HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right boys. All right my sweet little tiny little boys. You know what? Today a lot of times our episodes unfortunately are by the boys and about the boys.
BEN KISSEL
No they're not really.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. Yeah they are.
BEN KISSEL
They're never really about the boys.
MARCUS PARKS
Not really.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah they're always about the boys.
BEN KISSEL
I feel like masculine is like the fourth thing people would describe us as.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Today though, today's episode, all about the girls.
BEN KISSEL
It's about the girls?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh I see what I see what he's saying here. I see what he's saying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The ladies.
MARCUS PARKS
The ladies, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come on.
BEN KISSEL
That's fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
Otherwise known as the afflicted!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The afflicted! (metal drumming)
BEN KISSEL
Whoa! Welcome to Last Podcast on the Left everyone. I am Ben hanging out with the shirtless Henry Zebrowski and a sleeveless Marcus Parks. I just saw Marcus Parks' armpits, not that much hair. However I'm staring at Henry Zebrowski is chest and he makes up for it. Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Everyone knows that I'm the satyr of the group. From the waist up hardly any hair, waist down a lot of hair, it all fell to the bottom.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And there's actually a lot of accounts of demons and demonic figures in this entire story that had me feeling a little triggered.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Maybe almost body shamed by history.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because a lot of them talking about the evil nature of the squat hairy man who dresses in fun clothes.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Well folks we're not going to nilbog, we're not talking goblins, we're onto Salem Witch Trials part two.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Part deux.
BEN KISSEL
Part deux!
MARCUS PARKS
So when we last left Salem and the surrounding community circa 1692 the first of the main witchcraft accusers collectively known as the afflicted were just starting to show the first symptoms of bewitchment. Now what truly set the Salem Witch Trials apart from all the rest or at least the rest in America is that it was the only one to admit so-called spectral evidence during both the beginning accusations and in the trials themselves.
BEN KISSEL
Now is that what happens when you take a toot and it lends up a little bit into your underwear?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I would say legally it's a shart. Of the legal processes it's the most shart-like of them.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because anybody can anything, anybody can be a ghost, and it's very difficult to pin that down.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You might even say that might be difficult to find actual evidence of that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, could be. Yeah a shart I think-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's got evidence.
MARCUS PARKS
There's very hard evidence for a shart. Man, I don't know what it is. It's almost like it showed up-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's SBD.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah maybe an SBD and then your friend starts yelling at you that you did it, you did it, you did it and then they fucking hang you for it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then all of a sudden you're emolliated.
BEN KISSEL
Gotcha.
MARCUS PARKS
Well put simply spectral evidence was evidence that only the afflicted party could see. For example a girl would say that she was at that very moment being attacked by the astral projection of a witch that was clear as day to her but invisible to everyone else.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kissel's sucking my dick right now!
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's sucking my dick right now and he can still talk!
BEN KISSEL
It's amazing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is like a magic act.
BEN KISSEL
I wondered why my mouth tasted like a good Polish one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's sucking my dick right now!
BEN KISSEL
Wow! Spectral evidence.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But over the next couple of episodes what you're gonna see is the constant struggle I think of these guys in their own really stupid backwards way trying to figure out how to make all this legal. Which it ain't. And it's all dumb and it's a waste of time and it's actually just a font of misery for everyone involved.
BEN KISSEL
Just one second guys. (coughing) Hairball.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's spectral evidence.
BEN KISSEL
Spectral evidence.
MARCUS PARKS
Well usually spectral evidence would not be considered admissible evidence in court.
BEN KISSEL
Because it's not real.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it's a hallucination.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And hallucination is generous.
BEN KISSEL
They don't even allow lie detectors.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Lie detectors don't even work.
BEN KISSEL
Exactly.
MARCUS PARKS
Instead according to the book 'Salem Witch Trials: A Day By Day Chronicle', conclusive proof for witchcraft followed the same standards as any other crime in colonial Massachusetts. Back then you needed a voluntary confession plus concrete evidence of the act or proper evidence by two credible witnesses.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And a lot of this was set up from the crusades and the the inquisition.
MARCUS PARKS
And this is also just plain old legal shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
This isn't just witchcraft. Because remember witchcraft is just another crime like stealing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. But the witchcraft and she got baked into legal processes fucking 500 years before all of this shit. It has been going on for a long time.
BEN KISSEL
Also Henry, please say it correctly. Inquisition!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh you're doing Monty Python. And now I'm upset.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually but that's not even close.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No one expects the inquisition.
MARCUS PARKS
No one expects the inquisition.
BEN KISSEL
Inquisition!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're mixing.
MARCUS PARKS
You're saying it in a French accent, the characters are Spanish.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
BEN KISSEL
I'm not saying it like Monty Python, I'm saying it like Sebastian the crab from The Little Mermaid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't even... We are at the very beginning of a very long episode. This is the very, very beginning. We can't begin this now.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And Lumière was the French one, Sebastian I believe was Jamaican.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jamaican.
BEN KISSEL
Jamaican me crazy. We have a long episode.
MARCUS PARKS
Well concerning these standards of conviction or at the very least standards of accusation, confession without supporting evidence, that could just be the suspect's delusion, the so- called serial confessors. But evidence without confession like say evidence of the sort of folk magic many people did in 1692 New England, that could be seen as a coincidence.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Coincidence?
MARCUS PARKS
That's why you need both of them at the same time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And as far as the two witnesses principle goes, those two witnesses needed to have both observed the same event, not two similar events at different times. Like say if you're charged with sucking the devil's dick, both of those two people have to see you sucking the devil's dick. You cannot have two people seeing you suck the devil's dick twice. You understand?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Does the devil get to come out and say he was sucking my dick?
BEN KISSEL
Right. Does the devil like cuckery?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes!
BEN KISSEL
I think it'll make the devil uncomfortable.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No he loves it!
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But to be a cuck you have to be in a committed relationship in the first place and the devil is never going to be in a committed relationship.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hard to pin him down.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
But when it came to the Salem Witch Trials all of those rules were thrown out the window. In Salem a girl could just say that she was being attacked by the invisible specter of Goody Proctor and that would be admitted into evidence against Goody Proctor with just as much weight as if they found a pentagram drawn in goat's blood under her rug while she wore a t- shirt that says 'I sucked the devil's dick in Salem, Massachusetts'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Methsyndicate.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, thank you to methsyndicate for for the inspiration there.
BEN KISSEL
And all I got was this lousy t-shirt.
MARCUS PARKS
That's right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they didn't have any evidence. Because as I might begin to chart in this episode, the idea that there was a gigantic secret confederation of witches or devil worshippers in any single society, there's absolutely no real evidence.
BEN KISSEL
Aw, I hope that there is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well there's probably, we'll get into it at some point, but the idea that there are theistic Satanists. You get the Temple of Set, there are people that do believe in Satan as a god. But again they just believe, it's more luciferianism, they just think that there was a mix 'em up and Lucifer is the real god and god's the lion god, you see.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's a mix 'em up.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the most respected spiritual leaders in New England came out against spectral evidence even before the trial started and they continued to caution against its use during the trials themselves. However this was not because admitting spectral evidence was obviously stupid. Instead the leading ministers of the time and therefore some of the leading figures in the colony said that spectral evidence was unreliable because the devil was powerful enough to impersonate the innocent.
BEN KISSEL
Makes all the sense in the world.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Especially if I appear to you in some form that you may be confused. There's no way because I could never be the devil!
BEN KISSEL
I think you woke me up at like two o'clock in the morning when you were all hammered and you came into my room and then you...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Twas not me!
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Must have been some other specter.
BEN KISSEL
Spectral evidence.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I certainly never mistook your room for the bathroom.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
As far as where we are in the story of Salem, we're right at the beginning of the first accusation. After the two girls living under the roof of Reverend Samuel Parris baked a witch cake to identify the witch causing their torment, they accused one of the two people Samuel Parris had enslaved, Tituba, of being that witch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
And that was one of the better piss cakes in Massachusetts.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Disgusting. But also I found there actually is a really compelling evidence to say that Parris' daughters were suffering from tinnitus.
MARCUS PARKS
Really and that's it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not tinnitus, tetanus. Yeah, yeah, you know what I'm saying.
MARCUS PARKS
Tinnitus, oh yeah their ears were ringing a bunch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They did the Charles Manson act out. No, tetanus.
MARCUS PARKS
Interesting.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
However partly because the bewitch Mintz had started to spread beyond the Parris household to servant girls across Salem as well as the daughter of Parris' friends, the Putnams, people had a feeling that it wasn't just Tituba who was responsible for these attacks. Therefore Samuel Parris and his wife Elizabeth pushed their daughter and niece to name more witches in Salem, all while they bandied about the names of people they thought might be in the thrall to the devil all within hearing of the girls who needed more names to name. As far as who those names belonged to, they were women that the Parris' and their buddies didn't respect or people they believed wished them harm. In other words they named people it was safe to name.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The usual suspects.
MARCUS PARKS
And when the first afflicted girls overheard the names of people it was safe to name being spoken, they put those names in the jackpot. Specifically the second and third accused witches were two women of low social status named Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. While Sarah Osborne was merely a free thinker that somewhat lived outside of society, Sarah Good was certainly one of those aforementioned pains in the ass.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's kind of interesting. I watched The Witch again last night to kind of get more context and remind myself just how creepy New England is. And it is crazy, the idea that she truly was outside of society.
BEN KISSEL
Sarah Osborne?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They leave, they literally make them go. So they just go because also I found out reading a little bit about the structure of Salem Village is that back in the day they used to have all the farms in one collected area and all of the living areas in one collected area, right.
BEN KISSEL
Like it's a town.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like a town. But the idea is you had them all close, right, so that everybody could collectively work together.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That everybody that lived in the houses would collectively work the land and share amongst themselves. Eventually everyone realized I'm sick of doing this, I hate you.
BEN KISSEL
Right, I hate my neighbor, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want to go live over there where those nice trees are.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then they go set up over there. And eventually the longer you're over there everyone's like, 'I think that bitch is a fucking witch.'
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're just like, 'Look at her over there, she's staring at my rutabagas.'
BEN KISSEL
Why wouldn't she want to hang out with us? I don't understand.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't understand.
BEN KISSEL
She must be weird. She don't want to hang out with us.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You notice that the wheat is higher than it was yesterday?
BEN KISSEL
Ergot poisoning. Also Sarah Osborne, I was stuck in traffic today which was infuriating, she'd have loved the man I was behind because he had a funny bumper sticker and it said 'Think: It's Not Illegal Yet.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not yet.
MARCUS PARKS
Not yet.
BEN KISSEL
Not yet. So Sarah Osborne, she would have thought outside the bun too, she probably would have laughed at that bumper sticker which in my opinion makes her a witch. Is it wrong if I take the side of all the priests and pastors?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it is.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's wrong. It's a bad take. It's a real bad take.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Sarah Good was a poor alienated woman from a family who had fallen on such hard times that they were near vagrancy by the time the accusations began. While her family had once been successful, circumstances meant that she and her husband had resorted to begging, doing it in a way that is specific to those who once held higher status.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, I used to be rich! Don't we all want to see me be rich again?
BEN KISSEL
I love that.
MARCUS PARKS
Well for example if someone gave Sarah Good charity, she would make the giver feel uncomfortable as if the gift was an insult. But if the gift was too little, Good would feel equally disgusted.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh god, I can see this fucking bitch.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh. This is like when you try to give somebody who is unhomed in New York some food and they're like, 'I'm vegan.' Like you know what?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I had that happen to me. I remember one time I gave a sandwich to a poor dude on the street and he's like, 'I don't eat bacon.' And I was like I think that your lord would not care right now what you eat.
MARCUS PARKS
Or his lord would look at it as the ultimate test and would condemn him to hell forever for failing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dude, now you're in the puritan mindset.
MARCUS PARKS
I was thinking like a minister. Now I've been thinking like a minister since I was 6 years old dude and I fucking first got the fear of hell put inside of me deep where it still lives to this day.
BEN KISSEL
Nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This book, I can't really talk about it enough how much I love it, 'Europe's Inner Demons' by Norman Cohn. And a part of it is constantly that, it's this whole idea that even you would fall for one of these so-called human frailties, the idea of like being horny or wanting something else that somebody has, right, being envious of something.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And all of that is just a fucking trick bro. And then god purposely punishes you to make you want all the extra shit. He makes you want it because then you just yearning for it shows why you should be at the bottom of the fucking pile dude because you fucking didn't get it. Whammies! Nothing but whammies.
BEN KISSEL
Nothing but whammies. I mean literally it would just be an LT, lettuce tomato sandwich without the bacon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a salad. You cut up the bread, that's the croutons.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's not bad.
BEN KISSEL
It is bad. You want the bacon. Henry's trying to bacon scam people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you want the bacon.
BEN KISSEL
You want the bacon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can do a bacon flip if I want.
MARCUS PARKS
Whatever. Well as it happened, after Reverend Samuel Parris gave charity to Sarah Good one day at the start of his daughter and niece's afflictions, he noticed that Sarah walked off muttering something under her breath. But instead of simply thinking wow, what a bitch, Samuel Parris decided that yes, his girls had gotten worse after Sarah Good had come by his home. And the muttering that he heard, it must have been a curse!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the devil's oath!
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Meanwhile she was just going like, 'Cheap ass fucking minister.' That's all she was doing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's it. And to top it all off, Sarah Good was considered untrustworthy in this community of British immigrants because her father had been a highly successful innkeeper nicknamed The Frenchman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Frenchman!
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He invented two in the pink, one in the stink.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that something?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is really very incredible.
MARCUS PARKS
Trois en la rose?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Un en la rose et deux en la merde.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that something? Inquisition.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that you think that that's 'Tradition!' from Tevye.
BEN KISSEL
I always think of Tevye. It's one of my favorite fake sugars.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I fucking hate him. I'm gonna fucking walk away, dude. We've got 2 hours and 15 minutes left.
MARCUS PARKS
But that was Sarah Good. The other accused Sarah, Sarah Osborne, had done nothing more than make some unconventional life choices. Years before, she had scandalized the community by purchasing the contract of an indentured servant because she was in love.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's hot.
