August 17, 2025 • 15 mins
What if history's most infamous witch hunt could have been stopped with just a few different decisions? We're examining the pivotal moments between January 1692 and May 1693 when someone—anyone—could have pumped the brakes on Salem's runaway train of accusations.
From the shocking arrest of four-year-old Dorothy Good to Martha Carrier's unfortunate promotion to "Queen of Hell," we'll explore how escalating choices transformed a local crisis into colonial America's most notorious legal disaster. We'll meet the key players who either fanned the flames or tried to douse them—including Cotton Mather's mixed messages and Governor Phips' late-in-the-game reality check.
Join us as we dissect the moments when cooler heads could have prevailed and discover how 45 residents of unlucky Andover got swept up in accusations that would make even the devil blush. Sometimes it takes a village—or several villages—to create a catastrophe.
Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project
Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt
The Thing About Salem Patreon
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Just the facts, ma'am. Did you use at any time to ride
upon a stick or pull? Yes.
How high? Sometimes above the trees.
Do not you anoint yourselves before you fly?
No, but the devil carried us upon hand pulls.
(00:20):
Tell us all the truth. What kind of worship did you do?
The Devil. He bid me pray to him and serve
him, and he said he was a God and Lord to me.
What did he promise to give you?He said I would want nothing in
this world and that I would obtain glory with him.
(00:40):
Why would they hurt the village people?
The devil would set up his Kingdom there and we should have
happy days and it would then be better times for me if I obey
him. Did you hear the 77 witches
names called over? Yes, the devil called them.
What did he say to them? He told them obey him and do his
(01:03):
commands and it would be better for them and they should obtain
crowns in hell. And Goody Carrier told me the
devil said to her she should be a queen in hell.
Who was to be king? The minister.
Kind of man is Mr. Burroughs. A Pretty Little man, and he has
come to us sometimes in his spirit, in the shape of a cat,
(01:27):
and I think sometimes in his proper shape.
Do you hear the devil hurts in the shape of any person without
their consent? No.
Welcome to the Thing about Salem.
I'm Josh Hutchinson. And I'm Sarah Jack.
The interrogation we just re enacted was taken from the
record of the July 21st, 1692 examinations of Mary Lacey
(01:51):
Junior, Mary Lacey Senior Ann Foster, Richard Carrier and
Andrew Carrier and was a pivotalmoment which we'll have more
about later in the episode. We think of the witch hunt as a
runaway train fueled by hysteria, but there were a
(02:13):
multitude of individual actors that had free will to change the
course of the events. We'll be talking about pivotal
moments in the witch trials, when a person or group could
have made a different decision and LED the affair to a more
peaceful conclusion. We'll also cover sometimes when
people did succeed in bringing down the temperature in the
(02:35):
room. Had these choices not been made,
the runaway train may have gone off the rails.
So of course, we're talking about the Salem witch trials,
which we think of as beginning in January 1692 with the
afflictions of Abigail Williams and Betty Parris.
(02:56):
And it lasted until May 1693, when the final court proceedings
were held and the final prisoners were released from
jail. There are a lot of these points
of escalations. We're going to highlight some of
our favourites. One early turning point was the
arrests of Martha Corey, RebeccaNurse and Dorothy Good, which
(03:19):
took place between March 21st and March 24th.
Martha was the first church member to be accused of
witchcraft. She was a member of the Salem
Village Church. Then a few days later on March
24th, my 9th great grandmother, Rebecca Nurse was arrested.
Rebecca was the first member of the Salem Town Church to be
(03:42):
arrested. And the same day that Rebecca
was arrested, Dorothy Goode was jailed.
She was a four year old girl child, the daughter of Sarah
Goode. And all this tells us that they
weren't looking for just the usual suspects anymore.
(04:04):
If church members and little baby children not even old
enough for today kindergarten are getting accused of being
witches that hurt people, anybody is open to accusation.
The next turn of events that wascritical in escalating what was
(04:27):
happening was in April. On April 19th, Abigail Hobbes
gave a confession. GAIL, who's Sarah's favorite
confessor. She is.
