Category: Q&A

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A student interview with Professor Emerson W. Baker on the triumph and tragedy of the 1692 Salem witch trials as part of the 2019 National History Day contest. (Missed Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, or Part 5?)

Kayleigh: Why aren’t the accused and condemned Salem witch trial victims considered martyrs?

Dr. Baker: I do see that term martyr thrown around from time to time; I sometimes use that term. I really think they were. I’m not really a religious historian but martyrs are people who willingly accept their fate—usually a gruesome, horrible fate—in the name of maintaining their religious beliefs. They refuse to yield. Let me put it this way. I don’t think anyone gets into the martyr business. It’s not a good career move. I don’t think anyone sets out to become a martyr to make a name for themselves. But they do it because they are such devout believers in their faith that they are willing to die for it rather than in any way malign or give up that faith or lessen it.

Certainly, it seems to me that by the late summer of 1692, it’s becoming increasingly clear that if you confess, you may not save your life but you will at least prolong it. Having said this, I know my friend Margo Burns disagrees with this to some degree. She’d be right in saying, “Tad, we don’t know if Governor Phips had let the Court of Oyer and Terminer meet in November if it would have convicted and sentenced to death even more of the folks who confessed.” In January they did, in fact, start convicting people who had confessed in the September meeting of the court. I think she’s right there. But having said that, by the summer of 1692, if you noticed the people who had gone to trial, those who had pled “not guilty” had a very quick trial and sentence and execution.

If you looked at those who said they were a witch, like Tituba and Abigail Hobbs, months after their confessions they were still alive. So families were starting to beg people to just confess. At the time, did they actually think that they would ultimately be spared? Maybe not. But if you wanted to stick to your strong Christian convictions, that was a real quick path to death in 1692. If you were willing to lie—to put a stain on your soul and your family for eternity—and say that you were a witch, you would still be living, at least for a while. I think that’s a critical thing to understand that went on in Salem, that many people took that way out.

So to me, these victims really are martyrs. Why are they not considered that today? I think it’s a good question; I never really had that question posed to me. I’m still thinking about it. A couple of things. One is that people today don’t really understand what really happened in 1692, they don’t actually understand who was executed and why, and who was not. Whenever I give a talk and I say over a third of the people who were accused confessed and died, people are shocked by it. They just don’t know that. I think part of the issue is just a lack of awareness.

Two, if you think about it, we’re such a secular society today that we really don’t have martyrs. And also, in the Puritan faith, at the time when these people might have been considered martyrs in the 17th century, certainly the church and the authorities didn’t think them to be martyrs because they had been the ones who put them to death. And at the time when you want to consider people that were martyrs in the 19th and 20th centuries. I think we have a much more secular society, so I think that explains it. So, a lack of understanding and also the nature of our society today.

Kayleigh: Salem is most famous for the 1692 witch trials and people still talk about that history, especially during October. Nowadays, there are witch hunts, like in Africa. Why don’t people seem to care that it’s still happening? Or don’t do anything about it? It’s rarely in the news at all.

Dr. Baker: You see a story show up once every year or so. To me, part of it goes back to the fact that every society has its witchcraft. We no longer accuse people of being witches but there are still cases of mob violence today. They are declining. But I think as far as trying to put a stop to it, there are actually some international efforts that are underway between some of the humanitarian relief organizations that are trying to work to address some of these concerns.

But as to why they are not more well known? I think part of it is that witchcraft persecutions we have today in places like Africa are not state-sanctioned trials and executions. This is essentially mob violence. What you’re talking about here, well, there’s no official thing you can do to intervene. Instead what’s really called for is education. I’ve tried to explain to people the reason why we’re having crop failures is because of global weather patterns and it’s not one poor person in town you think is cursing the fields. It’s sort of an insidious situation.

How do you stop hate crimes? How do we stop the mass shootings in the schools? And in the churches? You can’t legislate that. No amount of aid or money will necessarily solve those problems. We have some of these problems in our country and there’s no easy answer, except to solve these problems through education. 

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Emerson (“Tad”) W. Baker is a historian and professor at Salem State University and the author of A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Witch Trials and the American Experience (2014), The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft & Conflict in Early New England (2007), and The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651-1695 (1998).