MARCUS PARKS
She married him after the purchase but because these things just weren't done, the community looked down on her for this decision.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How hot is it to be husband and present? You're the purchased one and you show up and you're like, 'Mm, ooh!' And you have to wear your tunic with the extra holes in the side to go get all the firewood and be like, 'Oh no, I spilled all this firewood.' And you drop down and that wife just sits there watching that husband get all dusty.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. I love this Zebrowski revisionist history of American history. This is great. After they get rid of CRT, you're going to be taking over for most curriculum.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll be fair and just and I'll just say humans should be damned and we're a virus on this rock.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. America: The Sexy Years.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as a result of thinking outside of societal norms just the slightest bit, Sarah Osborne was in prime position to be accused of witchcraft. However in an example of just how cruel and uncaring people can be when they're scared and looking for a scapegoat, Sarah Osborne was completely bedridden at the time of her accusation, colonial Massachusetts sick, and she was unable to leave her house under her own power.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that we could all tell that this woman has the ungodly powers of a witch.
BEN KISSEL
I mean she can't get out of bed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, we will all see as I show you now, as I grab her bedclothes and I spin her from the bed and she plunges in triumph into the devil! Oh she is just on the ground.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh well, let's fucking hang her. Honestly, what a waste of time. Let's hang her anyway.
BEN KISSEL
She'd have more power I think if she was a witch.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And that didn't stop the good people of Salem from actually dragging her from her bed to publicly accuse her of witchcraft.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can get up, get up.
BEN KISSEL
Do witches get sick?
MARCUS PARKS
I guess. Or maybe she's faking it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You get sick of the hassle of society.
BEN KISSEL
I agree with that.
MARCUS PARKS
She could also be faking it, you never know. You never know what happens.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You never know.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
You never know what happens to these people, yeah. Now Osborne and Good held at least one if not many of the characteristics that made a person susceptible to witchcraft accusations in the 17th century. They were outside of society, they wanted to be outside of society, they refused to show deference to the superiors and the existing order of things, they had moved around a lot for whatever reason, and/or their social rank had fallen. And so since Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne met at least a few of these criteria and they were openly suspected by those of higher social rank, Samuel Parris' niece and daughter named the two Sarahs as their tormentors.
BEN KISSEL
No!
MARCUS PARKS
And once the daughter and niece did accuse two more women, the other girls mentioned at the end of the last episode followed suit, specifically 12 year old Ann Putnam Jr.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's a hard ass bitch, that little girl.
BEN KISSEL
She's 12.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's intense.
BEN KISSEL
I guess she's colonial Williamsburg 12.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well this whole episode is filled with very scary little girls.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is filled with them being like, (British accent) 'I saw the devil in the window and he looked a lot like you.'
BEN KISSEL
Jesus. That is scary!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, dude. It's all of them. It's a whole town of The Orphan.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Every single one.
BEN KISSEL
Oh no! Proportional dwarfism.
MARCUS PARKS
(British accent) I saw Goody Proctor take the woman and roast her on a stick for four hours long.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(British accent) The fat was dripping and it was the devil's fat.
BEN KISSEL
How do they all sound like Julia Child?
MARCUS PARKS
Well Ann Putnam Jr said that the specter of Sarah Good was visiting her and pinching her. But more importantly Putnam Jr said that the specter was trying to get her to sign what the afflicted had started calling the devil's book.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. That's why a lot of times you'll see the devil hanging outside of various movie sets or hotels where the movie stars stay because he's constantly looking for others to sign the devil's book.
BEN KISSEL
He's not going to get Keanu, I'll tell you that much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Look at this signature I have for Hugh Grant.
BEN KISSEL
Ooh!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
$7 on eBay.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Just another nefarious page from the devil's book.
BEN KISSEL
I love that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And here is the signature I got a Disneyworld from a young Aladdin. Yes!
BEN KISSEL
Aladdin. He's actually not the genie. Isn't that something? Oftentimes people think Aladdin is the genie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They don't.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah they do.
MARCUS PARKS
No one had ever thought that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I would never do that. I would never conflate that and that is why I am the owner of the devil's book.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as we mentioned last episode the puritans were a mercantile people and contracts were a big part of their lives. So it made sense that one of the touchstones of the Salem story was the so-called devil's book where people could make their mark signifying a formal yet temporary covenant with Satan, much like an indentured servant contract.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man. You can do a lease to own with Satan for your soul.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it's a rent to own. It's a good point, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is. But again, this is a formula that harkens back to all accused organizations with Satan or contractual obligations with Satan.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That has been around for fucking ever.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's really strange because there's something about it again, the human need to create kind of a legal base, a form in reality because they are constantly not in good faith using the Satanist argument against people since the year 100.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The whole point is to discredit you but they need to find a legal basis, they need to find a hook that they can hang it on.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So these are the type of things. You say, 'Ah but you see she signed a contract!' And then they're like where's the contract? 'Tis but spiritual in nature!'
MARCUS PARKS
But the contract does exist but the contract exists in a place that is very real called the invisible world.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. It's just as real as this world.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah but it's invisible.
BEN KISSEL
Well it's invisible though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's invisible.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
And it lays on over our world like animation cells.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I get it.
MARCUS PARKS
You know where they put Mickey Mouse's face on and off and on and off? Yeah, it's like that except invisible. You can't see Mickey Mouse's face. You don't know if it's Mickey Mouse or not.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, you can't. No, you don't. And the invisible world is where I'm a professional basketball player, where Kissel's the best lover that the world's ever had.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And where Marcus is finally a beautiful woman.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that nice?
MARCUS PARKS
Finally. Finally I get to be Martha Sparks.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah, Martha.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh, I don't like the tenor in that.
MARCUS PARKS
I didn't like that either. I didn't like the tenor of that voice or the guttural growl I heard underneath.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Martha Sparks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You looked at Marcus like he was a pile of slim jims.
BEN KISSEL
Snap into a slim jim!
MARCUS PARKS
Now once Ann Putnam Jr started accusing the two Sarahs of pestering her, she was joined by Elizabeth Hubbard, servant to the man who had originally diagnosed the to Parris girls with bewitchment. That was Dr. Griggs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's me man! Dr. Napoleon Griggs!
BEN KISSEL
You changed your name.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man! Benedicto? It doesn't matter man when your practice is rock and roll!
BEN KISSEL
I have a lump on my neck, you want to check it out?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh hell yeah. You know who once had a lump in his neck?
BEN KISSEL
Who?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My old buddy who's dead! That's not good news, bro!
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's bad news?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You got cancer, son!
BEN KISSEL
Gosh darn it.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Elizabeth Hubbard added to the narrative by saying that she was being stalked by a wolf sent by Sarah Good and the specter of the bedridden Sarah Osborne was tormenting her while accompanied by, this is very interesting, a short hairy winged thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm pissed. I'm already pissed.
BEN KISSEL
You get mentioned so many times in these stories.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's a dude, should I jump into this now? Because this is fascinating.
MARCUS PARKS
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fascinating.
BEN KISSEL
Fascinating.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So I was reading this book again, 'Europe's Inner Demons,' and there's an old timey writer, right, a guy named Caesarius. His name's Caesarius much like 'is this guy serious?' And he was a monk in the 1200s. This is fun, this is fun. A fun way to tell history. Edutainment.
MARCUS PARKS
I reacted the exact same way I did as when you did it earlier.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, thank you.
BEN KISSEL
Oh this is the second time you've tried that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I did it on the show now though.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Before I ran it for Marcus and I was like wink. Because it came up yesterday when I was doing my research.
BEN KISSEL
That's fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he was this monk, right. So while he wrote these the stories of demons in their behavior for the all of these years and people thought that says Arias was writing a funny book.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They thought it was supposed to be funny. But this researcher which I think is really interesting, Norman Cohn, he postulates that the dude was not funny, that he thinks he was dead serious.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But the stories that he told of how demons behaved were like he basically wrote episodes of Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell.
BEN KISSEL
Good plug.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, it is. Where he wrote these stories about these little fat little demons.
MARCUS PARKS
What year is this? This is like 10th century, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is 1200s. And so he wrote this story and one was the story of this demon that wanted to get right with god, right, he wanted to confess his sins.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So he goes to this priest and he says, 'Hey, I wanna get right with god.' And the priest is like, 'Well it would take like 1000 years for you to confess all your sins.' And he's like, 'Good for you, I've been alive for 5000!'
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's good, he can do it 5 times.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's like all right, fine, whatever. Okay, you want to be absolved? You have to throw yourself on the ground and say 'praise god' three times a day.
BEN KISSEL
That's it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You got to do that for 1000 years and you're free and you're done.
BEN KISSEL
It's still not that much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the demon's like you got it. So he goes out there, he throws himself down and he's just like, 'Praise god!' And he does it again, prostrates himself again, 'Praise god!' And finally he's like this is really hard and he's like fuck it, I'll go back to hell. And then he just disappears.
MARCUS PARKS
That's the end of the story? That's the whole thing?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the end of the whole story. It's a 12 minute episode.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's really not much you can do with it. And I love the other story about the priest that all of a sudden got this beautiful singing voice.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And this guy was doing like, (singing) 'All my life, I pray for someone like you.' And they're like you never had this much soul, Derek.
BEN KISSEL
Was that C-Ci & Jojo?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. K-Ci & Jojo.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Told us all about having sex as little kids when we used to dance that in 6th grade. You make it hard for me, remember that?
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, you make it hard for me.
BEN KISSEL
Do you remember that one lyric? A little poke comes through.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's called Making it Hard For Me. The song is about dancing too close on a woman and then you get a boner because the woman's dancing close on you.
MARCUS PARKS
Get a boner, yeah. I just always think, (singing) Never gonna get it, never gonna get it.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Never gonna get it, never gonna get it.
MARCUS PARKS
Now that's singing right there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, En Vogue. Back when singers were singers.
MARCUS PARKS
Woo woo woo! Yeah!
BEN KISSEL
Just cut to me outside of the Pizza Hut buffet without $5.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I always remember. But this priest right, so he's singing and they're all like you never sang this fucking good, you must be filled with the demon.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So they go and they do a big exorcism on him, the demon comes out of him, and the guy just dies. And they just realized oh that demon's been living inside this dude singing great for the last 6 months re-animating his body. Just because all that demon wanted to do was sing!
BEN KISSEL
Well they should have let him sing then.
MARCUS PARKS
So that's that's all. The priest died and then the demon entered into his body and reanimated the body and all he did for 6 months was sing beautifully and that's it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, beautifully. Ands they were all pissed that he was so good.
MARCUS PARKS
What is the point of that story? What is the point of that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You never know. And then the end of it is something like leefay de un leche boxalotay which means in Latin that life is a box of chocolates.
MARCUS PARKS
Life is a box of chocolates.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic. Wow. I'm learning so much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is history!
BEN KISSEL
It's not.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is history!
BEN KISSEL
That's actually not history.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah it is!
BEN KISSEL
No, it's two stories that an idiot wrote.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No but I'm saying-
MARCUS PARKS
And badly written stories at that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it's just about how there's been stories of demons for a long time and what they do.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. You don't have to convince us.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. It's all good.
BEN KISSEL
I believe you, I believe you.
MARCUS PARKS
But with at least four girls claiming witchcraft, legal proceedings began against Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne on February 29, 1692 meaning the Salem Witch Trials essentially began on a leap day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A day that should never exist.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting indeed. I just feel so bad for Sarah Osborne. She's just in bed and she's like, 'What are you all doing? I've been sick.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, that's how it is.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. However the trials themselves would not be for months to come. On this episode we're going to be focusing on the formal accusations that led to the trials, the so-called examinations. Now since servant girls and children weren't legally considered to be people in colonial Massachusetts, the complaint against the witches had to be filed by men on their behalf.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Good and fair.
BEN KISSEL
So crazy.
MARCUS PARKS
And so once the complaint was filed, local magistrates Jonathan corwin and John Hathorne, or Hay-thorne, it's hard to say, they began with what was referred to as examinations. Examinations basically were a terrifying combination of an interrogation and a deposition followed by a likely instant arraignment all done not only in front of the public but your accusers themselves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And this was a step up from the inquisition because it used to be you only have the inquisitors to be in front of. So that this is them being like you see now we've made it fair, we've made it good.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
There's the examination first and then there's the trial after that. But almost 100% of the time the examination is just like you're guilty, get out of here, go to jail. And there's no bail either, you're in jail until the trial.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And also they said that the prisons there were fucking disgusting.
MARCUS PARKS
We'll get to the prisons later. And I think there was actually bail sometimes but it was prohibitively expensive most of the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. It was for the super, super rich
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I'm so glad again, no contemporary tie-ins.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely nothing has changed.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Corwin and Hathorne, they were nothing more than merchants and politicians without any legal training whatsoever. And even if they had been, Massachusetts at this time didn't even have a legal system to speak of because they were transitioning yet again to a new charter. And so Corwin and Hathorne got swept up in the same fear, paranoia, and social pressure as everyone else to keep this witch train moving for no particular reason other than life sucked and everything was hard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was something to talk about and when you are literally in a full standstill as a society, like your production is shut down, there's no farming the, the soil is fallow, everybody's at each other's throats, you're in the middle of literally a religious civil war amongst your community, it was almost like we can all agree on this, right.
BEN KISSEL
This town need a witch trial!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Very good.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the day after the complaint was filed the three accusers were arrested and brought to a local tavern for questioning. This included the still extremely sick Sarah Osborne who was ripped from her sickbed and brought to a bar on the say so of children. Once they all arrived at the tavern-
BEN KISSEL
That's how I'm gonna leave the hospital one day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Bring me to the nearest tavern. And then that's where you die.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The local children are convinced that Sasquatch has cancer in the local hospital.
MARCUS PARKS
Once everyone arrived at the tavern they had to undergo the humiliation of being inspected head to toe by the tavern owner's wife for witch marks which were blemishes, moles, warts, or pretty much anything out of the ordinary down to having a weird butthole or at least weird according to the inspector.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And then that guy, he's got starfish butt.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's hanging there and he's looking at yours been like, 'There's no natural butthole that is a circle.'
BEN KISSEL
Well I don't know about that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm sitting right here, that is obviously a hexagram.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Six-sided.
BEN KISSEL
It's like that little Play-Doh push thing.
MARCUS PARKS
I would say more discoloration because they definitely talked about grundles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Sometimes a butthole was not quite the right color. Or just birthmarks, if a birthmark was in a weird place or something like that. They would just decide basically.
BEN KISSEL
What was the perfect butthole?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The perfect butthole was (Borat voice) nice. It was pink, you know.
