The Backstory: Attacked by a Ghost in Salem Massachusetts!

The Salem witch trials took place 333 years ago. They left a lot of bad energy in that small New England town. But folks who’ve visited one house in particular have some pretty chilling stories to tell about being strangled, burned, and scratched by 300 year old ghosts!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We use the term witch hunt an awful lot these days,
and it's usually associated with mass hysteria, so it only
seems fitting to take a look back at the origin
of the phrase, particularly as we approach Halloween. Right. Well, now,
consider this couple the original American witch hunt in Salem, Massachusetts,
back in the early sixteen nineties, with the most haunted

(00:23):
houses there. I'm Patty Steele. The bad energy that lingers
after a witch hunt. That's next on the backstory. We're
back with the backstory. You may know a little bit
about the Salem witch Trials, but I'm going to give
you a rundown anyway. They took place in sixteen ninety

(00:44):
two and sixteen ninety three in Salem, Massachusetts. More than
two hundred people were accused of witchcraft. Twenty were executed,
nineteen by hanging, and one a man was pressed to
death with large stones in a tempt to force a
confession out of him. At least six others died in
prison or while being tested for being a witch. What's

(01:08):
amazing is it was over three hundred years ago, but
it wasn't until twenty twenty two that the last person
finally had her name cleared. All of the accused and
convicted were exonerated on a case by case basis over
the centuries, but somehow Elizabeth Johnson Junior slipped through the cracks.
She wasn't executed, but historians think that's because she was

(01:32):
intellectually disabled and more apt to make a false confession,
so they finally released her. She was cleared only three
years ago, when a group of eighth graders from Danvers, Massachusetts,
went to the state legislature to get her exonerated. The
Salem witch trials began when the town was experiencing some
upset over church politics, family feuds, and financial upset, and

(01:57):
people wanted to blame pretty much anything, so they blamed
the devil. I was common in those days. Three girls,
ages nine, eleven, and twelve started the mass hysteria by
throwing fits, and they blamed their upset on three poor
elderly women in Salem. One of those women panicked and said,

(02:17):
the devil came to me and bid me serve him.
She said there were other witches in town, and some
of them confessed as well, and they named others. It
was all in an effort to lessen their own charges.
But the confessions and finger pointing amped up the hysteria
even more. As months went by, dozens more were accused.

(02:38):
They were tested, but witch tests were kind of impossible
to pass. There was the swimming test. The judge said
that if the accused floated, they were guilty because the
water would reject evil. But if the person sank, they
were innocent, although of course they often drowned if they sank.
And there was the touch test. The accused had to

(03:00):
touch their victim, and if that person felt pain or
screamed out, the accused was guilty. Of course, the hysterical
accusers could easily lie and scream out in pain even
if they didn't feel anything. Finally, the Governor, William Phipps
ordered a special court to be set up and the
trials began. Within several weeks, the first execution took place,

(03:23):
and nineteen more followed over the course of the four
month trials. The whole thing ended when the governor's own
wife was called in to be questioned as a possible witch.
Phipps immediately dissolved the court and pardoned those who were
still in prison. So where do the haunted houses come in. Well,
there's the Salem Witch House, which still stands and is

(03:46):
a huge attraction for folks who want a taste of
the paranormal. Owned back in the sixteen hundreds by Jonathan Corwin,
one of the judges in the witch trials. There have
been a whole bunch of haunting claims made by visitors,
including ghostly sightings and voices, but the house considered the
most haunted in Salem wasn't even there until some time

(04:08):
in the mid seventeen hundreds. So why is it so haunted? Well,
it turns out the Joshua Ward House, built between seventeen
fifty four and seventeen eighty four, was built on the
site of the house owned in sixteen ninety two by
Sheriff George Corwin, nephew of the judge who owned the
Witch House. It seems George was a vicious piece of work.

(04:32):
He was the twenty five year old high Sheriff of
Essex County, where Salem was located. Corwin signed the arrest warrants.
He had the job of choosing the site for the
executions and also the job of torturing the accused to
force confessions out of them. Now ord has it that
in some cases he'd tie the neck of the accused

(04:54):
to their ankles so tightly that blood ran out of
their noses. That earned him the nickname strangler. In the
case of one elderly male victim, he laid boards on
top of him and loaded them down with heavier and
heavier stones until he was crushed to death. Corwin himself
died of a heart attack just a few years later

(05:15):
at the age of thirty, but the energy left behind
on that property is unsettled, to say the least. Multiple
witnesses who visited the house, which is now an inn,
claim they've been strangled while visiting while no one else
was in the room. Some folks claim to have seen
what they think is the ghost of that elderly man
who was crushed to death during the trials, and also

(05:39):
the ghostly appearance of a woman dressed in black who
wanders the halls wailing. They were even able to snap
a photo of her. And finally, others say they've suddenly
had scratches or burns appear on their arms while on
the property. None of this seemed to impact George Washington.
He'd been president for just six months, and he asked

(06:00):
to stay in the Joshua Ward House while on a
seventeen eighty nine tour of New England. Apparently the ghost
of the Strangler stayed quiet. I hope you're enjoying The
Backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave a review, or follow
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and also feel free to dm me if you have

(06:21):
a story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, It's
Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele.
The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis
Duran Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser.
Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday

(06:43):
and Friday. Feel free to reach out to me with
comments and even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty
Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening
to the Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces of history
you didn't know you needed to know.