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Subject to availability, consumer testing. Dramatically reduces skin aging activity from antioxidant protection against surface oxidative stress. Hey weirdos, I'm Ash. And I'm Alayna.
And this is Morbid. It's Morbid. It's like kind of Morbid in the morning, but not like the morning morning. It's like late morning.
Yeah, I would say. Yeah. You know? It's like 1030.
Yeah, you know? We're in the middle of a heat wave, but it's fall in my heart. Oh, it's fall everywhere except outside. Yep.
Have we started decorating for Halloween yesterday? I started and finished the other day. I had Hocus Pocus, The Corpse Bride, and what was the other movie that I had on the background? Halloween Town?
No, I didn't do Halloween Town yet. Wow, practical magic. Oh, okay. Oh, no, I'll do Halloween Town.
We did Hocus Pocus in Halloween Town while we were decorating yesterday, and we were still not done decorating, because let me tell you, decorating with three kids and two dogs means that you don't decorate one day. Yeah, no. Drew was out of the house, so I got to do it all by myself, and I haven't done that in a long time. Yeah, yeah, it was great.
Yeah, you know? It was lovely. I hope you're all decorated for Halloween, everybody, because it's Halloween. It's spooky season.
Let's go weirdos. We're here. I'm ready for haunted houses. I have been waiting for this all summer.
Fuck summer. If you love summer, that's fine for you. I fucking hate it. In the fact that we're in a heat wave right now, and it is September, and we're supposed to be in fall.
Yeah, I'm not enjoying that at all. In fact, are we just done after that? Does anybody know? Nobody knows.
We can't see that far out. I feel like we can. Okay, next Wednesday, according to my weather app, is going to be 69. See, that's why I'm going to bring you to the 60s.
As soon as we're out, because even 70, I'm like, even 70 can kind of go fuck itself. 70 can definitely go fuck itself, because the sun is still hot when it's 70, and then you get that nice fall breeze that starts to come in, but if you find yourself in the wrong place outside, and the sun is on you, you're just like, fuck, that's not fall-ish. Yeah, why am I wearing this chunky sweater? Exactly, exactly.
But let's hope, you know, everybody put their collective brain powers together to make fall up here for us. Please wiggle your spirit fingers. I'm requesting this with you. Oh my god, tomorrow's going to be, or there's going to be 93 fucking degrees.
No, I don't, I don't want to do that. I don't want to go to there. I don't want to go to there. Next week looks chiller, like 74, 72, 69.
Okay. Okay, that's the weather. That's the weather. Oh, before we start today's pretty, just like, bummer episode, because it's about a witch trial.
Okay. But it's like, when you go into witch trials, you always go in there being like, witch is fun. And then you go through and you're like, oh, this sucks. Yeah, because they are persecuted as fuck.
Yeah. But I wanted to quickly shout out someone pretty awesome, a listener, Corey, who sent us this. First of all, Corey has an Etsy shop. Amazing crocheter.
So good. Send me a pop-a doll. I wish that you, Corey, could have seen Alina's eyeballs yeet out of her face when she opens this. And then I immediately said, are you going to sleep with that?
And I brought it down to John, and I was like, I'm going to put this on our bed. And he was like, please don't. He was like, that's amazing, but please do not put that on our bed. It's incredible.
It's sitting right next to me, like, as we speak. With all her other ghost paraphernalia. With all her other ghost paraphernalia. And I'm telling you, like, Corey, this doll is fucking phenomenal.
He's so cute. I'll definitely post a picture of it because it's just too good not to. The care you put into it is, you're really talented. The details, too.
So I just wanted to shout out Corey's, like, all her shop. This is, they're all Alternative Hippie. I love that. It's H-I-P-P-Y.
Ah, nice. So she has an Etsy shop, and it's Etsy.com slash shop slash Alternative Hippie. Instagram.com, she's Alternative Hippie. All that good stuff.
So go. She said the same thing. She was like, I was like, you hadn't really gotten into any, like, newer rock stuff, and I missed that feeling, and then I felt it with ghosts. So, like, I love that we all feel that together.
So I just wanted to shout you out because that was really thoughtful and really awesome, and you literally made my year with it. So, again, I wish you could have seen her face when she opened that package. Somebody made me a Papa doll! I'm like, it's Papa!
So thank you so much for that, Corey, and I hope that your tickets just, like, rocked in the best way right now. Yeah. And I hope you can't crochet enough to, you know, I hope it just blows up. So you're awesome, and go check out Alternative Hippie.
Or else. Or else, okay? We don't know what else. I don't know what else, but I don't know.
But that's it. Either way, we're going to get into the story now of Half-Hanged Mary. Oh. Of Hadley, Massachusetts.
Oh, shit. Hadley, Massachusetts? Yeah. Massachusetts, yeah.
Massachusetts really had a time. Yeah, we fucked up a lot. We fucked up. We fucked up.
Yeah. I'm going to say they. Because, like, they fucked up our people. Yeah.
Like, the people doing the fucked up things. Yeah. That's not a we thing. No, I mean, I was not there.
Yeah, no. Like, I may be the elder on this podcast, but I was not present during these. So I will say that. That was a missed opportunity for a good joke.
I'm going to say thank you for walking yourself. No problem. I was waiting for it. I was waiting for you to be like, you were there, right?
I try not to do, like, too much elder abuse to you. It's okay. Sorry. I feel okay about it.
But I think we can all agree that there are very few examples of mass hysteria that loom larger than the Salem-Ontriles of 1692. 100%. I mean, over 200 people were persecuted during that. 19 were executed.
So crazy. It's so sad. And it was all for crimes that nobody had actually committed. But, you know, everybody ran with it.
And for centuries, it has served as a very important, but often ignored, warning against groupthink, against intolerance, you know, all that fun stuff. Once again, often ignored. We'd love to believe we're past that, but, you know. I thought of a great idea.
We should make sweatshirts that say fuck in Putnam. Oh, 100% because fuck in Putnam. Okay. Yeah, for sure.