BEN KISSEL
That's pink?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like pornography, you know it when you see it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You go like (Borat voice) that's
BEN KISSEL
Okay, so the wife of the tavern owner, why did she get to do that? Did she have credentials?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's probably just happy she's not the one being searched.
BEN KISSEL
I see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think you get that. Because they're looking for the witch's teat which is a third nipple that that would be used to feed the familiars or when the devil would come and supple. Supple and suckle.
BEN KISSEL
So they were stripped entirely nude in front of everybody.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah and their bush hair was shaved.
MARCUS PARKS
No the inspection was private.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that was classy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Because if they strip someone down then someone's going to get horny and you can't have that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Then that person has to be tortured.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Because you have to weigh is humiliation more important or is tamping down sexual need more important and in this point, sexual need, tamping that down won out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Life sucked and everything was hard.
BEN KISSEL
It sounds like it, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Interestingly Sarah Good's husband William Good who seemed pleased as punch about his wife getting arrested for being a witch-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bye honey! Bye! Oh I got to pick you up where? At the witch hunt? I'm inventing a thing called golf. Yeah, I gotta go do that.
MARCUS PARKS
He made sure to stop by the tavern to tell the woman doing the inspection, 'Hey, my wife, she just developed this weird wart underneath her right shoulder. Just wanna make sure you didn't miss it. Just wanna make sure you didn't miss it. Okay, see you later. I'll see you later!'
BEN KISSEL
He's trying to kill his wife.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tell me if I'm wrong, tell me if I'm wrong. She's got weird fucking feet, right? Just tell me. I'm not saying she's evil.
BEN KISSEL
Just sounds like you're not attracted to your wife.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no. I'm not saying she's evil.
BEN KISSEL
Do you want a divorce?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's punishable by death.
BEN KISSEL
Is that right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well you can't get divorced, you're not getting divorced in this society.
BEN KISSEL
God dang it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. So once the physical examinations were done, the magistrates moved on to the aforementioned legal examinations where according to author Emerson Baker, the suspects were grilled with all the fervor and dirty tricks of a police detective trying to elicit a confession. In this first of many rounds of examinations the accused were brought before the first four girls which were the two Parris kids, Ann Putnam Jr, and servant Elizabeth Hubbard. Once faced, Magistrate Hathorne asked leading questions that straight up accused the suspects of witchcraft. Basically instead of saying let's figure out what's going on here objectively and calmly, the judges actually began the examinations by declaring that witches were real and that the purpose of these proceedings were to find them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And we're gonna find them no matter what because we're here to find them.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
My god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And think about this, all this is at the fucking TGI Friday's.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Are people drinking and stuff?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It is an active bar?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, this is Ingersoll's Tavern.
BEN KISSEL
So everyone's just getting hammered and then you have a person be like witches are real. I see why it's entertaining.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is entertaining. I will say will I be mad if I'm there and I'm just trying to have a normal bar at happy hour and now a fucking witch trial shows up with no sign? I'll be pissed.
BEN KISSEL
It's better than a stand-up comedy show starting up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah for sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I don't know if at this point, for the first round of examinations they might have been at Ingersoll's Tavern but for every examination after that they did it in the meeting house which is basically like you're having a trial in a church.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now for example, here are a few of the questions that the magistrates asked the accused witches.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"What evil spirit have you familiarity with? Have you made no contact with the devil? Why do you hurt these children?" Why? Why, Kissel?
BEN KISSEL
Well it seems like you're accusing, I didn't do nothing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why did you hurt the children?
BEN KISSEL
I don't have any. I don't even like kids enough to hurt them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Writing down. Honestly that's the most honest stuff I've heard all day.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Sarah Good of course denied everything When she was put to the question what evil spirit have you familiarity with? None. Have you made no contact with the devil? Of course not. Why do you hurt these children? I have never hurt a child.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I didn't!
MARCUS PARKS
But in a pattern that occurred again and again throughout the preliminary accusations and the trials themselves, the afflicted girls wailed and convulsed and shrieked in agony whenever Sarah Good denied the accusations.
BEN KISSEL
Man.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The more she denied, the louder they shrieked and it's shrieking and shrieking, just the worst fucking noise you can imagine. Four girls all at once, four teenage girls screaming at the top of their lungs that they're in pain, they're in pain, they're in agony, they're in agony, everything's awful.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And have you ever been outside of one of these One Direction concerts?
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know how it is. But it is weird because it was total chaos, they were again trying this concept of there'll be order and justice here or whatever bullshit and then it was an immediate total circus.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh man, Sarah Good, she's getting gaslit. She must be pretty confused and upset at this point.
MARCUS PARKS
And so not knowing what to do, Sarah Good through the other Sarah under the bus and claimed that it was the bedridden Sarah Osborne who was tormenting all of them all at once, including Sarah Good.
BEN KISSEL
I can't even stand up to piss. I did not do this, I'm not a witch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's how powerful of which you are, Madam.
BEN KISSEL
If she can't stand to piss, she is not a witch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The first defense attorney.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well following that proclamation the magistrate brought Sarah Good's husband William Good to the stand. He said that he had no reason to believe his wife was a witch aside from her quote unquote "ill temperament".
BEN KISSEL
Oh come on!
MARCUS PARKS
Basically saying sure my wife's horrible to be around, I hate being married to her but no witch, she's no witch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's not a license carrying witch. She's more of a fucking I'd say a JV squad witch, you know what I mean?
BEN KISSEL
I guess contractually he fulfilled his husband duties.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, yes.
MARCUS PARKS
William Good Then got punny with it. In the middle of proceedings accusing his wife of a capital crime he said quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"I may say with tears that she is an enemy of all good."
BEN KISSEL
You're a witch!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a puritan enjoying a good joke right there, that's what I'm talking about.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, I hate it. It's horrible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh you're gonna murder her then, huh?
BEN KISSEL
It sounds like it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess I'll be single.
BEN KISSEL
You're way too happy about that.
MARCUS PARKS
But while the wailing did introduce some drama into the proceedings, nothing on that first day compared to the story told when Tituba was brought into the meeting house as that day's closer. Now to Tituba's testimony was what really kicked the lid off everything but her lies certainly were not those of a woman looking for attention or those of someone looking to shake up society. Instead Tituba was another victim.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes.
MARCUS PARKS
She later told a writer named Robert Calef that after she was accused following the baking of the witch cake, Samuel Parris beat a so-called confession out of her, then coached her on what to say and how to say it for her eventual public examination.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean anybody with a shade darker than a deep pink was under suspicion in this time period, you know what I mean? So Tituba was right in the center of it. She really became like a huge force by this. But also her hands were tied because she was fucked either way. She was gonna be hung up for doing nothing. There is no evidence that she did any sort of... Because there was titters over time saying that she did some fortune telling with the kids or showed them country style little magic things and there's no evidence that she did any of that shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Also if you google titters over time you're going to find one of the most romantic pornographies of all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm so glad I'm not your father.
BEN KISSEL
Titters over time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like I can just see Bengt Kissel just shaking his head, climbing into the cab of his truck, not even beeping a goodbye, just hitting that road.
BEN KISSEL
Yep, hitting the road. Titters over time. You'll love the milking scene.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Titters was my cousin's nickname when he was a kid because he was a chubby little boy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh for his tits? It was even just for his tits? Mr. Titters?
BEN KISSEL
Mr. Titters. Come here, Mr. Titters.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fucking Titters! I wish I knew a titters.
MARCUS PARKS
Just Titters, straight up Titters. He's a wonderful man now. You guys met him, remember in Grundy County?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's Titters!?
BEN KISSEL
I didn't know he was Titters.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That was Titters, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It would've completely changed my entire perception of that now handsome man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Next time I see him I am calling him Titters.
BEN KISSEL
What up Titters? We're gonna end up with four black eyes between us.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, he's gonna get quite upset. But awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Sorry man. Well because of Samuel Parris' coaching of Tituba, her story was intricate, extremely convincing, and most importantly highly satisfying to the people who believed that the devil was the source of all their ill fortune.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah it's good, man. It's a good story.
BEN KISSEL
She nailed it, huh?
MARCUS PARKS
Now Tituba said that she was first visited by the devil one night as she was falling asleep. A tall, darkly clad white-haired man stood beside her and told her that he planned to kill Samuel Parris' daughter and niece.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now if you're Tituba you're not going like, 'Nice.'
BEN KISSEL
That would be awesome.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, do it.
BEN KISSEL
He actually sounds like The Tall Man from Phantasm.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
And what was more, Tituba was supposed to help him or he would kill her as well.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Beheading usually was the threat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah let's do it, yeah. Fuck yeah, bro. Let's go. What are we gonna do? How are we doing it?
MARCUS PARKS
Well this man who was obviously the devil said that he was a god and presented her with a document that would exchange six years of service for quote "many fine things".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know if you've ever heard of a thing called a beer koozie.
BEN KISSEL
Ooh that's fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's more than that. I don't know if you've ever even heard of a thing called a key chain. So much swag.
BEN KISSEL
I'm thinking a molten chocolate cake also and then you'll be super happy. This is not that bad of a deal. Six years, you get a bunch of stuff? It's not that long.
MARCUS PARKS
It's just stuff though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it's devilry.
BEN KISSEL
Stuff, it's just stuff? We're surrounded by stuff. I love stuff.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's trickery because the devil doesn't just sign a contract for six years. No, you will see once your signature on the dotted line, there's when the trickery has been set.
BEN KISSEL
Titters over time.
MARCUS PARKS
Well if she declined, she pretty much had a deal. Sign the six years, do the devil's bidding whenever he asked, and you get many fine things. If you don't sign then you will receive the same torture as these two young girls.
BEN KISSEL
Just sign it!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I will make you watch Ken Burns' Jazz.
BEN KISSEL
I don't mind that but it is a lot. I really don't love jazz but I respect it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well over the next few days this white-haired devil would come again and again to offer Tituba bizarre bribes like small bright colored birds. Like look, I shall give you this bird!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See? It's a bird!
BEN KISSEL
What about GameCube? Can I get a GameCube?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I brought you a bird.
BEN KISSEL
A bird? You're the devil. You brought me an effing bird?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also understand this bird needs to be fed two times a day.
BEN KISSEL
I don't want a bird!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you also need to regularly clean it and you're gonna have to buy it a cage.
BEN KISSEL
An animal is the worst gift you can give.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, now it's yours. Congratulations.
BEN KISSEL
Man.
MARCUS PARKS
But still refused and the devil promised to return again and again, all while he bewitched and tortured the two young girls in the Parris household. By late January Tituba was being tormented by taunting and demanding apparitions, hogs and big black dogs that would leap from the shadows and yell:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Serve me!" (barking)
BEN KISSEL
Oink oink.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hell yeah, very good.
MARCUS PARKS
Other times the man with white hair would appear with a pair of cats, one red cat, one black cat.
BEN KISSEL
Meow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is Blackie, this is Ed Sheeran.
BEN KISSEL
Oh isn't that nice?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a little cat Ed Sheeran.
BEN KISSEL
Meow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Meow.
MARCUS PARKS
Or in an image that would show up time and again, the devil would be accompanied by a little yellow bird. Yellow being the devil's color which is why the original daredevil costume was that hideous yellow instead of the classic red that we now know it as.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fascinating.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. And that's called a piece of information that just removed a piece of information I wanted.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
Yep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There goes your brother's birthday.
BEN KISSEL
You know daredevil used to be a yellow costume. I guess he didn't have a good fashion sense because he couldn't see. He's blind.
MARCUS PARKS
He's blind, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's the whole thing about him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He can hear colors or some bullshit.
BEN KISSEL
No he can't hear colors. Also it's like green, you know the rules. It's the thing you don't... You know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We know.
MARCUS PARKS
You're just talking about the color of the sonar they use in the comic book to signify that he can see stuff with sonar.
BEN KISSEL
No, I'm talking about how if you see a piece of broccoli which is manmade-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't want to remotely talk about this fucking highly uninteresting fake scientific idea you have!
BEN KISSEL
It's not fake. No, it's not fake. It's real.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it's around this time that the devil urged Tituba to sign his book again, sign it again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, come on, right here next to this wonderful Judge Reinhold.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I love him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're gonna want to save that one.
BEN KISSEL
The Breakfast Club.
MARCUS PARKS
And after over a month of torment- Judge Reinhold was not in The Breakfast Club, you're thinking of Anthony Michael Hall.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't do it! Literally can't!
BEN KISSEL
Jesus fucking Christ.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm sorry I couldn't let it go, I couldn't let it go. Judge Reinhold was in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. That's what you're thinking.
BEN KISSEL
I don't give a fuck. I actually don't even care.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're never gonna get through this.
BEN KISSEL
Dr. Oz told me that you shouldn't even eat breakfast.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after over a month of torment, Tituba testified during her examination that she did sign the devil's book in her own blood with a crescent mark next to the marks of Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. But what was most disturbing for the people of Salem was that Tituba also testified that beside her mark and the mark of the two Sarahs, seven more marks.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah! The sequel!
MARCUS PARKS
That meant that there were no less than nine witches in Salem.
BEN KISSEL
This is starting to heat up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude, it's the Salem witch expanded universe.
BEN KISSEL
I guess so.
MARCUS PARKS
But once Tituba signed the devil's book, all bets were off regarding her reluctant participation in witchcraft. The specters of the Sarahs would visit Tituba on the regular, accompanied by a swarm of familiars including yellow birds, yellow dogs, and more red and black cats who would pause at Tituba saying:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Serve us. Serve us." (purring)
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, they're just needy ass cats.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Meow.
BEN KISSEL
You should do something for me, cat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you don't change my food, I get diarrhea.
BEN KISSEL
Just go kill a mouse. Go kill a bird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(purring)
BEN KISSEL
Actually here's a fricking bird, you want a bird?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm sorry, I'm an indoor cat. And you're gonna need to feed me.
BEN KISSEL
I'm so sick of you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ah yes, I see you've received my cats. Multiple!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the best part is they all go to the bathroom inside and they're yours now, congrats.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you so much for these cats.
MARCUS PARKS
The witches' familiars would play a large role in the proceedings to come as their presence was the true mark that a person had given themselves over to Satan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Satan! Satan!
