Welcome to the We Are More podcast.
My name is Alyssa.
And my name is Bri.
We are two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism.
We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach His
word.
And apparently that's controversial.
Get comfy.
You're a witch.
That's really hurtful.
Is it?
I think, I think so.
With the way you said it, your inflections.
I have so many songs to go with that.
So periodically Bri will just sing, which is pretty par for the course.
Yeah, it's pretty, pretty much me.
Yeah, that sounds right.
I've been thinking, okay, have you seen those things?
This is old.
This is like, I'm out of date.
But have you seen where people go, oh, if I had a starter pack, or if this character
from this show had a starter pack.
If I had a starter pack, it would most likely be Birkenstocks, Claw Clips, those waffle
shirts from Aerie, a Starbucks.
So you're a basic witch is what you're telling me.
A bottle of wine and a DJ.
A DJ?
I'd be a DJ.
Oh, you'd be a DJ.
Not like you'd have one following you around.
No, we tried that.
That didn't work.
So happy Halloween, everyone.
Happy Halloween.
Spooky scary skeletons.
Except not skeletons.
We're talking about witches.
We are.
But you do have, I bought Bree a painting for her birthday.
And it has spooky scary skeletons on it.
Except the title of it is The Winds of Change.
I need you guys to know, I was okay.
I love to gift give, it's just like part of who I am as a human.
And Brianna constantly, out of nowhere, goes, do you feel that?
And there's no context, okay?
You're talking about something totally different.
She goes, can you feel that?
It's the winds of change.
And so I found this painting.
And it's a Disney still from, what's it from?
Fantasia.
Fantasia, that's it.
And I mean, we're not like big Fantasia fans or anything, but we are big Disney fans.
And it's entitled The Winds of Change.
Guys, I've never been more proud of myself.
I just need to get a nail and it's going up in my wall.
I think we have nails.
I haven't been able to find one lately.
Absolutely certain.
But in this house somewhere, there is a nail to be had.
But do you know what that quote is from?
I don't.
Really?
No.
Where?
Where in Monsters Inc is there talking about spooky scary skeletons?
Randall, he goes, do you feel that?
Oh, The Winds of Change.
The Winds of Change.
Oh.
I was still on spooky scary skeletons.
Oh, that, I mean, there are skeletons in Fantasia that-
But there aren't in Monsters Inc.
Listen.
Oh, this is a really different movie than I thought.
It is.
Monster skeletons.
And they will send shivers down your spine.
Oh, good.
And anyways.
So I'm super proud of the fact, and I recognize that this was none of our doing, but I'm so
proud that this is coming out on Halloween.
This was God's timing.
It just makes me feel very accomplished.
I feel so professional.
On Halloween, we're talking about witches.
I'm very excited.
So guys, I have done an inordinate amount of research.
Guess what?
Brie has done none.
I have done none.
But Brie researched the last episode.
Yeah, that's good enough.
It's fine.
And also, I have been contributing nothing due to the plague.
That's okay.
She had the plague.
Very appropriate for witches.
I feel like had is not the term.
Has.
Still going on.
Do people get over pneumonia?
It's a real question.
Continuous plague.
I think it might go on till I die, which might be tomorrow.
This might take all my life.
But at least if I die tomorrow, I have enough money to really live it up for the next day.
Live like it's your last day on earth.
And your last day on earth is today.
If today is my last day on earth, I'm ditching all you people.
I'm going to Disney.
See you bye.
Very Super Bowl of you.
Speaking of the Super Bowl, for the day after Black Friday, we have very cool shirts.
We'll get on topic at some point.
I like how we're like, speaking of Super Bowl, I have no idea when the Super Bowl is.
It's not that day.
It's not Black Friday.
But football, there was a train of thought there.
We like to cause waves because it's who we are as people.
I don't know if you all have noticed.
But our family is very into like football, particularly on Thanksgiving Black Friday.
I don't think particularly on.
I think it's continuous.
They love football.
All the time.
We have to be present for it on the holidays because we're all together in one big house
for like four days.
And so for the last, I don't know, for one of the games on Black Friday, I think there's
multiple games on Black Friday.
Do not look at me.
I have no idea.
But we ordered shirts and a hoodie for my daughter that all say, go Taylor's boyfriend.
And I'm so excited about it.
They're still together.
I don't even care.
My boss texted me this morning and he was like giving me a list of things to do.
And at the end, he's like, go blue.
And I said, is there a game today?
Go football.
And he goes, Michigan versus Michigan State is playing I think tomorrow.
Oh, really?
Oh, well, go blue then.
I have made a family brand out of being, if you are not from Michigan, go blue is like
U of M, University of Michigan.
And if you say go green, it's Michigan State.
And I have made a personal brand out of being a Michigan State fan, despite the fact that
I could not possibly care less about any sport ever because Alyssa solely likes to push the
buttons of everybody around her.
Our whole family is U of M fans.
And I think it's hilarious.
And whenever anybody asks me about it, I very seriously just say, well, I look better in
green.
Yeah.
And the looks that I get.
It's worth it.
It goes better with my eyes.
