S1 – 3: By the Book

Sarah Osburne and Tituba were taken to the Salem jail, while Sarah Good was transported to the nearby Ipswich Jail, where Constable Joseph Herrick, a relative of hers, could keep an eye on her. After the magistrates and accused left the meeting house, though, that's when the shock waves began to spread. The place had been packed. Some estimates placed the crowd at nearly six d people, more than the

real population of Salem Village itself. Those people left for homes and taverns, taking the news of what they had witnessed out into the world, and news, as we all know, has a way of spreading like a wildfire. Some of them stayed behind, though a small group of Salem village men remained in the meeting house to discuss the matter in a more official capacity. Among them were two Putnam's, the uncle and cousin of Thomas Jr. Father of one of the afflicted, and they decided to send these two

men south to Boston for help. The most significant gathering happened over at the home of Dr William Griggs. He was the closest thing the village had to a medical doctor, and was a good friend of the Reverend Samuel Paris. He was a devout Puritan, an educated man, and a rational thinker, but he also suspected something less natural was behind the events of the past few days. He and a number of neighbors huddled together that evening inside griggs

house to discuss what they had learned. They arrived at the meeting house that day believing that there might be three witches in Salem Village, and left with news that there were in fact five of them. Three were in custody, sure, but there were still two at large, hiding in plain sight and continuing their dark, dangerous attacks. Those attacks were

still hitting home too, quite literally. Living in the home of William Griggs was his niece, Elizabeth Hubbard, who was one of the four girls making all of the accusations. So while the gathering was mostly a moment for everyone to process and regroup. They were also watching over her, making sure the witches left her alone. When the attacks began again, there were fresh eyes packed inside the house to witness it. This time, Elizabeth began to cry out

in pain. She claimed someone invisible was pinching and stabbing at her with the sharp object. Everyone could see it too. The girl was writhing in pain and flinching away from an unseen attacker. It must have been horrifying to watch. And then the girl froze and pointed toward the table everyone had gathered around. There, she shouted, there stands Sarah Good. Elizabeth described how the invisible witch was standing naked on the table. Her feet and legs were bare, as was

her chest. Oh, nasty slut, the girl cried out. If I had something, I would kill you. Samuel Sibley was seated at the table and watched it all in horror. His wife was Mary Sibley, the woman who had instructed Tituba and John Indian on how to make the witch cake just days before. Maybe he felt a need to atone for his wife's sins, or perhaps he was just so gripped with fear that he simply fell in line. Whatever the reason was, he stood up and swung his

walking stick at the empty air above the table. You have hit her right across the back, Elizabeth declared, you have almost killed her. Miles away in Ipswich, unaware of what was transpiring inside the Grigs home, one of the guards standing outside Joseph Herrick's barn glanced inside the check on Sarah Good and felt the hair on the back of his neck. Stand up. She was gone, vanished into the night, as if she had magically melted into the air, and all that was left of her or her shoes

and her stockings. When they found her the next morning, everyone held their breath. There was blood on her arm, as if she had been struck. This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Manky. The night of the gathering at Dr William Griggs house, that moment of reflection and panic. After a day of examinations inside the meeting house, everyone dispersed to go home. Two of those men were William Allen and

John Hughes, who lived in the same direction. They bundled up against the cold and then walked off into the night down the road. After a few minutes of brisk, silent walking. Both of the men claimed they heard a noise ahead of them down the road. It wasn't the sound they could identify, and it kept repeating itself over and over, but they needed to get home, so they pressed on. That didn't mean it was easy, though. Soon a dark shape began to materialize in the darkness ahead.