MARCUS PARKS
See familiars during this time period were considered not just the witch's buddy but an actual imp sent by Satan himself to aid witches in their nefarious deeds.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it came from the very first mentions of Satanic secret groups and their initiatory rights which is one of the first things you're supposed to do. This is true, this comes from ancient scripture, supposed to kiss a cat on the butthole.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely not.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is how. You're supposed to kiss a familiar and it says "most odorously under the tail".
BEN KISSEL
What does that do?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You lick a fucking cat's asshole.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah but why?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
To say hello to the devil.
BEN KISSEL
That is ridiculous. Why would the devil be there?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Never fuck the cat.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, never fuck the cat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Never fuck the cat.
BEN KISSEL
No, definitely don't do that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No matter how many times it fucking sluts around.
BEN KISSEL
It's a cat!
MARCUS PARKS
Well some of the very first artistic depictions of the devil way back in I think the 8th or 9th century showed people shoving their noses into the devil's butthole because that's how you pay fealty to the devil is you kiss the devil's butt. So I would imagine in lieu of the devil, if the devil doesn't show up, then you gotta kiss the cat's butthole because the cat is a familiar that has been sent by Satan. So if you can't kiss Satan, you gotta kiss the familiar.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Remember the guy that used to hold the for P. Diddy?
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you meet him it's kind of like you're meeting Puff Daddy, right?
BEN KISSEL
You kiss his asshole?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just saying in terms of chain of command.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You see that guy and you're like, 'You're the umbrella guy.' And he goes, 'Yep.' And then you're like, 'How's P. Diddy doing?' And he'd be like, 'I don't know, I don't talk to him.'
BEN KISSEL
Well he's definitely not wet, that's good. Man, I went to Massachusetts, their cats have the cleanest buttholes I've ever seen. But you should see the tongues on these guys. Much of Massholes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Moving on.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the familiar did not serve the witch simply because Satan told it to, the familiar needed nourishment and to keep the evil going, the creature would suckle blood from the witch either through a cut usually on the hand or the witch's teat that Henry mentioned earlier.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Little nipple.
BEN KISSEL
She needs to go to the doctor if she's bleeding out of her fucking tit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
Well usually they cut the hand, they cut the hand open and then the bird or something goes (licking sounds).
BEN KISSEL
When you say teat are you just referring to any open wound?
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're looking for a third nipple but most of the time they'll take anything.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well this concept was seen as such absolute fact that when Tituba was being grilled about familiars during her examination, Magistrate Hathorne asked point blank this question exactly:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Do not these cats suck you?"
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do not these cats suck you?
BEN KISSEL
Suck me?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can see the white hairs upon your jeans.
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You've been sucked upon a cat this day.
BEN KISSEL
I have not been sucked on by a cat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah well the more you say it, the more I think you might be having cats suck upon you.
BEN KISSEL
It's just reverse psychology.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. Now I have you. Cat sucker.
BEN KISSEL
I'm not a cat sucker.
MARCUS PARKS
No this is more a cat suckler. Cause if you suckle then that means the cat sucks you but if you're a sucker, you suck the cat. So the more proper term would be cat suckler.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cat sucky?
BEN KISSEL
I just don't think you should be doing any of this with a cat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, leave them alone.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
But while the animals present were usually familiars, sometimes the witches themselves took the forms of bizarre creatures out of nightmare. In one instance Tituba said she saw a bird with a woman's head fluttering about and the head belonged to none other than the sickly Sarah Osborne.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(coughing)
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh! Look at her, she's a little bird. Hey who's a little Calista Flockhart? Remember the reference?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kill me. Kill me.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, there you go.
MARCUS PARKS
Well speaking of the Sarahs, Tituba said that in addition to torturing girls in the Parris house, she was also present in spectral form during the torture of Ann Putnam Jr. And this of course made sense because Samuel Parris was coaching Tituba on all of this bullshit. But remember that Samuel Parris was also friends with the Putnam family and if Tituba was being coached on the torture of the two girls in the Parris household, then in order to keep up appearances she also had to be involved in the torture of Ann Putnam Jr.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And Ann Putnam Jr, they're part of the Putnam family that owned half of Salem.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's deeply connected to the landowners. That's another factor in all of this which we didn't get into because talk about sleepy history. As I was trying to read about the land issues happening between the families in the Salem area-
MARCUS PARKS
Ugh.
BEN KISSEL
Not fun?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it also just shows how petty and how empty all of this shit was. Because a part of it was also land disputes.
MARCUS PARKS
Part of it, yeah. And this also shows you how quickly all of this spider webs out. It really is like a rock hits your windshield and then before you know it you have to replace the entire motherfucker because it's just spidered out from this one tiny little rock.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Tituba said that she and the two Sarahs flew to Ann Putnam Jr's house on a pole, basically a broomstick, where neighbors were holding a prayer meeting for the already tormented 12 year old.
BEN KISSEL
And those were very orgasmic.
MARCUS PARKS
The poles?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You actually joke about that but it is true.
BEN KISSEL
No, that's true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was reading about the history of broomstick riding and where it came from. And one of the things that they said which was where ergot, er-gert per-sern-ing, actually comes into play is the fact that they believe-
BEN KISSEL
Er-gert per-sern-ing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
None of this might be real, honestly none of it might be. We have no clue.
MARCUS PARKS
I was gonna ask.
BEN KISSEL
No, I believe this is real. This is true cause we spoke to a witch about it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
this is the legend is that broomstick riding came from them covering themselves in a salve that sometimes would have hallucinatory shit like ergot in it. And one of the things they'd do is they rub it up into their pussy and then slather the broomstick with it and then that's what it was is that your= pussy stick (lip smacking sound) would stick to the broom.
BEN KISSEL
Ah, just like that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then you fly it around. And that's why they're always laughing and shit because they're literally coming.
BEN KISSEL
Yep. That's a scene from Titters Over Time.
MARCUS PARKS
But I would imagine having your pussy stick to a piece of wood is very...
BEN KISSEL
No they lube it up. They lube it up!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not if you're from 1690s Massachusetts.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely!
MARCUS PARKS
Because then you gotta peel it off.
BEN KISSEL
They're witches Marcus, they're stronger than us.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They like that feeling.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I suppose so. When Tituba showed up with the two Sarahs at Ann Putnam Jr's house, the Sarah's pulled out a big ass knife and told Tituba to kill the girl.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kill the girl!
BEN KISSEL
This escalated quickly.
MARCUS PARKS
And also at this point there in the invisible world, they're invisible. Nobody can see them except for Ann Putnam Jr. Tituba refused and supposedly wrestled the knife away from the witches while they threatened to cut off her head instead. Kill the girl or I'll kill you.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
And supposedly This was all seen by Ann Putnam Jr and was described in real time. People did have memory of Ann Putnam Jr saying, 'Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne are fighting over a knife right now, they're both trying to kill me!' However the most likely explanation for that was that Ann had a hallucination in front of her father. Her father told Samuel Parris and Parris told Tituba were you present at this Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne knife fight and she said yeah, sure and then repeated the story on the stand.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Still using the term hallucination very kindly.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Kindly and loosely, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
In the end though. Tituba did confess to the least of the tortures, pinching on the devil's behalf. That was the lightest thing you could do for the devil.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. The Al Franken approach.
BEN KISSEL
The devil is like, 'I'm the most powerful enemy of all time. Just go pinch someone for me.' It's kind of a funny thing to do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well that was all done on purpose and I'll talk about it when we get to the section where I talk about the beginning of the devil's supper.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But interestingly in another pattern that would repeat itself, the four girls who had spent Tituba's entire time on the stand in torment, they quieted down after she confessed and apologized. But once they calm down, Tituba started freaking out and acting tormented herself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now it's my turn! (screaming)
BEN KISSEL
Oh I thought we were done.
MARCUS PARKS
She said that the two Sarahs were now attacking her as she tried to out afflict the afflicted.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Never do that man, you can't out flick the afflicted!
MARCUS PARKS
But despite her confession, Tituba was held for trial. Three for three on the first day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All we're doing!
BEN KISSEL
What?
MARCUS PARKS
One day, one day. Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba. All that's one day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude. Already got three witches today. Good work everybody, good work fake court. Fuck yeah, man. You're a bailiff tomorrow. No shit!
BEN KISSEL
Awesome.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man, fake court's awesome.
BEN KISSEL
I wanna be Bull from Night Court.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And this wasn't even the end of the meeting. To tell you how almost mundane this was or at least how matter of fact the proceedings were, the rest of the day's meeting after they charged three women with capital crimes was spent arguing about bills and taxes.
BEN KISSEL
Always.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah because the road between Salem Town and Salem Village, it had been repaired. And Salem Town said hey Salem Village, you gotta pay for this shit. But Salem Village said to Salem Town, you should pay for this shit. So once again they were caught a fucking pain in the ass spat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's never been, I think in history too, the group of cantankerous fucking Karens in this entire story. It all started like this, it's all of this petty fucking garbage that they all would not give an inch on.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was all about whatever it was. It was all again everything sucked and life was hard.
BEN KISSEL
You call them Karens, I'm gonna call them Grumpy Rorys.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what? Good restructuring.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. Cause this seems like the men are being a little catty.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They all are.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But as two men from this meeting were walking from Salem Village to Salem Town to tell them fuck you, Salem Town. Salem Village, they ain't paying for this fucking road. They're not paying for this road. Salem Village ain't gonna pay for this road.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ain't gonna pay for this road, you're gonna be the one paying for the road.
BEN KISSEL
Well do you use the road?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I dabble.
BEN KISSEL
Well maybe you should pay for it then.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What if I instead... And you're the devil! You're a witch! Burn him! You're a witch!
BEN KISSEL
Goddamnit man. Honestly whoever came up with pay tolls is the devil because those are all over the place in Boston.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is honestly really nice because it does help build the roads.
BEN KISSEL
No, just tax me secretly. I don't need to stop in the middle of the fucking highway.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as the two men were walking down that road they heard frightening noises on said repaired road. They then saw a quote "unidentified beast" which flew apart and became three women who fled quickly as they vanished.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hi!
BEN KISSEL
Just sounds like three young people trying to get into an R rated movie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It does.
MARCUS PARKS
According to these two men, those three women were Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba. But even though all three including Sarah Good were being held in custody, it seemed to do nothing to alleviate the torment of servant Elizabeth Hubbard. That night she was afflicted by a series of pinches and as she stared blankly ahead she said quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"There stands Sarah Good upon the table by you with all her naked breast and barefooted, bare-legged. Oh, nasty slut! If I had something I would kill her."
BEN KISSEL
Tell me more now, what does she look like again?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She has a big old hanging top.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then round on the bottom and feverish red legs.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Maybe have her turn around.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And there you see the ponderous split in her back area with long hair like a horse.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. Well now you're kind of mixing streams.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And she's got shoulders like a goose!
BEN KISSEL
No, I can't think about this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And she's got the calves of a delicious roast beast.
BEN KISSEL
Oh man. I'm gonna go have sex with all these farm animals now.
MARCUS PARKS
So after taking her at her word that Sarah Good's right there, there she is, a neighbor keeping watch picked up his walking stick and started just stabbing at the air like (shouting).
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Everybody's jumping. Improv everywhere, man. Everybody's jumping in.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
And then after a few swipes, Hubbard said to the neighbor, 'Yes, you hit Sarah Good, you hit the specter in the back. You did it. You did it and you almost killed her. You almost did it. Yay!'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Meanwhile everyone else is just drinking beer, eating peanuts like this is fucking getting great. I thought we were gonna have to make up something to do today.
BEN KISSEL
No, I guess they're doing it for us.
MARCUS PARKS
They did actually. There was one instance of this happening in the bar, in Ingersoll's Tavern.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah I bet. It must have.
BEN KISSEL
I mean that is fun.
MARCUS PARKS
Well this scene of a girl directing someone to swap the air with an object where the specter was supposed to be, it would occur again and again, sometimes with success, sometimes not. But it certainly made people feel like they were a part of the scene. They were in it, man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. They were getting the mix, they're in the mix.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Meanwhile even though Sarah Good's specter was supposed to be attacking Elizabeth Hubbard, the real Sarah Good was trying to escape jail barefoot in the Massachusetts winter with her infant in her arms. When she was finally found almost freezing to death, her arm was bloody from wrist to elbow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The devil.
BEN KISSEL
I mean from the maybe the escape.
MARCUS PARKS
I think it's the escape, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The devil.
BEN KISSEL
Or the devil. It's one of the two.
MARCUS PARKS
now after Tituba's testimony the worst fears of the Salem community were confirmed. Witches were not only present in Salem but at least nine of them were working together in a conspiracy with Satan to torture their children and destroy their way of life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude, that's two up from seven.
BEN KISSEL
That's a lot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Let me say that again. Satan is there to torture your children, kill your children, and destroy your way of life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. I wonder what that's like.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now after the first three accused witches were in jail, the afflicted girl started feeling a bit better. The only one who showed no change was Ann Putnam Jr who seemed to be an actually very sick girl who needed treatment instead of blind indulgence.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(British accent) Maybe if you think I'm sick, maybe that's because you're an agent of the devil.
BEN KISSEL
No! You can't just say that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(British accent) Yes, you're a witch. Someone bring me pogs.
BEN KISSEL
Fine, here you go. Here are your pogs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(British accent) Thank you.
BEN KISSEL
Are you happy?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(British accent) Former witch.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you. It's very nice, you just saved my life.
MARCUS PARKS
You laugh but it was a lot like that. Ann Putnam Jr claimed to still be tormented by two additional specters. The first, in an accusation that was taken as seriously as death, was Sarah Good's 5 year old daughter, the unfortunately named Dorcas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, old Dorcas. I mean you just don't hear that name anymore.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I don't know why.
BEN KISSEL
I don't think you even heard it then. Dorcas?
MARCUS PARKS
Actually there was more than one Dorcas in Salem, there's more than one Dorcas in this story. And also Dorcas, that was another one of the nicknames that I had when I was a kid besides Marcus Farts, Dorcas Parks was also...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See that I like.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is fun and it makes sense.
BEN KISSEL
Dorcas Parks. Oh my goodness gracious.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually if I would have been a chubby, nerdy kid, Dorcas Porks, that would have been a hell of a nickname.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dorcas Porks is an incredible gay porn name.
BEN KISSEL
It's not so bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wish it was. And apparently it means a woman who's made clothing for the poor.
