Salem Witch Trials: The Dark Forces That Divided a Town

If you know anything about the Salem Witch Trials, the name Giles Corey might ring a bell. Of the 20 people who were executed, he's the only one who wasn't hanged on Gallow's Hill. Instead, he was pressed to death under a pile of large stones. At 1692, Giles has been accused of witchcraft by one of the town's afflicted girls. When he's formally charged, he refuses to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty, so his trial can't move forward. He's forced to lie down on a plank of wood as officials stack more and more rocks on top of him. It's a medieval torture method to make him bend to their will, but all Giles will say is more weight. Now, Giles is 81, and I always pictured him as a kindly old guy. That's often how he's portrayed in modern media. Turns out he'd once been tried for beating an indentured servant to death. So, greatest guy in town, probably not, but I think we can safely say he wasn't a witch. I had also assumed his refusal to respond to the charges was born out of pride. Like, he didn't want to acknowledge the absurdity that was taking over Salem, but that's not entirely true either. Giles Corey knew he would die no matter what, so by not entering a plea, he was actually preserving his land. This way, his home, his entire estate, would go to his children. If he had been convicted, and all would have been up for grabs, because Giles knew there really were sinister forces at work in Salem, but they weren't witches or the devil. They were his petty, vengeful, and greedy neighbors. Neighbors who would allow innocent folks to die if it benefited them, and they were supported by powerful men who were too inexperienced, too foolish, or too scared to stop them. Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast on Carter Roy. New episodes come out every Wednesday. We'd love to hear from you, so if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up, and give us your thoughts, or check us out on Instagram at the ConspiracyPod. Stay with us. 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Four out of five employers who post on Zip Recruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/theory. That ziprecruiter.com/theory. Meet your match on Zip Recruiter. You may have heard this story about how the Salem Witch Trials all began. In the winter of 1692, a group of girls gathers in secret. One of them taps an egg on the edge of a glass, cracks it open, and drops the whites into water. She watches as the egg spiders out, taking on some ghostly form inside the liquid. It's a type of fortune telling. The idea is an image will appear hinting at what her future holds. A child, a husband, a home, it's just a game. A bit of innocent fun, but the girls also know they have to keep this a secret. In the devoutly Puritan Salem Village where they live, this kind of tomfoolery is expressly forbidden. They may as well send Satan a personal invitation to come to Salem. And then one of the girls cracks an egg and sees an image of a coffin. Soon after, she and eventually her friends, are racked by painful fits. They scream and they growl as their bodies contort. And their parents have no idea what to make of it. They call upon doctor after doctor, but no one can find a medical cause, which leaves only one answer. The girls are being tormented spiritually by witches. The devil has answered the girls call. Okay, so that's how the story of Salem usually begins. But there's reason to believe it's not even true. Historian Mary Beth Norton points out there are no contemporaneous reports about the fortune telling going down that way. Even if it did, the timeline isn't clear. We don't know for sure that it happened right before the girls came down with their affliction. It really seems like the whole image of a coffin thing is just a legend. An eerie catalyst to explain how a small farming village became overrun by witches. A moment we can point to where everything started to spiral out of control. But in reality, there is no singular starting point. There is instead a long and complicated list of tensions. Crops aren't growing like they used to. Common diseases are mysterious and deadly. Scirmishes with Native Americans, especially in Maine, have everyone on edge. One day, the cauldron just boils over. And there's another driving force behind the witch hunt. And some experts think it was the most disastrous of them all. It's something the most powerful Salem villagers do have control over. Petty squabbles and family feuds. And they're willing to let innocent people die in order to win. Before we get into the politics of Salem, let's go over the basics of what happened there in 1692. It's around mid-January when nine-year-old Betty Paris and her 11-year-old cousin Abigail Williams start having fits. Painful, torturous, screaming fits. Dr. William Griggs, the only doctor in Salem, delivers the diagnosis. The girls are, quote, "under an evil hand." Part of being on the good foot. I guess one could have an evil hand. What he means is the girls are being attacked by witches. And maybe the most shocking part of it. This is all happening in the home of Reverend Samuel Paris, Betty's father, and the ordained minister of Salem Village. Reverend Paris and just about everybody else in Salem believe witches are real. When they are in the Bible, after all, the village is overwhelmingly Puritan. And the Puritans are part of an intensely devout offshoot of the Anglican Church, who feel God has chosen them to spread Christianity in the colonies. So the adults in charge accept this diagnosis. Perhaps they think if the devil has come to