They slowed their pace, believing there was some sort of animal hunched over beside the road. A moment later, that shape exploded upward, and as it did, it unraveled into the forms of three people women. If the men had to guess, they vanished almost as quickly as they had appeared. But as they did, both men were certain they recognized all three of them, Sarah Good, Sarah Osburne, and Tituba. Sarah Good, however, was miles away in an Ipswich jail

along with her baby. Actually that jail was the barn belonging to her relative Joseph Herrick and his brother Zachariah, and there was a bit of irony in her new situation. Remember, Sarah and William Good weren't doing so well financially. They've lost all of their land and had no way to provide for themselves. Life was hard for them, to say

the least. Two years prior to the events of six two, Sarah had approached Zachariah and asked if she and her daughter, Doroth the might sleep in the barn for a few nights. Sarah's sister had married into the Herrick family many years before, and I have to imagine she felt that if anyone was going to say yes, it would be the Herrick brothers. Instead,

they turned her away. That's when things got weird. Sarah, known around the village to be a grumbler and all around bitter woman, told Herrick that his heartlessness would cost him dearly. Perhaps she hinted one of his best cows might suffer. Zachariah's teenage sons escorted Sarah off their property, and a short time later two of Herrick's best cows disappeared.

This night, though the Herricks had no choice. Joseph was a constable for Salem and had been instructed to bring Sarah Good and her infant back to his farm, where she would be locked in the barn overnight. As the gathering at Dr Grigg's house took place, complete with Elizabeth Hubbard's claim of an invisible Sarah Good. The Herrick settled in for what they assumed would be a calm, quiet night,

but something went wrong. Sarah Good escaped. For whatever reason, she slipped out of her shoes and stockings and carried her infant out into the cold night air. Most historians think that she was out looking for a place to hide, but walking barefoot through the cold, snow and mud of

early March would have been painful. The guards noticed she was gone, but by the time they summoned the courage to inform Joseph Herrick, the sun had already come up and Sarah Good had returned to her makeshift prison cell. Joseph checked on her, found her arm covered in blood, and probably wondered aloud about what the woman had done to herself, And then he began his day. That new

day came with new news. Word reached Herrick about the events at Dr Grigg's house the night before, and of the appearance of Sarah Good without her shoes and stockings, and of how Samuel Sibley had struck her with his walking stick. And I realize we look back on this today with a bit of incredulity, But put yourself in the mindset of a superstitious, fearful puritan in the middle of a community at the beginning of a witch hunt. This was a red flag and a sure sign that

something evil was at work. Most people probably trying to get on with their normal lives that morning. There was always a lot to do to make sure your family and livestock were taken care of, after all, but magistrates John Hawthorne and Jonathan Corwin had servants for all of that. Instead, they paid a visit to the Salem Town Jail. They had some questions for one of the prisoners. Here's Pulitzer Prize winning author Stacy Chief. The conditions in the jail

were really deplorable. New England jails had not been built for long term stays. This was a culture that essentially dealt with malefactors quickly and effectively. No one was really mental to live in a jail the way these people ended up staying in these jails. The Salem jail is described as a suburb of Hell, and from the Boston jail was described as a grave for the living. So I think there you have it. Between the two, their tiny spaces unventilated. An earlier prisoner had talked about the

fact that he couldn't breathe for the pestiferous stink. As he puts it, the air is fitted their armies of life. And to add insult to injury, in colonial New England, you paid for your keep in jail, So you paid for your straw, you paid for your food, and you paid for your shackles. This was the place Tituba found herself the night after her examination in the meeting house. She probably awoke the next morning full of uncertainty and fear. Would they hang her without a trial? Would they drag

her back for more questions. Instead, Hawthorne and Corwin visited her and began a new interrogation behind the closed doors of the jail, But the magistrates were in for a shock when they arrived. Titsuba began to writhe and convulse in much the same way the four girls had done so in front of everyone in the meeting house the day before. When she could speak, she blamed the attacks on Good and Osbourne, which gave Hawthorne an idea they

now had a direct line to the truth. They asked Tituba about how the witches were attacking her, and she described it in detail. Then, almost as an assigne, she mentioned that the tall man had urged her to write in his book, which struck a chord with the two men. What book, they asked, Was it big or small? Titsiba shook her head. He did not show it to me, she replied, but had it in his pocket. After that, the questions flowed like a river, and Titchiba did her