BEN KISSEL
Dorcas and Titters, come in for dinner. We're eating bones again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh that's right because we were too busy fucking to remember we were brother and sister.
BEN KISSEL
Don't forget to lick the cat's asshole clean before you come in, Dorcas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Don't worry, I already did it. You can tell by how brown my tip of my tongue is.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
Now even though Dorcas Good was only 5, Ann Putnam Jr claimed that this kindergartner thrust the devil's book towards her and demanded she sign it. And when Ann wouldn't, the 5 year old bit, pinched, and choked her as viciously as any adult witch. The other accused person here, number five by my count I think, was a recent addition to Samuel Parris' church who seldom hesitated to voice her opinions.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
In other words a pain in the ass. Her name was Martha Corey and she was the third wife of a man named Giles Corey who over the years had graduated from pain in the ass to real piece of shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, all right.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I prefer a real piece of fucking shit.
BEN KISSEL
It sounds like. What happened to your other two wives?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well let's just say they're not wives anymore.
BEN KISSEL
Did he kill his wives?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, they just died. One died.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they just died.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
That happens a lot. But the thing is about this time is that when a wife dies and all that everyone's very sad but when you're accused of being a witch, that wife's death very easily turns into a murder.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
No matter what really happened. Because witchcraft, you can do anything with witchcraft.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
If they die of a fever, ooh you gave them that fever through witchcraft.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very easy to do.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
So you jump off a bridge, ooh witchcraft made you jump off that bridge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Exactly, yeah. Because back in the day there used to be many gods, right. There used to be many, many gods. And as we shifted to monotheism what they had to do was come up with all these different ways to talk about the inner drives of human beings which is why they invented demons.
BEN KISSEL
It's like that film Inside Out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm mad that you said it. But yeah, technically.
MARCUS PARKS
I suppose so.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm upset that it does work but yes.
MARCUS PARKS
It does work, yeah. Except for all the cuteness, it's demons and sins.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sin.
BEN KISSEL
(groans)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
One of the emotions in Inside Out should have been fucking disturbingly horny. That should have been one of them.
BEN KISSEL
It was for children.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Giles was considered a quote "very quarrelsome and contentious bad neighbor'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck you, you're the bad neighbor!
BEN KISSEL
No, I didn't even say anything to you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I save my spot every day.
BEN KISSEL
Can I get my lawnmower back?
MARCUS PARKS
He had once been in trouble for theft of dry goods and he had almost certainly beaten a handyman to death. It was never definitively proven but everyone knew that he beat the guy to death.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Would I beat the guy to death? He's the one with the hammers!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Can I get my lawnmower back again?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, you want me to re-introduce you to your fucking wife? She's a fucking cow out there eating all the grass all day. Fucking piece of shit.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa, Jesus. I didn't do anything to you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm a bad neighbor.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I see.
MARCUS PARKS
Giles was also known to threaten suicide to get his way. And he often threatened his sons with a specifically spiteful suicide in which he would kill himself and make sure that they took the blame if they didn't do what he said.
BEN KISSEL
It's highly specific.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is how I know that that I was born on the East Coast because my grandmother used to say fucking shit like this all the time.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I believe it. It's a good little tool of manipulation I suppose.
MARCUS PARKS
In other words he was a bad dude and his accusation would come on the heels of his wife's. See once Martha Corey was accused by Ann Putnam Jr, a new addition to the afflicted, a servant named Mary Warren, also said that Martha Corey's specter was haunting around for pinches and pokes. What's interesting about the afflicted Mary Warren though is that she worked for a couple named John and Elizabeth Proctor. And Proctor was none too convinced that any of these witchcraft accusations were true but not because he thought that witchcraft wasn't real, John Proctor believed that if anyone should be accused of witchcraft in the village, it should be the bewitched servant girls themselves and not the respectable women of the village like Martha Corey.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I also feel like that's just going to get him into extra trouble.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah maybe.
MARCUS PARKS
And John Proctor by the way, he was 60 years old and he did not look like Daniel Day Lewis.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No he did not.
BEN KISSEL
He doesn't?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's really weird how they do that in Hollywood. Some people call it lies.
BEN KISSEL
Right. It is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's more like it's dramatic effect where you make it seem like everyone would be attractive in the time period.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
What actor should they have cast?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Danny Devito. It could have been anybody. No actor, a guy with a fucking hatchet face who is disgusting. The guy from The Witch.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The weird British man. Yeah. No, I mean The Crucible was of course... Arthur Miller took many artistic licenses with The Crucible, for example the supposed romance between John Proctor and Abigail Williams. The real Abigail Williams was 11 years old and the real John Proctor Was 60 years old.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah so she couldn't be married for another two years.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, by Massachusetts law.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So yeah, then it was on like Donkey Kong.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely disgusting. Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Well since John Proctor was also a real piece of shit, when his servant Mary Warren started throwing fits and hurling accusations of witchcraft, he beat her until the fits and the accusations very abruptly stopped, implying that Mary might have just been joining in on the fun. But once Mary had her change of heart saying, 'Hey, I was just making shit up, sorry,' the afflicted girls also had a change of heart and said that Mary's specter had joined the ranks of the witches.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Welcome to the show.
BEN KISSEL
I am getting confused.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You wanted to buy tickets. It's just important to remember any time you get confused, it's just any single person that says any single thing about any one of the accusers or the afflicted, they get wrapped into the story.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So every single person that remotely touches the story is now in the story.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe they should just keep it down a little bit.
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe. Well Mary Warren then spent three weeks in prison until she decided it was better to be amongst the afflicted rather than the accused.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Changed teams.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And she once again lapsed into fits.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(shouting)
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness Henry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why wasn't I on Drunk History? (shouting)
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, wow. Shirtless Henry shaking around.
MARCUS PARKS
Mary Warren then rejoined the ranks of her tormented sisterhood while her masters, John and Elizabeth Proctor, they joined the ranks of first the arrested and then the condemned.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, it's fucking stupid, man.
BEN KISSEL
It sounds like they're choosing dodgeball teams but it's all about witchcraft and they can be killed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The stakes were high.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
MARCUS PARKS
Well seemingly low on outsiders and disliked community members she could name, Ann Putnam Jr made the first truly startling accusation. She named an elderly woman named Rebecca Nurse who was a good Christian woman by all accounts who was almost universally loved and respected.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They all loved her. The Anne Hathaway.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But as it happened time and again, as soon as one afflicted accused someone, the rest would follow no matter who was accused. It's the most dangerous game of 'yes and' that there's ever been.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
However it is important to note that the six main girls were not the only ones hurling accusations, nor were all of the accusers puritan. A middle aged Quaker woman named Bathsheba Pope counted herself amongst the afflicted and Tituba's husband, an enslaved man named John Indian, also came in and out of the proceedings to say he was being tortured by the specters of teenage girls. In a move that I don't quite understand, Martha Corey was actually brought to the Putnam house to meet her accuser, Ann Putnam Jr, face to face. And predictably the mere presence of an accused witch absolutely ruined the day of the afflicted.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, ruined her day is putting it lightly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
On this day Ann Putnam Jr fell into what were presumably full hallucinations the moment Martha Corey walked through her door. Ann crumbled and her feet, head, and hands horribly contorted as she choked and writhed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(screaming)
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You just know everybody's just sitting there with their head in their hands just being like, 'Oh fuck, who's next? Who's fucking next?'
BEN KISSEL
I mean were they like that or were they thrilled?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know. You ever see the Twilight Zone movie when they're all afraid of the kid in that one story?
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it's like that. I think they're all like, 'Whatever you need, Ann!'
MARCUS PARKS
It's a good thing that you did that, it's a good thing that you just accused the old woman that we all love of witchcraft. It's a good thing.'
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(British accent) Thank you mother. Oh tell me, I guess it's time for my fourth Pop-Tart of the morning.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I guess so. Apparently they're healthy snacks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(British accent) Oh my belly hurts. You're a witch!
BEN KISSEL
God! Man, I shouldn't have given you all those Pop-Tarts.
MARCUS PARKS
But when Ann Putnam Jr wailed that Martha Corey was torturing her just by being there, Ann's tongue stuck out seemingly involuntarily and she bit down hard as if Martha was punishing Ann with witchcraft most foul.
BEN KISSEL
At this point you just gotta be like all right, you know what? I see that I'm affecting you, I'm gonna go. I'm gonna get out of here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well what I would say is that if I was an accused witch at this time period, I think the goal is to start being like, 'Then I curse you! And I curse you!'
BEN KISSEL
Lean in.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you get everybody to do it, right. Cause then we can all be like is it working? Cause you could do it to people like, 'I curse you!' And then they have go like (wailing) they have to act like they're going crazy.
BEN KISSEL
Good point.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then you have everybody doing it and then you run. Cause then everybody's running.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I think if you do that you very much risk getting an ax buried in your skull right there in front of everybody, in front of the whole town.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
People taking this real serious.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Point counterpoint. Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
But when Ann regained the power of speech, she said that she could see a yellow bird suckling blood between Martha's forefinger and middle finger. And from there the hallucinations only got gorier or at least the claims of hallucinations only got gorier. Ann cried that she was looking directly into the invisible world which as I said earlier, that's the catch all term for the realm where specters did their dirty deeds, where familiars lived, and where the devil reigned absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes! Yes he does, doesn't he! And then this is where Aleister Crowley broke the mind of his intern.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is in the invisible world when they were fighting in the desert together when he fought, what was it, the Agamemnon. I forgot what it was.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Something like that. Abraxas maybe, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I gotta say the invisible world is a great place to be a cat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
BEN KISSEL
Lick my asshole right meow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're a guy. Just a guy in a cat suit.
BEN KISSEL
Fuck. Man, I was trying to play a cat though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh.
BEN KISSEL
You really ruined it for me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Good lord. I mean you're 6'7".
BEN KISSEL
Will you lick my asshole?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess you'll make me if I don't.
MARCUS PARKS
Well during this peek under the veil, 12 year old Ann Putnam Jr said that she saw a man skewered on a spit roasting in her parents' hearth. Then she turned to Martha, pointed and said:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(British accent) "Good Goody Corey, you'll be a turning of it."
BEN KISSEL
No!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(British accent) Yes, you're the man now.
MARCUS PARKS
Now this seemed to be a pretty far fetched hallucination for a 12 year old puritan girl. You might think oh my god, how does this girl possibly just come up with this stuff off the top of her head? She's never seen a horror movie before. But the Putnam's had taken in an orphan from the Maine frontier wars named Mercy Lewis who may have contributed to this fantasy with her own reality. By 17 years of age, Mercy's parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and most of her cousins had all been killed in the recent wars against the native tribes in Maine. And she had no doubt repeated the stories of natives burning people alive, whether those stories were true or not. But it was true that her entire fucking family was dead and smoldering in a burnt out village in Maine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She experienced trauma.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Sounds like it. Yeah dude, it sounds like they were pretty brutal wars.
MARCUS PARKS
They were extremely brutal on both sides.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And so when Ann Putnam Jr said that there was a person skewered on a spit in the fireplace, Mercy Lewis, the main refugee, grabbed a stick and repeatedly struck at the spot where the apparition was supposed to be which supposedly caused it to flicker in and out of Ann's sight with each strike.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like playing with the antenna. Do you remember that?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. It really is. It's just they were one wiffle ball away from just starting a game of baseball. Almost. Come on, put a couple of bases out there, outfielder, infielder, you got a game that you don't have to kill anybody in.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what this would have been good time for? Twister.
BEN KISSEL
Twister! They would have not been allowed to play Twister, they would have ejaculated all over themselves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But in the context of Twister, if you could say this is god's Twister, we're doing this for god, only god can play this game.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe if they just had everyone lay straight.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, sure.
BEN KISSEL
That's would have been their Twister.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's called Logs on a Mat.
BEN KISSEL
That's a fun game.
MARCUS PARKS
At that point Mercy Lewis, certainly shown some PTSD here, she joined in on the hallucination and claimed that the specter of Martha Corey had struck her with an iron rod.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ow.
MARCUS PARKS
And she fell to the floor in just as much torment as Ann. And at that moment Martha finally left the house. But Mercy's fits had become so strong that it took three men to restrain her. And supposedly later that night as Mercy sat in the chair facing the burning hearth, the seat began inching towards the fire and it took three men to stop Mercy from being thrown into the flames.
BEN KISSEL
That's fucking scary, dude.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What? Yeah it is. That is scary.
MARCUS PARKS
Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say it took three men to stop Mercy from throwing herself into the fire.
BEN KISSEL
That's a horrifying scene to be honest.
MARCUS PARKS
It's absolutely horrifying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I've got a little bit of a breakdown scientifically about mass hysteria from Joel, our researcher, that I actually thought was really interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And one thing it kind of talks about is what's kind of called mass sociogenic illness is one of the terms for it, because we've talked about the concept that we're dealing with which is conversion condition.
MARCUS PARKS
Disorder.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're dealing with a conversion disorder which I actually found out has not been debunked. There's a thing called functional neurological disorder that there is now a thing they kind of talk about which is this sort of weird spell of symptoms that a bunch of people get. And there's one thing, it's really interesting the way they trace it, that it seems to come from stress related stimulus. And eight symptoms that are typical with this type of hysteria, symptoms with no plausible organic basis, symptoms that are transient and benign, right, symptoms with rapid onset and recovery, occurrence in a segregated group, the presence of extraordinary anxiety, symptoms that are spread via sight, sound, or oral communication, doing this, being like, 'There's an apparition over there!' And then everyone goes like oh and they jump in and they act and they're doing it, they're fulfilling the fantasy.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A spread that moves down the age scale beginning with older and high status, right, which that's not true, it doesn't always happen. And a preponderance of female participants.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean if you look at it, it did absolutely happen that way. It's Samuel Parris coming out and saying the devil is real and he's coming for us.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes! It does.
MARCUS PARKS
So yes, it absolutely did happen that way.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now by late March of 1692, 10 people had become afflicted by witchcraft in Salem in a population of only about 550. To put that into perspective, if you apply that same ratio to New York City's population you'd have 149,400 people being attacked by invisible specters and 8 million people taking it all deadly seriously.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know, have you been on the Q train?