But it was definitely not the only example of witch hunting in Massachusetts, for sure. And in fact, 10 years before the Salem Witch Trials, there were very similar accusations of witchcraft that were aimed at Mary Webster of Hadley, which was another small village in Massachusetts. It's in, like, Western Massachusetts. Yeah, I don't think I realized Hadley was, like, that old of a place.
Yeah. I mean, every place in Massachusetts is old. It's old. But by the time the Massachusetts Bay Colony was established in 1630, the existence of witches and, you know, witchcraft and dark magic and all that had been a very prominent source of anxiety in this area over in Europe.
Right. And that was for nearly, like, two centuries that that was going on. So that was nothing new. You covered some of the ones in Europe, didn't you?
Yeah. We covered one or two, I think. We'll definitely cover some more because it really is fascinating. But although fears of witchcraft had existed in cultures around the world long before, beginning in the late 15th century, public fears and public accusations of witchcraft, largely spurred by the Catholic Church at the time, led to a centuries-long period of witch hunts across Europe that led to the executions of, not 19, which is bad enough, tens of thousands of innocent people.
That's crazy. So because there was such a prevalence of fear and black magic and witchcraft at that time, it makes sense that the earliest colonial settlers in Massachusetts Bay Colony would bring all those fears, anxieties, superstitions, all that stuff to their new home. They're like, let's bring all this fuck shit right on over. Yeah, let's not start with a clean slate.
No. Let's just bring it all over. Never that. So when the first laws were enacted in the colony in 1641, the general court included a common law statute that quoted directly from scripture.
And it established, quote, if any man or woman be a witch that is hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit, they shall be put to death. When you truly think about that, like, if you're a witch, we don't kill you. That's why. It's crazy.
When people say, I'm not really interested in witch trials, it's like, you're not like that. You don't get it? Of that being, those were laws. Like, that was put into law.
It's wild. If you consulteth with a familiar spirit. They basically said, if you have a cat. Yeah, if you have an animal that sometimes is seen around you, we're going to kill you.
That's what he is. Because we think you're consulting with the devil. Wild. Law.
Law. Men. Men. That's the problem.
Unfortunately, there was a law back then. Now, with laws in place that were literally criminalizing witchcraft and consorting with the devil, it didn't take long for colonial settlers to make good use of them. We're not going to let those laws just sit on those books. No, let's do this.
No, they can't get nasty. We're going to use them. So in 1648, 35-year-old Margaret Jones, who was a Charlestown midwife and practitioner of medicine, was like herbal medicine and stuff, was very much accused of witchcraft and put on trial. Little documentation from her trial has really survived today, but the diary of Governor John Winthrop, who sat on the general court at the time of the trial, does show some of the evidence that was used to convict Margaret.
I remember that name, John Winthrop. Yeah. The evidence included the fact that, quote, she was found to have such a malignant touch as many persons, men, women, and children, whom she stroked or touched with any affection or displeasure, and some things which she foretold come to pass accordingly, other things she would tell of as secret speeches, which she had no ordinary means to come to the knowledge of. So basically, she's saying, like, they're saying, like, people got sick after she was around them sometimes, and, you know, she knew things.
Maybe she was a little bit worried. Before I did, right? And it's like, I don't know, John Winthrop. I think you're just a little bit of that.
His journal also says that Jones's disposition during the trial was also used as additional evidence against her. It says Jones was very intemperate, lying notoriously, and railing against the jury and witnesses. Gee, I wonder why. And he wrote, in simple terms, Margaret Jones's unwillingness to be deferential and demure during what basically was most certainly a fight to keep herself from being hanged for nothing.
Literally nothing. Was considered by this puritanical society to be proof that she was consorting with the devil. So because she wasn't demure on the stand and sitting there going, well, I guess if you say I did it, I suppose I have to do a minute. Sure, mister.
Well, yep, I absolutely did that. Because she didn't do that. They're like, the devil. It's also like she's on trial for doing her job, it sounds like.
Which you all took advantage of for a little while until you decided that you wanted to rally against her. You were bored because you couldn't do anything in those times, so you're just going to make her a witch. That's the thing. Now, Margaret Jones was the first person in Massachusetts and just the second in the colonies to be tried and executed for witchraft.
And the fact that she was a woman was definitely not coincidental. No, never. She was a midwife, a practitioner of medicine, like we said before. And she likely, because of those things, like we just kind of touched upon, she definitely held a little bit of power in the community.
You know, those kind of resources, that kind of expertise, that was pretty specific. It was not in big supply in the colonies at that point. So she was going to be looked at as someone to turn to. It was kind of in the case of Bridget Leary, we talked about how, you know, the guy who was looked at as the powerful elder who had all this knowledge of folklore and shit, he held power at one point.
And when he didn't, everything changed. He made it come back. No. And also, she used local herbs and other non-traditional medicines.
You know, people started looking at that as suspect, of course. Especially, they only looked at it really when it was suspect, when their treatments didn't work. When their treatments worked, suddenly you're a great doctor and midwife and all that good stuff. But when it didn't work, you were a witch.
And also sometimes, like, medicine and medicine doesn't work. Yeah, sometimes you're just going to die. Sometimes I just wait a second. Now, eight years later, that same community tried and executed a woman named Ann Hiddens for similar things.
Nonsensical. We don't like her. She's not this demure, little wilting flower that we would like her to be. Exactly.
Because remember, in Salem, that seemed to be a lot of the shit. These women would speak out and speak up against things. They'd speak up for themselves. They'd speak up for their families, for all that stuff.
I was like, shut up. And they were like, shut the fuck up, witch. And it's like, okay, yeah. Well, like, we all see it.
We all see it. But apparently, in one of the sources that I'm going to link in the show notes, Bridget Marshall, author, points out witchcraft accusations were actually fairly common during this period in the colonies. Every town seems to have had at least one official accusation. And no doubt, many more had local legends and suspicions.
So it was definitely one of those things where there was official accusations, which would go to the higher authorities, go on trial, all that stuff. But you know, it was one of those things where they were like, that lady's a witch out there down the street who lives by herself because everyone she loves has died. She's a witch. And again, the accusations were common.