Her stories are grand. Abigail was the wild child of
Topsfield, had a very interesting relationship with
(04:47):
her stepmother and had a very interesting relationship with
the devil, which she confessed to on April 19th.
And in her subsequent questioning of her in jail, she
elaborated. But being from Topsfield, that
(05:08):
expanded the search radius for which is beyond Salem Village.
So that was a big piece of it. And this was the first
confession by anyone since Tituba had confessed on March
1st. There's also no signs of
coercion on this one. It appears to be a voluntary
(05:30):
confession. Her confession was a confession
of cominitine with the devil. It was a diabolical confession.
Yeah. And Abigail and her stepmother,
Deliverance Hobbes, they filled in key details about the
diabolic pact and the witch's Sabbath, how those things
(05:50):
worked. Yeah.
And Abigail said that she gave the devil her permission to
afflict people. So the devil went out in her
specter, her likeness, but only because she said that he could.
And this was a big moment because this said that the
(06:12):
witches had to willingly allow the devil to use their form,
that the devil couldn't use anybody's shape without their
permission. In other words, he couldn't
appear as an innocent person. So therefore, the spectres that
were being seen by the afflictedpeople were really the spectres
(06:36):
of witches who had given the devil their permission.
So this added some cred to spectral evidence, which the
ministers and others were reallytrying to decide.
I mean, in other witch trials even they were questioning
whether a spectral form was actually the person or if it was
(06:57):
the devil impersonating them. A very big moment in the Salem
witch Trials happened May 27th. This was what actually led to
the trial phase happening because for months the jails had
been filling with witchcraft suspects.
(07:17):
But Governor William Phipps, thebrand new governor for the
colony, creates a special court called the Court of Oyer and
Terminer, which means to hear and determine, and he appoints 9
judges to it, and they're going to start in June.
(07:38):
Another thing about the witch trials that I think we sometimes
forget is that ministers and other men were doing a lot of
deliberation around the scene world and the unseen world.
I wish they would not have had such a difficult time coming to
(08:02):
the conclusions that they neededto come to.
But one of the significant ones is the return of the ministers
on June 15th. In the return, the ministers
warned the justices about relying upon spectral evidence.
They urged the justices to avoidbulk tests for witchcraft and
suggested that the justices follow the guidelines set forth
(08:25):
in books by English Puritans such as Perkins and Renard.
The ministers also recommended that the justices hold their
proceedings in calm environments, caution them
against using spectral visions as proof of guilt because demons
could assume the image of the innocent people.
(08:47):
The return also closed with a recommendation for the speedy
and vigorous prosecution of the witches.
So contradicts itself basically.First they're urging caution
throughout the report, but then at the end they're saying be
(09:07):
speedy and vigorous. So the judges, they take this
return and they say, well we like spectral evidence, we like
doing folk tests and. The judges continued to do those
tests and to accept spectral evidence in mid-july.
There's another grand turning point in this.
(09:28):
One is really what expands the amount of people who are
descendants of those who experienced the Salem witch
Charles because things expanded to the community of Andover.
Yeah, Andover, including what istoday the separate community of
North Andover had more witchcraft accusations than any
(09:52):
other community, including Salem.
Another catalyst in the Andover phase was the sickness of
Elizabeth Phelps Ballard. One big element of this
Elizabeth Phelps Ballard sickness is that her husband at
some point called down to Salem Village and got some of the
(10:15):
afflicted girls to come up and examine his wife and determine
who was bewitching her. And so they came up, they saw
spectres, they made accusations.July 19th, Joseph Ballard
complained against Mary Lacey senior and her daughter Mary
Lacey Junior. This was a renewal of arrest
(10:39):
because there'd actually been 6 quiet weeks.
No warrants have been issued since June 6th.
And here we are, July 19th, and we've got two people getting
arrested. Then also in Andover on July
21st and Foster confessed the main aim of the witches was to
(10:59):
replace Christ's Kingdom with Satan's Kingdom.
So here is a conspiracy unfolding.
And this conspiracy gets elaborated on.
The piece that we read at the beginning was from the
examination of Mary Lacey Junior.
