The Thing About Witch Hunts Podcast

The Thing About Witch Hunts Podcast Learn with us weekly: witch-hunts, witch trials, & harmful practices related to accusations of witchcraft. youtube.com/

From the Connecticut & Salem Witch Trials to the ramifications of modern-day witchcraft accusations, we podcast it all.

09/27/2026

Mary Green of The Salem Witch Trials

In the summer of 1692, Mary Green of Haverhill, the wife of a weaver named Peter Green, was arrested for witchcraft. The warrant, dated July 28, charged her with afflicting Timothy Swan, Mary Walcott, and Ann Putnam. She was confined in the jail at Ipswich.

She did not stay there quietly. She escaped on August 2 and again on August 23, and both times she was recaptured. John Shepard of Rowley was charged with helping convey her out of the jail.

Shepard paid for his loyalty. In September, he confessed to helping convey her out of the jail, and the court fined him 30 pounds plus costs. On his confession and petition, the court suspended 25 pounds of the fine but ordered him held until he paid the remaining 5 pounds and costs.

Mary Green survived. In the months that followed, she joined other imprisoned women in petitioning for release on bail, and a bond for her release was posted by Peter Green and James Sanders on December 16, 1692.

Her story is one of many escapes and evasions during the Salem witch trials.

What do you think about these acts of resistance ?

Sources:
Arrest warrant and court judgment, Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive, University of Virginia: https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/n64.html
Bond for Mary Green, December 16, 1692, Massachusetts Archives via the University of Virginia: https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/archives/MA135/55.html
Escapes and petition for release, University of Michigan: https://news.umich.edu/?p=1939

Illustration: "Witchcraft at Salem Village," artist unidentified, in William A. Crafts, Pioneers in the Settlement of America (1876)

09/25/2026

Short overview of the 1692–1693 Salem Witch Trials

What It Was:Beginning in January 1692, the Salem Witch Trials became the largest and most infamous witch panic in American history. Massachusetts had already hanged 5 woman over a span of about 50 years.

How It Began: The crisis started in the home of Salem Village minister Samuel Parris when his 9-year-old daughter, Betty, and 11-year-old niece, Abigail Williams, began displaying afflictions. Records describe the ordeal. A local doctor soon declared the girls to be “under an evil hand”, a diagnosis used for sicknesses. In fact, Goody Glover had just been hanged in Boston in 1689 for afflicting the Goodwin Children.

The Human Toll: At least 156 people were formally accused across 25 different communities. The panic resulted in at least 25 deaths: 19 innocent victims were hanged. Giles Corey was pressed to death under heavy stones for refusing to stand trial. At least 5 people died in harsh jail conditions, including an infant.

Invisible Evidence: Courts relied heavily on “spectral evidence"-unverifiable claims by accusers that an alleged witch's “spirit” or shape was attacking them and forcing them to serve the devil. The trials followed a judicial process that included the “touch test” as evidence.

The Real Causes:This witch-hunt wasn't caused by a single factor like bad bread or simple "hysteria". Instead, primary sources prove it was driven by a pressure cooker of societal stressors: war trauma, economic crisis, smallpox epidemics, political instability, and deep religious anxieties like the fear of a diabolical community witch takeover.

09/24/2026

In 1692, Tituba, Mary Black, and Candy were accused of witchcraft and imprisoned during the Salem witch trials. Each woman was enslaved: Tituba in the household of Reverend Samuel Parris, Mary Black by Lieutenant Nathaniel Putnam, and Candy by Margaret Hawkes.

Tituba was the first person to confess in the Salem proceedings, under INTENSE interrogation. First she said she loved the girls.
In court, Candy insisted she had never been a witch in her homeland or in Barbados.

Mary sat in jail with many other arrested community members

Their words survive only through records kept by the men who held power over them.

Today we remember them by name.

Learn more at endwitchhunts.org

09/22/2026

Published on behalf of Leo Igwe, Director of Advocacy for Alleged Witches. Advocacy for Alleged Witches (AfAW) urges…

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