Mary Warren Accuses the Afflicted of Faking Bewitchment: Salem Witch Trials Daily April 3, 1692

Did the afflicted girls fake their symptoms?We explore a striking claim from within the crisis itself: that the afflicted may have been “dissembling.” We revisit Sunday, April 3, 1692, when Samuel Parris read aloud a note Mary Warren had posted at the Salem Village meetinghouse, inviting the congregation to offer prayers of gratitude for her deliverance—yet the note’s contents are unknown because Parris never copied it into his church record book. We also examine the puzzling gaps in Parris’s records during the most active months of the trials, raising questions about what was happening in the meetinghouse. Finally, we tease an April 19 court record showing Elizabeth Hubbard accusing Mary Warren of making the “dissemble” remark, which we’ll dig into next.00:00 Afflicted Dissembling00:10 Daily Show Intro00:17 Mary Warren Note00:42 Parris Missing Records01:22 Silence Raises Questions01:38 Hubbard Accusation TeaseA Brief and True Narrative by Deodat LawsonSign the petition to exonerate Massachusetts witch trial victimsFind My Massachusetts LegislatorsThe Thing About Witch Hunts / About Salem YouTube channel⁠Salem Witch Trials Daily Hub⁠The Thing About Salem⁠The Thing About Witch Hunts⁠Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692Bernard Rosenthal, ed., Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt⁠Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience⁠Marilynne K. Roach, The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under SiegeHigh Quality Scans of the Original Court Documents -Peabody Essex Museum Salem Witch Trials Collection