But at this point, convictions and executions, I don't know why that was so hard to say, they were less common at the time. But you could bring it to a point, but getting a conviction and executing that person was going to take a little more. But this was also due to the fact that, you know, they were recently established communities. Removing someone who was like a medicine woman, as much as you're claiming that's witchcraft and shit, removing anyone from these communities is kind of disadvantaging.
You know, it's really becoming a disadvantage for that community at this time because they really only have a handful of people to begin with. They need to establish themselves first and then they can fuck you over later. So they were very aware of that. I think a lot of times these things were more of a shame you into compliance and submission kind of thing.
So we don't have to take it to the conviction and execution stage. We're just going to make sure you know that you will become ostracized and we can bring you to speak out against us. So like just listen to what we say, become submissive and we'll leave you alone. Well, going back to them like not being fully established yet, I'm sure some of these women were like the first midwives in their village.
And then when they got more and more of them, they were like, oh, now we can fuck with that one that we don't like because we like this one better because she listens to what we say. Exactly. It's like, oh, they're the only ones. They were just dealing with it.
Right. The quiet when you finally switch off. The calm before the city wakes up. That's where great days begin.
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7 Prime Forever range at selected boot stores and boots.ie. Subject to evadability, consumer testing, dramatically reduces skin aging activity from antioxidant protection against surface oxidative stress. Now, like we know now, the reasons why a person would have been accused of witchcraft were very varied and almost always completely irrational. You know, petty arguments, overactive imaginations, just puritanical shit.
I don't like your face, so I would like you to be gone from my view kind of shit. Like, it was all just very, like, haphazard. If I don't like this person, I can accuse them of it. So scary.
Like, for example, this is a very interesting one. The case of Mary Parsons, who was a Northampton woman accused of witchcraft by her neighbor in 1656. Mary and her husband, Joseph Parsons, had... moved to northampton from springfield okay so they were already very much outsiders in this newly formed community because remember it's all brand new um so immediately the community wasn't talking as soon as two people come in from anywhere else you're gonna be the target um mary also had a son who was actually the first english child born in town so that was another thing that was already gonna stir up some crazy gossip and then the parsons were also of a higher social class and they had a lot more wealth than their neighbors so there was a lot of jealousy already off the bat they are baton zero now one day not long after they came to northampton a neighbor named sarah bridgman received a knock at her door she was holding her infant son when she came to answer the door and she said no one was there but then she saw two cloaked figures passed by and she became convinced that her child would die um i answered the door no one was there so i thought my baby was gonna die yeah that's a leap seems legit that's a leap and a half girl for him the child did die a short time later which is very unfortunate of course and sarah became convinced that the death was caused by mary parsons and not just like the old time apparently since she arrived in the village bridgman and parsons did not get along they feuded right off the bat but it's like all right sarah sometimes bitches aren't gonna like you and that's just the way it is like move on it's fine and you have to involve yourself in their life just move the fuck on if you don't like someone walk away toxic person walk the other way like just leave okay but no we've got to make this a bigger problem we've got to make it everybody's problem and honestly it's gonna become your problem bitch so she yeah so they've been feuding ever since the parsons had arrived and bridgman spent months telling anyone who would listen that parsons was a witch and that was her fault and finally joseph parsons mary's husband was like fuck you and decided to file a complaint of slander on his wife's behalf because that's a bad bitch move especially for a husband back then it's like don't talk shit about my wife like fuck you sarah but that is probably not good that he brought this to court because i feel like that's where it's all that's the thing it was very proactive of him of course it was pretty badass of him for sure i support joseph i'm here supporting him but like you said not great because of how shitty the system was it was great in all other ways not great because of how shitty everybody else was because by bringing those accusations to the attention of the authorities before it was like we're seeing before right there's shit talking among the community it wasn't taken to the official level but now it's happened it's gotten brought to the authorities they know that people are talking well this poor man was only trying to help his wife he probably regretted that every day and so it was brought to court and sarah when she explained that she said there was a great blow at the door i was like what sorry what and she immediately said she sensed a difference in her newborn as soon as that great blow at the door happened okay she said immediately i'm sure my child would die and i was like i don't know i feel like that's someone you should talk about someone else because i don't think that was mary and she said it was because there was wickedness in place wow this is real i just need like this is why these kinds of trials in this time period are so fucking fascinating to me because this was a legitimate criminal trial and this woman just said someone knocked on my door and my newborn got fussy and so i knew he was going to die because wickedness was in place she said that in a legal trial and they went hmm they said that's why they broke their chin and they said maybe we should hang this bitch like that's it's scary that was real how that that's fascinating to me like they just they didn't have enough to do back then they sure didn't now and that's the thing they had enough to do but it was and that's the thing they weren't bored they were just miserable because it was miserable back then we'll get into it but it's like that's what it was it's like like my numbing shit yeah and kids were bored they're bored and miserable now at the trial a lot of people testified that um sarah bridgeman's child's child had actually been frail and sickly since birth so so where's the thought on that so they're like when the child died unfortunately it was very tragic but not a surprise to a lot of people because he was born very sick that's sad but bridgeman stuck to her story that parsons was a witch and had killed her child through her consortium with the devil and wickedness of it all then we had other people come into the trial saying you know there's a yarn spinner that said the yarn she spun for mary parsons just ended up in knots no matter what she did and she said that was obviously because she was a witch maybe you just suck at spinning yarns yeah maybe maybe you're sitting in the yarn right now i think you are i do lies lies liar liar and it's also like it's just sort of the devil like knots like i don't know what that's supposed to be just like tying knots yeah i've never heard i'm not up on his likes and dislikes but i didn't know that was one of them i haven't heard that in a ghost song so did you see the protesters everybody like you gotta go on tiktok the protesters at the ghost concert i think it's in texas that checks yeah um funny they brought out a mary statue and everything it's like just let people there were signs that said i'm so sorry mary and i was like what what now i don't pretty funny i'm not gonna say too much well i'm like like what you like but like that's the thing don't listen to the music if you don't like it you don't have to partake in it it's fine people like people i feel like everyone now just like they're indoctrinating our children