best to keep up with the current. Did he make you sign it? No, my mistress called me from another room. What did he say you needed to do with the book? He told me to sign my name in it, she said, And did you do that? They asked, yes. One time I made a mark in the book with a red ink, red like blood. Did he take that red ink from your own body? No, but he said he would get it out of me the next time he visited. And

then the magistrates dug deeper. They believe that Tituba had seen the Devil's Book, his tool for recruiting humans into his evil mission among them. So he asked about that. Did you see any other marks in this book? They asked, yes, she said, a great many, some in red, some in yellow. He held it wide open and showed me a great many marks in it? What names were in the book, they asked? Did he tell you Good and Osbourne? She answered, but they were more I couldn't read. Hawthorne and Corwin

must have felt a chill run down their spines. More names meant more witches. They had already found three, which felt overwhelming as it was, But now they had learned that there were more among them. They aid, it wasn't an insurmountable number. How many marks do you think there were, they asked her. Tituba looked at them both with fear in her eyes. Perhaps she was afraid of her current circumstances, or maybe she was afraid of what her answer might mean.

I imagine she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then finally she answered them. Nine, she said, there were nine marks. Hawthorne and Corwin were stunned. They had believed all of the witches affecting the girls had been identified and captured, and yet here was a frightening new revelation. There were nine names in the book, Nine witches to torment them, Nine individuals who had signed on to help the devil destroy their great Puritan experiment in the New World.

Of course, they wanted to know who those other witches were, and they asked it, but to name them she shook her head, though she claimed they had only made marks rather than writing their own names down, so she didn't know who they were. But there's something else going on here that needs to be pointed out. You see, Puritans were absolutely obsessed with books. Jane Kaminsky, Professor of American

History at Harvard University. I did a piece of work at one point that I never published, about the image of the Devil's book in the Salem, which trials looking at the book trades in New England at the time. You know, what does it look like. Oh, it's small

and they hide in it's red, it's not read. This is a moment in the late sixteen eighties and early sixteen nineties where small secular print materials, you know, histories, geographies, satires, joke books, playing cards are coming into the bookstores and the ports cities. So yeah, this idea of a book used by the devil to establish contracts with human helpers was a big deal. It spoke to the very nature

of Puritans as book people. Reading was central to their faith, reading the Bible, reading sermon notes, reading educational books, and while most of the women in Salem were unable to write, they could certainly read. Here's Kaminski again. Women in Puritan New England have an unusually high level of reading literacy because it's thought to be so important for everybody to be able to read the Bible, and for mothers to

be able to read the Bible to their children. But they have a pretty low level of what's called sign literacy. So she can sign her name. She has some rudimentary written literacy, but probably not the fluency to write an entire document. The last detail these questions about the Devil's Book revealed to us is the seriousness of the accusations to a Puritan. Membership in the church was about confession.

She or the Halfway Covenant loosened those requirements a bit, But whether you were confessing your sins and story to a minister in private or while standing in front of the entire congregation, you knew the final step was to sign a covenant with your church. So the Devil's Book was meant to be a shadow of all of that, the dark opposite to the light of God. If the Puritans believe that you were a witch, it just made sense that you had also signed a covenant with the devil.

You had switched sides after all. Now, one of the books that would have been familiar to Hawthorne and Corwin was a sixty seven witchcraft reference work called Guide to Grand Jury Men. It offered a lot of advice to help the authorities properly examine accused witches, and one of those pieces of advice was that someone of spiritual authority must help the accused prepare for their examination. For Tituba, that person had to have been her master, the Reverend

