We look at the reported use of oomancy—egg divination—allegedly preceding the Salem Witch Trials. The discussion centers around a haunting account from Reverend John Hale about an afflicted girl who used an egg and glass to divine her future, only to see a coffin appear in the reflection. This ominous vision allegedly led to her eventual death, serving as what Hale callously called "a just warning" about dabbling with divination.

The hosts explore the ancient origins of divination practices, tracing them back thousands of years to early civilizations. The episode examines various divination methods documented in Salem records, including the sieve and scissors technique, key and Bible, and other techniques for fortune telling. Several fascinating Salem cases come to light, including Samuel Wardwell's admitted fortune telling abilities and Dorcas Hoar's reputation as a local fortune teller who specialized in predicting the deaths of men. The hosts share intriguing testimonies from neighbors who witnessed these practices firsthand, revealing how common divination was in 17th-century New England communities.

Throughout the episode, the hosts address common myths about Salem, including the popular but inaccurate image of girls gathering in circles for magic sessions. They also explore the mystery of which afflicted girl Hale was referring to in his account, as her identity remains unknown to this day.

Join Josh and Sarah as they uncover the surprisingly relatable human desire to glimpse the future, one cracked egg at a time. Connect with them on Patreon at patreon.com/aboutsalem to continue the conversation about Salem's divination practices and their modern echoes.

Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project

Massachusetts Court of Oyer and Terminer Documents, ⁠The Salem Witch Trials Collection, Peabody Essex Museum

Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt

The Thing About Salem Website

⁠The Thing About Salem YouTube

⁠The Thing About Salem Patreon

⁠The Thing About Witch Hunts YouTube⁠
⁠The Thing About Witch Hunts Website

You've heard the theory: ergot-poisoned rye bread caused hallucinations that sparked the Salem witch trials. It sounds so logical, so scientific, so... wrong.

When the afflicted girl Elizabeth Hubbard accused alleged witch Sarah Good of witchcraft through spectral torture - pinching, pricking, and demanding she sign the devil's book - was she describing a fungal poisoning? Or something far more complex?

Join Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack as they finally address one of the most popular silver bullet "explanations" for the Salem Witch Trials. They'll show you why this tidy medical explanation crumbles: convulsive ergotism is actually a syndrome with a constellation of symptoms and variables.

This episode will sharpen your critical thinking. The ergot theory's problems show us how easily we can be drawn to explanations that sound scientific but don't actually fit the evidence and why we need to dig deeper than the theories that simply make us feel better about difficult history.

⁠Linnda R. Caporael, “Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem?”

Nicholas P. Spanos and Jack Gottlieb Rebuttal, “Ergotism and the Salem Village Witch Trials”

Mary K. Matossian, "Views: Ergot and the Salem Witchcraft Affair "⁠

Nicholas P. Spanos, “Ergotism and the Salem Witch Panic”

Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project

Massachusetts Court of Oyer and Terminer Documents, ⁠The Salem Witch Trials Collection, Peabody Essex Museum

Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt:

The Thing About Salem Website

⁠The Thing About Salem YouTube

⁠The Thing About Salem Patreon

⁠The Thing About Witch Hunts YouTube

⁠The Thing About Witch Hunts Website

In Salem, people were hanged based on crimes no one else could see.

In Salem, accusers claimed to see the ghostly “shapes” of their neighbors tormenting them from miles away. These spectral attacks left real bruises, real terror, and real questions: Could the Devil impersonate innocent people? Why did Connecticut reject this evidence decades earlier while Salem embraced it with deadly consequences?

From midnight visitations to courtroom chaos, discover how testimony about invisible crimes became the most dangerous evidence in American legal history.

The shadows cast by Salem’s trials reach far beyond 1692—and the question of what we’re willing to believe based on what we cannot see remains as relevant as ever.

Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project

Massachusetts Court of Oyer and Terminer Documents, ⁠The Salem Witch Trials Collection, Peabody Essex Museum

“The Return of Several Ministers”

Letter from Cotton Mather to John Foster

Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt

The Thing About Salem Website

⁠The Thing About Salem YouTube

⁠The Thing About Salem Patreon

⁠The Thing About Witch Hunts YouTube
⁠The Thing About Witch Hunts Website

What happens when a few cryptic accusations transform into elaborate tales of midnight gatherings with the Devil himself? In Salem, the introduction of witches' sabbath stories didn't just add fuel to the fire—it created an inferno that would consume an entire community. These stories reveal how panic spreads and conspiracies grow, transforming neighbors into enemies and turning familiar landscapes into theaters of supernatural warfare.

Episode Highlights:

European Origins of Sabbath Stories • In the western Alps in the 1430s, stories spread after religious conferences • Originally called the "Synagogue of Satan," not sabbath or sabbat • 1669 Swedish trials in Elfdale Province featured children confessing to journeys to Blockula • Accused described calling "Antecessor come and carry us to Blockula" three times at crossroads • The Devil appeared in a gray coat, red and blue stockings, and distinctive high-crowned hat with red beard

Salem's Transformation • European sabbath tales were fresh in colonial minds when Salem's hunt began •Stories evolved from simple accusations into vast conspiracy narratives

Impact on the Witch Hunt • Each confession built upon previous stories, creating coherent mythology • Details seemed to confirm worst fears about supernatural conspiracy • Stories recorded as evidence and treated as truth by authorities • Transformed the scope from individual accusations to community-wide threat

Related Content: Join us on Patreon for bonus episodes and behind-the-scenes content

Buy the book: Origins of the Witches Sabbath by Michael D. Bailey

Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project⁠

The Thing About Salem Website

⁠The Thing About Salem YouTube

⁠The Thing About Salem Patreon

⁠The Thing About Witch Hunts YouTube⁠

⁠The Thing About Witch Hunts Website

Arthur Miller's timeless play, The Crucible, transformed the Salem witch trials into America's most powerful allegory for McCarthyism. When The Crucible premiered in 1953, Miller—who would later marry Marilyn Monroe—created a dramatized version of Salem that exposed the dangerous parallels between witch hunts and communist hysteria.

Hosts Josh and Sarah explore Miller's deliberate historical changes and why he chose fiction over fact to reveal deeper truths about accusation, confession, and moral courage under pressure.

The episode breaks down how Miller's allegory connected Salem's witch trials to 1950s Red Scare tactics, showing why both historical moments reveal the same pattern. Whether fearing witchcraft or communism, communities turn on perceived traitors through panic and make false accusations.

Explore The Crucible's lasting cultural impact from high school literature classes to multiple film adaptations. Whether you're studying the play for school, preparing for a performance, or simply curious about its enduring relevance, this episode explains why Miller's work remains essential reading in our current age of political polarization.

Perfect for students, theater enthusiasts, and anyone seeking to understand how The Crucible connects Salem's 1692 tragedy to timeless themes of integrity, community panic, and moral choice that still resonate today.

Buy the book: The Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America by Clay Risen

Buy the Play: The Crucible by Arthur Miller

⁠The Thing About Salem Website⁠

⁠The Thing About Salem YouTube⁠

⁠The Thing About Salem Patreon⁠

⁠The Thing About Witch Hunts YouTube⁠

⁠The Thing About Witch Hunts Website

Explore one of the more bizarre forms of evidence used to convict witches in colonial America. When the Salem Witch Trials judges accepted poppets as deadly proof of witchcraft, they turned dolls and rags into evidence that cost innocent people like Bridget Bishop their lives. The judges admitted all kinds of evidence that wouldn't survive five minutes in a modern courtroom, including poppets—dolls crafted with malicious intent—that were allegedly used to afflict targets from afar.