it's like everything i'm like still let your kid go to a ghost show yeah it's like your kid isn't gonna go to a ghost show unless you bring them to one so unless they're like that's your fault so it's just ridiculous it's a little silly and honestly ghost shows are fucking amazing and the people at ghost shows are some of the nicest people i've ever been around so there at the ghost at the ritual that we went to they call it a ritual it's always called a ritual i think i even knew that they call their shows rituals it's fun i love it at my ritual uh that we went to uh we were loving the people in front of us it was this couple and don't worry i'll get back to the story i promise i know tangents piss some people off but here i am i just gotta tell you because it was lovely yeah it was a couple in front of us a man and a woman and they were having the fucking time of their lives and they were like so in love and just like dancing with each other and so happy and i literally was like just their vibe that's precious was so happy we all said it like we were all like these people are lovely to just be around i love that it was delightful that so like shout out to those two people in front of us because they were and they were like turning to each other like screaming the words to each other just like dancing having the ball it was just so good the guy was so theatrical to every song i was like you're killing it it was like adds to the experience around like that and i met a lot of listeners at the show and they're really kind and awesome and it was really cool and you guys were um but either way you know the devil loves knots who knew weird but things escalated as well when a woman named mrs hannum who was another yarn spinner um and she apparently worked with the parsons before she testified on sarah bridgman's behalf saying that uh parsons had quote attempted to lure her daughter away from her home what and it's like what and then another woman came and said her daughter got ill after she refused to let her daughter work for the parsons so she must have bewitched her yes of course and then a man came forward and testified and said oh my cow got sick as fuck after i had some words with mary parsons and then it died and it's her fault i truly can't the fact that they thought people just died because they had words with each other well what's great about this one i will say is that the court was able to be like debunked okay that's nice because upon further questioning it was very clear that mrs hannum the yarn spinner had been feuding with mary parsons ever since mary parsons complained of the quality of her yarn so she was just pissed because her little ego got bruised she had shitty yarn fuck your yarn and she saw this trial as an opportunity to get back at parsons which i'm like people were fucking cutthroat back then like my yarn hey yeah she doesn't like my yarn so my way of getting back to her is having her hang by her neck until she's dead yeah like damn that's normal imagine living in like i'm not that petty like imagine standing in that crowd you you spun some yarn that sucked and you just sit you're sitting there and you're like you're like well she got her she said shit about my yarn my yarn quality is top-notch it's like damn like that's cold-blooded like people were cold-blooded so yeah she was just pissed about the quality of the yarn she was like cool i'm offended so i'm gonna send you to be executed and people also testified that sarah bridgman's baby like they said before had definitely been sick since birth so that was just not right under these circumstances the court and i think they found that the cow had died of a very normal cow thing and i think it's actually the owner's fault like it was like something he had done accidentally that he caused it wow so the court ruled in favor of mary parsons and were actually told sarah bridgman you are actually in trouble for lodging these false accusations now oh hell yeah they said you can either pay parsons court fees or you can issue a public apology i would say you have to do both and that petty little bitch was like i'll pay the fees she wouldn't even publicly apologize wow like what bitch people really were like such a bitch but what's sad though is that although the slander trial may have come to an end bridgman kept spreading rumors about parsons being a witch and they just kept going for like generations and basically undermined the part it undermined the parsons family's social status and any political influence they had in the village for generations that's really she ruined their legacy essentially that's just why because she didn't like her like that's a petty bitch she i hope she got hers and she's a little bad life right and this kind of shows you that although there was a genuine belief in witches and witchcraft that's the thing this wasn't only i don't like this person's i'm gonna fake it people genuinely believe that witches and witchcraft were like evil and like they were these like you know the hook nosed like you know the warning in the nose kind of thing we see in all the the media you see of another green and that they're flying on a broom in the middle of the night you know like that kind of stuff they definitely believed that and especially in the massachusetts bay colony but it was also just as common for this to be the case where it was you know consorting with the devil was basically i'm being petty and i'm gonna you know settle my petty grievance with you by pretending that you're consorting with the devil right um now getting on to mary webster it kind of seemed like this was partially the case is that people just didn't like her and she was an outsider so they decided to make her consult with the devil fictionally as the case um so mary webster was born mary reeve she was born in england circa 1624 and she was brought by her parents thomas and hannah reeve to the massachusetts bay colony and within she was brought there within a decade or two after her birth so within her first 20 years she was brought there all right again a lot of these records are haphazard so you just have to piece everything together but they settled in springfield now little is known about her early life but she does and she doesn't appear on record until 1670 and that's when she married 53 year old william webster of hadley so she relocated from springfield to hadley and when that happened often moving was a big deal of course it set you back yeah that it sets anybody back anyways but it really set you back back then people like died on the way to move to a new place and they were the websters were described as having become poor and having living many years in a small house in the middle highway and were sometimes aided by the town okay so nobody's really sure like what the definition of poor was back then because things were so willy-nilly like how bad it really was yeah but i think the fact that they were receiving aid from the town makes them uh down at the bottom of the ladder you know yeah so according to sylvester judd who is an author and who wrote the town history of that of hadley he said mary's temper quote which was not the most placid was not improved by poverty and neglect and she used harsh words when offended despised and sometimes ill-treated she was soured with the world and rendered spiteful towards some of her neighbors so here's the thing the thing with mary is that we see she's in poverty she's having to get aid from the town she's being treated as such because people are not treating her like shit and it's like so her neighbors are dicks to her and treat her like a piece of shit and she's supposed to be like a ray of sunshine she was brought here from where she was born and it's like she's supposed to be the sucking ray of sunshine for you and like make you happy when you treat her like shit because of something completely out of her control that she's dealing with poverty of course yeah absolutely and they even said because of her quote unpleasant demeanor her neighbors started referring to her as a witch and she quickly became a target for a lot of harassment now soon rumors were spreading about mary and that you know she did this she did that she bewitched some cattle and horses so that they stopped and ran back and could not be driven by her house um in some cases the rumors had a little bit of truth to them because mary would try to keep farmers