tempt them and destroy their work, what better place to start than. Inside the Reverend's home. The affliction spreads. More Salem girls experience their own fits. And Putnam, Jr. Betty Hubbard, Mercy Lewis, and several others join the first two. The witches, they say, come to them in spirit form. They describe being pinched and pricked by unseen hands. Only the girls can see their invisible torturers, but the Reverend takes their word for it. Pretty soon, the afflicted girls start naming names. Three women are the first to be accused. Tichiba, an enslaved woman in the Reverend's household. Sarah Good, who people generally don't like after a series of unfortunate events took her from riches to rags. Isn't exactly a ray of sunshine, and neighbors have long suspected. She's a witch. Lastly, there's Sarah Osborne. She's also been a hot topic in the Salem rumor mill. ever since she married her indentured servant. Formal charges are filed against all three women by John Hathorn and Jonathan Corwin, the local magistrates. When it comes time to interrogate the accused, witches, all of Salem gathers to watch. You might be wondering how officials can prove anybody is a witch and no in Salem, they aren't throwing people into the water to see if they drown, but they can subject the accused witches to a body search to scan for something known as the devil's mark. The idea is if you make a pact with the devil, that kind of evil leaves a visible scar. If the magistrates can't find any physical proof, well they have other options to build their case in the 17th century, signs of being a witch include people think you are a witch. Maybe you get into a big argument with a neighbor and the next week, their livestock dies. Plamo, you might be considered a witch. Likewise, if you're simply related or married to somebody rumored to be a witch, have a weird sister? Good luck and should you dare to suggest that all of this switch stuff is just a bunch of hogwash. Well my friend, that would definitely make you sound like a witch to the people of Salem in 1692. Now, the courts at this time have a real guilty until proven innocent vibe, and the defendants don't have any kind of legal representation. So the bottom line is, if one of the afflicted girls names you, the chances of clearing your name are slim. Of course, the easiest way to prove someone is a witch is by getting them to confess. But that doesn't work with Sarah Good or Sarah Osborne. They both deny the charges, and they still wind up in prison awaiting trial. Tichibah is a different story. Not only does she confess that the devil came to her, she says he threatened to torture and kill her if she did not hurt the children of Salem, and sign the devil's book. So Tichibah claims she signed it. Then she reveals that hers wasn't the only name in that book. Nine others had already signed. Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and seven more witches living in Salem and Boston. The officials can't believe what they're hearing. Tichibah is saying there's a whole coven of witches, and most of them are still out there waiting to be uncovered. Side note, Tichibah was almost certainly bullied into confessing, and she's not the only one who threw the two Sarahs under the bus. Both of their husbands did too, in court, in front of everybody. William Good's exact words were "she is an enemy to all good." Not sure that was in the vows you took there, William. Anyway, with this confession, Tichibah ends up saving her own life. The Salem magistrates want to keep her alive. Along with anybody else who will tell them what they want to hear, this moment will set a precedent for others to confess. Not because they are guilty, but because it's the only way to survive. The next few months, Salem Village is overcome with hysteria. More and more people are accused, questioned, and eventually tried, including Sarah Good's daughter Dorothy, who's only four years old. Then there's Elizabeth and John Proctor, in Bridget Bishop. People kind of suspect she was a witch even before this all began. A lot of these people are easy targets. They're mostly women who don't conform to social norms. But a few weeks in, the tide starts to change. The accusers start to name some unusual suspects, like Martha Corey, a god-fearing member of Reverend Paris's Church, and Rebecca Nurse. At 71 years old, Rebecca is the wife of a prominent Salem landholder. She attends church in the next town over. It's been there longer than Reverend Paris's Church, though she pops by to hear his sermons too. She's as devout as anybody around. A few neighbors are so certain of Rebecca's innocence, they petition the court. Even so, the officials accept these accusations. They believe Salem really is under attack. In a way, it makes sense to them that the devil would try to recruit people like Rebecca. By mid-May, the prisons are filling up. There are already 38, quote unquote, "witches" in prison, and when the trials begin in June, they are a real spectacle. Nearly everyone in Salem comes to watch. One, after the next, the accused are paraded before a panel of nine judges. If they've already confessed to witchcraft, the process is fast. If they haven't, they try to plead their innocence. Which is tough to do. There's a special place reserved in the courtroom for the afflicted girls, like Ann Putnam Jr., Betty Paris, and Abigail Williams. They sit right up front. Between the judges and the defendants. If an accused witch looks their way, the girls scream like they're being tortured. They claim the witches are sending their invisible spirits to harm the girls, right there in the courtroom. Sometimes the spirits confess to other crimes they aren't even on trial for, like murders. They even reveal the names of other witches in their midst. Oh, well, according to the girls. The court considers these claims spectral evidence and the judges take it into account when deciding someone's fate. A fate that's always bad news. The conviction rate is high. Almost everyone tried between June and September is found guilty, including Rebecca Nurse. The petitions written by her friends and neighbors help at first. She gets acquitted. But then one of the judges urges his colleagues to reconsider. Rebecca is found guilty, along with Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, Bridget Bishop, The Proctor's Martha Corey, and several others. 