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A student interview with Professor Emerson W. Baker on the triumph and tragedy of the 1692 Salem witch trials as part of the 2019 National History Day contest. (Missed Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, or Part 4?)

Kayleigh: Are there any other lessons from the Salem witch trials that people of today should learn?

Dr. Baker: Any other lessons of the trials? Wow. That’s clearly like the big question.

If we can think before we rush to judgment, if we could try to put ourselves in other people’s shoes rather than scapegoating them, it would be nice. The other thing is how our society—well pretty much every society throughout history—has always considered itself to be superior to everyone who lived before. Even in the up-to-date, modern society of 1692 I’m sure they felt the same way: that previous generations were nowhere near as smart or as sophisticated or technologically savvy or you name it. We tend to put down previous generations and assume they were more stupid than we were.

You see it all the time on TV, for example. One of my least favorite shows on television is Ancient Aliens. It’s a show on the History Channel where they look at things from the ancient world that don’t make sense or that we don’t understand. For example, we don’t understand how they built the great pyramids. We don’t understand how they built things to such exacting standards in prehistoric times only using stone tools.

So if we don’t understand it, for some people the answer can’t be that these people had ancient wisdom and knowledge that we are not smart enough to figure out. In some ways, they were our superiors. As a historian, I can accept that and say, “wow, there’s a lot we could probably learn here.” But if you look at a show like Ancient Aliens, the basic premise is people long ago were clearly stupid and inferior compared to us. So if they were able to do things that we cannot explain—like building the great pyramids—the logical answer is that they had help from ancient aliens who flew in from outer space to do these things for them.

Every time I give a talk about the Salem witch trials, someone always says, “How can they be so superstitious?” Well, they weren’t superstitious, they were God-fearing Christians and the Devil was real. “How could they be so foolish and superstitious, so ignorant to execute all these people for witchcraft?” My point is: They weren’t foolish, they weren’t superstitious. They thought they were doing what needed to be done according to the knowledge of the day to protect the individuals and their society. They thought people who were believed to be witches were in league with Satan, and through Satan were using his black power to destroy the earth.

Every society has challenges. People looking back at history are going to judge them and say, “wow they were really stupid. Why did they do it this way? Why wasn’t it so obvious to them that the answer was something else?” If only we could try to be more like a just society, and try to eliminate hatred and discrimination and realize that we don’t have all the answers. We should try to do the best we can under the circumstances, and not judge our fellow people, nor judge people in the past unless we really try to understand their lives.

Emerson (“Tad”) W. Baker is a historian and professor at Salem State University and the author of A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Witch Trials and the American Experience (2014), The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft & Conflict in Early New England (2007), and The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651-1695 (1998).

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Cotton Mather wrote the only government-approved book about the Salem witch trials.

A student interview with Professor Emerson W. Baker on the triumph and tragedy of the 1692 Salem witch trials as part of the 2019 National History Day contest. (Missed Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3?)

Kayleigh: As you said in your book, A Storm of Witchcraft, Governor William Phips created one of the first large-scale government coverups in American history by curbing free speech [about the Salem witch trials]. This happened again, during World War I, etc. Why do you think the government seems to repeat the same problems over and over again? Is it because they don’t learn from history or they forget about the past?

Dr. Baker: I don’t really think history repeats itself but I do think sometimes it burps itself back up. Part of it is that most politicians are not good historians. I also think too that unfortunately, it’s sort of a self-preservation reaction to try to cover something up. It’s an instinctive thing to muzzle the press, to quiet dissent. It’s weird because on the one hand, you know, it’s such an American thing to have dissent and to have freedom of speech and open opinion. It’s also part of a self-preservation mode to try to quash that, to control that.

Frankly, you can see that today in this whole bit about fake news. The president can’t control free speech, he can’t issue a public speech ban the way William Phips did, but what he can do as much as possible is to control the media by saying they are speaking falsehoods. To me, it’s the same kind of process. What’s interesting to me—and this is where Salem is so fascinating—is that every generation has that version, that incident of Salem: the Red Scare, McCarthyism, or earlier on, the treatment of Loyalists, or the issue of slavery. Every generation has its political fight where one group or multiple groups try to restrict the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, of other groups, for political ends. Ultimately, unfortunately, it almost seems to be part of human nature and it’s something we have to be constantly on guard for and to fight against.