and travelers away from her house and so she would overturn their loads sometimes what uh that's hilarious she's just like get off my fucking lawn well she's like you're all assholes i mean stay away from my house i don't blame her fuck you well you have to wonder if something happens that she wanted them away from her house because that seems like a kind of a joke you know find out what they actually do to her and what is very normal you're like yeah you were probably hurting her physically you pieces of shit yeah that's what it sounds like now in one instance they claimed and i'll take what you will from this they claim that quote she entered a house and had such influence upon an infant on the bed or in the cradle that the infant was raised to the chamber floor and fell back again three times and no visible hand touched where were the owners of the home yeah was she uh just like i don't know this looks like neglect of an infant or possibly half of an infant infant and then they just blamed it on mary webster like what now the rumors were getting were growing and growing apparently and so the community was now kind of biting back at mary oh so either way the rumors are growing and growing and in response to these rumors the community is starting to get more and more you know proactive in their response to her so she became the target for what is called witch disturbances oh no i don't like that already so apparently so the author i mentioned before smith says that when farmers claimed they were unable to drive their cattle by mary's house they quote would enter the house beat her or threaten to do so and then she generally let them pass uh yeah because they had beat her so she was probably unable to stop them at that point so that was called a witch disturbance they would just enter the suspected suspected witch's home and beat the shit out of her to make her whatever was happening stop what and then they're always like and these women were so unpleasant and it's like i would fucking i would be the epitome of foul and rotten if i were this woman i would ruin everyone's lives around me do you ever just think like what are humans like what i think it all the time like how did it how do we get like i think it all the time it's a lot i really do so they would do that that's why when they're like oh she would like knock over their loads and stuff like yeah i would fuck up their livelihood too i'd be like you literally came in my home and beat me so fuck off as you wind down this evening let number seven prime forever serum be your secret to aging at the speed of a glacier helping to pause the visible signs of skin aging number seven prime forever serum works to dramatically reduce skin aging activity while you sleep find the number seven prime forever range at selected boot stores and fruits.ie subject to availability consumer testing dramatically reduces skin aging activity from antioxidant protection against surface oxidative stress now judd the author i mentioned before who the history padley described an incident in 1680 where a 16 year old girl named ann belding was charged with quote purposes and practices against the body and life of mary wife of william webster so apparently ann entered the webster's home and likely assaulted or attempted assault mary and so she was she was required to publicly apologize and pay a fine she had to pay one pound to webster and four pounds to the county for doing that why didn't she spend time in jail y'all because they're just like you're like i'm just sorry what the fuck so over time the rumors about mary webster just grew they grew they became more they became way more outlandish way more detailed they were coming from way more people but there was one that proved a lot more consequential for mary's safety than the other ones oh no so and you knew this was coming i knew one of those was going to hit different and it was going to be the breaking point i was worried so in the early 1680s it was said that mary entered the house of a neighbor again and before she left the house or excuse me not long after she had left the house a hen came flying down the chimney and fell into a boiling pot of water okay to me that just feels real real colony-esque i'm sure hens fell down chimneys all the time like i don't if i was back then if you transported me hi i'm elena from 2023 if you blocked me into 16 you know 80 or wherever this was in one of these houses in the massachusetts bay colony and suddenly a hen fell down the chimney into a scalding hot thing of water i don't think i would really i'd like probably like i think i would just look over like yep you just feel like well we're having chicken for dinner just like oh is that how you guys would get your food like i don't have this for santa that doesn't seem wild to me i'm like hens are probably all over the fucking place yeah and they're probably just falling down chimneys and shit it's not like our chimneys where it's like this very intricate system it's just a hole in your roof it's just gonna fall down so to me i'm like yeah okay like dinner but no because apparently that was a little strange that a hen just fell down the chimney which i think is wild i do too i feel like i agree i don't think it'd be that i don't think it was i think they're just using that but the real strange thing was that mary was discovered to have a skull's mark on her body in the same place that the hen had i guarantee someone probably broke into her house here and burned her probably or it's like i don't know they were cooking over straight up bonfires back then like yeah i'm sure everyone got burned all the fucking time by just doing the simplest of tasks probably like i'm sure there was all kinds of burns but did they make this like a witch mark well that what they assumed was you know that because it's in the same place as the hen that mary had been acting in the form of a familiar to spy on her neighbors so they're claiming she was the hen they're claiming mary transformed herself into a hen and said let me eat myself down the chimney into a boiling pot of water and then she lived and then she lived okay because that's the other thing here's my other question here but we don't have it on record so i would like ask this neighbor from beyond what the fuck's up kyle because this hen fell down your fucking chimney into a scalding thing of water i think it died you didn't eat that hen you're telling me you just let that hen go we're in the massachusetts bay colony in 1680 and you're letting free fucking dinner waddle out of your house i don't think so i don't think so you sure about that i think you are i think you ate that for dinner and then you're sitting here claiming that it was mary webster i don't think so so you ate mary webster so how's she walking around if you ate her doesn't make sense this whole thing is truly the most that's what i'm like no one was logical back then or you know what here's the thing i bet here's here's the thing i bet there were some logical people in there but they were zipping their fucking lips because they didn't want to be the next one accused or we thought to be consorting with the devil that's the thing so it's one of the things they just stay quiet and let it happen it's like so we look back and we're like are you all like just cuckoo like what is going on no one stepped in was like well did you eat the hen like no one asked that yeah did you eat said hen that fell and burned their booty in the water did you eat the booty bird you didn't let that thing leave no of course not why waste a good head exactly in 1680 hell yeah now in march 1683 mary was wrought before the county court in northampton because of this and she was accused of quote being under strong suspicion of having familiarity with the devil or using witchcraft what did come guilty but after hearing testimony from some of her neighbors the county court looked at it and was like you know what these look these look like pretty strong accusations it seems like everybody thinks you're kind of a bitch so i think maybe we should uh we should look at this further so they referred it to the court of assistance in boston for consideration oh no yeah they look at this like i don't know it seems like you might have been that hen and then they were like and these people say that you suck so i think we should just the fact that they're like we think you were that hen yeah wrap your mind