19 are executed by hanging. At least four more die while in prison. And then of course there's Giles Corey, who is pressed to death by rocks. The Salem Witch Trials go down as a terrifying cautionary tale. A shocking example of injustice. It's fascinated historians for centuries. In 1969, nearly 300 years after the trials, two of those historians decide to collaborate. Professors Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum are teaching a course at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst when they come across a bunch of rare documents about Salem. They start piecing together the story of what was going on socially and politically in the village back then. And they realize something. When they map out the homes of most of the accused witches and then the people who accused them, it almost looks like the town is divided right down the middle. And they start to believe it wasn't really the afflicted girls driving the witch hunt at all. It was the adults in charge of the girls who were pulling the strings the entire time. These days it's well understood that the Salem Witch Trials targeted women who didn't conform. We're not here to debate that. But if the following theories are right, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Starting in 1969, Professors Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum spend years researching the trials. Like many historians, they dig into depositions and other legal forms. But they also analyze tax assessments, land deeds, and petitions passed around at community meetings. Okay, not exactly my idea of a fun Saturday night though. Actually, maybe it would be looking at all these documents drinking little wine, trying to figure out who was accusing whom. Well, it turns out those records hold a lot of clues about what was really going on in Salem back then. And the picture they paint looks a little different from the official story. From what Boyer and Nissenbaum can see, the witch trials may have been heavily orchestrated by two Salem families. You've already heard their names. The Putnams and the Paris family. As in Reverend Paris, whose home happened to be ground zero for the witchcraft hysteria. Okay, let's back up a bit to when Salem Village gets it start. By the way, I did not realize that there were actually two salums. Yeah, in the late 17th century, there's Salem Village known today as Danvers. And then there's Salem Town. Salem Town comes first. It's established as a port city in 1626, and it flourishes. It's home to a bunch of well off merchants who tend to be more liberal than their Puritan neighbors. Over the years, some of those Puritan families leave the bustling Salem Town for the country. Enough of the community grows there that it gets its own name. Salem Village or Salem Farms. Here the population is lower and the pace is slower. One of the first families to settle in Salem Village is the Putnams. In the 1640s, they get a 100 acre land grant. The patriarch John grows that into an impressive 800 acre expanse by the 1660s. That's roughly the size of Central Park in New York. By the time John dies and divides his land between his three sons, the Putnams are the second wealthiest family in the village. They're beat out by the porters. The porters came to Salem Village around the same time as the Putnams and started off with the same size 100 acre plot. But their patriarch grew their holdings into something like 2,000 acres, more than twice the size of the Putnam lands. Not only that, the Porter lands are situated closer to Salem Town. That gives them easier access to trade and everything else the bigger city has to offer. So the porters end up being more well connected. They're elected to local office more than the Putnams. And the porters have a more diversified and successful family business. The Putnams, by contrast, mainly stick to farming. They try to get involved in iron smelting, but the venture is a big failure. It seems like the porters are constantly one-uping them. But the Putnams keep trying to gain the upper hand. In the 1670s, Salem Town gives Salem Village partial independence. Technically, Salem Village is just a settlement, not its own municipality. So most of the big decisions are still made in town. And the villagers pay their taxes to Salem Town, even though the town is doing so much better economically. But Salem Village gets permission to build their own meeting house, a church, and hire their own minister. Well, now they don't have to travel all the way to town just to worship. Starting their own church comes with its own set of difficulties, though, like finding the right person for the job. The first four ministers are polarizing. The Putnams even use their poll to drive out when they don't like the village's second minister, George Burrows. When Burrows comes back to collect his last paycheck, one of the Putnams actually has him arrested on a minor