It does.
And my hair.
It does.
My personality.
You know.
And on to witches.
So today, we're going to be talking about the Salem witch trials and also the Hartford
witch trials and also the Pendle witch trials because I did so much research.
Proud of you.
Hartford just reminds me of Gilmore Girls.
I mean, that's exactly where it was.
So there you go.
Fantastic.
So we'll be talking about the Gilmore Girls witches.
Hope you guys are prepared.
So we're going to start with the Salem witch trials because I mean, I think that's probably
why you're all here.
That's the most famous ones for us here in the United States.
So the Salem witch trials were between February of 1692 and May of 1693.
So not like a long time.
I just almost made a joke about 1692.
Was it an inappropriate joke?
No.
Then make the joke.
I'm going to sail the ocean blue.
Well, that's wrong.
I know.
Anyway, so I think we think of this as a long period in history.
And the reality is it was just over a year.
And really, most of it happened in the summer between those two.
So the summer of 1692 was when it...the FUROR.
Can I say something stupid?
Okay.
When I think Salem witch trials, I do not think the United States of America.
Well, I mean, they were still colonies.
Yeah.
But I just...I picture it in England.
Okay.
Well, that's wrong.
I can't help you there.
I just don't want to be associated with it.
I'm like, send it over the ocean.
Well, in England...well, in Europe, I guess, between...lots of research, guys.
Between the early 15th and the early 18th century, 500 people were executed for witchcraft.
Across the pond.
So is across the pond.
So when you do talk about witch trials, globally, Salem is kind of just a blip.
But for us, because it happened in the country we're living in, and it happened a lot later
than most of the European witch trials, it seems like in Europe they had kind of...they
thought they moved on, they thought they were better than this now.
You know, like, we've moved on, we are better.
Yeah, like we're more educated, we don't think about this anymore, whatever.
And then all of a sudden, Salem happens like 80 years after the main ones in Europe.
Or behind the times.
Yeah.
And so it was kind of a big deal.
So the Salem witch trials started with two young girls.
One was 9, one was 11.
Oh, they were babies.
They were very young.
I mean, that's my daughter's age, so you're talking about young, young.
I'm sorry.
This big of drama started with preteens?
Yeah.
What the heck is this?
We have preteen drama in our history?
Preteen drama.
I mean, probably a lot.
My gosh.
So their names were Betty Parris and Abigail Williams.
Now Betty was the daughter of the Reverend Parris.
So he was the pastor of the Salem area at the time.
So he would have had a lot of power and influence.
And then Abigail was her cousin, Betty's cousin.
And I believe Abigail was living with them at the time.
And all of a sudden, the girls start acting real weird.
As all 9 and 11 year olds do.
But like they're contorting their bodies.
They just watched The Exorcist and were confused.
Leave them be.
They were in the 1690s?
Yep.
I don't think so.
They were just trying to be cheerleaders out in their backyard.
So they're starting to do weird things.
They're saying weird things.
Strange, right?
Now there's no videos of this.
I can't sit here and tell you this is exactly what they did.
They were starting their periods and they had hormones.
I mean, they were 9 and 11.
That's what was happening.
I can tell you right now.
But I think because they were in the Reverend's house, obviously there was precedent for witch
trials.
This was not a new concept.
It was kind of an old concept.
But when witch trials come to town, who becomes the most important figure?
True.
The Reverend, right?
The Exorcist.
I don't think he was exercising anybody.
I haven't seen The Exorcist all the way through, so all my references probably don't make sense.
Alright, well, you people out there that are going to watch it tonight because it's Halloween,
don't listen to Brie.
So these two girls, they accused three women of being witches.
I think the wording was afflicting them, so essentially coming to them in their dreams
and scratching them or attacking them, things like that.
Yeah, basically.
So they accused three women and those three women...
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
So the three women were Tituba.
Whoa, watch your mouth.
So she was actually the slave of Reverend Paris.
So she's in their household, she's an easy target, right?
Absolutely.
She's marginalized, she's not important in society.
No one will miss her when she's gone.
Right, so they accused her as one of them.
The other two were Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne.
Oh, I've heard of them.
So these were all women kind of on the outskirts of society.
How can you accuse someone whose last name is Good?
Like the Good Witch?
They did.
She was the Good Witch of the North.
I don't think so.
Like Glinda!
So one of them was younger, pregnant, she had to beg for money because...
Was she 12?
Maybe.
Not that young.
But she was begging for money, so again, outskirts of society, not an important person, not someone
that the girls would have been concerned about in any way.
And then the other woman was an older woman who, from some accounts that I read, had recently
stopped going to church.
Oh, convenient.
Yeah, was someone that wasn't super well liked, you know, again, on the outskirts of society.
So I feel like putting myself in these 9 and 11 year old shoes, that makes sense, that
they would try to pick people who wouldn't be missed or weren't connected well or...
Well who's gonna question that?
These are already people that if we kick them off the island, nobody's gonna care?
Which is horrifying.
Poor unfortunate souls.
Right.
But at the same time...
Sea Witch.
I caught it.
