Witcheshave been cut recently : The hit TV shows " Charmed " and " Sabrina the Teenage Witch " have both been rebooted , Sephora tried ( and fail ) to trade astarter beldam kit , and about everyone you lie with has been sorted into a Hogwarts House .
But the true story of witches in America is a dark one of spiritual persecution and paranoia — and , as it twist out , the first known regime covert - up in American history . But the hombre at Stuff They Do n’t Want You To sleep together attempt to uncover it in one of their latest podcasts : The Truth About the Salem Witch Trialswhere hosts Matt Frederick and Ben Bowlin visit with special guest Aaron Mahnke , who is the brains behind the smash dark account podcasts Lore and Unobscured .
The story bulge out way back in 1692 when England and France were at war , and the two country used the American colonies as their battleground . This caused refugeesfrom upstate New York to flee to the Massachusetts Bay Colony and , specifically , Salem Village ( now the city of Danvers ) . The influx of refugees caused discord in the village , straining resources and exacerbate exist economic problems .
Many , if not most , of the villagers blamed the daimon . Salem was aPuritanvillage and purely religious , so reverence of the devil — and witchery — was hackneyed . This room of thinking followed the colonist from Europe , where decade of thousands of hoi polloi , mainly womanhood , wereexecuted for witchcraftbetween the 1300s and 1600s .
However , many residents also blamed the small town ’s first ordained government minister , Reverend Samuel Parris . And it was in his menage wherestrange things start pass . His 9 - class - old daughter , Elizabeth , and his 11 - year - old niece , Abigail , began having tantrum , call , throwing thing and contorting themselves . Another girl began get like episodes , and the only culprit seemed to be a supernatural one .
magistrate pressured the girls to point finger , and they eventually did , accusing a slave girl named Tituba and two other women , Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good , of making deals with the devil . The two Sarahs denied it , but Tituba confessed , and the beldame hunt began .
Over the course of 1692 , 200 people were accused and jailed,19 people hang , and one older human beings was press to death with boulders , until finally Gov. William Phips ended the trial . It was n’t the decease that disturbed him , exactly , but rather a legal question : Shouldspectral evidencebe allow in the test ? Spectral evidence , or the testimony of dream and visions , was all that condemned 20 people and ruined the lives of a hundred more , and it was earn judge and ministers in charge of the trials uncomfortable .
too soon on , respected minister Cotton Mather protested the comprehension of phantasmal evidence . Then Mather ’s boy , Increase Mather , protested as well , write , " It were better that 10 suspect witches should escape than one innocent person be sentence . “Then , when his own wife was accused of witchcraft , Gov. Phips finally dissolved theSpecial Court of Oyer and Terminer , and convened a unexampled one that disallow spectral evidence .
Convictions were negligible without it , and before long , all the captive were released and pardoned . But by then , people had already been sent to their graves , or wrongfully imprisoned for more than a year .
And that concerned Phips , too because he was afraid of what might come next : the backlash . So began the first political science cover song - up . Phipsbanned all writingsabout the trials to keep all the data hidden . Many letters , court book and documentswere even destroyed , leaving only the prosecutions ' sides of the account intact . It did n’t last long ; within three class , writings criticise theSalem crone trialsand the government activity ’s treatment of them were published and wide circulated . But the cover version - up still muddies some of the facts today . What else do n’t we know about what really happened during the Salem witch trials ? You ’ll have tolisten to the entire podcastto find out what questions remain .
study more about the Salem crone trials in " Six Women of Salem : The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials " by Marilynne K. Roach . HowStuffWorks picks related title based on books we think you ’ll care . Should you choose to purchase one , we ’ll find a portion of the cut-rate sale .