Samuel Paris. It would be a fair guest to assume that preparing Tituba involved asking her questions and testing her knowledge of the Bible, but not for Paris. The day before her examination, he chose instead to simply beat her. It wasn't justified, of course, but I have to wonder if he did it out of anger over the witch cake incidents and a bit of urgency from her living

under his roof and responsibility. So Paris beat her, Perhaps that explains her wild stories the next day in the meeting house, where she accused Sarah Good and Sarah Osburne of being in league with the Devil. It certainly explains her eagerness to please, to paint elaborate pictures full of rich, powerful detail. He had asked for her cooperation at the

end of a painful switch, and Titsuba clearly delivered. I think it's safe to say that we can look back today on the interrogation and see the men essentially leading the witness. They never said did you experience anything odd the other day? Instead they asked estions out of the blue, like was there a book and why did you sign it? Tituba, female heathen slave, the lowest of the low in their society, was already in jail. So she would have done anything

or said anything to prevent execution. Any of us would have. And you can see them guide her answers over time. First she never saw the book, and then the tall man showed it to her. That evolved into holding it and then reading it. It wasn't that she was slowly remembering more and more detail. It's that she was paying attention, listening to Hawthorne and Corwin as if her life depended on it, and giving them the answers they were looking for.

Emerson Baker, one of our guest historians throughout this season, of Unobscured discusses this in his book A Storm of Witchcraft One wonders. He wrote, what would have happened had Paris and the judges not coerced Tituba into confessing the Salem witchcraft outbreak might conceivably have been limited to three people, a fairly typical case of no particular note, and certainly not a pivotal moment in American history. But that's not

what they did. Instead, they approached a volatile situation and steered it in a different and arguably worse direction. It would be the first of many wrong turns that would get them lost in a dark forest of fear and panic. Peace it seems would be a lot more difficult to track down. At this point, It might be helpful to step back and ask the question why why did the people of Salem village believe the devil had singled them out and made them the focus of his evil mock nations?

And the answer comes back to us from that vision of Salem being a city on the hill. Historian Richard Trask, the whole purpose of it was to bring down the Puritan commonwealth of Massachuset sits they looked at themselves as being the elect of God. The new Israelites of old, who were establishing a city upon the hill. The devil obviously would want to combat that type of thing, and that's why they believe that the devil was coming to Salem Village into all of mass Bay to bring God's

Kingdom on Earth down. To that end, Samuel Paris called on all of Salem Village to fast and pray. He held private gatherings at his house of the most devout among them, and other neighboring ministers joined them, including John Hale from Beverly. Even Paris's daughter Betty and her cousin Abigail, the two original afflicted girls who had started everything, joined them for these prayer meetings. Not long after, though, Paris had Betty sent to Salem Town to stay at the

home of a distant relative named Stephen Sewell. Betty was only nine years old, and while her affliction didn't stop right away, she does seem to vanish from the court documents after this. Some historians think it was a rare moment of sanity when the community honored the tradition of only allowing adults to testify. After Betty, Paris was moved to a safe home in Salem Town. The three accused witches were transferred to a jail in Boston, where they

would await a full criminal trial. The three remaining afflicted girls seemed to become more calm, but then on March three, Annie Putnam claimed she was tormented yet again, and this time the attackers were new to her. One, she said was a woman she couldn't see clearly, but the other was clear. She claimed it was Dorothy Good, the five year old daughter of Sarah Good. The little girl, according to Annie Putnam, was holding the Devil's Book out to

her and demanding she signed it. Sadly, the people around her took her seriously. A week later, she managed to put a name to that other attacker, Elizabeth Procter. Elizabeth was the forty one year old mother of five children and pregnant with her sixth. She and her husband, John Procter owned a tavern north of the village at the intersection of two busy roads. They were part of the wealthy Procter family, members of the church, and owners of

a lot of land. There was a lot to respect about Elizabeth, but there were other details about her that might have made her an easy person to accuse of witchcraft. The biggest of those was that her grandmother, goody Bert's had been accused and tried for witchcraft roughly three decades earlier. The assumption was that if wealth and godliness could run in families, then so too could allegiance to the devil.

Her husband, John was twenty years older than her and had inherited all of his land from his parents, who had moved to Massachusetts in the sixteen thirties. By sixteen seventy four, he'd lost two wives and a number of children. But Elizabeth seemed like the perfect balm for those wounds. She was smart, rugal, and a formidable presence, and both of them were a bit more progressive than their neighbors.