BEN KISSEL
Whoa! There it is folks, he took down the Q train a notch. That Q train really had it coming for being a train that transports people to work, to and fro.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually I think these days it's like the 1,2, 3 is pretty bad and the A, C, E I think is also taking a beating.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
It's a lot of the trains to be honest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's 6 of the trains.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
4, 5, 6 also, the green line is not doing great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not doing well either, no.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah I actually think the numbers might hold. I think over 100,000 witches in New York City.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as far as why the witch panic gained so much traction so fast, the answer is simple. The people in charge took it seriously. See not only did the local magistrates take it seriously but Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth, arguably the only person even close to being in charge of something here, he traveled to Salem with four assistants to take part in the examinations.
BEN KISSEL
Honestly that's a fun fricking trip, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
It is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is. Being like, 'All right well we gotta go handle these witches.'
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But the thing is we're going to find out that the Crown itself is gonna be real upset they do all of this.
MARCUS PARKS
Real upset.
BEN KISSEL
She's always upset.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it was a man, baby. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well episode 501, so talented.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Deputy Governor Danforth could have easily walked into that meeting house in Salem and shut the whole thing down before even a trial occurred because he had every right and power to do so. But instead he participated and provided tacit approval in the process.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can I maybe say it was just easier to do than any of his other jobs?
MARCUS PARKS
And it was just the easiest thing on the checklist and it's one of those things you just keep doing the easy thing over and over again instead of doing the hard stuff?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. It pretty much is black and white, you know what I mean?
BEN KISSEL
The road is real. They have to fix the road.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but that's very complicated.
BEN KISSEL
But the invisible realm, I can do that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Anything can happen. Yeah, that's easy. Yeah, you just show up and you hang a bunch of people and you leave.
BEN KISSEL
And that's the end of the series, folks. I want to thank everyone for listening, I wanna thank you for the support over the years.
MARCUS PARKS
Well furthermore when Danforth returned home, he told damn near everyone, 'Hey, witchcraft is infesting Salem.' And he told everybody everywhere and he therefore spread the panic throughout the entire colony.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Now all of Massachusetts knows that there is witchcraft in Salem and not only that but the only man in charge is telling them that witchcraft is real. Now I don't mean to be cynical here-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa. Whoa!
BEN KISSEL
Please don't be that, Marcus.
MARCUS PARKS
But with the new government coming in, because remember they're transitioning from one charter to the other, they're transitioning into the English law, puritan rule charter, I'm sure Danforth wanted to hold onto his position.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Therefore a crisis like this would be the perfect excuse for him to stay in power to be transitioned over from one to the other because the old chestnut have not switching horses midstream, that's been in use by politicians for hundreds if not thousands of years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because first of all you have to get the second horse there into the middle of this stream.
BEN KISSEL
Well yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right, And yes, oh yes, my first horse, tis already wet and covered in mud.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Titters the horse.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh Titters.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you know how he longed to be a mother, you can tell by his udders. But simply that's because of the weight distribution that poor little Titters suffered from.
BEN KISSEL
Poor Titters, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I will say you daren't switch a horse midstream because then you have two wet horses and nine wet people looking at the horse.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
But for a specific modern parallel outside of how George W. Bush won in 2004, this tacit approval of the Satanic panic by an authority figure is exactly what happened with QAnon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
MARCUS PARKS
Instead of stamping it out as an obviously stupid and not even that clever prank perpetrated by the worst of the image boards, certain people in power and certain authority figures gave it credence. And now we've got multiple people in Congress who have all the sense in mentality of a true believing 17th century witchfinder.
BEN KISSEL
Awesome.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which I always thought was gonna happen for scientology.
BEN KISSEL
Awesome!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I always thought this was gonna happen for scientology but they couldn't get their fucking shit together.
BEN KISSEL
Nope.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's because as soon as LRH was gone, as soon as he volunteered his body-
BEN KISSEL
Last name Hubbard and I believe there's a Hubbard in this story, isn't there?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There is.
MARCUS PARKS
There is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But as soon as he gave it up, they couldn't fucking figure out what to do with themselves. They couldn't find their dick with a lasso.
BEN KISSEL
Wow!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When it comes down to it the scientologists should be there, not the QAnon people.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness, he's spitting fire today folks.
MARCUS PARKS
But that's how it jumped and that's how things jumped in Salem as well. In Salem it jumped from just this thing that's going on in Salem that might have fizzled out, that's how it jumped to a colony-wide thing where people actually get executed is because the governor went in and said, 'Hey this is real. Everybody, this is absolutely real.' Same way as QAnon would have stayed on the internet, it would have been a fun stupid internet conspiracy theory.
BEN KISSEL
A nice little LARP.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But because people in power validated it, it made a jump. When I was in Texas this weekend I saw a Q flag out amongst many other flags.
BEN KISSEL
Of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes.
MARCUS PARKS
This shit is in the real world now because the people in power said, 'Yeah, that's cool.'
BEN KISSEL
Marcus, that was actually a taping of Sesame Street. And the letter of the day was Q.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
His paranoia has gotten very intense.
BEN KISSEL
It's a little bit strange. Absolutely. This is a thought virus, that's what's happening here.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. So on the second round of public examinations the magistrates started with Martha Corey, repeating their previous pattern of accusations, insinuations, and leading questions. By now though the afflicted were starting to solidify their act. They reacted to every movement Martha Corey made, crying out if she bit her lip, showing bruises if Martha clenched her hand, or feeling general pain from pretty much any movement.
BEN KISSEL
God, it seems like theater training. And a one and a two, let's take it again. Are you biting your lip? She's biting her lip, take it again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Everybody's doing it now.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean these girls performed together enough where they got the instinct and they all performed in concert with each other.
BEN KISSEL
They're like the Harlem Globetrotters of witches.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well at this point the Quaker Bathsheba Pope joined in, saying that she felt as if her bowels were being torn out by Martha's diabolical and invisible machinations.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, I'm in your butt! Yes!
BEN KISSEL
I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I may be sleeping over here but when I'm asleep I'm in your butt.
BEN KISSEL
Is it possible it's just menopause?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
More like man-a-pause.
BEN KISSEL
I'm gonna kill you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is about misogyny.
MARCUS PARKS
Now to make her stop, Bathsheba through her muff at Martha.
BEN KISSEL
Wait what?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is back in the day, it's a glove.
MARCUS PARKS
People still use them. No, it's the muff, it's the thing that's made out of a fox.
BEN KISSEL
No they don't use them.
MARCUS PARKS
People still use those.
BEN KISSEL
When was the last time we saw someone use them?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean it was on Melania which tells you all about muffs.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, Melania.
BEN KISSEL
Christmas? Fuck Christmas.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But since muffs aren't exactly aerodynamic, she threw the muff, it didn't make it. So Pope took off one of her shoes and threw it at Martha's head.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dang!
BEN KISSEL
That'll work. That's a projectile.
MARCUS PARKS
And after Martha Corey managed to stay almost perfectly still and the girls finally calmed down, the afflicted claim that they were made privy to the fact that Martha Corey had signed a contract with the devil for 10 years of service of which four remained. For this Martha Corey was sent to jail.
BEN KISSEL
So she's still on her rookie contract.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. All of these accusations are happening over several days, correct? The idea is that they're bringing them back to... So it goes back and forth from the tavern to the meeting hall.
MARCUS PARKS
Well there's the accusation first and then there's the examination. Because they gotta make it feel at least a little bit official.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You're right.
MARCUS PARKS
They've got to put something, gotta put a sheen of law onto all these proceedings.
BEN KISSEL
Good Lord.
MARCUS PARKS
Well up next was, no shit, the 5 year old daughter of Sarah Good.
BEN KISSEL
Dorcas!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Little Dorcas.
MARCUS PARKS
Little Dorcas.
BEN KISSEL
Get Drocas on the stand! Free Dorcas! Free Dorcas!
MARCUS PARKS
Well as soon as the child entered the court, the afflicted acted the same way they had acted with elderly Martha Corey and still they flinched and winced even after an officer of the court held the little girl down to keep her from moving because she's after all 5 years old.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And you'll know where little Dorcas was because every place she sat, there is a little Cheez Doodle.
MARCUS PARKS
Got a little goldfish. Got a little cheese goldfish. They're everywhere.
BEN KISSEL
Oh she's so funny. Just ooh, goes down Dorcas' throat like her throat's the river.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dorcas, get the fuck out of my office. That's all I can see.
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Being like Drocas, get off my exercise bike!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. I feel like it's like Dorcas, get in my office! Dorcas, get the fuck out of my office.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Get outta my office!
MARCUS PARKS
Dorcas, stop it! Stop it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dorcas.
MARCUS PARKS
Stop it.
BEN KISSEL
Stop eating your own ear. How are you even doing that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We need to name our dog, next dog.
BEN KISSEL
Aw, next dog is Dorcas.
MARCUS PARKS
Dorcas. Oh yeah, Dorcas. Well after the afflicted cried out that the specter of Dorcas Good had bitten them and after they showed bite marks on their skin that they had no doubt done themselves, the magistrates ordered the kindergartner to jail.
BEN KISSEL
What?
MARCUS PARKS
Where she was shackled in iron like all the others to prevent her from doing further witchcraft.
BEN KISSEL
She's like a real life My Little Monster.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
They put her in cuffs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's a regular Greta Thunberg.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know if those are comparisons that really work.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know what she does.
BEN KISSEL
Well of course she's being used by a lot of people much like Dorcas was.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the iron shackles were both convenient and a bit of a problem for the afflicted. And here's where playing by the illogical rules of witchcraft accusation got more people into trouble. Where I say illogical rules, it's more like they're playing by the rules and the rules have their own logic to them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's all shifting.
MARCUS PARKS
And in order to keep this going, yeah, you have to follow the logic of the witchcraft rules the whole time. And the logic of witchcraft rules just brings more and more people in, it's a vortex that just keeps getting bigger and faster.
BEN KISSEL
Right. May I steal a term from Marcus? Cui bono? It's much like how Donald Trump because he's got his LIV golf courses and those are financed by the Saudis.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So now he doesn't know who did 9/11.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You move, you change who did 9/11.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
More like what did 9/11?
BEN KISSEL
What happened? Strong wind?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What was 9/11?
BEN KISSEL
What's the deal with 9/11?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When was 9/11?
BEN KISSEL
Soon they're just gonna bake your whole head in the cheese.
MARCUS PARKS
Well concerning iron it was believed that if a witch was shackled in iron she, like a fucking fairy, would lose his or her powers as long as they were kept in iron.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. They couldn't be touched. It does, it hurts magic.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But the girls, the afflicted, they needed to have constant tormentors to keep everything going. So when one person was shackled they had to name more names.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I see.
MARCUS PARKS
This of course cuts both ways. If a girl was suffering from the aforementioned conversion disorder, then her symptoms would not have stopped because the imagined witch was in jail because their lives did not change from sucky and hard to awesome and easy in any meaningful way, their symptoms are not going to go away.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's almost as if they were hoping that there would be a change and then when all of the drama happened and then nothing got changed and actually got worse, it's almost like they realized like oh we are actually all now in an incredible amount of shit.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I don't know if they realized at one point that like, oh no, they snapped out of it, it wasn't witches. I think that they thought that they were still being afflicted by something, something is happening here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
So logically there's gotta be other witches around, there has to be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There has to be!
MARCUS PARKS
Because these other witches, the ones that I thought that were doing it, they're in iron. So there's got to be more witches around.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're in special witch jail.
BEN KISSEL
it only makes sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're in Magneto glass prison.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And they logically had to name more names because I think they were also trying to please these authority figures who had told them you are bewitched, you are bewitched.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
There's something wrong, witches are fucking with you. And I think most likely that this is the case with only a couple the girls, I think a lot of them were talking out of their ass. I think Ann Putnam Jr certainly and probably Mercy Lewis were suffering from conversion disorder and that this was sort of how they manifested it. Although I could be wrong, I might be wrong completely. I wasn't there, it's 1692. Who fucking knows?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nice.
BEN KISSEL
No one's accusing you of being there, Marcus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're a witch!
BEN KISSEL
You're a witch!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're a witch!
BEN KISSEL
Wait, what? I called him a witch!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what you get for calling him a witch.
BEN KISSEL
Goddamnit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I'm the only person who's safe because I am a witch.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay. Sucky and hard sounds like two thieves that only steal licorice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're being cute today.
MARCUS PARKS
Well when it came to girls making shit up though because there certainly were a few of those, it's possible that they either weren't ready for the game to end or they thought that they had already gone too far to stop now. Because admitting to making false witchcraft accusations, that was also a crime. Not capital but it was a crime.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was a crime.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, so you wouldn't die though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, not necessarily. But I think there's subtler forces at work here too. I think there's a little bit of, there's two ends. There's the view that these are people trying to find agency in a full on misogynist theocracy, right, this idea that they're trying to find a way to gain some kind of power by flipping it on their heads and making sure now everyone has to listen to the little girls even though before they were non existent. But then there's the other side of the same exact coin was does giving into the narrative that the witches are real actually help the patriarchy? Does it help fuel it by completing the circuit, by saying like we are now the other elements that make what you say about witches being real, real. So now we're actually completing a incomplete picture.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
These girls gained no power whatsoever. Not at all. All they did was they got 25 people killed. That's it. They did not gain any power at all.
BEN KISSEL
Well let's not say that's it. I mean it's a lot. I don't want to say impressive but they definitely accomplished what they wanted to do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When we get to the end of our series we will show that they did go too far.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know.
BEN KISSEL
Wait, what?
MARCUS PARKS
Now to the point of keeping things going, the afflicted couldn't very well keep saying the same things over and over again. In order to up the stakes once more, an afflicted girl claimed that the godly Rebecca Nurse and about 40 other witches-
BEN KISSEL
Wait!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
They had invaded the lands of Samuel Parris to hold a devil's supper.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Don't be late!
BEN KISSEL
I don't want to be late.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cocktail hour's at 5:30.
BEN KISSEL
I'll be there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And we're cutting it off at 6:30 ao you don't interrupt the seating chart.
BEN KISSEL
What is this, Holden's wedding?
MARCUS PARKS
In a perversion of the lord's supper, that was the holy communion, the devil's supper involved taking a communion of the blood of an innocent.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Evil.
BEN KISSEL
I mean it's not that different.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it's the blood of an innocent, not the blood of Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jesus was giving you his blood, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So Jesus was guilty?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No he's making you drink his fucking blood.