At the end of my previous book, The Devil of Great Island, which is another case of witchcraft in New Hampshire in the 1680s, I say, unfortunately, as long as we have hatred and prejudices and racism and bigotry and persecution and scapegoating, we’re going to have some form of witchcraft. And we’re also going to have some kind of effort to restrict people’s freedoms. It’s not the most optimistic, uplifting note. But to me, it’s why studying this stuff is so important because it rings true today and it alerts us to the dangers of any efforts to restrict a free society.

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Emerson (“Tad”) W. Baker is a historian and professor at Salem State University and the author of A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Witch Trials and the American Experience (2014), The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft & Conflict in Early New England (2007), and The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651-1695 (1998).

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Proctor's Ledge

A student interview with Professor Emerson W. Baker on the triumph and tragedy of the 1692 Salem witch trials as part of the 2019 National History Day contest. (Missed Part 1or Part 2?)

Kayleigh: In Salem, they treat history like it’s more of a show than actual history. The museums are kind of terrible. Why do you think that is? Is it because they think people will be more interested in the drama than the truth?

Dr. Baker: I think part of the problem is that Salem has become a dark-tourism community, a witch-trials-tourism community. A large part of Salem’s economy depends on tourists, depends on people coming here to visit the sites associated with the witch trials. And it’s problematic. We have the 1692 deaths of 19 innocent people and we have the people who are promoting dark tourism. I call it the vampire-fangs-and-fried-dough phenomenon. People come here during Haunted Happenings and find this carnival-like atmosphere.

I think the problem is knowledge. One reason I started teaching about Salem witch trials and writing my book was that if you tell people the story, it gives them great pause about what they are doing in Salem. But the other problem is that people are doing this for a living. Most of the museums in Salem that make their money off of witchcraft tourism are not really museums. By definition, museums are nonprofit organizations. And these are all for-profit businesses, and, as you point out by your question, many of these places make their money promoting the spectacular, the morbid, the lurid, rather than trying to tell the story as we historians would like to have it told.

When they dedicated the memorial at Proctor’s Ledge* in July 2017, I was honored to be one of the few people who was asked to say a few words. What I said then was that I was thrilled to see Salem’s reaction when we came forward and told the mayor and her staff that we had confirmed the execution site. Frankly, when we did that I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was thinking, how on earth are we going to raise the money for a memorial? You know, we were just a small group of folks. Immediately, at that first meeting, the mayor and her aide simply said, “thank you for doing this. This is now our duty, our responsibility to help ensure that this site has been properly memorialized and is never forgotten again.” And the city took it upon itself immediately to build a memorial there.

To me, it was something wonderful that the city was willing to confront its past. So when I got to speak at the dedication, I mentioned this and the way the community came together to build this memorial. To me, I hoped it signaled a new beginning for Salem and how it treats the witch trials.

I would like to see in the future less celebration and more communion, dedication, and thought about the events of 1692, rather than celebration and the carnival-like atmosphere. Realistically, we’ll never get rid of that carnival-like element. I think we need more reflection and less celebration. I guess I am mildly optimistic that that can happen.

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*Emerson Baker and the Gallows Hill Team spent five years researching data and analyzing topography to pinpoint the site where 19 victims of the 1692 witch hunt were executed. In 2017, a memorial was dedicated at the location.

Emerson (“Tad”) W. Baker is a historian and professor at Salem State University and the author of A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Witch Trials and the American Experience (2014), The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft & Conflict in Early New England (2007), and The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651-1695 (1998).

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A student interview with Professor Emerson W. Baker on the triumph and tragedy of the 1692 Salem witch trials as part of the 2019 National History Day contest. (Missed Part 1?)

Kayleigh: Danvers, Massachusetts, is almost disassociated with the 1692 Salem witch trials. Of course, Danvers has its memorial but it’s kind of out of place and hidden. Do you think it’s because of the way, like you said earlier, “Gallows Hill cast a large and dark shadow on Salem”?