During this big say, how did just a group of suspects come
(11:22):
in? It was Mary, her mother, Andrew
Carrier, and Richard Carrier being examined and they
elaborated on A Celestial Game of Thrones.
They said that Martha Carrier and George Burroughs were the
Queen and King in hell, and theysaid that the devil did not hurt
(11:44):
in people's shapes without theirconsent.
Just confirming what Abigail Hobbs had said earlier and
making it seem like spectral evidence was real.
Yeah, sadly, the sick Elizabeth Ballard did pass away on July
27th. Her death just reinforced
(12:07):
people's belief that she had been bewitched.
Now she's murdered by the witches, so that definitely
turns up the heat in Andover. Let's talk about those ministers
again. They kicked things up again.
Yeah, this time they actually did a solid increase, Mather.
(12:30):
It took him apparently months ofdeliberation and writing to come
to the conclusions that he did about spectral evidence and so
forth. This important publication
called Cases of Conscience by Increase Mather came out on
October 3rd and a report of thispublication was read to the
Cambridge Assembly of Ministers at their monthly meeting at
(12:53):
Harvard College. So they were all wanting to know
what does Increase have to say about all of this?
And their conclusions were read to congregations that week.
This work, Cases of Conscience, exemplified the shift in
opinions about the trials that had happened over the summer.
(13:14):
As we get into the fall, there starts to be some people coming
out against what's going on, theway things are being handled.
Increase suggested the afflictedpersons may actually be
possessed. And then on spectral evidence
increase, writes the Devil, may by divine permission appear in
(13:37):
the shape of innocent and pious persons.
Finally, on October 29th, Governor Phipps shuts down the
Special Court of Oyer and Terminer.
Yeah. One of the assistants, James
Russell, asked Governor Sir William Phipps directly if the
Court of Oyer and Terminer should stand or fall, and Phipps
(14:00):
replied it must fall. So we had mentioned earlier the
legislature established new courts in November.
That happened November 25th, andthe witchcraft cases that
remained were transferred to thenew Superior Court of
Judicature, which held sessions in 1693 in Salem, Charlestown,
(14:24):
Boston and Ipswich. The last case was heard May
11th, 1693, and as soon as everyone had paid their jail
fees, the jails were cleared outof these accused witches and the
Salem witch trials. We're basically over.
And you just wonder if one thinghad happened differently in
(14:48):
these turning points that we talked about, what would have
happened? How could things have been
different? How good lives have been saved?
Join in on this discussion on our Patreon community.
We'd love to see you there and hear what you think.
Patreon.com/about Salem.
Just the facts, ma'am. Did you use at any time to ride
upon a stick or pull? Yes.
How high? Sometimes above the trees.
Do not you anoint yourselves before you fly?
No, but the devil carried us upon hand pulls.
(00:20):
Tell us all the truth. What kind of worship did you do?
The Devil. He bid me pray to him and serve
him, and he said he was a God and Lord to me.
What did he promise to give you?He said I would want nothing in
this world and that I would obtain glory with him.
(00:40):
Why would they hurt the village people?
The devil would set up his Kingdom there and we should have
happy days and it would then be better times for me if I obey
him. Did you hear the 77 witches
names called over? Yes, the devil called them.
What did he say to them? He told them obey him and do his
(01:03):
commands and it would be better for them and they should obtain
crowns in hell. And Goody Carrier told me the
devil said to her she should be a queen in hell.
Who was to be king? The minister.
Kind of man is Mr. Burroughs. A Pretty Little man, and he has
come to us sometimes in his spirit, in the shape of a cat,
(01:27):
and I think sometimes in his proper shape.
Do you hear the devil hurts in the shape of any person without
their consent? No.
Welcome to the Thing about Salem.
I'm Josh Hutchinson. And I'm Sarah Jack.
The interrogation we just re enacted was taken from the
record of the July 21st, 1692 examinations of Mary Lacey
(01:51):
Junior, Mary Lacey Senior Ann Foster, Richard Carrier and
Andrew Carrier and was a pivotalmoment which we'll have more
about later in the episode. We think of the witch hunt as a
runaway train fueled by hysteria, but there were a
(02:13):
multitude of individual actors that had free will to change the
course of the events. We'll be talking about pivotal
moments in the witch trials, when a person or group could
have made a different decision and LED the affair to a more
peaceful conclusion. We'll also cover sometimes when
people did succeed in bringing down the temperature in the
(02:35):
room. Had these choices not been made,
the runaway train may have gone off the rails.
