The similarities and differences between humans and other animals have long been a source of philosophical conundrum, since the time of the Abrahamic religions, when the God of the Book of Genesis told Adam he would have dominion over all
the animals in his kingdom. Many assume unquestionably that humans are superior to other species, as if by somehow, having a broader awareness of our earthly surroundings, we have permission to take charge of all living things, that they, in some ways, are here simply for our sustenance and gratification.
Some point to certain characteristics as a way of differentiating ourselves, the supposedly uniquely human imperative towards art, the facility to communicate in languages which have grammatical rules far more complex than other animals. That we walk upright on two feet, rendering us mobile in a way that few other animals can mimic, freeing our hands for using tools, and allowing
us to better conserve our energy. And yet with Charles Darwin's explosive theory of evolution outlined in the Origin of the Species, since eighteen fifty nine, many began to question the received wisdom that we are masters of our space. One thing human beings continue to share with other animals
is a sense of territorialism. We see it on programs narrated by the likes of David Attenborough about the natural world, in the predominantly male species of lions or stags fighting with one another to be crowned alpha of the herd. In astonishing observations made by scientists in Thai National Park in southwestern Cote Duvoir, for example, chimpanzees are recorded utilizing distinctly human like warfare tactics, such as the use of
hillside terrain for reconnaissance and weapons. It can be amusing, therefore, or disturbing to see these similarities reframed by certain human beings as high minded or politically expedient predestined, even when territorialism is used to whip up anger in instances of political rhetoric, or when invasion narratives are used to justify acts of violence in the name of protecting a state
or territory. It is perhaps for this reason that invasion narratives have long been used as a staple of the science fiction and horror genres, in particular, since they play into humanities more animalistic tendencies when it comes to territorialism.
When we recognize our true animal nature, we see our inclination for territorialism for what it is, which is to say, an entirely natural impulse, instinctively driven by fear and the will to survive perceived threats to the family, threat to the colony, threat to food supplies, harvests, the prevailing political order, or even as in H. G. Wells is classic, the war of the world's threat to the species itself will engender a shift toward territorialism, whereby just where we might
need them most, our base animal tendency will override the one thing we might actually justifiably hold as something unique to human beings, our ability to think rationally and abstractly beyond our primal impulses. Historically, one of the most striking examples of humanity's capacity for territorialism came in the form of the series of witch panics which swept across England, Scotland, Europe and other parts of the so called New World
during the late seventeenth century. It is testament to the political turbulence of the time that figures such as self appointed which Finder General Matthew Hopkins, as discussed in Season two, Episode two's Time Out of Joint, were able to ascend to positions of relative power in England or because of
a perceived threat to the status quo. And yet, despite sharing some of the same fear led impulses as invasion narratives, stories about witches and demons also offer something quite unique, not just because of what they say about historical attitude toward women and minorities as examples of individuals considered by those in power to be different and unknown and therefore fair game to be scapegoated, but because the supposed invasion meant to be taking place is almost always embedded within
a community. Territorialism leads naturally to paranoia and is a zero sum game. In order to justify the fear being whipped up, an antagonist must be identified, and so when all external threats have finally been exhausted, there is nowhere left to turn except toward members of your own community. It is no accident, for example, that Arthur Miller's most famous play, The Crucible, ostensibly set during the Salem witch Trials, was written and performed in the aftermath of the mid
twentieth century Red scare in the United Slce States. Miller was explicit in drawing the connections, which he saw as an indictment of Cold War hysteria as much as it was a fable about the foundation of violence on which
his country was built. The story of the Gloucester invasions during the summer of sixteen ninety two is perhaps the most interesting example of North American witch hysteria, precisely because it seems to explicitly marry together the most terrifying elements from within the invasion narrative that the newly settled New England outpost of Massachusetts viewed itself at war with enemies both within and without, and as we shall see, people