MARCUS PARKS
But that's just wine. That's just wine, that's transubstantiation. This is the literal blood of an innocent.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah! New blood.
BEN KISSEL
Oh so it's real blood, real blood. Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And in this case the blood belonged to Parris' niece Abigail Williams. Well Abigail Williams said that she was ordered to eat of the devil's supper, her own blood. And when she refused she was choked.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes! Now we'll see what you can eat. I know I was trying to make you eat but now I'm choking you so you can't eat.
BEN KISSEL
I know and now I want to eat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The devil's trickery!
BEN KISSEL
Dang it.
MARCUS PARKS
According to her and two other girls, the devil's supper was presided by who else but the devil.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is my supper after all!
BEN KISSEL
Again man, you're like this all powerful evil entity.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm also a caterer.
BEN KISSEL
I guess. This is it, huh?
MARCUS PARKS
The devil who showed up to give communion was they said a fine grave man. And all the witches were made to tremble when he came.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hope you ladies are ready to orgasm!
BEN KISSEL
I guess so.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause that's what women like. Well I'll talk a little bit on the idea of where Satan even came from and the idea of the Satanic mass. Where it seemed to come from was a little bit I was alluding to before, right. So at some point there were many gods.
BEN KISSEL
Naturally, of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There was many gods and many agents of god. There was many spirits and nymphs and they all took care of the bad things.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But at some point we wanted to have one god.
BEN KISSEL
Not created by humans at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No way. Certainly not arbitrarily created over hundreds of years of various councils to all decide what this mysterious book of poetry that was somehow delivered to them, not written by people, that was delivered to them that they had to figure out what god was and how he reacted.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so what they did was they made up Satan because they needed somebody else because if there's just one god then that means that god is also the same god that makes all the bad things.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He makes all the good stuff but he also makes the harelips, which Joaquin Phoenix, he made his lunch off of that one.
BEN KISSEL
Well absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Nothing wrong with it at all.
BEN KISSEL
Nothing wrong at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I'm just saying there's also babies having babies.
BEN KISSEL
I'm loving watching you struggle.
MARCUS PARKS
That's true. Babies having babies. That's not what you'd expect god would that, babies having babies.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
AIDS.
BEN KISSEL
There you go, fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a bad one.
MARCUS PARKS
That's a bad one. Earthquakes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Earthquakes.
MARCUS PARKS
Tornadoes! Any sort of natural disaster.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Babies having babies.
MARCUS PARKS
Like when you bite into a hot pocket and you think it's good and it's not and it burns your mouth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
It's always, you never get the right temperature.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
That's the devil.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the devil.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Season 4 of Westworld was made by the devil himself.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I can't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so the idea is you had to create an evil god, so they created this. But then ever since, as soon as Christianity came out of the spiritual vagina, it splintered into many different factions. And so what the main church, first it started with the Roman Church and the Greek Church and all that kind of shit. The main pantheistic religions, they wanted to smash little Christianity outbreaks by calling them cannibals and saying they do all this evil shit. But really where it came from was a thing called 'Agape' which actually was the supper that someone in a Christian society, a person that was well earned would host a dinner where people would come and hang out and they would they do a prayer thing.
BEN KISSEL
Agape.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it means open. Agape.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Agape. It also then quickly got turned into the idea of the bacchanalia, that actually they all get together, they have big gay incest orgies, right, fathers fucking mothers and fathers fucking daddies and fathers taking their sons and all that shit.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic. Really getting into detail there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah and all that cannibal shit. But really what it turned into was those are all split-offs because the people that were truly accused of that were these things that they called the dualists, the people that believe that there were an unknowable creator god, the gnostics, and then a tangible god that normal Christians would worship that created this evil material world, right. It's interesting.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it was split apart. But the Cathars, which is like one famous group of them, they were constantly labeled as this, as cannibals, they would do these big crazy gay orgies and all this kind of shit.
BEN KISSEL
Seems like you're really focused on the gay orgies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They were. They were the ones doing it. They were.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. You mentioned that a few times.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But they were just weird.
BEN KISSEL
When did they kiss each other?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The top and the bottom.
MARCUS PARKS
Top and the bottom, okay. Beginning and end with kissing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Incest and cannibalism and maleficorum were really big, the idea of little tiny witchery, like bad magics. And part of what the Cathars were really were just like the guy that doesn't talk at IT who's super into vore who was always on the tambourine subreddit. You know what I mean?
BEN KISSEL
Oh interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what they say about tambourinists.
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Gay incest orgies.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know. It seems like you're really hung up on that. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But this has been around for a long time.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Are you Q?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No I'm P.
BEN KISSEL
Oh you're P, okay. Interesting though.
MARCUS PARKS
Well with the revelation that 40 witches had participated in the devil's supper, all bets were off as far as who could be accused because the ranks had to be filled up somehow with someone.
BEN KISSEL
You can just see the devil being like how am I going to feed these 40 people?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I am stressed out.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. Can you stop accusing people here? I actually cooked for three and now you're telling me there's 40 people coming to my dinner? God dang it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess I'll make 7 lbs of macaroni.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, well macaroni's great. Fills you up, it's cheap.
MARCUS PARKS
I like this outlaw country bassist devil voice you got going on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I do too.
MARCUS PARKS
He's gonna start telling stories about Whelan any second now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. It's actually a trick with the kids, spaghetti. They don't know, it's very cheap.
MARCUS PARKS
Well furthermore, the Salem Witch Trials are a prime case of in for a penny, in for a pound. Because if you believe one claim you have to believe every claim. Basically it's how you go from Hillary Clinton had a weird party with a performance artist to Tom Hanks is a blood drinking pedophile on adrenochrome locked in a battle with JFK Jr for the soul of the world.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Prove he's not! Prove he's fucking not, all right?
BEN KISSEL
Not our Tom Hanks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where was he?
BEN KISSEL
He was a 13 year old who made a wish to become large and then he had sex with a volleyball for a while, he died a sad death in Philadelphia.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Love Tom Hanks.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Love him.
MARCUS PARKS
In the next round of examinations, the magistrates decided to test the accused by asking them to recite the Lord's prayer because it was believed that anyone aligned with the devil would be physically unable to do so. But this test is not as simple as you might think. When I say that they would be unable to recite the lord's prayer, it would be more accurate to say that they could not recite the lord's prayer perfectly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
It wouldn't be like you tried and you couldn't even get through our father who art in heaven (choking). No. The deviation of just a single word or a single mispronunciation of any word throughout the entire lord's prayer, that was evidence of witchcraft because it's not that you fucked up, it's that you couldn't do it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know exactly. Yes, the Lord's prayer is simple.
BEN KISSEL
Go for it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Our farter... Ah.
BEN KISSEL
No, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay, all right. Our farter-
BEN KISSEL
Oh man, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Who is in Bethlehem-
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Our farter-
BEN KISSEL
Our father.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Who is in Philadelphia, hallowed be thy gunk. Thy pigeon come, thy ringman done, on earth as it is in St. Petersburg, Florida.
BEN KISSEL
You're a witch. You're a witch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what? Honestly I'll take it.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hate public speaking.
BEN KISSEL
I can tell, you're very nervous.
MARCUS PARKS
Well for example, during the second round of examinations one of the accused said, as he was reciting the lord's prayer, he said deliver us from evil. Which that's how I've always known it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's what I thought.
MARCUS PARKS
Deliver us from evil. No.
BEN KISSEL
What?
MARCUS PARKS
The real line is deliver us from all evil.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Got you, bitch!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You never had it right, dude!
BEN KISSEL
Our father who art in heaven-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.
BEN KISSEL
On earth as it is in heaven.
MARCUS PARKS
Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us of our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from all evil!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All evil!
MARCUS PARKS
For thine is the power, the kingdom, and the glory forever. Amen.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not a witch.
BEN KISSEL
You're gonna kill me cause I fucking forgot the word 'all'?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah honestly. They will, literally they will.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Since the accused had said the popular version which is the one we all know, that person failed the test and the failure was used as evidence of witchcraft.
BEN KISSEL
But isn't evil all evil by nature?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you know that there's two other stazas to In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida? You're not psychedelic.
BEN KISSEL
Goddamnit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah and another person when they tried doing it, they said 'hollowed be thy name' instead of 'hallowed be thy name'. So again, therefore witch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kill her.
BEN KISSEL
Splitting hairs.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well I mean that's what it's all about, that's the whole fucking game. Now during this round the accusers roped in Martha Corey's husband Giles Corey, making him the first but certainly not the last man accused during the Salem Witch Trials.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I'm a fucking witch!
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
And a bad neighbor, don't forget that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's so less sexy when it's a guy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is.
MARCUS PARKS
But during Corey's examination, instead of staying perfectly still to avoid the noises of agony made by the afflicted, Giles Corey waved his hands in the air and shook them around.
BEN KISSEL
Is he like Marcus Bachmann?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A little bit.
MARCUS PARKS
He wasn't mensing across the stage, he was waving his hands. More like jazz hands, think jazz hands.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can kind of see this because you ever do one of those public areas where you can wave your hands through arches and they make noises, it's like fun soundscapes?
MARCUS PARKS
Like a theremin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. He's just doing it with all the afflicted girls, he's just going like, 'You go, you go.' (grunting)
BEN KISSEL
He's like Ike Turner out there forcing these people to perform.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is. I think he also understands that his time is gonna be up pretty certain and now what he's gotta do is be a bastard to the very fucking end.
BEN KISSEL
I guess so.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what I like about Giles Corey.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I think what he's trying to do is he's trying to see how far they can take it because he's sitting there thinking these girls are faking it, what the fuck are they doing, they can't scream forever.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they will stop eventually.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they will stop eventually. But they stopped him from doing it. Before they really let him go for it, they tied his hands behind his back so he couldn't do it anymore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now also that makes him super guilty-looking, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah it does.
MARCUS PARKS
Because it makes it look like he tormented the girls on purpose. But in a somewhat creepy moment that shows that the nu metal head tilt is timeless, Giles tipped his head to the side during his testimony and the afflicted girls all tilted their head the same way.
BEN KISSEL
That's scary, man!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is scary, man.
BEN KISSEL
If I was sitting there drinking I'd be like, I'll have another beer, they're scary, man.
MARCUS PARKS
Then when Giles Corey exasperatedly sucked in his cheeks, the girls did that as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You copied me! Stop copying me!
MARCUS PARKS
And so after hurling a fair amount of vile puritanical insults at the afflicted, Giles was sent to jail to join his wife Martha.
BEN KISSEL
Oh poor guy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah exactly. Ah fuck, now I'm in jail with my wife?
BEN KISSEL
Come on.
MARCUS PARKS
Up next though was a creature of pure chaos, a troll who would have certainly been right at home on 8Chan. Her name was Abigail Hobbs and her only purpose in the Salem Witch Trials was to royally fuck with everyone involved. In other words she did it for the lols.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What else do you need me to do for ya, Mr. J?
BEN KISSEL
That's horrifying. You're not Harley Quinn, you're not Harley Quinn.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She is Harley Quinn.
BEN KISSEL
You're not Harley Quinn.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Imagine me as Harley Quinn.
BEN KISSEL
I don't want to do that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mr. J, you wanna see what's in my short shorts?
BEN KISSEL
I already saw a lot of alternate universe Harley Quinns at Comic-Con and everyone is beautiful in their own way.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I just don't need you to do that impression.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay, Mr. J.
BEN KISSEL
No, I don't like it. No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Look at my crop top!
BEN KISSEL
You're shirtless. I wish that people could see this horrific image.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I have the same cup size as Margot Robbie.
BEN KISSEL
But you're not Australian.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're right.
MARCUS PARKS
That's right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The only difference.
BEN KISSEL
The only difference.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Abigail Hobbs could have easily joined the ranks of the afflicted. She chose instead, even at great personal cost, to play the part of the witch to throw as many wrenches as she could into the situation to make things even worse in Salem. This is a girl who liked to gunk up the works. And while it's tempting to say like fuck yeah, what a groovy chick, man. She fucking upended the entire system. It's important to note that her trolling greatly contributed to the execution of 19 people and the deaths of 6 more. Again the modern parallels are astounding.
BEN KISSEL
I was never like oh that's cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nah, it's bad.
BEN KISSEL
It's bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's bad, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Killed a lot of innocent people.
MARCUS PARKS
Well see Hobbs' claims of involvement in witchcraft raised the entire affair to another level because where before you had only an enslaved person confessing to being a witch and a reluctant one at that, you now had a community member saying that she not only practiced witchcraft but she did so of her own free will and she loved it.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah I sucked the devil's dick. I also played with his fucking balls and then I took him out to dinner and then I bought him dessert! Yow!
BEN KISSEL
That's a nice night at the Cheesecake Factory.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What are you gonna do? Come on!
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Hobbs openly bragged that she feared nothing and had quote "sold herself body and soul to the old boy."
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Every hole. Every hole is spoken for.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it seems like it. It's just you're going into great detail on that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. What's fun about one hole is that eventually it turns into the other hole.
BEN KISSEL
I suppose so.
MARCUS PARKS
That's about the closest anyone came to mentioning sex in all of these proceedings, sold herself body and soul.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Almost casually, Hobbs would tell women she didn't like that she could and would call upon Satan at any moment to raise nearby spirits for torment if they didn't do what she said to do.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
MARCUS PARKS
And all this was most likely done out of a certain teenage rebellion. It's a lot like Damien Echols, people calling him devil worshiper and him playing it up cause he thought it was funny.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. Yeah because he was just a high school kid and he didn't commit a murder. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
He didn't think it was possible that they would believe it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah exactly.
BEN KISSEL
But they did. But this is interesting, I actually talked about this on top at this past week as a little side story but there was a woman that went to an execution, she was going to witness the guy who killed his girlfriend '94, he's gonna be executed. But they kicked her out because her skirt was 1.5 inches above her knee.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's insane. That's fucking insane.
BEN KISSEL
So the problem wasn't executing this person for sport basically, it was that she showed her kneecaps.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Disgusting.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that crazy? So we're still there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well interestingly though, Abigail Hobbs was another one of those Maine refugees from the frontier wars. But she flipped it to the metal side by saying that she had met the devil four years earlier at Casco Bay prior to her arrival in Salem. And she had been in the devil's service ever since.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you wouldn't believe what his boat's like.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, what was it like?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Long.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah? Was it a sailboat or a motorboat?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it's just... Fuck you! How dare you doubt what I have to say? Yeah I was on the devil's boat last year! And you're trying to get me to describe it?