around that we have a burn mark on you so i'm pretty sure you were that hen that flew down the chimney i definitely i must go like i just don't know and in april by the way mary webster is 60 years old now in april mary webster 60 years old is shipped to boston shipping up to boston but not in the fun way where she was held in a local jail cell waiting her trial for witchcraft she was held there for a month oh my god and you can only imagine the conditions think of the worst conditions you can ever imagine that's what jail was about yeah and that's what they would have you wait in for your witchcraft trial that you were placed on trial for because assholes didn't like you i truly can't and couldn't mind their own fucking business and just stay to their own shit they had to get your shit this is so sad you know i didn't realize she was 60 and that adds so much more yeah sadness to it happily just you know she should have been happily just being a bitch kind of curmudgeonly yeah like just let her live she's a victim of circumstances just leave the fuck alone don't interact with her don't pass her house she's not trying to hang out with you i mean according to them she really was she really wanted to go she's like maybe that's the thing maybe she just wanted a fucking friend now again sat for a month in jail and then her trial began on may 22nd 1683 and was heard by governor simon bradstreet and nine of his uh fellow you know powerful men uh now after hearing the charges they said seems pretty reasonable i think we should take this to trial pretty reasonable that you became a hen yeah and then they said we should take this to trial and there was an indictment written up in the indictment read the grand jury being impaneled they on perusal of the evidences returned that they did indict mary webster for that she not having the fear of god before her eyes that's always my favorite part of it she's like you are not you don't have a fear of god in you so you must be an evil piece of shit that we need to kill and it's like huh why do people still feel that way so not having the fear of god before her eyes and being instigated by the devil hath entered into covenant and had familiarity with him in the shape of a warnage which is a fish or a wild black cat of the woods and had his imps sucking her and teats or marks found on her they love that they love a tea and they love an imp sucking oh they love it um that's the thing i'm like look inside yourselves yeah i'm not gonna king shame here but like look inside yourselves and just like come to grips with what you're really focused on you should just start writing fan fiction you know what if we had had like book talks like fairy smut books rolling around them if we had that back then i think everybody would have been okay they would have sat in their houses read some fairy smut gotten their shit together and come out into the world a little less wound up i think so to be clear alina's the one reading the fairy smut she just showed me a song i don't know anything about rune other than that he's the crown prince i'm gonna read the crescent city book because i haven't even gotten to him yet but um crown prince of the is it a valgarin i haven't gotten to them yet so but anyway in crescent city though i've been sucked into it but they need some fairy smut um so yeah so you know teats marks on her all that good stuff and by several testimonies may appear contrary to the peace of our sovereign lord the king his crown and dignity the laws of god and his jurisdiction the court on their serious consideration of the testimonies did leave her to further trial i gotta go nonsense i must go she spent another week sitting in boston jail and then was brought back before the court of assistance on june 1st where she was formally tried um and there is one piece of documentation from that trial that we can look at that says mary webster was now called and brought to the bar and was indicted to which indictment she pleaded not guilty making no exception against any of the jury leaving herself to be tried by god in the country the indictment i'm like he doesn't try though like you guys have to try her yeah like where is he at the indictment and evidences in the case were read and committed to the jury and the jury brought in their verdict that they found her not guilty okay i didn't see that coming she was acquitted she was acquitted of the charge of witchcraft mary webster returned to hadley and all was supposed to be great but you know what it was her neighbors that were pissed the court acquitted her they weren't gonna bring her back in but they weren't they weren't done the neighbors were pissed now when mary webster was first accused of witchcraft and brought before the county court among the men who examined her and considered the evidence against her was philip smith who was a local judge and a deacon for the town of hadley in his later accounts of the story cotton mather who everybody remembers cotton mather that should have like some kind of reverb on it like scary in your brain he um yeah it's just some evil in there um he describes smith as follows mr philip smith a man of about 50 years a son of eminently virtuous parents a deacon of a church at hadley a member of our general court a man of their county court a selectman for the affairs of the town a lieutenant in the troop and which crowns all a man for devotion and gravity and all that was honest exceedingly exemplary um you can stop sucking his dick now like because you know what cotton mather likely never met this man just want to put that out there he loved him he likely never met philip smith but because philip smith was down to get some witches hanging by some ropes cotton mather was like what a fucking virtuous the man gift to our entire planet this man is and it's like settle the fuck down cotton take all of this settle the fuck down and by the way speaking of cotton mather i think i might take another look at the salem witch trials and kind of like revamp our series on it because i just love that i've read more into it and i have more to say uh so he shit his dick about philip smith even though he'd never met this man ever did not know what kind of man he was so strange but you know despite mary webster being acquitted of the charge of witchcraft which was no easy feat no uh but and this was a court in boston she probably knew that this wasn't even the end of it oh yeah smith philip smith maintained that she was a witch she was in league with the devil he would not be convinced she wasn't and that's why cotton mather loved him he was right beginning in january 1864 apparently philip smith's health began ailing a little bit and it was very obvious you know and they said he showed such weakness from the weariness of the world that he knew not he said whether he might not he might pray for his continuance here so he wasn't gonna pray to live okay because he's so weary of the world i mean and that's what cotton matter had written by the way but he didn't know him you know um but basically what he was saying was that you know his righteous spiritual battles with evil were just taking its toll on him and he was such a we should you know wow like this man should wow this man is on his deathbed because he's just been fighting this this righteous war with the devil so hard and he doesn't even know if he wants to say anything this is making my head hurt i'm like i don't know i think it's just the 1600s and he's dying of things you die of in the 1600s probably and also when you're that fucking wound up about everybody all the time yeah you're probably gonna die sooner because your shit is all rocked inside so like you should calm down calm down now like the court records that have since you know really been lost to time at this point of course there's not a lot of documentation about smith's illness but according to bridget marshall in the time leading up to his death the decline of his physical health and body was accompanied by a lot of like emotional and mental issues as well um he had fits of delirium and they would definitely frighten everybody around him like his nurses anybody that was watching over his bedside i'm sure it was terrifying i mean that would be scary now even with all we know but back then yeah that was i mean that's what the witch trials basically started from well that kind of like happens at the end of your life i mean in certain