So of course, we're talking about the Salem witch trials,
which we think of as beginning in January 1692 with the
afflictions of Abigail Williams and Betty Parris.
(02:56):
And it lasted until May 1693, when the final court proceedings
were held and the final prisoners were released from
jail. There are a lot of these points
of escalations. We're going to highlight some of
our favourites. One early turning point was the
arrests of Martha Corey, RebeccaNurse and Dorothy Good, which
(03:19):
took place between March 21st and March 24th.
Martha was the first church member to be accused of
witchcraft. She was a member of the Salem
Village Church. Then a few days later on March
24th, my 9th great grandmother, Rebecca Nurse was arrested.
Rebecca was the first member of the Salem Town Church to be
(03:42):
arrested. And the same day that Rebecca
was arrested, Dorothy Goode was jailed.
She was a four year old girl child, the daughter of Sarah
Goode. And all this tells us that they
weren't looking for just the usual suspects anymore.
(04:04):
If church members and little baby children not even old
enough for today kindergarten are getting accused of being
witches that hurt people, anybody is open to accusation.
The next turn of events that wascritical in escalating what was
(04:27):
happening was in April. On April 19th, Abigail Hobbes
gave a confession. GAIL, who's Sarah's favorite
confessor. She is.
Her stories are grand. Abigail was the wild child of
Topsfield, had a very interesting relationship with
(04:47):
her stepmother and had a very interesting relationship with
the devil, which she confessed to on April 19th.
And in her subsequent questioning of her in jail, she
elaborated. But being from Topsfield, that
(05:08):
expanded the search radius for which is beyond Salem Village.
So that was a big piece of it. And this was the first
confession by anyone since Tituba had confessed on March
1st. There's also no signs of
coercion on this one. It appears to be a voluntary
(05:30):
confession. Her confession was a confession
of cominitine with the devil. It was a diabolical confession.
Yeah. And Abigail and her stepmother,
Deliverance Hobbes, they filled in key details about the
diabolic pact and the witch's Sabbath, how those things
(05:50):
worked. Yeah.
And Abigail said that she gave the devil her permission to
afflict people. So the devil went out in her
specter, her likeness, but only because she said that he could.
And this was a big moment because this said that the
(06:12):
witches had to willingly allow the devil to use their form,
that the devil couldn't use anybody's shape without their
permission. In other words, he couldn't
appear as an innocent person. So therefore, the spectres that
were being seen by the afflictedpeople were really the spectres
(06:36):
of witches who had given the devil their permission.
So this added some cred to spectral evidence, which the
ministers and others were reallytrying to decide.
I mean, in other witch trials even they were questioning
whether a spectral form was actually the person or if it was
(06:57):
the devil impersonating them. A very big moment in the Salem
witch Trials happened May 27th. This was what actually led to
the trial phase happening because for months the jails had
been filling with witchcraft suspects.
(07:17):
But Governor William Phipps, thebrand new governor for the
colony, creates a special court called the Court of Oyer and
Terminer, which means to hear and determine, and he appoints 9
judges to it, and they're going to start in June.
(07:38):
Another thing about the witch trials that I think we sometimes
forget is that ministers and other men were doing a lot of
deliberation around the scene world and the unseen world.
I wish they would not have had such a difficult time coming to
(08:02):
the conclusions that they neededto come to.
But one of the significant ones is the return of the ministers
on June 15th. In the return, the ministers
warned the justices about relying upon spectral evidence.
They urged the justices to avoidbulk tests for witchcraft and
suggested that the justices follow the guidelines set forth
(08:25):
in books by English Puritans such as Perkins and Renard.
The ministers also recommended that the justices hold their
proceedings in calm environments, caution them
against using spectral visions as proof of guilt because demons
could assume the image of the innocent people.
(08:47):
The return also closed with a recommendation for the speedy
and vigorous prosecution of the witches.