Sea Witch.
Thank you.
But at the same time, if they had started off accusing really important people, they
probably would have been dismissed.
Even though they did have some level of status, they were related to the Reverend.
As two children.
Right.
But they had more status than say, these women.
So what happened is Tichyba, who's the slave, she confesses.
She says she is associated with the devil, she was coming to them in their dreams, whatever.
Now she confesses because allegedly she was beat very badly by Reverend Paris.
She was forced into it.
Right.
However, the deal was also throughout all of the Salem Witch Trials, the deal was if
you confess and you blame a bunch of other people, you won't be killed.
Which makes zero sense.
None of this makes any sense.
Our history sucks.
But that was kind of the deal.
So on both sides, on the one side she's getting beaten and told you're going to confess to
this whether you like it or not.
And then on the other side, she's trying to save her own life.
Which I mean, can you blame her for heaven's sake?
And I mean, she's in that household.
There's these two girls that she's probably been caring for for as long as they've been
alive.
She probably feels maybe protective of them in some way.
I'm just speculating.
Yeah, for sure.
So the other two women did not confess.
As they shouldn't, Sarah's.
The Sarah's did not confess.
Now the Sarah that was pregnant, the younger Sarah, she was actually already a mother and
her daughter was now having to be raised by someone else.
And she had her baby while in prison.
The baby passed away, unfortunately.
And then once she had the baby, she was accused, found guilty, and hanged.
The other Sarah, I believe, died in prison.
Because she was old.
Why do we always think of burning the witches when they were hanged?
So none of the US witches were burned.
Now that's not to say that didn't happen other places.
But when you see, like Brie was telling me about, the reason we were doing this episode
is because Brie saw some shirts that said they didn't burn witches, they burned women.
And there's definitely precedent for burning.
But in the United States, particularly in Salem, there were 20 people that were accused
of witchcraft.
And there were almost 200 that were accused.
But there were 20 that were accused and convicted and executed.
And they were all hanged.
And there was one additional man that was crushed.
We'll get there.
Like a tomato.
I mean, it was quite graphic.
I read some graphic stuff.
It's not great.
But, so that was the start of things.
And that was in March of 1692 that they were accused, that they were then, you know, went,
started on this whole path, right?
And that started a crazy amount of crap.
So in the end, there were four main girls that were accusing people.
So it was Betty Abigail, and there was Ann Putnam, who was 12, and Elizabeth Hubbard,
who was 17.
And these four girls are primarily responsible for accusations, okay?
So they start the path.
Now, there's a lot of control around them.
And you have to ask, where's the control coming from?
Satan.
I don't think that's it.
I mean, you could make that argument.
But a lot of the control is coming from the men around them.
Now these two first little girls, they're acting super weird.
There's actually some theories as to why.
One of the theories is that-
Periods.
That's your theory.
I don't know that that's been substantiated.
But one of the theories is that they had a very heavily rye-based diet, and rye can get
a fungus in it.
There's a fungus among us.
That can make you act super weird.
So that's one theory as to why that might have started.
But remember that the father here is the reverend who has something to gain.
Now later on, another one of the women that gets accused, I believe it's Anne Putnam's
father.
So Anne starts acting weird too, right?
And her dad is feuding with this woman whose land kind of backs up to his.
They've been feuding for a long time.
She is an upstanding member of the community.
She goes to church.
She's like everybody's grandma.
Everybody loves her.
The BFF.
Except Mr. Putnam.
So Mr. Putnam now tells, in theory, the theory is, that he tells his daughter, accuse her.
That way we'll get her land.
Because she was in control of it, and women didn't have a lot of rights in the first place.
So the fact that she had any control of this property, she's hanging on by a thread.
All he needs is one little thing to break that thread.
Oh, you're going to sing a song.
A tiny little...
The rumor weed.
You're on the rumor weed.
The rumor weed.
Yeah.
Never mind.
At least I knew where that one was going.
So then you've got that man in power.
Then you've got the judges, the magistrates, the religious leaders that come in to decide
the fate of those who are accused.
Saying guilty or not guilty.
Always guilty.
And they're perpetuating it in a really horrific way.
Because like I said, the deal is, if you want to be found innocent, you have to say, yes
I'm in line with the devil, but plus also, here's four other people that I saw in line
with the devil.
Which is crazy.
It's all about power, right?
So about 200 people, not quite 200, but right around 200 people were accused over a very
short amount of time.
Think of how many, almost every day you're having these cases.
And actually there were a couple of animals too that were tried.
There was a dog.
What?
And I want to say a pig.
Were they allowed to speak up for themselves?
I don't know, but they were executed.
This is very Charlotte's Web.
It's very strange.
I don't like that.
Dr. Dolittle and whatnot.
It's wild.
But think of how often this is happening.
This is almost constant.
And then you look at why.
I want to get through this one so that we can talk about some of the other trials too.
But oh, I'm sorry.
By the end there were 10 women and girls that said they were afflicted by witchcraft.
So those four that I said before were the main four, but by the end there was like a
group of 10 of them.
And they would go in and they would provide something called spectral evidence.