They were known to allow the local Native Americans to drink in their tavern, which was a huge deal in those days. The Native Americans were seen as agents of the devil. They were the enemy who stood opposed to the Puritan mission, and yet John and Elizabeth served them beer. Hatred ran so hot that at one point someone took them to court over it. The angry man Giles Corey, had a bit of a reputation for being a hothead, though.

Here's Emerson Baker. He had been accused of setting for arson on the house of his neighbor, John Proctor, and he had also been convicted really of manslaughter back in the sixteen seventies, of beating his simple minded teenage servant to within an inch of his life. And then the fellow, poor fellow dies several days later, and they say, well, it isn't murder, but you know, okay, pfine, Pfine. Proctor, however, won the case and business stayed brisk at their tavern,

always busy helping patrons there. Elizabeth needed help around the house, so she hired a young local woman named Mary Warren. She had lost her entire family to tuberculosis years before, so the proctors were all she had. That said, they weren't exactly kind to her, which is why when rumors of Annie Putnam's accusations reached Mary Warren's ears, she might have seen an opportunity. On March twelve, Mary claimed to see a specter floating through the house, which eventually landed

on her lap. When she could make out a face, she was shocked to see it had taken the form of her employer, John Procter, The real man, however, was not amused. He essentially told her to cut it out and if she didn't, she'd receive a severe beating for her behavior. Then she did stop for a while, but when John left town a day or so later, her nightmarish visions miraculously returned, this time in the form of

a woman. It wasn't Elizabeth Proctor though. No this witch's name was new to the growing list of the accused, yet at the same time it felt like a natural fit. Mary identified her attacker as none other than Martha Corey, Giles Corey's wife. To understand exactly why the people of Salem Village might not like the Corries and Martha in particular, we have to go back to the halfway Covenant. Membership in the church in Puritan times was a huge deal.

Only full fledged members could take communion and have their children baptized, two key rights for Christians. But that level of membership required standing in front of the entire congregation, confessing your whole sinful life to them and then waiting for their answer. It was strict then. As a result, many churches were shrinking rather than growing. The halfway Covenant

was supposed to change all of that. Instead of a public confession, churches that adopted the more liberal Halfway Covenant allowed prospective members to simply meet with their minister privately. And here's the other important detail about membership. Once you were a full member in one church, you could visit any other and receive the same benefits you would back home, whether or not they were a halfway Covenant church. Here's

Emerson Baker again, the Corries used that loophole. Giles Corey becomes a member of the Salem Town Church and even though they say, basically despite his his reprobate past, he's acknowledged his past as a center and we accept him into our fellowship, into our covenant. So then imagine, here's this fellow who people know to be who he is, and he's sitting right there and partaking of the Lord's suffer with the other members of the Salem Village Church.

Because as a member of the Salem Town Church, you can attend and you have full rights really to receive communion. Oh really, isn't that interesting? This trophy hunting, social climbing wife who claims she's a gospel woman, and look how she managed to get her husband, Giles Corey, arsonist, beater of servants. We've managed to get him into the church. Something's wrong here. Obviously they had the reasons for accusing Martha Corey, but it certainly set a new precedent. This

was a full fledged member of the church. She was part of the inner circle, one of their own, in a special position of respect, and by disregarding all of that, they opened the door for similar accusations to be leveled at other unlikely suspects. One of those was Rebecca Nurse. Rebecca Nurse was older than middle age. That's Marylyn k Roach, author and historian. She had a large family of grown children with grandchildren, so it's an extant family. That's not

a lot of death in infancy in her family. Her husban than it's still alive, so she's not a widow. Pretty much on her own. She has a good support network, and she's a full member of the Salem Town Church. She seems to be well respected, but she's accused. Rebecca was actually a sickly, nearly deaf, seventy one year old grandmother, which sounds incredibly harmless, right, But she also had enough social baggage to at least give the accusation some level

of credibility in their eye. If you think about it, one of the first people they might attack would be a woman like Rebecca Nurse who attends Salem Village But as a member of Salem Town Church, aren't we good enough for you? Why not? Could it be the fact that you and your husband a few years ago took in a Quaker orphan when his parents died and they were friends of the Nurses. Wow, we know your charitable could Puritan godly folk, but but why why a Quaker child?