So contradicts itself basically.First they're urging caution
throughout the report, but then at the end they're saying be
(09:07):
speedy and vigorous. So the judges, they take this
return and they say, well we like spectral evidence, we like
doing folk tests and. The judges continued to do those
tests and to accept spectral evidence in mid-july.
There's another grand turning point in this.
(09:28):
One is really what expands the amount of people who are
descendants of those who experienced the Salem witch
Charles because things expanded to the community of Andover.
Yeah, Andover, including what istoday the separate community of
North Andover had more witchcraft accusations than any
(09:52):
other community, including Salem.
Another catalyst in the Andover phase was the sickness of
Elizabeth Phelps Ballard. One big element of this
Elizabeth Phelps Ballard sickness is that her husband at
some point called down to Salem Village and got some of the
(10:15):
afflicted girls to come up and examine his wife and determine
who was bewitching her. And so they came up, they saw
spectres, they made accusations.July 19th, Joseph Ballard
complained against Mary Lacey senior and her daughter Mary
Lacey Junior. This was a renewal of arrest
(10:39):
because there'd actually been 6 quiet weeks.
No warrants have been issued since June 6th.
And here we are, July 19th, and we've got two people getting
arrested. Then also in Andover on July
21st and Foster confessed the main aim of the witches was to
(10:59):
replace Christ's Kingdom with Satan's Kingdom.
So here is a conspiracy unfolding.
And this conspiracy gets elaborated on.
The piece that we read at the beginning was from the
examination of Mary Lacey Junior.
During this big say, how did just a group of suspects come
(11:22):
in? It was Mary, her mother, Andrew
Carrier, and Richard Carrier being examined and they
elaborated on A Celestial Game of Thrones.
They said that Martha Carrier and George Burroughs were the
Queen and King in hell, and theysaid that the devil did not hurt
(11:44):
in people's shapes without theirconsent.
Just confirming what Abigail Hobbs had said earlier and
making it seem like spectral evidence was real.
Yeah, sadly, the sick Elizabeth Ballard did pass away on July
27th. Her death just reinforced
(12:07):
people's belief that she had been bewitched.
Now she's murdered by the witches, so that definitely
turns up the heat in Andover. Let's talk about those ministers
again. They kicked things up again.
Yeah, this time they actually did a solid increase, Mather.
(12:30):
It took him apparently months ofdeliberation and writing to come
to the conclusions that he did about spectral evidence and so
forth. This important publication
called Cases of Conscience by Increase Mather came out on
October 3rd and a report of thispublication was read to the
Cambridge Assembly of Ministers at their monthly meeting at
(12:53):
Harvard College. So they were all wanting to know
what does Increase have to say about all of this?
And their conclusions were read to congregations that week.
This work, Cases of Conscience, exemplified the shift in
opinions about the trials that had happened over the summer.
(13:14):
As we get into the fall, there starts to be some people coming
out against what's going on, theway things are being handled.
Increase suggested the afflictedpersons may actually be
possessed. And then on spectral evidence
increase, writes the Devil, may by divine permission appear in
(13:37):
the shape of innocent and pious persons.
Finally, on October 29th, Governor Phipps shuts down the
Special Court of Oyer and Terminer.
Yeah. One of the assistants, James
Russell, asked Governor Sir William Phipps directly if the
Court of Oyer and Terminer should stand or fall, and Phipps
(14:00):
replied it must fall. So we had mentioned earlier the
legislature established new courts in November.
That happened November 25th, andthe witchcraft cases that
remained were transferred to thenew Superior Court of
Judicature, which held sessions in 1693 in Salem, Charlestown,
(14:24):
Boston and Ipswich. The last case was heard May
11th, 1693, and as soon as everyone had paid their jail
fees, the jails were cleared outof these accused witches and the
Salem witch trials. We're basically over.
And you just wonder if one thinghad happened differently in
(14:48):
these turning points that we talked about, what would have
happened? How could things have been
different? How good lives have been saved?
Join in on this discussion on our Patreon community.
We'd love to see you there and hear what you think.
Patreon.com/about Salem.
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