So remember-
Like the moon and the stars?
Not quite.
Remember that this is a legal court in the United States.
Now this wasn't the United States at the time.
It was colonies.
But still, this is a legal proceeding.
And this group of girls, however many there were accusing you at the time, would stand
up in court and they would present what they would call spectral evidence.
So that's where they can see something.
So if I was to be like, Brianna is scratching my eyes out-
With my third eye?
Yeah.
And ripping my leg off and whatever.
I couldn't think of anything else.
That was the first thing that came to my mind.
The first thing that came to my mind is, she's ripping my leg off.
But they would present this spectral evidence.
They would contort, they would look crazy, they would whatever.
And that was taken as evidence against the people being accused.
I want to say so much that like, oh, they're so stupid back then, but I guess it's not
like they had access to the internet.
Well that time was very different.
It was definitely very different.
But a huge part of what's happening here is, like we said, power dynamics, selfishness,
a lack of consideration for other people, a lack of ability to consider other people.
Some of these girls that are accusing people, one of them was a servant who started having
the convulsions and whatever, which again could have been caused by Ry.
It could have been caused by something actually going on in the environment.
And her master, I don't really know what, her boss, she was a servant, not a slave,
so that's kind of a complicated terminology.
But he beat her really badly because he didn't believe in the witch trials and he said, not
in my house.
So then, long story short, that's John Proctor and his wife were both accused.
And he was one of the men that was hanged because she did turn around.
At first she apologized.
She said, oh so sorry, didn't mean it, whatever, because he had hurt her and she was scared
of him.
But then the girls turned on her, the group of girls, and said, no, now we're going to
accuse you of being a witch because you're saying we're all lying.
So now she's got to turn back around.
So she accuses him and his wife again and he is hanged, the wife is not because she
was pregnant and ends up getting pardoned in the end.
It's all about power dynamics and where does the power lie?
And you've got these ten girls that had no power in their lives.
And I don't want to excuse what they did in any way.
If you have zero power and then you go from having zero to all of this power and you don't
know how to handle yourself, and if you give up even a little bit of that power then they're
going to turn on you.
Now it's a game of survival too.
So I think it's, because the whole time I'm researching I'm asking myself, why are women
accusing women?
Why are these marginalized people accusing more marginalized people?
And I think it boils down to if they had accused prominent members of the community, if they
had accused men, if they had accused the pastor.
People that were important, and unfortunately that was not the case for most women.
Most women wouldn't have been considered important.
So they accused the less important to get their own leg up.
Because that's what worked for them.
And in the end, what stopped all of this, and this is a little bit wild to me, so what
stopped it in the end, again, 200 people have been accused, we've been going through trials
for a year, is that the girls accused the governor of Massachusetts' wife of being
a witch.
And so now he's like, okay, we're not going to take spectral evidence anymore, and we're
done, we're out.
I wonder if they knew that that would stop it.
Years later, quite a few of them formally publicly apologized for the whole situation,
as did quite a few of the magistrates.
There was one guy, kind of like the head judge, he to his death never apologized and essentially
said I was doing God's work.
Evie- He doubled down.
Bekkah- He doubled down.
Evie- Just like the KFC sandwich.
Bekkah- Oh, the double chicken garbage?
Evie- Yeah, nasty.
One of the videos that I saw, and I watched a lot of videos, I read a lot of articles,
but one of the videos that I saw, I think the most impactful thing that they said was
these are some of the truest Christian martyrs.
Bekkah- Explain.
Evie- These would have been the people, the 20 people that died.
21 actually, because one was crushed.
Just real gross, his tongue came out.
Bekkah- Ew!
Stop it!
It's Halloween!
Evie- Oh, for Halloween.
We love to talk about-
Bekkah- We're talking about death!
I don't know what to tell you.
The hanging was not a great time either.
But they said that these 21 particular people were the ones that refused to say yes I did
it.
Now it's really hard to blame the other 180 people-ish, because that's scary and you're
saving your own butt.
But at the same time, the 20 people that died, the 21 people that died, refused to say that
they were witches.
They refused to say they were in line with the devil.
Now you can say for whatever reason, but I would guess that for a lot of them it was
based on their own faith.
I'm not gonna align myself with that.
I'm not ever gonna say that I did that.
At the very least, they don't want to lie.
Bekkah- Right.
And so these people, now were all of them great?
No.
John Proctor, not a good man.
But they were martyrs for their beliefs at the end of the day, which because it's a Puritan
culture were mostly Christian beliefs.
And I just thought that was so impactful.
I've never heard it talked about like that.
That these people were Christian martyrs.
And what a way to turn that story on its head.
Think about that.
Put yourself in that situation.
What would you do?
Would you stick to your guns and know that you're facing death?
Or would you lie and accuse someone else?
That's a tough choice.
Just to save your own butt.
Bekkah- Well I mean only 10% of them did that.
So it's a very small percentage and I think that's probably representative of what would
actually happen if this happened today.
It's very hard to blame people for when you're facing death, working to save themselves,
and yet at the same time, the people who paid the ultimate price, we call them witches.