cases you know at the end of your life nobody nobody goes out the same way you know it's like that's and back then you look at fits and delirium as being magical like they were spurned by something evil meanwhile it's like probably just his body shutting down just biological processes uh but to a puritanical society that was very deeply entrenched in legends and superstitions and religious doctrine dog the very and marshall points out the author the very visible struggle he endured with his illness no doubt appeared to the puritan audience as they fight with the devil and with cotton now they're writing that this is his righteous battle with the devil that is killing him it's just compounding that's so wild that they were like yeah he's just fighting out with the devil this isn't just illness this is him literally in a cage match with the devil wow now in his delirium he would rant like philip smith would rant a lot he would ramble he was very incoherent this there and everywhere we've all if you've loved someone that's been at the end of your life their life you know there can be some moments where you're like i have no idea where you are right now but you're telling me about it right um and again a lot of local people and found and his neighbors found that they were thinking this was him being possessed and this was the effects of black magic or anything biological no never now because smith had been one of the most like loud and aggressive proponents of mary webster's guilt even after her acquittal many of the men in town concluded that webster must be the blame for this illness i knew that was coming yeah they said this is definitely revenge for his having tried to bring her to justice and you know this is all her this is like he's being the target after him you better believe the next person on the list is going to be someone else involved in the trial that's ridiculous and the longer his illness went on the stranger and more wild the stories of his symptoms became um one of the most absurd things that was stated like officially about it was that in his sick room they claimed that medicines had been emptied by unseen hands and that a fire mysteriously appeared under his bed and then stopped was he burned i was like i feel you should be looking at him the fires are starting under his bed what's going on there now according to our pal cotton mather's account of it who again believes that very much believes that webster was to blame um they and apparently they decided to test this theory that uh mary was to blame um people in the town came to philip or excuse me came to mary's home and decided to do witch disturbance on her because remember if they think you're fucking around they can just come and beat the shit out of you god so cotton mather wrote an account of this even though he was not there but again um some of the young men in the town being out of their wits at the strange calamities thus upon one of their most beloved neighbors went three or four times to give disturbance unto the woman this thus complained of and all the while they were disturbing of her which by the way they were disturbing of her remember what we're saying here he's saying all the while while these men came in and beat the shit out of a 60 year old woman in her home all the while while they were beating the shit out of a 60 year old woman at her home he was at ease philip smith and slept as a weary man these were the only times they had perceived him to take any sleep in all his illness while everyone was beating the shit out of an elderly woman that's good yeah i'm glad he rested easy during that period but it's her who's consorting with the devil like y'all you're telling me the only time this man got sleep was when an elderly 60 year old woman because that's elderly back then yeah it's not elderly now so don't come from me but back in the 1600s that was you were you were past your point of like damn look at you but they're beating a 60 year old woman this is so exciting and he's sleeping soundly like a baby but she's the one concerning with the devil my god everybody he's just living my god like let's just look at what's happening here but nobody's gonna speak up but again it was very very long believed that to stop a witch from you know furthering any harm she was doing through magic or her spells was to physically restrain or stop her in some way and when philip smith finally died from his illness on january 10th 1685 a group of young men set upon mary webster at her home they dragged her from her house and they hung her from a tree by her neck oh my god um yeah now at this time the uh gallows and trap door had not been invented yet so it is very likely and really the only way that they just hanged her from a tree and allowed her to strangle oh my god i told you this is a rough one holy shit she lost consciousness and when they when she was no longer moving they cut her down they rolled her body in the snow for some time and then they finally buried her in the snow and left her for dead i am without words yeah so what we've seen here is that obviously the men of hadley it was only men who did this by the way the men of hadley were obviously disappointed by the boston's court decision and certain that mary was guilty so they decided to enact mob justice and they figured they could just get rid of mary webster and that this gave them reason once philip smith died it was her fault they felt validated picturing that in your head they broke i'm sorry i'm not over this head into her home dragged her out probably hanged her from a tree on her own fucking property probably and then rolled her and buried her in the snow so she'd probably likely died of hypothermia among other things well you know it's it came to a big surprise to the men that uh when they came back she didn't die what she was still alive what a bad bitch yep and let's see Even better is that Mary Webster lived another 11 years before dying of natural causes in 1969 at around the age of 70.
That's my girly right there. Mary Webster said, fuck y'all. She said, Daisy Egg. She said, fuck y'all.
Fuck y'all. She said, fuck y'all. Daisy Egg. She said, Philip Smith, won't be seeing you for a while.
Bye. Holy cannoli. I did not see that one coming. Cotton Mather must have shit his dick on that day.
Those men, what I wouldn't give to be now and travel back there with just like an iPhone so you could just like record all their reactions and then pop back here and be like, check out these fuckers. Assholes. You know, they all like some of them cry. Oh my God.
It's like amazing that she was able to live that long and I'm so happy, but one to go through that and who knows where it ended. I'm sure people were still breaking into her house and fucking after that. But I'm like, fuck yeah. Good for you living out the rest of your fucking days.
I mean, fuck all you. Y'all be damned. Like, damn. Wow.
Mary Webster. I didn't see that. Yeah. So, you know, the colonial witch trials up to and including those in Salem were definitely about power.
A lot of it. Obviously, there were some cases like Sarah Bridgman and Mary Parsons that were just jealousy, petty shit, grievances. But they were fueled by a religious body as well that sought to use superstition, misogyny at the time and great fear of the unknown to maintain their stronghold on the colonies. So again, it goes right back to power at the end.
And keeping everybody. Keeping everyone in line. Yeah. They don't want anyone speaking out against them.
They believe this. So you're going to believe it. You're going to shut the fuck up if you don't. This was particularly true for our guy, Cotton Mather, who was one of the loudest and most aggressive proponents of the witch hunts in all of the colonial era.
Now, in 1689, he actually published the account of Philip Smith's illness and death. And he named Smith specifically, but he did not name Mary Webster. He wouldn't name her. He used the account to, among other things, promote the righteousness and virtuous of Smith and his efforts, you know, his righteous efforts to rid Hadley of witchcraft.
And he also kept promoting the belief that the colony as a whole was just lousy with witches and practitioners of black magic. And again, it's important to remember, like I said earlier, Cotton Mather was not a resident of Hadley. And it's unlikely that he had ever been there before. And he definitely didn't know Philip Smith.