were often at a loss to distinguish between them. You're listening to unexplained and I'm Richard mc lean smith in Massachusetts, America, July sixteen ninety two. Strange things are afoot in Salem Village. Eleven women and one man a languishing in jail as they await trial, accused of perpetrating witchcraft. One Bridget Bishop had already been executed twenty miles away to the north,
in the small village of Capean. An unseasonable warmth seemed to tighten its grip around the usually mild seaside location. During this time of year, crops were being cultivated for harvest, and twenty five year old renowned local family man and smaller stateholder, Ebenezer Babson felt positive that the weather signaled
good things for his maize god fearing above all things. However, Ebenezer knew only too well that the weather was prone to change, and so he concentrated his energies on making sure there was an ample store of food for what would surely be another blistering winter. But the work was proving a little harder than usual because that July, Ebenezer and his family, including his widowed mother Eleanor, had not been sleeping well. It started with the children crying out
in terror. One night. Babson ran to their bedroom to find them shaking with fear in their beds, claiming they could hear noises in the cottage. They said it was almost as if a person or persons was walking freely around the humble property, laughing and making merry, and even rifling through the kitchen cupboards. Hearing though he was, Ebenezer also possessed a fiercely practical streak. He reasoned that the disturbances were likely something to do with the local wildlife,
or more possibly a figment of his children's imagination. He told them to try and ignore it and get back to sleep before returning himself to bed. But the strange disturbances continued. Over the next few nights. The children continued to claim that something was in the house with them moving around at night. Finding no outward reason why his children would lie to him. While out in the field, one day, Ebeneza privately began to wander if his house
was being stalked by Native American hunting parties. He'd heard of such things taking place down in Maryland and thought that if it were happening to them, as the man of the house, it was his job to defend it, this being a time before law enforcement or even the comfort of neighbors who lived anywhere nearby. For now, though, he tried to put the thought out of his mind, there was work to be done while the weather was
still good. When the sun went down, he finished up for the day and made his way back to the cottage. All things considered, it had been a solid day's work, and he allowed himself a smile at the thought of another job well done. By the time Ebenezer returned home, it was pitch black as he approached the cottage. Candlelight flickered from inside the windows. As he drew nearer. For a moment, he fancied that he could see silhouettes moving across them on the outside of the house. That strange,
The children must surely be in bed by now. As he got closer, he made out the shape of two men, both of whom seemed to have just stepped down from the wooden porch. Who goes there? He called out, which seemed to startle them when he trekked further down the path. They seemed then to immediately bolt into one of the nearby cornfields. Ebenezer ran into the house, demanding to know from his wife who had been calling at such an hour.
With a look of confusion, she assured him that no one had been calling, and neither had she heard anyone outside. With this, Ebenezer became even more concerned and returned instantly to the private fear he'd been harboring all day that his house was now the target of a Native American hunting party. With no explanation to his wife about what had been troubling him. Ebenezer seized his long armed flint lock from above the fireplace and tore off in search
of the elusive intruders. Ebenezer headed straight into the corn fields. He knew them like the back of his own hand, even in the dark, without a lantern to guide the way. Every clod of dirt beneath his boots, every root and twig, felt familiar to him. In this way, he was able to track the men through the corn and emerged on the other side at a nearby swamp. When he got there, he saw the men start up from behind a log and run into the marsh, seemingly disappearing with no indication
of their whereabouts. The last thing he thought he overheard one of them say, was the man of the house is now come, else we might have taken the house. Back at the cottage, the whole family was awake and every one on high alert. Upon his return, Ebenezer seemed convinced that the mysterious men had been planning a siege. He hustled his children on to the back of a wagon while he hitched up his horses and sat up
front with his wife and mother. His plan was to make haste to the nearest garrison, located about two miles away. The rough hewn timber garrison, surrounded by a large wooden palisade, was located high on the rocks of Cape Ann, overlooking the sea. The heavy sound of waves crashing onto the rocks could be heard in the distance. As Ebenezer and his family approached the garrison gate in sight, a number of men were stationed tasked with protecting the local area.
