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July 20, 2025 - Dan Bidondi Show
40:50
Inside The Salem Witch Museum
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When 19 people were hanged, one man was pressed to death for the crime of witchcraft here in Salem.
Their names are on the red lit circle in the center of the room.
And this exhibit, we explore the tragic events that led up to their deaths.
The exhibition will begin on the left wall and work its way around the room.
And when you finish this exhibit, you will exit to the left and head to your second exhibit, which is Evolving Perceptions.
We hope you enjoy your visit.
Look at his grandma.
The famous
Salem Witch Museum.
We are going to show you the witchcraft trials which took place in Salem Village in 1692.
Do you believe in witches?
Millions of your ancestors did.
Worship of the powers of evil.
The forces behind storm and sickness and drought and deaths was man's first religion.
And the witch was its priestess.
Long after Christianity had come, it survived in secret.
On the witch's Sabbath, the covenants of 13 would gather round their magic nine-foot circle.
A fire would be lit beneath the cauldron.
The scourge and pentacle and Atham.
A black-handled sacrificial knife would appear.
And the ancient ritual invoking the evil one would begin.
To the good folk of Salem in 1692, the devil and witchcraft were realities.
They could hear him in the howling of wolves, in the creaking of an old house on a winter's night.
They lived in dread of the Indians, of diseases such as smallpox, which kill their children without reason.
Of the home government in England even, which had threatened to take away their lands and their charter.
Fear was the climate of their lives.
And for hours every Sunday, their ministers warned them against the devil.
The Prince of Darkness, who was everywhere.
Who whispered evil thoughts into the minds of the unguarded, tempting them to sign his book, to sell their souls for power and riches in this life.
He it was who met with half-med old women in the forest to perform unspeakable rites and threatened us all with eternal damnation.
Satan.
He had come to New England, so creatures like Cotton Mather said to undo God's kingdom, setting snares to the unwary, forever watching, watching, waiting to claim his own.
Here is the Putnam house, typical of its day, everything in it plain and practical.
People then had little time for play.
The men in summer worked at farming or fishing.
In winter they mended fences or nets, or went hunting in the woodlands for partridge or wild turkey.
The women toiled the year round at cooking, washing, scrubbing and sanding the floors, molding tallow candles to light the long winter nights.
For young people, especially girls, there was not much amusement.
A girl like little Anne Putnam, having done her household duties, would not be encouraged to run and play, to meet boys, to be frivolous.
The Puritan God forbade it.
Trapped as they were in this somber adult world, it is not surprising that girls of the time became restless and resentful.
But the hand of authority was so heavy upon them, they dared not express themselves except sometimes in attacks of what we call hysteria.
Wild, destructive emotional outbursts.
Anne had more reason than most for being disturbed.
Her mother was an embittered woman whose sister had died in childbirth.
Mrs. Putnam herself had had two children who had died and lately had started dreaming about her sister and her own dead babies.
It seems that in her distraction, Mrs. Putnam considered turning away from her god and trying to contact the dead by forbidden means.
And in this little Anne was to be her helpmate.
For Anne was one of a circle of girls who had begun to meet quite regularly in the house of the Reverend Samuel Paris.
The center of these meetings was old Tituba, a black woman whom Paris had brought back as his servant from Barbados.
To amuse the girls, Tituba told them stories or showed them tricks and scraps of magic, some of which had probably come over with her ancestors in the slave ships from Africa.
Anne's mother may have thought to use Tituba as her means of communing with the dead, but things shortly took a very different turn.
Poor innocent Tituba.
Little did she imagine that the tales she told to pass a winter's afternoon would soon be used against her.
Nor could she have guessed that the terrible suspicions at first concentrated upon her would spread to involve so many, many others.
The very fact that her circle met in the house of a minister made the girls all the more guilty about what they were doing.
From playing at witchcraft, they would come to believe themselves bewitched and shortly be laying the blame for their condition upon others.
An explosion was coming.
One of the first to give way was Betty Parris, a frail, suggestible child, the daughter of the Reverend Parris himself.
