The Thing About the Salem Witch Trials

Step into Salem in 1692 as we follow Bridget Bishop from her life in Salem Town to the courtroom that condemned her. She was the first person executed in the Salem Witch Trials, convicted on testimony about specters, poppets, an “unnatural mark,” and long-running neighborhood quarrels—despite insisting she had never harmed the accusers and did not even know them. We trace her documented history from England to Mas...

Why did the 1692 Salem witch trials require an entirely new court, and how did that court reach a 100 percent conviction rate? This episode examines the Court of Oyer and Terminer, the special tribunal that prosecuted witchcraft accusations across colonial Massachusetts, and lays out the legal machinery, the magistrates, and the evidentiary standards that decided who lived and who died.

When Sir William Phips took office, the provin...

William Phips was the last person anyone should have trusted with one of the most consequential legal crises in American history. No formal education. No legal training. No political experience. The man who put him in charge of Massachusetts was Increase Mather, the most powerful Puritan minister in colonial New England.

Phips arrived at the Salem witch trials as governor of Massachusetts Bay with a life behind him that had nothing ...

From Witch Trials to Revolution: Salem Village on the Front Lines

We connect Salem’s darkest legacy to the opening clash of American independence with historian Dan Gagnon, Danvers resident and author of A Salem Witch: A Biography of Rebecca Nurse. Our conversation brings the Revolution into the very streets of Salem and Salem Village (today’s Danvers), where coercive acts, a moved provincial capital, troops on the Salem...

Every April 30, bonfires burn across Europe on the same night witches were said to gather on a mountaintop and make their covenant with the devil. That image did not stay in Europe. It crossed the Atlantic, embedded itself in colonial New England theology and law, and by 1692 it was being sworn to in witchcraft trials that sent nineteen people to their deaths. In this episode, hosts Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack follow that thread...

ESPN has a history podcast, and they used it to cover the Salem Witch Trials on the 50th anniversary of the ergot theory. Hosts Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack, descendants of Salem Witch Trial victims, respond to Stupiracy's April 2nd episode on whether moldy rye bread caused the accusations of 1692.

What you will learn:

• What the ergot theory is and why it has circulated for 50 years
• How the historical symptoms from Salem do not m...

On April 19, 1692, Salem witch trials magistrates conducted their busiest day of examinations yet. Four accused witches appeared before the court in colonial Massachusetts. Two confessions were recorded. And the Puritan legal proceedings that would lead to nineteen executions shifted into a dangerous new phase.

In this episode of The Thing About the Salem Witch Trials, Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack break down the examinations of Gi...

What does the American Red Cross have to do with the Salem Witch Trials? The answer runs through one of the most defiant women of 1692.

Sarah Cloyce was the youngest of the three Towne sisters, the sibling who survived when Rebecca Nurse and Mary Easty did not. Born in Salem in 1642, Sarah lived a relatively ordinary Puritan life until March 1692, when her sister Rebecca was arrested for witchcraft and Reverend Samuel Parris deliver...

She accused 16 people, was named a victim in 13 indictments, and may have been the most powerful force driving the Salem witch trials of 1692. So why does history overlook Mercy Lewis?

What You'll Learn

• Why some historians consider Mercy Lewis the ringleader among the afflicted girls

• How surviving the Wabanaki wars shaped her role in the Salem witch trials

• The full content of her April 1st visions, including the biblical passages a...

Follow the events of April 4, 1692, as new testimony and complaints target recent suspects. We cover a reported spectral attack involving the shape of John Proctor afflicting Abigail Williams, then dig into multiple depositions against Rachel Clinton, including claims of meetinghouse disturbances, strange animal apparitions, a mysterious loss of beer, and a tense late-night confrontation followed by an apparent affliction and near-...

We explore a striking claim from within the crisis itself: that the afflicted may have been “dissembling.” We revisit Sunday, April 3, 1692, when Samuel Parris read aloud a note Mary Warren had posted at the Salem Village meetinghouse, inviting the congregation to offer prayers of gratitude for her deliverance—yet the note’s contents are unknown because Parris never copied it into his church record book. We ...

In today’s Salem Witch Trials Daily, we walk through Saturday, April 2, 1692, focusing on Abigail Williams’ claims that the specters of Elizabeth Procter and Rebecca Nurse repeatedly afflicted her in March and April, including being “grievously pinched” and tempted with fine things to sign the book. We also explore how accusers often listed dates of spectral attacks and why our day-by-day approach helps reve...

In our April 1, 1692 episode of Salem Witch Trials Daily, we explore how the afflictions continue to mislead people in Salem and nearby communities through the reported testimony of Mercy Lewis. We recount her vivid description of being taken to a “glorious place” filled with light, where she saw a multitude in white robes singing from Revelation 5:9, Psalm 110, and Psalm 149—passages we connect to the religious c...

Fast Day in Salem: Prayer, Fasting, and Abigail Williams’ Witch Feast Vision

In this episode, we follow Thursday, March 31, 1692, as Salem observes a Puritan fast day while Abigail Williams reports seeing about 40 witches feasting near the Salem Village parsonage of minister Samuel Parris and claims the specter of Rebecca Nurse attacks her. We explore how Puritans in New England viewed prayer and fasting—grounded in the ...

In this episode of Salem Witch Trials Daily, we cover Wednesday, March 30, 1692, when Rachel Clinton—arrested the day before—was slated for examination, though no record of that hearing survives. We focus on three depositions made against her that day: Thomas Burnam Jr. describes watching for a cow-milker he associates with Clinton and claims the figure vanished and later turned into a gray cat; Mary Fuller Sr. recounts...

We are so happy to introduce Salem Witch Trials Daily, our new podcast that follows the 1692 Salem Witch Trials in real time, day by day, court date by court date, through the documented record. In Salem, Massachusetts, 19 people were executed, one man was pressed to death for refusing trial, and more than a hundred others were accused and imprisoned, leaving a lasting mark on American history. Building on the extraordinary listene...

The Salem witch trials of 1692 were not driven by local grudges alone. Behind the arrests, examinations, and executions was a centuries-old theological framework that convinced educated elites, magistrates, and Puritan clergy that they were fighting a coordinated demonic war against the Christian church itself.

Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack trace the elaborated theory of witchcraft from its origins at the Council of Basel in the 14...

On Sunday, March 27, 1692, Reverend Samuel Parris led Salem Village through two Sabbath services shaped by the recent “dreadful witchcraft” crisis and the public suspicion of alleged witches. We cover how his sermon warned that Christ knows how many devils are in the church, prompting Sarah Cloyce—sister of Rebecca Nurse—to flee the meetinghouse, and we note later claims about what witnesses said happened af...

We revisit Mercy Lewis’s reported afflictions and connect them to later depositions involving Elizabeth Proctor and Martha Cory. We also discuss a pivotal event recorded by former Salem Village minister Deodat Lawson in A Brief and True Narrative, describing how magistrates John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, along with minister John Higginson, examined the youngest witchcraft suspect at the prison keeper’s house. We exp...