Dr. Baker: I think Danvers has very deliberately chosen a separate path. Richard Trask, the town archivist of Danvers, has posted on the Danvers Archival Center website various articles and materials. In one he has written about how Danvers became a town. I actually quote it in my book, A Storm of Witchcraft. He talks about the whole process of when Danvers finally was allowed to split off from Salem in 1752. Many historians, like [Paul] Boyer and [Stephen] Nissenbaum, believe—and I would agree too—one of the triggers that caused the Salem witch trials was the inability to split off from Salem in 1692. Ironically, it took another 60 years, until 1752, before the Salem Villagers were allowed to become a separate town, for a number of political reasons. Trask’s article traces that evolution to when the town is named Danvers after an English nobleman, which was a common practice back then. Trask thinks that the town was perfectly happy with that, that they enjoyed the anonymity of no longer being part of Salem.

I think you’re right, part of it is that shame, that humiliation, but Danvers also tried to much more normalize the relationship [to its 1692 past] over the years. Remember, it was Danvers that was the first community that had a memorial [in 1885]. Then they added onto it in 1892. To me what’s really fascinating is: Where was that memorial placed? It’s placed at the Rebecca Nurse farm. When the memorial was placed there, the farm had long been occupied by members of the Putnam family. Have you been to the Rebecca Nurse farm?

Kayleigh: Yes, I have. A couple of years ago.

Dr. Baker: If you go down to the cemetery there, you’ll notice that there are probably more Putnams buried there than Nurses. For me, the fascinating piece is that the Putnams are actually related to the Nurses.* Nowadays this is one big, happy family. What’s neat to me, you know, is that the Putnam family was willing to let the Nurse Family Association erect this memorial to the [witch trials] past in their family cemetery that they also shared with the Nurses.

I think Danvers has always tried early on to atone for what happened in 1692. To me, the very different treatment of the tercentenary is a good example of how Danvers deals with these things. They wanted to build a memorial. But they were much more low-key, they didn’t get [Holocaust survivor and author] Elie Wiesel to dedicate it or stuff like that. If you’ve seen the memorial, it’s right there by the elementary school, it’s across the street from the site of the 1692 meeting house, it’s sitting there amongst the ballfields and elementary school. It’s part of this residential community and it just seems to blend in very nicely.

The other thing Danvers did in 1992, and you see this at the Nurse cemetery, they reburied what they think are [witch trials victim] George Jacobs’ remains. The way they did this was so Danvers. Salem, you know, they unveil this memorial, they have Elie Wiesel, they have all these bells and whistles. Danvers essentially had this private committal service for George Jacobs. They went to great lengths to be historically accurate with this. They built—well, a fellow who is a good carpenter built—a replica of a 17th-century coffin to put the bones in, they did that replica 17th-century gravestone, and recreated a committal service like you would have had in 1692—and they basically did it as a private ceremony. I think there was one reporter they allowed to be there. But there weren’t all these press releases, “Come watch us bury George Jacobs!” So, to me, it was much more an acknowledgment of the past and the wrong, but with absolutely no efforts to commercialize it.

Since 1892, at least, Salem has had this complex relationship. On the one hand, people want to make good on past sins and say “let these things never happen again.” On the other hand, they’re saying, “Would you like to take a tour of haunted Salem for $30?”

Danvers is not like that, it has never been like that. They’ve never tried to commercialize it in any way or draw any publicity to the community. The Danversites are not interested in doing that. They take quiet, humble acts to try to do penance for the events of 1692.

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*In 1692, some of the Putnam family, most notably Ann Putnam Jr. (1679-1716), accused 70-year-old Rebecca Nurse of being a witch. She was hanged on 19 July 1692. A generation or two later, the families intermarried.

Emerson (“Tad”) W. Baker is a historian and professor at Salem State University and the author of A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Witch Trials and the American Experience (2014), The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft & Conflict in Early New England (2007), and The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651-1695 (1998).

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Every year, more half a million high school students participate in the National History Day contest. In 2019, the theme was Triumph & Tragedy in History. Besides a multimedia website based on witch hunts, Kayleigh interviewed Emerson (“Tad”) Baker, historian and professor at Salem State University. Professor Baker is the author of A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Witch Trials and the American Experience (2014), The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft & Conflict in Early New England (2007), and The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651-1695 (1998). He also was a member of the Gallows Hill Project Team that verified the 1692 site where 19 people were hanged during the Salem witch trials.