Still.
We call them the Salem Witches.
And that's gotta be, I mean they're not on earth anymore, but that's pretty rough.
I just thought that was so impactful.
And remember that 70% of the people in the Salem Witch trials that were hanged were women.
It wasn't all of them, but it was a huge percentage of those who were accused and those who were
hanged.
Bekkah- Yeah, I'd love to dive deeper sometime into women turning on women and how that is
not a new topic.
We're doing that today.
In so many ways, just simple things like, oh you don't homeschool your kids?
I do.
Shame on you.
Or ooh you're going to work?
Oh you shouldn't.
You should really, like your greatest calling is to be a wife and mother.
You should want and love to stay at home.
Or you're celebrating Halloween.
Oh yeah!
That's a huge one.
I remember we've always, we didn't really come from a family that didn't celebrate Halloween,
but we also went to very conservative churches where there was definitely that group of people
that was like, you're celebrating the devil.
Which I think is kind of funny because they don't want to celebrate Halloween, but they
will celebrate harvest and you can decorate and go get candy.
And then I mean Christmas is a pagan holiday.
We stuck a Christian sticker on it, but that doesn't make it a Christian holiday.
I think it's all about what you choose to do with that day.
Trick or treating is not inherently demonic.
We're just getting candy guys.
I like candy, I don't know what to tell you.
I love cats!
You know what my favorite is?
Those Reese's Fast Breaks.
They've got like nougat and peanut butter and chocolate.
It's a great time.
I like it.
Take five.
I know you do.
Those are hard to find.
Both of these are hard to find.
It's like all of the things.
So sinful.
So there's a couple of theories of why this got so big in Salem.
Because there, we'll go into another one that happened in the United States as well, but
it's interesting because there's a broader picture here.
So part of it is that the Puritan leadership was starting to feel out of control.
They were having some wars with the Native Americans and they believed that the Native
Americans were in line with the devil.
I realize that that is insane, horrific, ridiculous, but that is what they believed at the time.
And so in these wars, now they're feeling out of control.
They're feeling like Satan is coming in because we're at war and we're losing.
And so because they were, again, losing control, now how do we regain the control of at least
the people in town?
Because originally the Puritans had come over to avoid religious persecution, but now they
were over here and a lot of people were not going to church.
A lot of people were starting to think differently.
A lot of people were questioning the reverends, things like that.
So how do we regain control?
Well, a really publicized widespread witch hunt might do it.
G!
So that's one theory as to why it kind of got so big and why the leaders allowed it
to get so big.
Because there were other times where these things got shut down, where it would start
and they were like, no, this is stupid.
We're not doing this.
But here was a perfect reason.
And one of the resources that I read, it said 1690s New England is much less Puritan than
1630s.
So you think about modern day churches, when a pastor starts to lose control, what's the
first thing that he does?
Puts more restrictions on the people to try to force them into control.
Puts more restrictions on the women.
Not biblically based.
No.
But just human based.
How do we control this big group of people?
A big group of people is hard to control.
So tell the women that they can only wear skirts.
Have an element of fear.
Right.
Absolutely.
Like you think of trauma bonding now, you can create really strong bonds if you have
a common enemy or a common fear.
Right.
So that's exactly what they were doing here.
Now the next one I'm going to talk about.
There's so much that goes into this.
I feel like I watched like 20 hours worth of videos and we're compressing it into not
that long of a podcast.
I've just been watching Agatha all along, so I feel like that's my research.
Oh good.
Yeah, that's good.
That'll do it.
They did have the horrifying Salem witches in that.
That gives me nightmares.
Very scary.
It's very scary.
If you're not into scary, don't watch it.
If you're into scary, it's pretty good.
But anyway, so the next ones I want to talk about were a little bit earlier in time and
they were the Connecticut witch trials or the Hartford witch trials depending on who
you ask.
The Gilmore Girls witch trials.
Because that's all we know about Connecticut.
Or Hartford.
So these happened in a longer period of time, but they're not quite as famous because there
were less cases tried over quite a long period.
But it was between 1647 and 1663 and it was the very first large scale witch trials in
the colonies.
There were 37 cases tried as opposed to almost 200 in Salem and 11 people were killed.
Again, most of whom were women.
What's 11 divided by 37?
What?
I don't know.
I have an English degree.
You're trying to figure out percentages.
You should phone.
Because I feel like that's a bigger percentage of people.
Percentage wise, oh yeah, a lot more percentage wise.
If you got accused, you were less likely to survive it.
But a lot less cases over a long stretch of time as opposed to a single year and then
you've got almost 200 people.
So the first woman, the first person, but she was a woman, to be accused, her name was,
and I don't know how to say this, but Ulce A-L-S-E Young.
Call her Ulce.
She was the first person executed for witchcraft likely in the American colonies.
So ever since we came over, she's our first witch.
She's the first witch.
But again, that's really hurtful probably.
So she was executed in May of 1647 and there are no surviving records about her trial or
charges.
So nobody really knows what she was accused of, what the evidence was.
We just know that she was executed.