Why not joined Salem Village Church? Why does your husband friend sist nurs Why is he one of the leaders of the faction that is trying to get Samuel Paris thrown out his minister in Salem Village. So there with Rebecca Nurse, even though she's a god fearing Puritan, there are some questions about her orthodoxy. One more odd detail.

During this new wave of accusations, when women like Elizabeth Procter and Rebecca Nurse were being swept into the flood that was washing over the community, a new unexpected accuser appeared. Up until this point, all of the afflicted were young women, girls really, ranging from nine to sixteen. But it was in the midst of this new way that twelve year old Annie Putnam's own mother and Putnam Senior, began to report her own torment at the hands of these witches.

And Putnam wasn't a girl. She was a thirty year old mother, pregnant with another child, and a well respected member of the Putnam family. So, as you can imagine, the gathering that Sunday in the meeting house for a sermon by guest sister Dao Dat Lawson, was quite the tense moment. Lawson, if you remember, was one of the former ministers of Salem Village, so everyone knew him. Oh, and the Putnams were there, and so was Martha Corey. Lawson had barely managed to start his sermon before all

hell broke loose. The afflicted girls fell to the floor as he was preaching, their bodies twisting and writhing as they cried out in pain. Abigail Williams pointed up into the empty air above their heads and claimed to see Martha Corey flying around the room. And while Martha Corey spoke up and denied all of it, her fate seemed to be sealed. Martha was arrested the following day, and Rebecca Nurse was brought in three days later. Their examination

was much like you might expect. Hawthorne and Corwin were among the presiding magistrates, and they returned to their obsession with the Devil's Book. Martha Corey was indignant what book? She spat back at them. Where should I have seen a book? I showed these girls none, nor have none, nor brought none. But defending herself wasn't the best thing to help her case. The judges saw her as too confident and forward, and that she was stepping out of line.

Immediately after the examination, she was carted off to the Salem jail to wait for her official trial. Rebecca Nurse experienced a lot of the same treatment during her examination. She professed her innocence, of course, but in the middle of it, Anne Putnam Senior started shouting at her, accusing her of doing the work of the devil. Anne said that Rebecca had tried to get her to sign the mysterious read book and had sent her spirit to attack her more than once. Then she went stiff and had

to be carried from the room by her husband. Paris must have found himself in quite a difficult place. On one hand, the whole idea behind full membership in the church was that these were the elect of God, the chosen ones, the best of the best, and the truest of true. They had passed through the fire of communal judgment and reached the other side safely. And yet members of the church were in jail. Now, how could he explain that? How could his theology keep pace with the

events that were unfolding? And then it struck him, even among the twelve Disciples of Jesus there had been one secret agent, Judas, who had been working with the devil. Speaking from the pulpit the following Sunday, he explained how tricky this all was to his parishioners. If it could happen to Jesus, he said, then perhaps even someone like Rebecca Nurse could be more than she appears. Have I not chosen you? Twelve Paris read aloud from the Book

of John, and one of you is a devil. It wasn't just one, though, Tituba had told the magistrates that she'd seen nine marks in the devil's book Buck, so at the moment the village was a little short of suspects. The first five were now in jail, along with Sarah Goods five year old daughter Dorothy, But that had left the community on edge. How could they look at any of their neighbors without wondering are they a witch? As well? The spotlight briefly drifted over towards the two younger sisters

of Rebecca Nurse. One of them, Sarah Klois, had actually been into gathering that Sunday in the meeting house for the sermon by Reverend Paris, and when he stated how possible it was for someone as devout as Rebecca to be an agent of the devil, Sarah had stormed out and discussed to the rest of those in the room, though it was difficult to not see it as the flight of a guilty woman. Another person under scrutiny was