The hosts reveal how law enforcement searched accused witches' homes for "pictures of clay or wax," turning up everything from rag dolls stuffed with goat hair to knotted handkerchiefs filled with cheese and grass. In the most shocking cases, judges conducted live magical experiments in their own courtrooms while watching the “afflicted” witnesses writhe in apparent agony, then using these theatrical displays as evidence to send people to the gallows.

Listeners discover the tragic stories behind Salem's most infamous poppet cases, like those involving Bridget Bishop, Candy, and Abigail Hobbs, who claimed the devil personally delivered poppets to her. The episode also explores pre-Salem cases like Goody Glover.

This is another chapter in understanding how Salem became America's most infamous example of justice gone terribly wrong.

The Thing About Salem Website

The Thing About Salem YouTube

The Thing About Salem Patreon

The Thing About Witch Hunts YouTube

The Thing About Witch Hunts Website

In the inaugural episode of The Thing About Salem, hosts Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack take you inside the Salem Witch Trials, focusing on the early events that triggered the infamous witch-hunt. Discover how Tituba became the unwitting catalyst for America's most infamous witch hunt. This isn't the sanitized version you learned in school or saw in The Crucible—this is the raw, documented truth about three pivotal days that changed history forever.

When 9-year-old Betty Parris and 11-year-old Abigail Williams began barking like dogs and trying to walk into fireplaces in January 1692, their desperate community turned to folk magic—baking a grotesque "witch cake" made with the girls' urine and feeding it to a dog. This bizarre ritual, unique in all of New England's witch trial records, appeared to succeed when the girls began naming witches the very next day. Their first target was Tituba, the enslaved indigenous woman in their own household—the most vulnerable person in Salem Village and the unwitting catalyst who would spend 15 months in jail as the witch trials exploded across Massachusetts.

Listeners are provided with a detailed account of the strange behaviors exhibited by Parris's daughter Betty and niece Abigail, the mysterious witch cake baked by Mary Sibley, and the subsequent accusations against Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne. The podcast also highlights Tituba's lasting impact and a commemorative brick in her honor at the House of the Seven Gables. The episode is the first in a weekly series exploring different facets of the Salem Witch Trials.

00:00 Introduction to The Salem Witch Trials

00:13 Meet Your Hosts: Josh and Sarah

00:35 Podcast Overview and Schedule

01:07 Focus on Salem Witch Trials

01:25 Tituba: The Enslaved Woman at the Center

02:02 The Mysterious Illness of Betty and Abigail

05:55 The Witch Cake Experiment

09:58 Accusations Begin: Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne

12:10 Tituba's Fate and Memorial

13:31 Closing Remarks and Patreon Invitation

Key Topics Covered

• The Parris Household Crisis (January 1692)
• The Afflicted Girls
• Mysterious Symptoms
• Dr. William Griggs
• Mary Sibley's Folk Magic
• Samuel Parris's Response

• Tituba's Vulnerability

• • Life-Changing Moment

  The Thing About Salem Website

  The Thing About Salem YouTube

  The Thing About Salem Patreon

  Mary Bingham’s YouTube Channel: Sarah Wildes 1692

  The Thing About Witch Hunts YouTube

  The Thing About Witch Hunts Website

  Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem by Elaine G. Breslaw

  Six Women of Salem by Marilynne K. Roach

  The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-By-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege by Marilynne K. Roach

Are you curious about the Salem Witch Trials? Fascinated? Intrigued? Maybe even fully obsessed? Josh and Sarah from Witch Hunt podcast bring you The Thing About Salem, a podcast dedicated to uncovering all things about the Salem Witch Trials. Each week, in 15 minutes or less, we go through all the feels as we share a story and a discussion. Together, we will cry, rage, and even laugh a little about some of the silliness, like the witch cake baked with the urine of the afflicted girls. Early topics include Tituba, The Crucible, poppets, the witches' sabbath, and witch marks. In future episodes, we will peel back all the layers of the witch trials.