And one of the theories is that she was potentially in line to inherit her husband's land.
Oh, power move.
So that's a theory.
It's not proven for sure, but that's what happened with her.
So then the first recorded confession of witchcraft, so she didn't confess to it that we are aware
of, but the first confession was Mary Johnson.
Why would you be spared if you confessed?
Doesn't it make more sense?
If you're confessing, let's get rid of you.
Yeah, but if you confess and you blame someone else, then the trials keep going and they
have a vested interest in the trials continually.
True.
I don't know, it seems shady.
So the first confession was from a servant.
She was a servant named Mary Johnson.
She was accused of theft in 1648 and then was extensively tortured and interrogated.
And after that, she confessed to familiarity with the devil.
Ew.
Yeah.
I mean, it's dark and icky.
Her execution was delayed, but she actually was executed in the 1650s, so even though
she confessed, she was executed.
And then these are the three main ones.
Again, there were 11 people, but these are the three main ones.
There was Catherine Harrison, who was a former maid servant of one of the captains in the
area.
She was born in England and came to America, which poor her because they were done in England.
They were done killing the witches.
She's like, I thought I escaped.
Dang it.
But she became a wealthy citizen eventually because her husband passed away and she inherited
his estate.
She then had a bunch of legal issues and despite the fact, so people were burning her crops
and killing her livestock.
Rude.
She's a woman who owns property and they don't like that and they're trying to drive her
out.
And even though people saw it, there were eyewitness accounts of it.
She was never given any restitution.
No one was ever charged.
Well, think about the bystander effect now.
Just because you see something wrong that's happening doesn't mean people in general are
going to do something.
So, her whole situation was a disaster.
Okay?
Poor thing.
So, she's accused of that.
Then she's accused sometime between 1668 and 1669 and she's accused of breaking the Sabbath,
which wow, if we're getting accused of that, we are all done.
All of us are out.
You did any amount of- Did you turn your head to breathe on the Sabbath?
You're done.
I mean, if I don't actually work on a Sunday, it's a miracle.
Think about every time someone has a Sunday off and they're like, oh, finally I can mow
the lawn.
You're screwed.
You're right.
You're still doing something.
Yeah.
So, she was accused of that, of fortune telling and also of black magic.
And then they also used spectral evidence against her.
Her case was real funky.
So, the first jury-
Stink?
Yes.
The first jury could not decide whether she was guilty or not.
The second jury did find her guilty, but then the magistrate decided that she was not guilty
because it was all spectral evidence against her and he didn't like that.
Some of them-
How kind of him.
Some of them turned on it eventually.
Still not great.
So, she was actually released, but she was banished from Connecticut.
So, despite the fact that she was released, all of her property, so she might as well
be dead.
All of her livestock.
I mean, we don't know what happens to her after this.
I believe her family moves to New York, but we don't know what happens to her from here.
But whatever did happen, she lost any autonomy.
Any power, any finances, she lost it.
It was gone.
She was literally banished from her home.
Despite the fact that she's found innocent.
They banished her.
Like why?
I don't know.
So, there's a really interesting after these things happen process of eventually, after
these people have died, finding them innocent.
Okay, so with the Hartford case, Salem has a similar situation, but with the Hartford
case in particular, in 2012, descendants of those who were executed petitioned to the
Connecticut government to pardon the victims.
Because technically, it's still on the books that they are guilty of witchcraft.
Because these were legal proceedings.
So technically, it's still there, right?
So that was in 2012.
The motion was not passed.
Maryam- 2012 was a rough year.
We thought the world was going to end.
Bekkah- Yeah, and then it did it in 2020.
Dang it.
All day.
But the motion didn't pass.
Why?
I don't know.
I didn't get there.
Then in 2007, so we're going back a little bit, Addie Avery, who was a descendant of
one of the women that was killed, petitioned the British government, because remember,
we were colonies at the time.
So the British government to acquit the convicted witches.
They did not.
I would love to know the reasoning.
I couldn't tell you.
I think it's just not important enough.
It's so long ago that it's like, who cares?
But clearly, someone cares or no one would bring it up.
So then in 2017, the town of Windsor, so just Windsor specifically, not the whole of this
case, but just one town that was involved, unanimously passed a resolution to symbolically
clear the names of two of the victims that were in their town.
So they couldn't clear everything, but they symbolically cleared it.
In 2023, last year, boys and girls, the Connecticut House of Representatives voted 121 in favor
and 30 against to exonerate those who were convicted of witchcraft.
Why 30 against?
They were like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no.
This is last year.
That's insanity.
Last year.
And a similar situation happened in Salem.
This was not exclusive.
Wild.
Okay, so the last one is the Pendle Witches.
And the Pendle Witches were in England.
They were in Lancashire.
Lancashire?
Lancashire.
I think it's Lancashire.
Lancaster?
No, that's not Lancashire, England.
And this was in 1612.
So this was significantly earlier.
I don't know if you guys know this, but we're not British.
Even though sometimes we're talking in accent.
Sometimes you talk in accent.
What?
I don't know.
So we're going to speed through.