Elizabeth Procter's husband John. The day after the examination of Rebecca Nurse, John encountered Samuel Sibley, husband of the woman who had baked the witch cake in the Paris home weeks before. John casually asked Samuel how things were going in village, and Sibley replied very bad. Proctor told Sibley that he was on his way to pick up his servant Mary Warren, and used a few choice words about

her in connection to the events that were unfolding. I'd rather given up money than get her involved in these examinations, he said, and then added that he should just beat the devil out of her. Sibley raised an eyebrow. First Proctor's words had been violent and in discreet, referring to the young woman as a jade, a seventeenth century term for a worn out horse, but there was also the apparent dismissal of the seriousness of the examinations. John Proctor

didn't seem happy that they were taking place. Samuel Sibley couldn't help but wonder why. Proctor picked up Mary Warren a short while later and then carted her back home, where he beat her for speaking out when he wasn't physically abusing her. She convulsed and writhed under the torment of an invisible attacker, but John Procter wasn't pleased with what he perceived to be an act. He told her that if she somehow managed to roll herself into the fire,

he wouldn't try to stop her. A few days later, on April second, Mary made her way back into town. Her fits had miraculously stopped, more than likely thanks to the threats of violence from John Proctor, but she chose to give credit to God. She could apparently write well enough that she'd penned a request for prayers of gratitude and then tacked it to the notice board of the

meeting house. The following day, Samuel Parris stood before his congregation and read the note aloud, but rather than being thankful, he expressed doubt. The afflicted girls had told everyone that the devil promised to end their pain if they would only switch sides and join him in his mission to destroy the community. If Mary no longer suffered, he told them, it might not be cause for celebration soon enough, though there were other things for the community to talk about.

Former say and village minister Daodete Lawson had been writing down his account of the past two months and then hurried to get it published. His ten page pamphlet was given the incredibly long title of A Brief and True Narrative of some remarkable passages relating to Sundry Persons afflicted by witchcraft at Salem Village. It's a mouthful, I know, but it also spread the word about what had been happening, casting the net over a wider area and snagging more

and more attention for the trials. And while I'm sure the members of the Governor's Council of Assistants had heard the news of the Salem events weeks earlier, this was the nudge they needed to take action, and they committed to attend the next examination to take place. For Hawthorne and Corwin, this was the legitimacy they've been looking for. Real representatives from Boston, from the Governor himself were about to travel north and sit among them and hear for

themselves what was going on. Emboldened and seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, Hawthorne issued the arrest warrants for two more suspects, Elizabeth Procter and Sarah Klois. But two more arrests weren't going to satisfy a community that was becoming more and more hungry to find all the witches in their midst. In the days leading up to the examinations of Procter and Klois, the Putnam women, both Anne Senior and her daughter Annie, claimed that John

Procter's invisible form attacked them. Tituba's husband, A man that all the records simply referred to as John Indian, claimed that he was attacked as well. But it was Abigail Williams, niece of Samuel Parris, who painted the most disturbing picture of all. According to her, a group of witches invaded her uncle's parsonage and held a devil's supper, complete with wine and red bread. It was an imitation of the Christian sacrament of Communion, and it was a slap in

the face of the devout Puritans who felt threatened. Worse yet, though, was the number of witches Abigail claimed to have seen in the house. According to her, it wasn't just the seven identified suspects, or even the full nine they had been told of. No, she said this gathering was much larger. There were, by her account, at least forty witches inside the Paris home that night. Thankfully, there was hope on the horizon. The highest authorities in the land had arrived

in Salem Village to help. Finally there would be justice. The governor himself, Simon Bradstreet, didn't make the trip north. The man was eight years old and the travel just wasn't something he was up for, which was a shame. Brad Street had been involved in the Massachusetts Bay Colony since it was nothing more than an idea on paper, and had been on that first expedition that founded the city of Boston. He was a powerful figure and his absence would be felt. In his place, Deputy Governor Thomas