charge. When it comes time to hire their fourth minister in less than 20 years, the village considers Reverend Samuel Paris. He's known for giving these fiery zealous sermons, often about the devil. The porters are past. They don't like Paris, and they sign several petitions against hiring him. But the Putnams, they think they've finally found a winner. Almost all of them throw their support to the new Reverend. Paris ends up getting hired in 1689, about 2 and 1/2 years before the witchcraft hysteria begins. Since he's the first ordained minister in the village, a whole gaggle of Putnams officially joins his church. The porters, meanwhile, keep attending church in Salem town. Actually, most people in Salem village choose to keep making that long trek to avoid Reverend Paris. In retaliation, he lashes out at them as outsiders. He and his church, which is no joke, made up of 25% Putnams, intentionally exclude people like the porters. So let's think about that. The main and really the only self-governing force in Salem village is Paris's church. They take every opportunity to shut out their neighbors who don't like what they're doing. Meanwhile, Paris is preaching about the devil and witches. In January, 1692, Paris gives a sermon about how the devil is the great enemy of the church. All of the adults in the room understand that he's low-key slandering his detractors, but to younger churchgoers in the room that day, including his nine-year-old daughter Betty and his niece Abigail Williams. And they're just hearing and in passion sermon about how the devil is at work in Salem and how these outsiders are bad people. Days later, in Reverend Paris's house, Betty and Abigail start experiencing fits. Followed shortly after by Anne Putnam, Jr. John Putnam's granddaughter. Remember the first three witches they name? The easy targets? They call out Ticchiba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne. And the girls have probably heard their families say horrible things about these women. But get this. Sarah Osborne is also currently in a land dispute with Anne Putnam's father, Thomas Putnam. And what did we learn from Giles Corey? Number one, always have some badass final words ready to go. Just in case. And number two, if you're convicted of witchcraft, you risk forfitting all of your property. Well, guess who else has been tangled in land disputes with the Putnam's? Rebecca Nurse. Her family has been warring with them for years. And once again, it's Anne Putnam, Jr. who accuses Rebecca. Now, we don't know for sure that Anne's father tells her to incriminate Rebecca, but even the most meticulous historians admit, it's not hard to imagine. At the very least, it explains why Anne even thinks to name Rebecca, despite her spotless reputation and the support of her neighbors. That includes the porters. They sign that petition, the one that tries to save Rebecca from a conviction. They testify on her behalf at trial, but they can't help her. The porters can't even shield their own from the accusations. Like Daniel Andrew, he married into the Porter family. He's wealthy, successful, and owns a lot of land. Last year, he served on an anti-reverent Paris village committee. He's recently acquired a new part of land in a prime spot between the village and the town. And in April, he's elected to office. Shortly after that, the afflicted girls led by an Putnam Jr. say that he's really a witch. Now, Daniel Andrew survives, but only because he goes on the run. And he loses the political seat he just won. A special election has held that July during the height of the witch hunt fervor, and he's voted out. Along with another man named Philip English, who's also been called out as a witch, which is interesting. Since Philip English won that election by defeating a Putnam-- oh, no, but I'm sure that had nothing to do with it-- back to Boyer and Nissenbaum. When they looked at all these documents, these tax assessments showing which families are the richest, land deed showing who owns what, petitions, that show a clear divide between the Putnam and Porter families, they decide to make a map. First, they plot out the homes of the accusers, then the accused witches, and a clear pattern emerges. Overwhelmingly, the accusers live on the west side of Salem Village, closer to the wilderness, and to the Putnam lands. Most of the accused witches live on the east side, closer to Salem Town, and the Portors. So maybe the hysteria was just a clever guise to target the Putnam's enemies, to settle longstanding disputes, to finally establish dominance over the Portors. Side note, some detractors say it's not an airtight case. the author Benjamin C. Ray is the director of the city. Salem Witch Trials documentary archive, he's spoke to a few holes in Boyer and Nissenbaum's theory. Notably, he says the map is not comprehensive enough. It leaves off some of the people involved who, incidentally, don't fit in with the idea of Salem being divided down the middle. It's a good reminder. Always question a map. While Rey makes a good point, a lot of Boyer and Nissenbaum's theory stands. The putnam's did play a major role in deciding who was charged with witchcraft. And a lot of the accused were in league with the porters and they wanted Reverend Paris gone. Okay, another thing I learned about the Salem Witch Trials, officials didn't go around arresting every single person the moment the afflicted girls called them a witch. I mean, I was kind of under the assumption that once they threw your name in the ring, you were immediately toast, but that's not how it happened. Officials would wait for an adult to file a formal complaint. And