Or Mary Webster. So what the fuck is your... Get out of everybody's business, bitch. He's a busybody.
He's the definition of a busybody. He didn't know Mary. He didn't know Philip Smith. He's never been to Hadley.
What are you doing? Right. And of course, he did include some documented facts about the case in his account. But a lot of what he wrote was just biased, fictionalized shit, just bullshit, and very much just like preaching what he wanted to preach.
Of course. He wasn't trying to give a historical account of something that happened. He wanted something that would boost his argument in favor of witch hunting. And unfortunately, it worked.
Because as we know, just a few years later, in 1692 and 1693, stories like that of Smith and Webster were used as supporting arguments for the outrageously barbaric witch trials in the village of Salem. And it actually, again, it ended up being that it was a government-sanctioned murder of 19 people, which like, when you really think of that, it's just... Like your brain can't even... And most of them were young women who were guilty of literally nothing, but couldn't defend themselves because it was just this hysteric, frenzied mob of people that were brought to that point by men like Cotton Mather.
Who were just like, insane. There's no other way to say it. There's no other group of assholes just create hysteria. And then it's like, then these little girls who were fucking bored and everybody just decided, that's what it was, these little girls who were fucking bored and nasty, cruel little fucks.
And then these men who were trying to, you know, boost this argument anyway, saw that and said, perfect, we can use this. It's like, all work together. So much assholes working together. What a horrible time to be alive.
Truly. And when the witch trials came to an end in the spring of 1693, public hysteria had died down and order had started to be, you know, restored because that was looked at even by them as like, what the fuck just happened? Yeah. And the truth came to light that, you know, like these young women were all this, all the people, young women who had made the shit up about like the fits and being attack inspectors and all that shit, that they lied.
They came forward and said, I made the whole thing up. I was bored. And the public reaction was fucking horror and revulsion. They couldn't believe what they had done.
They were like, I can't believe we've been taken so easily by all this bullshit. How gullible have we been? And how cruel have we been? Like, damn, we suck.
To the point of murder. We murdered young women because we were just easily led. But even after the order and sanity had been restored to Salem briefly, Cotton Mather and other of those guys, like that were part of this whole thing, some of the judges, some of the people that were into it, they were still advocating for further witch hunts and trials just to try to get that control back over the community. And luckily, they're like, you know, it was kind of at that point, they were kind of like ignored and everybody's like, now you're an asshole.
You have to chill this on, guys. But, you know, it's when you look back on it, you're like, wow, that's wild. And it blows your mind. But it's also when you look at 17th century colonies, hysteria is not that wild to think about.
Because when you think about it, colonial life was miserable. It was incredibly difficult. Colonists often relied on that dichotomy of good and evil just to explain the hundreds of hardships and tragedies and oppression and awful shit that just fell into their laps on a normal daily basis. Like their cows dying and hens coming through the roof, they're falling into boiling pots of water.
But, and that is truth. That is true. That was a shitty time. It was a shitty life.
And they were just looking for something to believe in. And they were using it. But they were using it. Something else?
But we cannot take away that misinformation and the spread of it and misogyny also played an incredible role in that. Incredible. At the forefront, I would say. And even in the Boston Globe in 1977, Hal Clancy wrote that he talked about the story of Smith and Webster.
And he described Mary as, quote, in 1977, he described her as, quote, an aging spinster who wore rags, lived in a shack, and got by brewing love potions and peddling hexes. She claimed to possess an evil eye that could drive a cow at a blink. Now, he made that this article has, like, somewhat of a humorous tone to it, but it's got tons of factual inaccuracies in it. Lies.
And it also just completely perpetuates what started the witchcrafts in the first place. Like, learned nothing. I was like, that article just shows you, whoa, you just literally looked at that whole thing, you saw the lesson there, and you just perpetuated it. Man.
Like, he literally says, basically, his view of the history of that whole thing was the only plausible explanation for why Mary Webster's neighbors believed her to be a witch and literally hanged her after she was acquitted for it was because she portrayed herself as such. She did it by being an old spinster, by working with herbs and non-traditional shit, by not being a pleasant flower, by not, you know, preaching whatever it is they wanted her to preach, she did it. Literally, in 1977, this man is just learning zero. I was like, holy shit, Massachusetts.
Yeah, that's embarrassing. Like, Massachusetts is my girl. Like, I ride for her. Massachusetts is my beach.
She's my bitch. I love her. I ride for her. I love Massachusetts.
We ride for her. But it's proof that some people did not learn from their own shit. And it's like, get it together. And to be like, she was a fucking witch.
I'm like, this is elderly abuse to, like, the highest level. And you're like, she was a fucking witch. She made love potion. I'm like, I don't think they worked.
And also, it's like, she was a witch. So, basically, just be like, I don't know, she portrayed herself as one, so she could drive someplace. And I'm like, okay, so should they have hung her from a tree? And buried her in the snow?
Like, are you, is that what you're saying? You sure about that? You're not sitting here saying, like, wow, this 60-year-old woman that was just, like, trying to live her life by herself. That people kept coming into her home and beating the shit out of her on a regular basis.
Don't act like a witch. Don't act like a witch. Damn hell. Wow.
Damn. That sounds like satire, but it's the Boston Globe. Like, that's not a lot. Damn.
Damn hell. But, yeah. So, that's the story of Mary Webster and a couple of other witches, but. That was, yeah.
Like, that was, uh. I don't know. That was something. That was wild.
And she was expecting. But the fact that she was like, she was. Fuck y'all. I mean, it was, like, a triumph.
But then it's, like, only a couple years later, we were like, and now for the Salem Witches, where it's going to be really bad. My God. But eventually, you know, eventually. Pouring out for all the witches out there, okay?
Yeah, truly. You know, damn. Holy shit. Yeah.
I'm just, like, shook that all of that happened. And then, however many years later, he was like, yeah, fuck her, right? It's true. Fuck her, right?
Yeah. So, that's the story of Half-Hanged Mary. That's what she's referred to. Woof.
Yeah. Well, with that, we hope that you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. But not so weird about this.
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