Only 12 people were accused in this particular case, but the reason that it's significant
is because it was one of the bigger cases.
Even though 500 people were executed in Europe, it was over a huge period of time.
So this was one of the hot spots, right?
Oh.
So 12 people were accused.
Nine women and two men.
So that's how many were tried at that point.
And then 10 were found guilty and hanged and one was found not guilty.
Most of them, so six of these people, were from two feuding families.
Just like the Hatfords and the Hatfords?
Hatfields.
Hatfields and the Pacoys.
Good job.
I know history.
But I think it's important, this one I'm not going to talk a ton about because we're
getting to the end.
But I think it's important, again, power dynamics.
So the way that this started is kind of a wild story.
So buckle up.
The original accuser was a man.
He's walking through the forest.
He comes upon a beggar woman.
She asks him for some money.
Now the current assumption based on current knowledge is that this man likely had a seizure
or some kind of medical event.
He passes out.
Someone finds him, takes him to a local inn.
They revive him.
And when he wakes up, he tells this story.
He says, I met a beggar woman on the road.
I said, no, I wouldn't give her any money.
And a dog came out of the forest and started talking to her.
And the dog said, do you want me to kill him?
And she said, yes.
Why wasn't the dog tried?
Why wasn't there evidence of a dog attack?
Like there are many questions here.
There was no dog.
So he accuses her.
They bring her in.
She admits to this after, again, a lot of coercion.
She's a beggar.
She has no status in society.
She just doesn't want to die.
That's what this boils down to.
And he actually was going to say, according to records, he was going to pardon her to
say, forget it, whatever.
Because I'm insane.
Probably because he didn't believe himself.
Yeah.
Or hot goss time.
He was trying to do something bad to her.
And he was like, no, no, no, no, no.
I'll pardon you.
Yeah.
I mean, there are many possibilities.
This is an old story.
A lot of it is lost to time.
But what happens is his son was called because his dad is passed out in this random town.
His son comes in and is like, heck no, we're accusing her.
So she ends up being accused of being a witch.
So then from there, there are two feuding families.
And they're feuding because both of them are impoverished and they are basically fighting
over who gets to beg where.
They also think that there might have been some aspect of natural healing going on.
So potentially they were using herbs and stuff to try and help heal people.
Homeopathic?
Which at the time probably would have been considered witchcraft.
Which is weird because I feel like all medicine back then was homeopathic.
Well, yeah, but this one was being done by women.
Oh, okay.
I mean, that's it.
That's what's happening.
And so in order to save her own butt, she accuses this other family because, hey, they're
annoying me anyway.
I'm going to accuse them.
Now both of these families were led by matriarchs who were in their 80s, both of whom were executed
along with huge percentages of their families.
So it didn't work out.
Sorry, grandma.
Didn't work out.
But it's so interesting to dive into this.
And on Halloween yet.
On all Hallows' Eats.
It's so fun to look at these stories and pull them apart in a way I've never seen them before.
To look at the Salem witches and say, you were martyrs for your faith.
Instead of saying, oh, you were witches.
And I think we just, we go along with the story because it's an interesting story.
It's a wild story.
It's a spooky story.
If you go to Salem, it's super kitschy.
Now I've never been, but I've seen lots of videos.
Very hocus pocus.
Yeah.
And I don't necessarily think there's anything inherently wrong with that.
Every town has their thing.
Michigan has a lot of apples.
There's a lot of apples here.
Cars.
Cars, yeah.
So many cars.
But I don't necessarily think there's anything inherently wrong with it.
I also think it's important to dive deeper into these stories and to ask bigger questions.
Why did it happen?
Why were women turning on women?
That's why those shirts are so popular right now.
They didn't burn or hang witches.
They killed women.
Where do we draw the line today?
Because I was talking to my mom about this.
Our mom.
No, just yours.
She's been aggravating me.
Just kidding.
Sorry, mom.
You haven't been.
But I was talking to her about this the other day, and obviously on a much smaller scale,
but I was relating this to the witchcraft scare of our childhood.
So we grew up in the era of Harry Potter, and yet, as little conservative Christian
children, if you said the words Harry Potter, you were getting grounded for a month.
I remember when you started reading them.
In high school.
Yeah, in high school.
And you had to hide it.
You put different book covers on your books to hide that you were reading them.
Because we were rebels.
But I mean, I'm not talking about little kid at that point.
I was in high school, I think my sophomore, junior year of high school, and I started
reading them because my friends were all really into them.
And still, even by that time, so that was after they'd been out for quite a while, it
was still, my mom was very, our mom, our mom, just yours, Terrence, was very upset that
I was reading them initially.
And our parents have read them, watched movies, very much turned around on that, and are totally
fine with it.
In fact, very obsessed, I would say.
Yeah, we watched them a lot.
But it's so interesting because you look at the same concept?
This fear of this unknown witchcraft stuff.
And yet we were okay with, and I know not all Christian households were, but in ours,
we watched the show Bewitched.
We watched The Sword and the Stone.
We watched...
What was that one movie with, I think it was Cary Grant, where they buried people in the
basement?
NIC.