She began to fall into trance-like states, her eyes fixed, her body rigid.
The disorder next spread to Abigail Williams, her cousin who lived in the same household.
She began to babble or to run around on all fours, making barking or braying noises.
When his daughter's condition became frighteningly acute, the Reverend Paris called in Dr. Griggs, a physician in the village.
Dr. Griggs was at a loss.
His simple medical knowledge told him the girl did not have fever or epilepsy or the usual forms of madness.
What did she have?
Whatever the malady was, dozens of other young girls would soon be catching it.
Within a few days, Dr. Griggs would be making the same calls, asking the same futile questions in houses all over Salem Village.
Betty, child, what afflicts thee?
Betty, speak!
In God's name, who has done this to thee?
It began to seem to the villagers that they were seeing the devil's work.
The girls were possessed.
They twitched and spoke in tongues.
It was not a case for medicine at all.
Said the doctor, the evil hand is upon them.
It was for men of the church to discover who was responsible.
The girls now began to be questioned night and day, the Reverend Paris himself taking the lead in these inquisitions.
The sternest efforts were made to wring from them some hint as to who had bewitched them.
It was not an easy task.
At first the girls would not answer.
They simply screamed and writhed or did blasphemous things such as dashing a Bible against the wall.
But gradually they began to give names.
Betty Parris, driven frantic by her inquisitors and probably calling out to her own black nurse for help, saw Tituba.
Oh, Tituba.
And that poor woman became among the first to be accused as a witch.
Others, much less likely, named by the madden girls almost it seemed at random, were also accused.
Among them was a woman known all her life for piety and uprightness, but now grown old and ill and almost too deaf to hear the charges against her.
Rebecca Nurse.
The fact that Rebecca could scarcely walk at the time in no way affected the accusation of witchcraft.
The hysterical girls carried away began giving what was called spectral evidence.
Visions they claimed to have had of the accused.
According to Anne Putnam and Abigail Williams, Rebecca's shape, her astral self or soul, had been seen flying about while in body she lay at home in bed.
At first no one in the town could believe it.
But then her few enemies, among them Anne Putnam's mother, declared against her.
On March 23, 1692, Rebecca Nurse was placed under arrest.
The case was very nearly dismissed, but for a last-minute accusation made once again by Mrs. Putnam.
On the strength of that, old Rebecca Nurse was finally brought to trial in Salem on June 29th, Chief Justice William Storton presiding.
Even then, the townsfolk and the jury were not convinced.
Mrs. Putnam and the girls who had testified against Rebecca were among the onlookers.
A hush falls over the courtroom as Thomas Fisk, foreman of the jury, rises to deliver the verdict.
May it please the court.
We find the defendant, Rebecca Nurse, not guilty.
Says you and your fellow jurors, reconsider your verdict.
Rebecca was cross-examined again about a remark she had made earlier on the trial.
It involved a misunderstanding, which, because of her deafness, she had been unable to clarify to the satisfaction of the court.
Now, old and exhausted, she was questioned about it once more.
But she was too worn out to defend herself, simply staring into space and making no reply.
The jurors recessed once more.
Now Thomas Fisk comes forward to deliver the final verdict.
We, the jurors, find Rebecca Nurse guilty.
The law put itself at the disposal of this gathering madness.
Before it was done, 19 would hang.
Another, Giles Corey, would die a still more horrible death, and hundreds all over New England would be sent to jail, some for up to seven years, languishing, forgotten, long after the obsession with witchcraft had died away.
Amid all this confusion, the farcical trials in which judge and jury gave in to the screaming of hysterical girls, amid fear and slander and random accusations, a few men stood out as heroes, steadfastly clinging to their reason and their principles, even in the shadow of the gallows.
One of these was John Proctor.
From the first, he refused to be swept up in the general panic.
Unlike others, he saw the hounding of witches to be nonsense and said so.
When his own servant girl was afflicted, he turned her over his knee and spanked her, temporarily curing her.
His outspokenness attracted the attention of the girls.