Seeing the looks of concern on the family's faces, the garrison occupants quickly ushered them into the building. With the Babsons safely inside, Ebenezer hurriedly told the others present about his family's predicament. He wondered if anyone else had experienced anything similar, but it was the first that anyone had
heard of it. But no sooner had he started his account, he once again heard what he took to be the sound of heavy footfall, but this time it was as if a whole group of men were surrounding the building. What was that, one of the children cried out with alarm. Than others claimed to hear it too. The horses outside began to winny. Ebeneze's youngest daughter. Ghased in horror, Eberneza fetched his gun and ran out into the night. Under
the faint, bony sliver of a crescent moon above. He caught sight of what appeared to be two men running fast and away from the building, but he was too exhausted to follow. The family chose to lie low at the garrison the following day until they were sure it
was safe to return home. But when nightfall came, Eberoneza, for the third time in its many days, was keeping watch outside when once again he believed he caught sight of the same two men loitering about in the darkness, but this time he managed to get a good look at them. Stepping forward to confront them, he paused suddenly when he saw that one seemed to be carrying a bright silver gun, the kind favored by French Canadian trappers,
worn slung across their shoulder. They wore white breeches and waistcoats, too, so it stood to reason he thought that they were most likely frenchmen. He chanced another step forward, the men suddenly advanced on him, forcing a terrified Ebenezer to turn on his heels and sprint back to the garrison. Once safely inside, he warned the others that they might be under attack. All the while, the apparent noise of the men moving around outside remained, but few wanted to go
and confront them. At this point, Ebenezer sought counsel from another man, local farmer and family friend, John Brown, who agreed to help him. The pair disappeared into the night and reappeared breathless shortly after. The men claimed to have successfully chased off the miscreants, but there weren't two of them, now, claimed Brown, but three. On July fourteenth, Ebenezer, John Brown and the other men of h who were stationed at the garrison were drawn out once more by the sound
of people flitting about outside. They were stunned to find that, according to them, the enemy group had now swelled in number from two or three to around half a dozen, all seemingly darting away from the garrison back to the cover of night. Worried that they might be about to be drawn into an ambush, the group held back, with the exception of Ebenezer Babson. Unable to help himself, he tore off after them once again, and in the process misfired his rifle, which allowed them all a moment to
take cover. Ebenezer later stated that he was just closing in on the mystery men's position when he called out to his friends. Here they are, he said, at which point he took aim toward three of the supposed Frenchman, brought his rifle up to his shoulder and fired. Ebenezer
was stunned for a moment. The three men he'd fired on appeared to fall to the ground in sequence, like fauns during a hunt, he thought, But just at the moment when he was about to call to his comrades that he'd killed them, the men rose like revenance and disappeared once more as quickly as they came. Just then, a shot rocketed past Ebeneze's head, missing by a matter of inches. It seemed to have come from a nearby copse of trees, close to where the spectral Frenchman had disappeared.
Ebniza turned to see the bullet, still hot, wedged into the bark of a tree bright behind him. Believing he was still under threat, Ebenezer swiftly took refuge behind the tree. John Brown and the others soon joined him, claiming later that they managed to pin down one of the Frenchmen who they'd succeeded in separating from his group. This time, Brown took aim and shot the man at point blank range, then watched him crumple to the ground with a sickening thump.
The men of Cape Ann cheered in triumph, but when they turned back to the body, it appeared to have completely vanished into thin air. Exhausted, the colonists made their way back to the garrison with only their small lanterns to light the way. The men soon became spooked by what seemed to be voices whispering out to them in an indistinguishable language from somewhere in the underbush, But whenever the light was whipped round and the shadows pushed back,
they saw nothing. The next day, one of the garrison men, Richard Dolliver, burst into the building with some alarming news. He had just been on a scout in one of the many orchards scattered around Cape Ann when he spotted a party of what seemed to be a dozen of the frenchmen camped out in its center. They were chanting in a strange language, he said, and performing bizarre rituals around a fire, invoking false gods. Just like Ebenezer and the other colonists, Dolliver was too, a god fearing man
who felt the influence of the devil acute. As he explained to the others, he believed the Frenchmen were gathering supernatural powers from occult forces beyond his control. So he took aim at the troop of dancing strangers, raised his rifle to his shoulder, and fired at them, just as Ebenezer and John Smith had done before, and just as in previous attempts, the shots only sir to break up the ritual and send the apparent Frenchman scattering into the trees.
It was Dolliver's unnerving story that prompted the garrison to finally seek help from the outside world. On July eighteenth, after ten days of skirmishes with the mystery assailants who descended on Cape Anne, Eboneze at Babson sent an emissary to the nearby town of Ipswich. His communication emphasized dire
warnings about the potential consequences of an invasion. In response, senior local army official, Captain Appleton, dispatched sixty men from his own garrison in the hope of quelling the threat. From records, however, it seems as though Captain Appleton's troops fared no better. No sooner had they arrived than they quickly learned that the so called infernal visitants responded to lead and gunpowder as children were to snowballs. For a fortnight.