Kayleigh: My project is following the history of witchcraft and showing this year’s theme of triumph and tragedy, of how the horrible deaths and torture that the accused went through caused people to change how they think about the government and how they treat trials. I know that in your book, A Storm of Witchcraft, you talk about the current significance of the trials. I was wondering how you think Salem has become a place where modern-day witches want to live when in history witches had been hunted and killed there.

Dr. Baker: Well, as I like to say, Gallows Hill has cast a large and dark shadow on Salem since 1692. And I really think that has been a point of shame and humiliation and reflection on people in Salem ever since. Note that it took until the 300th anniversary for the city to even build a memorial to acknowledge that. And that there were, as I talk about in the book, efforts before that. They tried at the 200th anniversary and there just didn’t seem to be the will in the community to face it. There really was an effort I think to really try to forget—collective amnesia.

Look at the whole side of the executions where people knew, well into the 18th century, the Proctor family owned the land, surely they knew where the executions took place, and yet somehow by the 19th century the community somehow managed to collectively “forget.” [If you were sitting here with me, you’d see I was putting quotes around the word “forget.”] And so it was a long sort of sore spot for the community, and as I point out in the book, Salem really was publicly ridiculed for it as early as 1697 in the first book where they do that.

So, back to your question: How does that get Salem to be a welcoming place? It is interesting. I was on a panel discussion about this subject a few years ago. Essentially, you hear about some of the people who come to Salem, for example, a fellow who had several murder sentences overturned—a very famous case—he was released from prison after a wrongful conviction after he served many years in jail. He and his wife moved to Salem. When asked why, his response was that the people in Salem understand how dangerous, how damaging it is to pre-judge people, to rush to judgment. He said it’s sort of like letting people be and prove themselves on their merits. In essence, they felt that Salem was a very welcoming place, that no one was making any assumptions about them or their past. They said that Salem had made that mistake before and the people here now wanted to be a more open and welcoming community, where people, regardless of who they are—their background, their faith, anything—that they would be welcome in Salem.

I get that sense here in the people of Salem overall that people want to try to make amends. The one way that you can do that is to be an open and caring community where everyone—immigrants from all over the world, people of whatever faith—can be comfortable and feel at home in Salem.

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J.W. Ocker surrounded by witches in Salem

An award-winning macabre travel author, J.W. Ocker wrote A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts.

WitchesMassBay: In 2015, you spent the month of October in Salem. If you could distill one moment in time that captures your month-long adventure in a nutshell, what would it be?

J.W. Ocker: That’s a real soul-searcher, that one. I’m tempted to go small, like sitting in the living room of the mid-19th century house I was renting and watching Halloween masks file by outside my window. Or big, like standing out on the common on Halloween watching a massive witch’s circle being cast while hordes of trick-or-treaters flowed by. But really, I think it was my late-night weeknight walks in the city. Most of the crowds were gone. You could hear the leaves scratch across the cobblestones. See tour groups from afar, each member holding a candle as they walked. I would duck into bars decorated for Halloween and have an autumn-themed cocktail or two and then head back out into the night, walking under the dark silhouette of the House of the Seven Gables, past the sparkly blackness of Salem Harbor, the spookiness of the Old Burial Ground, through the wisps of fake fog off the Haunted Neighborhood, my way lighted by the Halloween decorations glowing in every window. At that time of night in October, you can really feel the weight of the city’s history and the strangeness of its present.

WitchesMassBay: What are your favorite haunts in Massachusetts Bay?

J.W. Ocker: Let’s see, sticking as close to the coast as I can and leaving out Salem and Boston, it would be: The Edward Gorey House in Yarmouth Port, Hammond Castle in Gloucester, and Dogtown in Cape Ann. The house of a macabre artist, the castle of a wealthy eccentric, and a preachy ghost town. It’s a cool place, this Massachusetts Bay.

WitchesMassBay: In your book, you explain the dichotomy between the lovers and the haters of anything witchy in Salem. How can Salemites reconcile the past and embrace the future?

J.W. Ocker: Honestly, I’m not sure if they can. And I’m also not sure that I want them to. That friction between past and present, between art and kitsch, between the different types of tourism—all of it keeps this city interesting and energetic and oddball. Gives it a soul. Keeps it from being any other city. And everybody has something to prove there, whether it’s the witches or the historians or the art museum or the residents or the tour guides or the churches. That leads to some bad moments, sure, but in the end leads to a thriving, ever-changing, continually fascinating city character. It’s like people. Show me somebody who has figured him- or herself out and I will show you a boring person.