His pregnant wife Elizabeth was soon accused and hailed into court as a witch.
When he took the stand to defend her, he was denounced by one of the witnesses, Abigail Williams.
By spectral evidence, she suddenly discovered that he too was a witch.
And the other girls at once joined in.
52 people signed a petition on his behalf, but it was no use.
In August 1692, his brave man and his wife were condemned and sent to jail.
John's prophecy was coming true.
The girls he had said will make devils of us all.
Witch!
By the summer of 1692, others all over New England, some 250 in all, had been thrown into prison.
The accused sometimes sharing self with their accusers, witnesses whom the girls had later turned upon and implicated.
Rebecca Nurse, even after her ordeal in court, was not let alone.
The girls claimed that her soul was escaping and tormenting them still.
So the old woman was loaded down with chains, as if these would somehow trap her wandering spirit.
She was charged for her chains, just as she and the other prisoners were charged for the food they ate.
Even those who escaped hanging were in some cases bankrupted by their terms in prison.
Here is Sarah Daston of Charlestown.
Her neighbors denounced her as a witch.
She was tried and found not guilty.
But she was too poor to pay her card costs and so held.
Her relatives were years of collecting the money to free her.
And before they did so, she died, innocent and all but forgotten in this cell.
Here are John Proctor and his pregnant wife Elizabeth.
John is writing a last letter to the friends who had tried to save him.
In defending his wife and their unborn child, he has at least succeeded.
Because of her pregnancy, the court will grant her a stay of execution, and she will be released after the witch madness has died down.
John is less fortunate.
He will hang within the fortnight, on August 19th, along with George Burroughs and three others, as guiltless as himself.
And here is Tituba, the old slave, whose charms and tricks and tales told to pass in Winter's afternoon were the start of it all.
In fear of her insane masters, she has confessed and will eventually go free, never understanding what wrong she has done.
Indeed, she did none, nor did any of the others.
They were simply struck down by the dementia of their times.
The way in ages to come men were to be struck down for holding the wrong political opinions or for being of the wrong race.
It is perhaps no accident that the Salem witch persecution began with a woman who was black, and that the devil himself at these trials was often referred to as the black man.
Of all the 20 executed, the most piteous and stubbornly brave was Giles Corey.
He was not blameless.
He had believed in witches and even testified against his own wife.
He was then accused himself.
Under the law of those days, as he knew, to be a confessed witch meant to forfeit one's lands and one's fortune.
Giles Corey determined to protect his heirs by never uttering a word in court.
He was therefore condemned to the medieval torture of pressing, in which heavier and heavier weights were piled upon a man's chest until he either confessed or was crushed to death when his rib cage collapsed.
Corey, a man of enormous strength, never gave in to his tormentors.
Giles Corey!
Will thou not speak and say yea or nay in thy behalf?
What sayest thou?
Speak!
So be it then!
Oh, wait.
They merely went to Gallows Hill.
Among these was the Reverend George Burroughs, who was hanged on the same day as John Proctor.
Burroughs, a former minister in Salem Village, had been arrested and brought back from Maine.
His execution was presided over by Cotton Mallor, who had come from Nasty for the occasion.
It was thought in those days that a witch could not recite the Lord's Prayer without a mistake.
On the gallows, Burroughs gave this final proof of his innocence.
And forgive us our trespasses.
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
Lead us not to temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever.
Amen.
Cotton Mallor speaks.
The devil but speaks through the mouth of his servant.
This man is guilty and shall hang.
There shall be no reversals of justice in this place.
hangman you may proceed minister of the lord 18 others in 1692 accused of witchcraft by enemies superstitious neighbors young girls in the grip of a vengeful hysteria
Once the witch mania had passed, it never came again to New England, and at its worst was never as bad as in Europe, where it is said millions were hanged or burned on suspicion of having made a compact with the devil.
One might have asked then and could still ask today, who is the devil?
On whose side was he fighting?
On whose side does he fight even now?
Before the trials were over, one of the afflicted girls admitted that what she had done was done for sport.
