Pulling from the Records
Salem’s court records and contemporary accounts reveal many complexities. The documentation shows patterns that extend far beyond 1692—connections between legal procedures, community tensions, and individual motivations that help explain not just what happened, but why it happened the way it did.
Looking Ahead
Next up is an episode on spectral evidence, which was central to the accusations and convictions. We’re looking forward to breaking down this complicated view of the natural and unnatural worlds and how it played out in the courtroom.
What happens when a few cryptic accusations transform into elaborate tales of midnight gatherings with the Devil himself? In Salem, the introduction of witches’ sabbath stories didn’t just add fuel to the fire—it created an inferno that would consume an entire community. These stories reveal how panic spreads and conspiracies grow, transforming neighbors into enemies and turning familiar landscapes into theaters of supernatural warfare.
Episode Highlights:
European Origins of Sabbath Stories • In the western Alps in the 1430s, stories spread after religious conferences • Originally called the “Synagogue of Satan,” not sabbath or sabbat • 1669 Swedish trials in Elfdale Province featured children confessing to journeys to Blockula • Accused described calling “Antecessor come and carry us to Blockula” three times at crossroads • The Devil appeared in a gray coat, red and blue stockings, and distinctive high-crowned hat with red beard
Salem’s Transformation • European sabbath tales were fresh in colonial minds when Salem’s hunt began •Stories evolved from simple accusations into vast conspiracy narratives
Impact on the Witch Hunt • Each confession built upon previous stories, creating coherent mythology • Details seemed to confirm worst fears about supernatural conspiracy • Stories recorded as evidence and treated as truth by authorities • Transformed the scope from individual accusations to community-wide threat
Related Content: Join us on Patreon for bonus episodes and behind-the-scenes content
Arthur Miller’s timeless play, The Crucible, transformed the Salem Witch Trials into America’s most powerful allegory for McCarthyism. When The Crucible premiered in 1953, Miller—who would later marry Marilyn Monroe—created a dramatized version of Salem that exposed the dangerous parallels between witch hunts and communist hysteria.
Hosts Josh and Sarah explore Miller’s deliberate historical changes and why he chose fiction over fact to reveal deeper truths about accusation, confession, and moral courage under pressure.
The episode breaks down how Miller’s allegory connected Salem’s witch trials to 1950s Red Scare tactics, showing why both historical moments reveal the same pattern. Whether fearing witchcraft or communism, communities turn on perceived traitors through panic and make false accusations.
Explore The Crucible’s lasting cultural impact from high school literature classes to multiple film adaptations. Whether you’re studying the play for school, preparing for a performance, or simply curious about its enduring relevance, this episode explains why Miller’s work remains essential reading in our current age of political polarization.
Perfect for students, theater enthusiasts, and anyone seeking to understand how The Crucible connects Salem’s 1692 tragedy to timeless themes of integrity, community panic, and moral choice that still resonate today.
Explore one of the more bizarre forms of evidence used to convict witches in colonial America. When the Salem Witch Trials judges accepted poppets as deadly proof of witchcraft, they turned dolls and rags into evidence that cost innocent people like Bridget Bishop their lives. The judges admitted all kinds of evidence that wouldn’t survive five minutes in a modern courtroom, including poppets—dolls crafted with malicious intent—that were allegedly used to afflict targets from afar.
The hosts reveal how law enforcement searched accused witches’ homes for “pictures of clay or wax,” turning up everything from rag dolls stuffed with goat hair to knotted handkerchiefs filled with cheese and grass. In the most shocking cases, judges conducted live magical experiments in their own courtrooms while watching the “afflicted” witnesses writhe in apparent agony, then using these theatrical displays as evidence to send people to the gallows.
Listeners discover the tragic stories behind Salem’s most infamous poppet cases, like those involving Bridget Bishop, Candy, and Abigail Hobbs, who claimed the devil personally delivered poppets to her. The episode also explores pre-Salem cases like Goody Glover. This is another chapter in understanding how Salem became America’s most infamous example of justice gone terribly wrong.
In the inaugural episode of The Thing About Salem, hosts Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack take you inside the Salem Witch Trials, focusing on the early events that triggered the infamous witch-hunt. Discover how Tituba became the unwitting catalyst for America’s most infamous witch hunt. This isn’t the sanitized version you learned in school or saw in The Crucible—this is the raw, documented truth about three pivotal days that changed history forever.
When 9-year-old Betty Parris and 11-year-old Abigail Williams began barking like dogs and trying to walk into fireplaces in January 1692, their desperate community turned to folk magic—baking a grotesque “witch cake” made with the girls’ urine and feeding it to a dog. This bizarre ritual, unique in all of New England’s witch trial records, appeared to succeed when the girls began naming witches the very next day. Their first target was Tituba, the enslaved indigenous woman in their own household—the most vulnerable person in Salem Village and the unwitting catalyst who would spend 15 months in jail as the witch trials exploded across Massachusetts.
Listeners are provided with a detailed account of the strange behaviors exhibited by Parris’s daughter Betty and niece Abigail, the mysterious witch cake baked by Mary Sibley, and the subsequent accusations against Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne. The podcast also highlights Tituba’s lasting impact and a commemorative brick in her honor at the House of the Seven Gables. The episode is the first in a weekly series exploring different facets of the Salem Witch Trials.