J.W. Ocker writes the Odd Things I’ve Seen (or OTIS for short) blog that documents his adventures. Besides A Season with the Witch, his books include the 2015 Edgar Award-winning Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allen Poe, The New England Grimpendium: A Guide to Ghastly and Macabre Sites, and (yes!) even spooky kids’ books.

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ergot fungus on rye

A Q&A with Margo Burns, associate editor and project manager of Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt and expert featured on the Who Do You Think You Are? TV series.

WitchesMassBay: What is the premise behind the idea that ergot caused the Salem witch hunts?

Margo Burns: The initial proposition of this idea came from an observation that the symptoms of the accusing girls in Salem Village appeared to resemble the physical and hallucinogenic symptoms of convulsive ergotism. Ergot is a toxic fungus that can grow on rye grain used to make bread in the 17th century, and it has a chemical similarity to LSD, a known hallucinogen. The connection does not explain why the adults in the community—parents, clergy, judges—interpreted such reported symptoms as being caused by bewitchment.

WitchesMassBay: Some notable people, including accused witch John Proctor, believed the core group of afflicted accusers were lying and pretending their illnesses. In 1692, would people have had an understanding that ergot (or contaminated food) caused hallucinations and physical reactions?

Margo Burns: Doctors and “chirurgeons” were often called for help when someone fell ill mysteriously, and ministers were often asked to come pray for the patients to recover with the help of God. A popular witch-finding guide of the period by Richard Bernard gives a list of examples of how doctors were able to diagnose what may have appeared to be bewitchment instead of known physical ailments, including one case that was as simple as the patient having worms, and who got better after “voiding” them. Blood-letting, laxatives, emetics, and diuretics were common treatments as a result of their understanding of how the four “humours” worked in the body. Some of their cures were actually right on the money. They knew about the dangers of spoiled food and many other things, which, frankly, were more common then than now.

WitchesMassBay: Today, the debate on ergot continues, with scientists and witch-hunt historians on both sides. Why is this such a popular theory?

Margo Burns: It is not technically a theory, but a hypothesis, a guess. It would be a theory if there were solid evidence to support it, but it is circumstantial at best. Both historians and medical professionals have found that the evidence offered contains cherry-picked data and ignores known exculpatory evidence. There doesn’t seem to be a debate about that, even though it is often portrayed as such in the popular media, because who doesn’t like experts disagreeing? Except that they don’t. If there’s debate, it is more like debating whether the moon landing was real or not: There will always be someone who believes it was faked, no matter what is presented to them as evidence.  Also, many people who hold this explanation as valid often do so because it positions the people of the 17th century as ignorant and superstitious while we in the 21st century are superior in our scientific understanding. Single-bullet solutions for complicated events are also reassuring, especially if it feels like a secret has been revealed, and we’re in on it.

Ergot as the toxic culprit behind the accusers’ symptoms was not necessarily what engaged people about this idea in the mid-1970s when first posited: It was that ergot was chemically and symptomatically similar to LSD.

WitchesMassBay: Any other theories you would like to debunk?

Margo Burns: It is not really about debunking as it is understanding that every critical approach to historical material is actually a filter through which the facts are perceived—some coming into focus and others blurring into the background, depending on the person’s interests and world-view, often with some creative embellishment to complete a popular trope of the time period.

Charles Wentworth Upham, an antiquarian from Salem writing during the mid-18th century, portrayed Tituba, known to be a slave from Barbados, as a Civil War-era stereotype of a voodoo-practicing Black African Mammy from the South, even though Tituba was consistently described in the primary sources as being an Indian. From this, he fabricated the story that the accusing girls had been learning magic from her and went dancing in the woods—none of which is in any of the primary sources—to explain the girls’ behavior. Because this story is vivid and shocking, it comes across as plausible and is generally accepted as true, even now and even though it is not supported by any primary sources.