Later, other girls confessed, among them Anne Putnam, whose evil genius was perhaps as much her mother's as her own.
Years afterward, in 1706, on the anniversary of a fast which the state of Massachusetts had declared in repentance for the sale of witch trials, Anne tried to make atonement for the terrible evil she had done.
As she stood in her pew, Parson Joseph Green read her statement to the congregation, among whom sat the children of Rebecca Nurse.
I, Anne Putnam, desire to be humbled before God.
It was a great delusion of Satan.
I did it not out of any anger, malice, or ill will.
And particularly, as I was a chief instrument of accusing good wife Nurse and her two sisters, I desire to lie in the dust and be humbled for it.
I desire to lie in the dust and earnestly beg forgiveness of all those unto whom I have given just cause of sorrow.
So it all ended.
We may take pride in the fact that in a world such as that of the 17th century, haunted by superstition, by dreams of magic and satanic evil, we gave way but once and then only briefly to our fears.
You
We'll get started as soon as right this way folks.
Second presentation's right in here, just up the team left there.
Try to fill that in as best if you can.
We should put Kamala Harris up there, Hillary Clinton, there is our former governor, and Gina Raimondo.
First of all, there's no heating with ringing.
We get something more water.
Also, no video or audio recording.
Can't deal with the first presentation.
One thing I want to mention in here is please look out for these artists cases.
We got one in the corner there, two on that back wall with the timeline.
Feel free to check them out and read what we have in them, but please don't lean on them or put anything on them.
They are pretty fragile.
They can fall over easily.
We've had it happen before.
Any artifacts in there are fairly old and we don't want anything damaged, so we do appreciate your cooperation there.
We're gonna get a tiny engine to keep it in.
All right, everybody.
If you would all come to lunch over here, we'll get started.
So we're going to start off by talking about this volume question.
Now, this presentation is going to focus on the word width and how the word and the image of the witch have evolved over time.
So looking at this wall, we can see a couple different examples of the width throughout history.
We do have the width of Salem in 1692 all the way over there in the far left.
We got John and Elizabeth Proctor.
And then we have a couple other definitions of the witch.
We have the Wizard of Oz up the top there, and then we also have the witch here.
Now, with that being said, witchcraft started off as a very serious criminal offense.
Witches were said to be evil and desperate people who had made a compact with the devil in return for supernatural powers, and they were said to cause storms, harm children, spread diseases.
Now, witch trials in Europe started during a time of fear and uncertainty.
Witches were people who had made a compact with the devil, as I've just said.
And in Europe, life was characterized by religious tension, outbreaks of the Black Plague, war, and unusual weather patterns.
And that made life very frightening and uncertain.
And during these times of fear and uncertainty, people looked to find someone to blame, and that's what we call a scapegoat.
Now, witches made a very convenient scapegoat for a number of different reasons.
Now, one thing I'd like to bring up here is: if you guys look at this artifact case behind you on that wall, we have a couple of different artifacts relating to the practice of folk magic.
Now, folk magic was frowned upon by the church, however, it was still fairly common in Europe.
For instance, our 17th-century Bellermine jugda would have been used to ward off evil spirits.
Additionally, herbs were not only used for their medicinal properties, but they were also used for spiritual and magical properties.
For instance, daisies were used to not only cure headaches, but they were also said to bring good luck.
Now, those who practiced folk magic were not considered witches, however, it could help arouse suspicion if you did practice folk magic.
Now, that made people like midwives and healers particularly vulnerable to accusations.
Now, that brings us to these two women behind you here.
Now, the stories of these two women are fictional, however, they are based on the reality of many different accusations seen during this period, and they're just going to tell you about themselves now.
My name is Angles.
I grew up in a farm in Scotland.
Mine is Patarina.
I lived in a village in the Holy Roman Empire.
I always did what was expected.
I got married and had children.
I grew older and learned the trade of the midwife.
I never thought suspicion could fall on me.
It started with an argument as a tragedy.
The harvest was bad that year, and drought are everyone worried.