Arsenic and Old Lace.
I don't think they were witches, I think they were just killers.
They were just killers.
That is a spooky show.
They were just killers.
They were not witches.
Also you could talk about things like Snow White and Cinderella.
The Wizard of Oz.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Why are those things okay?
And what are we really scared of as Christians in this setting?
What are we afraid of?
Because the reality at the end of the day is the spells in Harry Potter, she just took
a bunch of words and translated them into Latin.
Evie.
They weren't relating it back to Satan at all, it was just magic.
It was magic, but we are so afraid of getting too close to sin.
And maybe that's part of what some of the accusers or the magistrates or whoever in
these cases were doing, not that that makes it any better, but maybe that's what they're
doing is you're so afraid of stepping a little too close to the sin because then you might
fall into the sin that you put this big wall up, not just around you, but around everyone
of faith.
Evie.
And now it's not just that sin that's the actual sin, it's for example, really conservative
Christians back in our time, I don't know if it's true now, but they would say don't
go to the movies.
Because not that necessarily the movie that you're going to see is bad, but you don't
want anybody to think that you're going to see what could possibly be a bad movie.
And that's real, I know if you're not from the conservative Christian faith, that sounds
wild, but that's true.
Bekkah Or don't go into a restaurant that serves alcohol, because even if you're not
getting alcohol, someone might walk by and think you're getting alcohol and then that
could damage their faith.
Evie.
Right, so now all these things become additional sins, like going to the movies is a sin, going
to that restaurant is a sin, even though it's not.
Bekkah Right, so even though Harry Potter is not talking
about the devil in any way, if you want to argue Agatha all along on Disney, I hear you.
I hear you.
But, because there's actual demons in it, it's a little spooky guys.
But with Harry Potter, there was nothing about that.
There's magic, there's spells, etc., but there's no worshipping the devil.
And that's what the Bible says to steer clear of.
But we had to put a bigger circle around it so that you don't get even close to sin.
It's the same thing with drinking.
We talk about wine a lot.
A lot.
conservative Christians, at least the spaces that we grew up in, did not drink.
You do not drink.
Ever, ever, ever.
Evie Even though Jesus did.
Bekkah Not for health purposes, not for anything else, and if you choose not to drink, no issues
with that.
100% your own decisions.
But to look at the entire Christian community and say none of you can drink because the
Bible says don't get drunk.
So now we can't drink at all.
Evie I think more specifically it says don't make anything else an idol.
So if you're an alcoholic, I do think you're making alcohol into an idol.
But if you're having a glass of wine, I'm not going to follow you for that.
Bekkah But we had to draw a big circle.
And once you draw your own big circle, you gotta draw it for everybody else because you
don't want to be all alone.
Because if it's a sin for you, it's gotta be a sin for everybody else.
We don't understand nuance.
Evie The idea of misery likes company.
So if you're miserable, you don't want to be miserable alone.
So you're going to draw everybody else around you into that.
Bekkah It's such an interesting, as we relate it all back into the witch trials, I think
it absolutely is about exerting power over the people around you.
Whether that's through the church, whether it's through the witch trials, whether it's
through men telling women what they can wear and what they can do with their bodies, it's
exerting control.
It all falls back onto that.
And what can we do to step out of that?
Here on this, the Halloween.
Evie Here on Halloween, we have a Christmas message
for you.
Bekkah We do?
I don't know.
It'll be really interesting if one of these comes out on Christmas.
Maybe we'll do the trifecta.
Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas.
Evie I think on Christmas we should talk about the ghost stories.
Bekkah Sure, like a Christmas Carol.
Alright, so I think that's all we have to talk about today.
I hope you guys have an amazing Halloween.
Evie I hope you watch a scary movie, eat some candy, have a good time, and then call into
work tomorrow.
Bekkah Oh, I was going to call into work on...
I was going to pre-warn them, like I'm out on...
I'm a freelancer so I do what I want.
I was going to be like, I'm not working on the first, but I've had the plague and I had
to call out a lot, so I can't do that.
It's a bummer.
But I hope that you guys can.
I think that they should...
Hot take.
Controversial take.
Are you ready for it?
Halloween should always, always, always be on a Friday.
Evie A hundred percent!
Bekkah Why are we doing this to ourselves?
Evie This is ridiculous, like I don't care about October 31st, I don't care what it is.
It should just be the last Friday of October.
Bekkah I'm good with that.
Friday or Saturday?
I'm okay with Saturday also.
Evie Yeah, even better.
Bekkah Either way.
All right.
Well, now that you've heard us rant for a while.
I love you.
Woooooo!
All right, if you know anybody in... let's see.
Salem.
If you know anybody in Salem or Massachusetts.
Or England.
Or Hartford.
Any of those places that might want to listen to our craziness.
Please share this with them.
Hey, if you know any witches.
Hey, maybe they would enjoy it.
I know one just looking at me right now.
Shut up.
But we'll see you guys next week for...
I don't know what yet.
Ummmm...
The winds of justice.
All right, we'll see you next week for The Winds of Justice.
Bye, we love you.
Bye.
I love you.