Danforth was sent along with four assistants. They were important guests, so the examinations were moved to a more important location, Salem Town. But rather than sit up front and serve as judges, the five men simply took seats in the crowd and observed. Hawthorne and the others must have felt awkward about that. They began by speaking with some of the victims, including John Indian and Mary Walcott, the sixteen

year old daughter of a local militia captain. She'd been living with the Putnam's, who were her cousins, and that put her in the middle of a household under fire by the evil forces that were at work. Elizabeth Hubbard and Abigail Williams, two of the original accusers, also added their own stories, tales of that red Devil's book, of invisible attackers and of painful torture. Some of the accusers actually fell to the floor in fits of pain, while

others found they couldn't speak at all. It became so tense in the room that Sarah Klois actually fainted. John Indian claimed that Elizabeth Procter had come to him and asked him to sign the Devil's book. John Procter, sitting in the crowd, stood up and shouted that if he got his hands on John Indian, he would beat the devil out of the slave. John, as we've seen so far, had an anger management problem, and it was beginning to

get noticed. When Elizabeth Procter finally had a chance to speak for herself, she didn't face the judges or even the visitors from Boston. Instead, she faced the small group of accusers and warned them that lying before God was much worse than lying before the court. Judgment awaited them, she said, and they should correct their behavior instead. Many of the accusers began to shout out that John Procter

was attacking them. Almost immediately, John was grabbed from his seat in the crowd and dragged forward to stand before the judges. When they asked him what he had to say for himself, Procter shook his head. I know not, he replied, I am innocent. As a test, they asked him to recite the Lord's Prayer, believing that no which would ever be able to say it perfectly from memory.

John was recorded as saying hollowed be thy name rather than hellowed, something that could have been a slip of the tongue or a product of a noisy room, but it was enough to draw suspicion from the magistrates. Order dissolved. In the room, Abigail Williams claimed to see John Proctor attacking a woman named Sarah Biber, and in response, Biber

fell to the floor and began to convulse. Annie Putnam backed away from an invisible Elizabeth Procter, who she said was trying to hit her, and then fought back by swinging her fist at the empty air. Halfway through the punch, her arms stopped, as if someone or something had repelled the blow. Salem town Minister John Higginson shouted for silence and then uttered a loud and ominous prayer over the room full of people. When he was done, a team of constables swept in and led each of the accused

out of the room and off to jail. And just like that, the madness was over. Mary Warren, that willful servant girl who suffered under the abusive reign of the Proctors, left Salem Town and headed straight back to the Procter farm. Once there, she gathered all of the children together to share the news. News that would have been horrible for them to hear, but I have to imagine she took a lot of joy in sharing with them. Your parents will not be returning home tonight, she told them, and

I don't know when they will. That's it for this week's episode of Unobscured. Stick around after this short sponsor break for a preview of what's in store for next week. Next time, on Unobscured, Standing before the Magistrates, Abigail Hobbes spoke before they could ask her any questions. I will speak the truth, she said. I have seen sights and have been scared. I have been very wicked. I hope I shall be better if God will help me. What sites did you see? Hawthorne asked, I have seen dogs

and many creatures. What dogs do you mean, Hawthorne asked, ordinary dogs. Abigail shook her head, I mean the devil. The magistrates pressed on where had she seen them? They asked, Abigail replied that her encounter had taken place in the woods in the middle of the day years ago, back when she lived at Casco Bay. That was where she'd put her hand on his book. When they carried her off to jail a short while later. The name Cascoe Bay still hung in the air like a neon sign,

pointing at the danger that lurked the north. But Abigail had also made it clear that it was spreading health and might already be among them. She claimed that a shape shifting man had visited her at her home here in Topsfield. He had alternated between the form of a cat, a dog, and a black man with a black hat, and this man, she claimed, had offered her fine clothes and the power to harm others in town, a power

that she had readily accepted. Unobscured was created and written by me Aaron Mackey and produced by Matt Frederick and Alex Williams in partnership with How Stuff Works, with research by Carl Nellis and original music by Chad Lawson. Learn more about our contributing historians further reading material, resource archive and links to our other shows at History Unobscured dot com. Until next time, Thanks for listening,