One morning, my neighbor asked him about a horse.
He was shy and sistent, and I couldn't help but lose my temper.
Her husband ran to science means a night.
It was their seventh child, only a few months old.
I did what I could, but the illness came on faster.
My herbs provided little comfort.
My heart broke for the poor mother.
My child has died.
She could be no problem to me.
I began to overhear gossip at the well.
Soon, more than refusing my help.
My neighbors, people I've known my whole life, wouldn't look me in the eye.
When they arrested me, I was 53.
I was 68.
I was tortured.
They insisted I need others.
They left me in vision to die or confess I was found guilty and sentenced to be burned at the stake.
We were innocent.
But it didn't matter.
Escheri remembers our confessions, but doesn't tell our stories.
Alright, everybody.
Now if you turn and look at this witch that we have here, now this is much more common with something that would be described as asked to describe a witch today, right?
A lot of people are going to point out the black had the green skin, perhaps the broom that the witch would fly around on, and this is a lot different than the two witches that we just heard from, so the question is, how did we end up here?
Now, during the witchcraft trials, many rumors circulated about these people.
Witches were said to fly around on brooms, pitchforks, poles, even backwards on goats.
And they were also said to have animal companions such as birds, cats, dogs, or even snakes.
Now, as the witchcraft trials came to an end in Europe, the memory of the witch remained in popular culture, and this stereotype developed, and we ended up with what we have here today.
Now, one modern addition to the witch would be the figure's green skin.
This was actually only added in 1939 when MGM wanted to take advantage of its new technical technology while filming The Wizard of Oz, and they opted to paint Margaret Hamilton's character green in order to take advantage of that new technology.
Now, this is a departure from L. Frank Baum's original children's book, which we can see in this glass artifact case here.
And with that being said, she'll tell you a bit about herself now.
Listen carefully, my prisons.
In rural lands filled with darkness and stories, the imagination runs wild.
Harrettony tales of a sinister creature deep in the forest, capable of brewing potions over a bubbling cauldron, causing thunderous hailstorms and spreading a devastating disease, sparking terror.
Thousands were executed for a crime they did not commit.
As time went by, laws changed, and witch trials came to an end, but stories lingered on.
For once grounded in real sphere, memories changed with each generation.
Over a time, I was said to ride a broomstick instead of a pole or a goat.
I was given a pointed hat and the black cat.
Children were raised hearing tales of the old evil woman in a candy-covered house.
As time continued to march on, I slowly gained new stories.
I was brought to Hollywood and transformed into a beautiful housewife and the heroine of Hogwarts.
Brave, kind, and intelligent.
I could be more than my history.
I could be both powerful and good.
Time goes on, and perceptions evolve.
My role is different now.
My legacy altered.
But I suspect my story is not yet done.
Alright, everybody, if you could please follow me this way, I'm going to walk down this hall here.
And I'd actually like to talk about this wall.
Now, this is our timeline wall with events relating to witchcraft history.
Above the line, we have Western history, while below the line is witchcraft history.
Now, the witch trials in Europe coincided with the development of the printing press.
Actually, hold on, before I get there, I just want to talk about these two artifact cases.
Briefly, this first artifact case contains artifacts and accounts written by those both in favor of the witchcrafts and critics of them.
And then this second case contains artifacts that relate to the evolving perception of the witch.
Now, with that being said, the witchcraft trials in Europe coincided with the development of the printing press in the 15th century, and this made the spread of information a lot easier compared to times past, especially fears of witchcraft.
Now, one important book that we have here, we have a 1600 edition of the Malleus Maleficarum.
Originally published in 1482, Malleus Maleficarum is Latin for hammer of witches.
And it is essentially a manual on how to try, find, on how to find, try, and punish a witch.
Now, the Malleus Maleficarum ended up becoming so popular in Europe that there were even poppetitions, and it was the second most popular book in Europe.
The one book that was more popular than the Malleus Maleficarum was the Bible.