Arthur Miller repeated the story about the girls dancing in the woods in his play, The Crucible, in the 1950s. Miller was swept up personally in Senator McCarthy’s anti-Communist activities, and the story of public trials based on false accusations condemning innocent people in Salem resonated for him. The Crucible is an extremely popular play, and his craftsmanship so superb that audiences start believing that the story and characters are based more closely on the real events and people than they are. His use of names of real people for his characters further blurs the line. The play is so compelling, in fact, that over the years in discussing the origins of his play, Miller himself began to believe that some of the fictive things he wrote were in the primary sources he had read, even though he hadn’t.

Margo Burns was project manager for Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, the most complete compendium of the trial documents.

Margo recorded two lectures on ergot—and both of them are different:

Ergot – What a long strange trip it has been -The Moldy Bread Myth by Margo Burns (Witch House, 2018)

The Salem Witchcraft Trials and Ergot, the “Moldy Bread” Hypothesis by Margo Burns (History Camp 2018)

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Tom in front of Judge John Hathorne’s grave

Thomas O’Brien Vallor has been sharing his knowledge of the 1692 witch hunts with countless tourists for the last 15 years. Unlike ghost tours and campy attractions, Tom tells the Salem story in a way that is respectful, inclusive, and educational. And his perspective is just a little different from your average tour guide.

WitchesMassBay: With so many tours in Salem, what makes your tour different?

Thomas O’Brien Vallor: My tour is unique in that I talk about witch-hunt history from a practicing witch‘s perspective and witchcraft from a historian’s perspective. Magic is a cultural phenomenon that exists in all societies and its influence on the Salem witch trials is very interesting.

WitchesMassBay: How would you define a modern-day witch compared to what people were accused of in 1692?

Thomas O’Brien Vallor: To put it simply, a witch today is someone who practices magic; the people of 1692 were not practicing magic. Of course, there‘s a bit more nuance to it than that.

WitchesMassBay: Tourists flock to Salem looking for telltale signs of the witch hunts, but very little physically remains that has ties to 1692. Do you have any suggestions of where to go or what to do next (after taking your tour, of course!)?

Thomas O’Brien Vallor: Because I feel such a strong connection to history, I think the important sites in Salem still hold the most power even if today they’ve been replaced by office buildings or intersections. I think that if I were a tourist visiting Salem, I really would just like to walk around the city and soak everything in.

WitchesMassBay: What’s something that tourists repeatedly ask you?

Thomas O’Brien Vallor: One common question we get is: “Where were the witches burned?” They weren’t witches and they weren’t burned. It’s frustrating that people still believe that.

WitchesMassBay: Even though people on your tour sign up for a witch walk, do some tourists expect something else?

Thomas O’Brien Vallor: What‘s annoying is when people think witchcraft is all hocus pocus and magic tricks and then expect me to perform for them. If I‘m teaching someone about witchcraft, sometimes all they want to do is wind me up like a toy and watch me do tricks.

WitchesMassBay: What’s your experience been like as a tour guide?

Thomas O’Brien Vallor: I can‘t even begin to get into all the ways that being a part of the magic of Salem has changed my life for the better. Just being able to help educate people has given me a fulfilling and happy life at such a young age, especially when I see so many people around me searching for meaning in their lives.

Updated 29 May 2019 after Tom started his own Satanic Salem Walking Tours, which regularly receive great reviews at TripAdvisor.

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Jean M. Roberts recently published Weave a Web of Witchcraft, the story of Hugh and Mary Parsons of Springfield, Massachusetts, who were tried for witchcraft in 1651. Below, we discuss the writer’s craft, the research involved, and how the community reacted to charges against this married couple. 

WitchesMassBay: Why did you decide to write the story about Hugh and Mary Parsons?

Jeanie Roberts: The road to this book was long and twisty! Several years ago, I was doing genealogy research on an ancestor, William Sanderson, who lived in Watertown, Massachusetts. At the time I thought his father might be a man by the name of Edward Sanderson. While digging for information I uncovered a nasty skeleton in the proverbial closet. Edward Sanderson had raped Ruth, the eight-year-old daughter of Hugh Parsons, also of Watertown. This Hugh has been, over the years, confused with the Hugh Parsons accused of witchcraft in Springfield. I remember thinking, “Wow, how could this poor man have had such a wretched life?” And I thought it would make a great book. Only after I began to seriously research Hugh and his wife Mary Parsons did I realize that there were two separate men, but by then I was hooked on the witchcraft story.

WitchesMassBay: How do you as an author put yourself into a 17th-century mindset to tell their story?