a lot of those adults who stepped into help were named putnam. How did they find the time? I mean, aren't you supposed to be running a huge farm? Maybe that's why your iron-smelting business never took off. You're running around filing charges about witches. I mean, how do you run an iron-smelting business into the ground? Anyway, if the Salem Witch Trials really were an act of revenge by the putnam's, we still can't blame them for everything. Well, this may be the 1690s, but there is a court of law, magistrates, judges, a governor overseeing all of the Massachusetts Bay colony. Shouldn't they have seen what was really happening here before so many innocent lies were lost? Or did they know that what was happening wasn't right and let the trials go on for their own selfish reasons? If the Salem Witch Hunt was prompted by jealousy and fighting between neighbors, that still begs the question, where were the people in charge? How did they let this go on for as long as it did? Well, in January 1692, right as the witchcraft hysteria breaks out, the Massachusetts Bay colony gets a brand new governor. Sir William Fips has been living between London and Boston. So you know, Massachusetts, well, he's just not there when things go haywire in Salem, because he's off working on a new charter, basically. England's new rules for how its American colonies are to be governed. In the meantime, the magistrates in Salem have a problem. The witch trials can't move ahead until the governor returns and the new government is put into place. Fips doesn't come back until mid-May, something like four months into the whole ordeal, because of how slow news travels, he doesn't even know what's going on until he gets home. By then, at least 38 of the accused are piling up in prison. Even though Salem is in crisis, Fips has a bigger problem to deal with first. The colonists are fighting with Native Americans up in Maine. So for now, he orders the courts to start processing cases. But importantly, he does not tell his superiors over in England what's going on. Why? We'll come back to that in a minute. During those long and chaotic four months, the magistrates, like Hathorne and Corwin, have been conducting all those interrogations we talked about. And they've already made some odd choices. I don't know about you, but I kind of took it for granted that a lot of the weird stuff happening in these witch trials was just the way things worked in 1692. Starting with the fact that they open up these pretrial hearings to the public. But in reality, they should be conducting them in private, not in the largest building in Salem, where practically the entire town can come watch. It leads to total madness. Sometimes people are yelling out their own questions from the audience. In the first 1692, it's a bold choice. According to historian Mary Beth Norton, we don't know why the officials made the decision to hold public interrogations. Maybe they figured, "What the heck? People want to see witches? Why not let them see witches?" There's also the fact that none of the Salem magistrates are trained in the law. Well, that could have something to do with it. There might have been a more personal motive, too. Norton points out that a few years earlier, two colonial forts were destroyed by the French and Native Americans. And it was all thanks to poor decision making on the part of a small group of powerful men, which included hathorn and corwin, the Salem magistrates. That mistake led to mass destruction and loss of life. That's a hard fact to have to live with. And now, here comes this group of girls claiming evil is lurking everywhere, and witches are responsible for just about anything bad that happens. Crops, sickness, death. By 1692, the magistrates should know better than to accept witchcraft charges at face value, but perhaps they need to believe that the devil is to blame for their own failings. On the same theory goes for the chief judge during the trials, William Stoten. He was involved in negotiations with the French and Native Americans. If he'd been successful, it's fair to say the war would have been long over by now. But he failed. As the trials begin in June, Stoten and the other judges make another controversial decision to allow spectral evidence. You know, when the afflicted girls would claim they saw witchy spirits in the courtroom, this isn't super common in witch trials. There is precedent for spectral evidence from a case 30 years earlier in Suffolk, England and Cotton Mather, the highly influential clergyman and a vocal supporter of the trials, says, "Well, it's fine." As long as the judges don't rely solely on it for a conviction, which they definitely do, but the decision sparks debate in Salem. Even while the court is in session, the piece involved in the trials writes that spectral evidence is, quote, "more commonly false and delusive than real." He adds, "Why would an accused person stand here and plead their innocence? Well, at the same time, spiritually attack the girls in front of everyone." It doesn't make sense. By the late summer and fall of 1692, another highly respected voice agrees with that judge. His name is "increase" Mather, Cotton's father. He doesn't think they should be using spectral evidence at all. He does think that whatever is going on here is surely the work of the devil, but maybe not witches. I mean, how do they know that devil wouldn't just appear as an innocent person to so distrust and cause chaos? Over the summer of 1692, across four rounds of trials and executions, public support for the witch hunt fades. More and more prominent people start to question how the trials are run