Now, as witchcraft trials continued and fears of witchcraft continued to spread throughout the continent, witch trials became increasingly popular in areas of legal government, such as the Holy Roman Empire.
Now, to dispel a popular myth, no one in New England was burned at the stake.
Though in Scotland and other parts of Europe, witches were burned.
In England and its colonies, witches were treated like any other felon and hanged.
Now, further down this wall here, we're going to keep walking and we're going to focus on these two people here.
One last quick note.
The final European witch trial happened in the Swiss canton of Blores in 1782.
So if you would all follow me down this way around this corner, we have one live tab below to talk about here.
Now, today, a large population, especially here in Salem, identifies with the legacy of witchcraft.
Now, these modern-day witches practice a neo-pagan religion known as Wicca, meaning they draw inspiration from older Earth-based religions of pre-Christian Europe.
So they recognize major holidays that coincide with the cycles of the Earth, as we can see with their Wheel of the Year up on this wall here.
And you can see most of their holidays coincide with solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarters.
Now, that being said, they're going to tell you about themselves.
Now, if you could just do me a favor and push that green button on the wall there, please.
Thank you.
What is a witch?
Today, this word has inspired many with the weight of its history.
We are wices.
We practice a neo-pagan religion.
Often referred to as modern-day witchcraft.
This religion draws on older, earth-based practices.
We recognize a male and female god, believing in balance and equality.
The devil plays no part in our religion.
In the modern day, the word witch holds both old and new meanings.
It is a legacy of injustice and ignorance, from which we have much to learn.
What does this word mean to you?
Alright everybody, if you could please turn to space this wall behind you.
We have one last thing to talk about here today, and this is our witch hunt wall.
And up at the very top, you can see our witch hunt formula, which is fear plus a trigger equals a scapegoat.
Now, below that, we have a couple different examples.
The first one being, of course, Salem in 1692, where a fear of the god or the devil, triggered by the misdiagnosis of the afflicted girls by Dr. Griggs, led to the accusations of about 150 townspeople here in Essex County.
Now, further down this wall, we have three contemporary examples from the 20th century, the first of which, and the one I would like to talk about here today, being the scapegoating of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Now, on December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbor in Hawaii was attacked by Imperial Japan, and following these attacks, fears of Japanese Americans swept throughout the nation.
In response to these fears, 120,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly removed to their homes and sent to hastily constructed detention centers across the nation.
Now, although Pearl Harbor acted as the immediate trigger for this treatment of Japanese Americans, decades of racism and propaganda against Asian Americans made them particularly easy scapegoats.
Now, additionally, there was no evidence to suggest that any of these people had any sort of allegiance to Imperial Japan.
As a matter of fact, many Japanese Americans opted to join the U.S. military, including the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which was entirely comprised of second-generation Japanese Americans.
Now, that unit to this day remains the most decorated unit in U.S. military history for both its size and length of service.
In 1988, President Ronald Reagan did apologize for the treatment of Japanese Americans.
He apologized to those who lost nearly everything.
They lost their homes, their life savings, and their livelihood.
However, that was 40 years after the fact.
Now, looking at this wall here, it reminds us why history matters.
It reminds us why in times of fear, it's easy to reach out for a group or person to blame for any number of things.
However, it's by studying history that we can hope to prevent tragedies like this in the future.
With that being said, you'll notice that I have these postcards in my hand here.
On the back of these postcards, we do have our Witchump formula.
There's space for you to fill that out using your own example.
And if you choose to do that, we then encourage you to turn it back into us or even mail it back to us later on.
Our address is right on there.
This is a part of a project we have going on.
If you do choose to give us an example, your example will then go on to our online database underneath the education section of our website.
We do really enjoy hearing from all of you, so I would like to encourage everyone to please take a postcard.
Take as many as you'd like.
They're free for the taking.
I have some here.
There's plenty more on that shelf right there as you exit.
We would love to hear from you guys.
With that being said, that concludes our tour here today.
I would like to thank you all for visiting us.
We'll exit down the stairs and out the double doors.
And I hope you all have a great rest of your time here today.
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