Jeanie Roberts: I fell in love with history as a young woman. Most of the books I read are nonfiction history books. When I began doing genealogy, I was surprised, happily, to find that I have dozens of Puritan ancestors. I was also somewhat shocked to find that among my ancestors were accused witch Mary Bradbury and many accusers. Naturally, I had to read everything I could about the Salem witch trials. My most recent read was The Witches: Suspicion, Betrayal, and Hysteria in 1692 by Stacy Schiff, which I highly recommend.

For me, genealogy is not just about names and dates, it’s about who these people were, what were they like, how did they live, what did they believe. So, I began reading everything I could about them. Even before I decided to write this book, I was reading resource books. One of my favorites is Albion’s Seed by David Hackett Fisher. I even bought a book on how they constructed their houses. One of my favorite reads is 17th century probate files, including wills and their inventories. I love to see what they owned, how their houses were furnished, what small creature comforts they possessed. Other books that I found extremely insightful were Goodwives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Governing the Tongue by Jane Kamensky.

My husband indulges me in my research and a few years ago we went on a research vacation through Massachusetts and New Hampshire, looking at first-period houses to get a better idea of what they were like. We even toured the Macy-Colby House in Amesbury, where my ancestor Anthony Colby lived.

When I laid out the outline for the book, I was determined to give a fairly accurate representation of life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. From making soap to butchering a pig to putting supper on the table, I hope I have captured the essence of life in Springfield and that the reader feels immersed in the world of Hugh and Mary.

WitchesMassBay: Do you think of the Parsons’ witchcraft accusations as an isolated incident—or similar to earlier cases in Massachusetts Bay and the Connecticut colonies? 

Jeanie Roberts: The accusation against Hugh came shortly after a Wethersfield, Connecticut, couple—John and Joan Carrington—were accused of witchcraft. Was this the impetus for his accusers? I think that these people really believed that the devil lurked behind every tree and that witches were very real. Mary Beth Norton raises this point in her excellent book, In the Devil’s Snare.

These people were also very contentious and quick to take each other to court. I believe that jealousy, resentment, and grudges had much to do with the accusations. Hugh was not a poor man. Economically, he was probably in the middle of the pack. He had a brickmaking skill that was in demand. He seems to have taken advantage of his monopoly and maybe charged more than others liked. It may be that his accusers were seeking revenge. Anne Rinaldi makes this point in her fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials, A Break with Charity.

In 1656, a second Mary Parsons—married to Joseph Parsons of Northampton (relationship to Hugh unknown)—was also the victim of witchcraft gossip. Her husband sued for slander and won. However, her accuser later made a formal charge against Mary in 1674 and she was taken to Boston for trial. Thankfully, she was acquitted. It is suggested that economic jealousy played a part in that case.

WitchesMassBay: Why do you think the Springfield community supported and corroborated the witchcraft claims against the Parsons, knowing that it could lead to their deaths? 

Jeanie Roberts: This is a good question. I think psychologists and psychiatrists would love to have the answer. I believe that mob mentality plays a huge role in all the trials that involved multiple accusers. It’s easier to convince yourself that you bear little responsibility for their deaths if burden is spread among many.

I think it’s interesting that accusations against Hugh began in the depths of winter when there was less to occupy the hands and minds of his neighbors. They had more time to stew about past grievances and recall slights and odd statements.

WitchesMassBay: With a husband and a wife accused as witches, were they treated differently by their neighbors and the courts based on their gender?

Jeanie Roberts: Augh. I don’t want to give the plot away for those who don’t know the whole tale. I’ll try to skirt around the story. Hugh, once accused, was placed under house arrest at the home of the town constable. The depositions in his case were dragged out over several months. From their testimony, it would seem that they were not frightened of him even after the testimony began. The constable’s wife asked him to help her with a task down in the cellar. Clearly, she did not fear him. Were they giving him the benefit of the doubt? It’s hard to tell.

Mary was on the receiving end of her friends and neighbors’ sympathy until she went off the rails, so to speak. She was dealt with rather rapidly after that. That’s all I can say without spoiling the plot!

In Jeanie’s book, Weave a Web of Witchcraft, you’ll even find testimony by my ancestor, Griffith Jones, and his curious story about disappearing knives.