and who is being accused. A major turning point comes when George Burrow's former minister of Salem Village is convicted. He had been accused by Ann Putnam Jr., no surprise there. Her father, Thomas, who we know did not support Burrow's, filed the charges. And like everybody else on trial that summer, Burrow's is found guilty. On August 19th, a crowd gathers on Gallows Hill to witness his execution. Before he's hanged, Burrow steps forward and recites the Lord's Prayer without skipping a beat. The crowd is shocked because they believe a witch would not be able to do that. A few of them actually tried to put a stop to his execution, but they are talked down by Cotton Mather. Now, Cotton's father increase, his name is Good Pals with Governor Fyps. He and a growing crowd of concerned Bostonites have the governor's ear. This realizes innocent people are dying here. On October 29th, he finally shuts down the court that he had set up specifically for the Salem Witch Trials. And he calls for an end to the arrests. That same month, Fyps finally writes about the death of the victims. about the whole debacle to his superiors back in England. He admits he's responsible for setting the courts in motion, but he also downplays his role. He hasn't even been in Massachusetts while many of the trials were taking place. He was in Maine. And as soon as he heard rumors that innocent people were being executed as witches, he stepped right in and put his foot down. His lying. According to Mary Beth Norton, Fips was in Boston most of that time. And there's something else he conveniently leaves out of his letter. The governor may have had personal reasons for not shutting things down and sail him earlier. See, Fips realizes that both he and his wife are at risk of being identified as witches. Well, he's been known to visit a fortune teller here and there. His wife is related to another accused witch. Both of those markers are considered awfully witchy in 1692. While the public is in favor of the witch hunt, Fips wouldn't want to stick his neck out. Anybody suggesting the accusations were false was painting a target on their own backs, amounting to more negative attention. This safe play would be to wait until public sentiment turns against the trials, which is what Governor Fips does. But that's not all he waits for. His wife has just been named as a witch. It doesn't look as though she's formally accused, but talk usually leads to an arrest before things can get that far. Fips shuts everything down. He just waits until his spouse's life is in danger and by then at least 25 people are dead. His order isn't a get out of jail free card though. In 1693, another 52 people still in prison are tried. Only now the hysteria has died down. Judges are no longer putting much stock into spectral evidence. In the end, everyone left to face witchcraft charges is either acquitted or granted a reprieve by the governor. In 1697, just five years after it all began, hindsight in Salem is already 2020. The town holds a day of fasting, a way of atoning for what happened there, a judge issues a formal apology and Reverend Samuel Paris is forced out of the village in a coup led by the family of Rebecca Nurse. Two years after that, Thomas Putnam and his wife die before writing a will, the Putnam children receive small inheritances and learn their new estate carries a lot of debt. When in Putnam, Jr. grows up, she stands up in church one day and asks for forgiveness. She now believes she had been diluted by Satan and descending innocent people to the gallows. It's unclear if she ever came to terms of the fact that she'd also been diluted by her own father. There's so much we do know about the Salem witch trials. Historians have carefully preserved a lot of primary source documents from depositions, de warrants, diaries, but there's one more thing I want to mention. There are still a lot of holes in the records. A lot we don't know about the actual trials. And sure, that could be because this all happened over 300 years ago, but we know certain people took notes that were never fully recovered. One example, an archive of personal letters written by a Salem judge is missing everything from 1692. It's a little suspicious. Mary Beth Norton says participants in their relatives may have intentionally destroyed some of the documentation from Salem. Reverend Samuel Paris almost certainly did, because when everybody stepped back months later and saw the horrors they'd been involved with, they wanted to erase any record of their involvement. Kind of makes you wonder how much of what we know of the Salem witch trials and these conspiracies, whether it's the governor's involvement, the puttenums orchestrating it or the accusations themselves, were shaped by powerful men removing their names from embarrassing or incriminating documents. Thank you for listening to conspiracy theories. We are here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at the conspiracy pod. If you're watching on Spotify, swipe up, and give us your thoughts. Our sources for today's episode include Mary Beth Norton's book, "In the Devil's Snair," the witchcraft crisis of 1692, Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum's "Sail and Possessed," the social origins of witchcraft and the Nat Geodoccus series, "Witch's Truth Behind the Trials." Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story and the official story isn't always the truth. This episode was written and researched by Mickey Taylor, edited by Justin Sales, fact checked by Sophie Camp, and engineered video edited and sound designed by Alex Button. I'm your host, Carter Roy. [music fades out]