As news arrived from Salem that five more supposed witches had been hanged, the apparent invaders toyed with the deployment from Ipswich. Their laughter and jeering seemed to echo from every bush and every tree. They apparently threw stones, rotten fruit and vegetables, and even excrement. They beat upon the doors of the garrison building with sticks and fists, and it now seemed to Ebenezer, as it did to Captain Appleton, that the invader's sole purpose was simply mischief, rather than
any design on domination. It's unclear as to how the series of incidents, which later became known as the Gloucester Invasion, came to an end. Some have speculated that once Ebenezer Babson, Captain Appleton, and the rest of the team at the garrison came to the realization that they could not defeat their enemy with mortal weapons, the so called Frenchmen disappeared, having seemingly proven some as yet undisclosed point about their
infernal power. Others, such as colonists and letter writer Thomas Franklin Waters, seemed to suggest that the band of Mystery Invaders were connected to Satanic practices, and that their mission was simply to break the strong Puritanical Christian faith that defined Gloucester County at that time. He wrote an account of the event shortly after, in the midst of witchcraft accusations. In sixteen ninety two, he wrote a new and unique
outburst of Satanic rage revealed itself. Gloucester was invaded by a spectral company of Indians and French, coming out at the swamps or cornfields, sometimes singly again in a group, they approached the garrison. Usually the guns of the soldiers misfired, but when the guns were discharged, the bullets had no effect. Their speech was in an unknown tongue. They carried guns, and real bullets shot from them would dug out of the trees. They suffered night and day for about a
fortnight altogether. In sixteen ninety three, Reverend John Emerson of Gloucester County wrote to his close friend Cotton Mather, an influential Puritan minister in the colonies, math the son of Increased math considered himself an expert on the subject of bewitchment. In sixteen eighty nine, he published memorial Providences relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions, in which he confidently affirmed the indisputable existence of witches and devils and urged all Christians to
weed them out at the first opportunity. It was Cotton Mather who recommended bodily searches be carried out on the accused in Salem to search for marks of the devil. Emerson's letter to Mathers read, I hope the substance of what is written will be enough to satisfy all rational persons that Gloucester was not alarmed last summer by real French and Indians, but that the devil and his agents
were the real cause of all the molestation. I would take upon me to entreat your earnest prayers to the Father of Mercies, that those apparitions may not prove the
sad omens of some future and more horrible molestations. Cotton Matha himself also recounted the incident in Great detail in his book Magnalia Christie Americana, embellishing many details taken from Reverend Emerson and others which describe the visitants in no uncertain terms as demons who'd been sent to Gloucester by the Devil himself to molest and upset the inhabitant's security for his fervent support of the Salem witch Trials and
its puritanical dogma. More generally respected author and Salem native Nathaniel Hawthorne, best remembered for his classic novel The Scarlet Letter, referred to Cotton Mather as the chief agent of mischief at Salem, an ironic twist indeed, given Mather's own emphasis on the mischief of the so called Frenchman at Gloucester, and a stark reminder of how moral values had changed
in the intervening century between his time and Hawthorne's. Nevertheless, it seems that Mather's account of the Gloucester invasion endured, for he was taken on good authority when the story was embellished later again by Samuel Adams Drake for his book New England Legends and Folklore, published in eighteen eighty four. Despite everything written about the glocester invasions. There appears to be no concrete evidence that there were any assailants at all,
at least not in the material sense. Judged by today's standards. The so called invasion could be read as a lesson in the power of fear and how quickly it can morph into xenophobia. On the one hand, the purported assailants are described as being either French, Canadian or Native American, whilst on the other they are ascribed to characteristics which each teller of the tale seems keen to emphasize as
other worldly and sometimes even satanic. Despite the immateriality of the apparent assailants, the threat is immediately assumed to be one from outside. At no point is it considered to be originating from within the settlement, and even when it does, such as in the case of those accused of witchcraft in Salem, it is only because the individuals in question
are apparently under the juress of an evil force. Because any possibility that there was something rotten within the group itself is unthinkable and crucially counterproductive to quelling the fear, there was great value in sustaining the idea of an external threat, too, For those at the top of the community whose prosperity depended on maintaining a solid and committed flock. There is little doubt there were genuine reasons to be fearful, being abroad in an unknown land, far from the comforts
and familiarities of home. There is nowhere to turn if the harvest fails, and not least of all the ever present threat of attack with war between the colonists, competing European powers and Native American communities, an ever present danger, but seeming obliviousness that the colonists had for their own
violent contribution in creating that environment in the first place. Notwithstanding, what perhaps chills me most of all is the propensity with which a community, when feeling threatened, will seek cohesion and strength by carelessly demonizing others, or even by seeking enemies where none exist, as a way to dampen fear and insecurity. And to think that this is an entirely natural human phenomena, one we might all perhaps be susceptible
to given the right set of circumstances. This episode was written by James Connor Patterson and produced by me Richard McLain Smith. James is a brilliant writer and poet. His debut collection of poems titled Bandit Country, Exploring the hinterland between the North of Ireland and Republic, was shortlisted for the twenty twenty two T S. Eliot Prize and is out now to buy. Do check it out. Thank you as ever for listening to the show. Please subscribe and
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