BEN KISSEL
I didn't even say anything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're a witch too.
BEN KISSEL
Goddamn.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah! Good work Ann! Crazy little toddler. All you guys are crazy.
BEN KISSEL
I hate this episode of Rugrats.
MARCUS PARKS
Abigail Hobbs, she is truly the person who destroys lives.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let me guess, you guys are into the devil now? I was into the Devil four years ago. Okay?
BEN KISSEL
I can't. I'm sorry that it's cool now.
MARCUS PARKS
What's really fascinating though is the fact that since Abigail Hobbs fully and completely admitted to being a witch, the first to do so without hesitation, the afflicted girls showed no signs whatsoever of any discomfort during her examination in court, even though they were being faced with a witch who was waving her arms going, 'I'm a witch! I'm a witch! I'm a witch! I'm a witch!'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm a witch! I'm a witch! I'm a witch! I'm a witch!
BEN KISSEL
So they were like, 'You ain't a witch.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well cause what happened was man, they're stealing their shine.
BEN KISSEL
That's what I'm saying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, man. Cause now it's like oh fuck, now we got a pro in here? We were all having fun, we were the first ones in.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now she's in here, she's taking up all the oxygen. And also or were they just watching and learning?
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe. But while Hobbs was certainly giving herself up as a witch, she also in the process put her entire family into the jackpot with her.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh this is just... I'm not having children.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're not having children.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm telling you man, she's just a person who fucking destroys, like a human tornado.
BEN KISSEL
Honestly it's like when Casey Anthony brought her family into the story.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh very much so.
MARCUS PARKS
Well since witchcraft was seen as a corruption that could be taught, a witch's family members always with suspicion by association. And so when questioned, although Hobbs, she showed contrition for her time as Satan's naughty little girl-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I must have been too naughty for me to be here in jail, Mr. J.
BEN KISSEL
God stop it, you're not Harley Quinn.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(coughing)
BEN KISSEL
I love smoker's cough Harley Quinn.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(coughing) You wanna go get some Dunkies?
BEN KISSEL
Oh god, you're so aggravating.
MARCUS PARKS
Well when questioned, Hobbs freely offered up her parents as witches and said yeah, I fucking turned them, I turned them, I was the one who did it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Daddy always wanted a piece of my snapper.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, Harley!
MARCUS PARKS
And her parents joined her in jail along with all the others.
BEN KISSEL
Oh god. What do you say to your daughter at that point?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'd just be like who else is a witch, honey? That's what I would do.
MARCUS PARKS
Next up were the Bishops, Edward and Sarah. And for me, I hate this one the most because Edward and Sarah Bishop sound truly like just a couple of regular fucking people trying to make lives in this weird ass place.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They were accused because they ran an unlicensed tavern with gambling out of their home.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They were cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And because Edward had allegedly encouraged his children to quote "abuse the neighbor's swine" which put in modern terms he said hey, go fuck around with the neighbor's pig. Just go fuck with the pig.
BEN KISSEL
Go kick the pig!
MARCUS PARKS
Just go fuck with the pig, I don't know. Don't kick it, no, no, don't kick it. Just go pull its fucking tail or something.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I sure wish that those neighbor kids would leave me alone. But when it comes down to it I guess it's their freedom, everything else sucks around here.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely little piggy.
MARCUS PARKS
Sarah was further accused of causing the suicide of a woman named Goody Trask. Goody Trask, after an argument with Sarah Bishop, had gone home immediately and cut her jugular vein open with a pair of scissors.
BEN KISSEL
Oh mama.
MARCUS PARKS
And she died, she bled to death.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
What didn't help matters was that Edward Bishop, perhaps only in jest, and this is why they were just fine people, he said in public many times that his wife was so familiar with the devil that she sat up nights quote "chatting with the fiend".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're all having fun. Yeah, he knows the devil. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's a funny guy. We have a good time with him.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe he nicknamed his penis 'the fiend'. Great character in the WWE, was anyway.
MARCUS PARKS
Now by this point it was becoming obvious to people that you were either on the side of the court or on the side of the devil because if people didn't participate in these accusations in some way or if they participated then changed their mind, they would be accused. For example, a deputy named John Willard who had himself arrested many witchcraft suspects and had even helped Ann Putnam Jr during her afflictions, he resigned because he thought that innocent people were being accused willy nilly.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I thought you were gonna say because he arrested himself which is kind of adorable if he has too many drinks and he puts the handcuffs on himself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
BEN KISSEL
I've done it again. Citizen's arrest, I'm gonna go sleep in the jail.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. Good joke is I always wanted to sleep in the jail.
MARCUS PARKS
And within days Ann Putnam Jr said the Deputy Willard was now amongst her witchy tormentors.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
Yep, that checks out. Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Just by saying hey, I don't think we should be arresting this sweet old lady.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Now from Salem Village the witch panic began to spread far beyond even Massachusetts. 250 miles away in Stanford, Connecticut a servant girl said that she felt a prickling and pinching in her breast while gathering herbs. She then spent the next two days weeping and falling to the floor, followed by another 13 days of being haunted by a spectral cat who alternately cajoled and threatened her.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(purring) Meow. I see you're crying, are you a pussy? (purring)
BEN KISSEL
Are you a jellicle cat?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Get stronger! It is me, the cat!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So stop crying because you look ugly when you cry and you're gross when you cry.
BEN KISSEL
That's not very nice of you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
BEN KISSEL
What do you want me to do to you?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want you to suck my little cta fucking dick til I come in your mouth.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you. I love this series.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But if not I'll take some tuna fish.
BEN KISSEL
All right, here you go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(purring)
BEN KISSEL
(singing) Jellicle cat, he's a jellicle cat.
MARCUS PARKS
Now with each round of accusations the types of people accused got more and more unlikely. See in the first round it was just a couple of weird off-putting old ladies that nobody likes, no big deal. On the second though you have people of a little higher standing. You had Rebecca Nurse, she was actually well respected in the community, she was a good woman of god. She was the one who proved that any woman could be accused.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
On the fourth round though the afflicted finally got around to accusing a bonafide reverend named George Burroughs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man.
MARCUS PARKS
Which opened the door for absolutely anyone in Salem to be accused. However Burroughs was still somewhat of an outsider even though he was a minister, it wasn't like he was well liked. See he'd been one of the three aforementioned ministers who had popped in and out of Salem in the years leading up to the hire of Samuel Parris.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wonder why none of these guys wanted to be the pastors of the town.
BEN KISSEL
God, this is scary man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now Burroughs had come under suspicion for a number of reasons. First, while most ministers were expected to be open and engaged with the community, Burroughs was withdrawn and private. He was a weird guy. Second, he was exceedingly strong which was considered odd for a man who should have spent his days reading the bible instead of participating in physical activity. Where did you get that strength but from the devil?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I got a gripper. I go one of those hand grippers.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, those little hand grippers? Yeah, that's the devil's toy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I'm sorry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I thought I was making my grip grip.
BEN KISSEL
No, I'm sorry. Do you have a NordicTrack? Is that a NordicTrack that I see? That's the devil's toy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. Oh fuck!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This cost $2000.
BEN KISSEL
Do you have that Suzanne Somers pussy machine? The one that strengthens, the Thighmaster? That's the devil's toy too.
MARCUS PARKS
Lastly Burroughs was fond of toads which was considered a bit odd, not to mention the fact that toads are a classic witch's familiar.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
So he's strong and he likes toads.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Cause kissing a cat on the butthole was one way to start a Satanic mass and the other one was to kiss a frog on the mouth.
MARCUS PARKS
But it's just Burroughs, 'I like my frog. I like my frog, my frogs are friends. I like my frog.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is my frog. What's nice about a frog is that they all share their lilypad. None of them fight.
BEN KISSEL
It's nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We can all learn something from frogs.
BEN KISSEL
I love a good frog. I mean they're a little creepy but I like them.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Burroughs left his minister post in Salem in 1683, 9 years prior to the trials. This was not because he was kind of witchy, he didn't leave because he was kind of witchy. He left because the people of Salem stopped paying him because they didn't like him which is the same shit they were trying to do with Parris before witchcraft so coincidentally struck his home.
BEN KISSEL
All right, my car is literally in the pothole in the road guys. So can we just figure out who's gonna pay for this?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
George Burroughs then spent the next eight years or so in Maine at the house that was reported to be haunted. Curiouser and curiouser. And finally he returned to Salem for god knows what reason. I guess because the frontier wars had come, he was familiar with Salem, he just thought okay, let's give this place another fucking shot. Or maybe he was forced to go there, I'm not really sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He might have been forced to come back.
BEN KISSEL
Doesn't sound like a lot of people liked him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. A lot of people didn't like Salem Village either.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Unfortunately for burrows though, through sheer coincidence he'd got caught in the troll storm because his haunted house in Maine was in Casco Bay, which was the same town where troll Abigail Hobbs had said she first paid fealty to the devil.
BEN KISSEL
Oh get out of here, Abigail.
MARCUS PARKS
To that point, two days after the examination of Abigail Hobbs, Ann Putnam Jr said that the specter of Reverend Burroughs had tried to get her to sign the devil's book. I think it's like witch number five or six that came around and said Abigail, sign the devil's book, sign the devil's book.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She was big.
BEN KISSEL
I guess so.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They needed to get her.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, she's a real star here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She was clutch.
MARCUS PARKS
But what was different about Burroughs is that while he try tried to get her to sign the book, he'd boasted of killing not only his own wife and child but the wife and child of the Salem minister who came after him, Deodat Lawson.
BEN KISSEL
He didn't though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but in the spectral world he did, his ghost did.
BEN KISSEL
But he is just sleeping.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But his ghost confessed. So that's as good as him doing it.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
It really is. And so with the man of god officially accused the stakes were raised again. The afflicted claimed that George Burroughs had hosted a gathering of witches in Reverend Parris' pasture. He called all of these witches to order with a trumpet blast. (trumpet sounds)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(trumpet sounds)
MARCUS PARKS
And he gave a sermon reminding them of their task of replacing god's church with the devil's. Which I think is the first time that any real goal was mentioned outside of just go and do that voodoo you do so well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I actually think that this was... It's interesting because that was what I talked about. Of any real luciferianism, that is the crux of it is that the wrong god's in charge and that the other god needs to be put back in charge.
BEN KISSEL
I mean maybe spice it up a little bit, might get some more income in there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, hey, also sometimes we all need a break.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
After the sermon though, witches passed bread and cider around the table in Parris' pasture where it was announced that Satan had arrived. And that not 9, not 40, but 300 witches were living in Massachusetts.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's just a lot. That number really went up there, huh?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. Think about how many people were there. We're going to talk about it.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean in all of Massachusetts, a few 1000. I mean you're talking maybe 10% of the population.
BEN KISSEL
That's a lot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a lot.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a lot.
BEN KISSEL
It's a lot.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a lot, yeah. Burroughs it was said would be king of hell.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And a woman named Martha Carrier would be queen. And I know we haven't mentioned Martha Carrier yet but holy fucking shit there's so many people involved in this story that I cannot name every single person because it just becomes a name salad and you're not going to know who the fuck is who.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My thing is that yeah sure, I guess you can name me king of hell but I'd rather be accountant of Frogtown.
BEN KISSEL
That would be cute, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If there are frogs in hell, I guess I'll be there. But I don't even want to be in charge them, I want them to be free.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, they can't be around that much fire.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I kind of want to be the president so that they'd vote me and then they chose me.
BEN KISSEL
The president of frogs?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's not possible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Could you just kill me already?
BEN KISSEL
They have no voting system.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just just kill me.
BEN KISSEL
I can.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the authorities actually traveled all the way to Maine to arrest Reverend Burroughs and five more were-
BEN KISSEL
What?
MARCUS PARKS
Dude, that's the thing. It wasn't just one of those things where you're accused and it's like well if he's around I guess we'll arrest him. They hunted your ass down.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude. And this is not like the internet. He was just at home and then all of a sudden a dude showed up and said guess what? You're a witch in Massachusetts.
BEN KISSEL
I'm a witch?
MARCUS PARKS
And five more were arrested in this round as well. And people would escape. When they knew that the witch accusation was coming, their friends would go and say like hey, they're about to fuck you up, you need to get out of here now.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, makes sense.
MARCUS PARKS
And they'd leave in the middle of the night and hide in New York City or Boston. People would hide in New York City mainly because New York City was just a fucking merchant town and they do not care.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Nobody cares.
MARCUS PARKS
Nobody gives a fuck.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No god.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. No god at all. It's like the only question is does it make money and if the answer is yes then New York City is home.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. That's why they got the best food.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The water.
BEN KISSEL
And Chicago. Oh the water's great.
MARCUS PARKS
But this being colonial times, the question was where all these witches would go while awaiting trial. The answer was Boston.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, no way.
BEN KISSEL
Boston.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I also want to say I listen, all right. I listened to the audience. Someone in the audience told me that they felt that some of our Ted Kennedy jokes over the last week are hac.
BEN KISSEL
Why? He murdered that woman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I've heard the terms, people said that they were Jay Leno-esque.
BEN KISSEL
Well Jay Leno's one of the most successful comedians.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, yes.
MARCUS PARKS
He's just a regular guy, when he's around he reads Hot Rod magazines and that's it. Super nice guy, regular guy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Regular guy.
BEN KISSEL
They were mad at us for making fun of Ted Kennedy for murdering that woman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah so I decided here's a more specific, a better Massachusetts joke.
BEN KISSEL
Oh you're actually taking a note from the audience.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah. But this is better. So just so you know, if you want better Massachusetts jokes.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Here we go. Yo momma so stupid she thought Mattapan was where chefs lived.
BEN KISSEL
Actually I'm gonna need some scotch for this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no.
MARCUS PARKS
Is that it? Is that all?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why are rectal thermometers band at Boston College?
BEN KISSEL
I would really love to know that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They caused too much brain damage.
BEN KISSEL
Because they're assholes.
MARCUS PARKS
Did you just like look up Aggie jokes or something?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I looked up specific Massachusetts jokes.
BEN KISSEL
What else do you got? We can do this all night. I do like that one because the thermometer going into a butthole but that's where their brains are.
MARCUS PARKS
That's where their brains are, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Massholes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yo momma so stupid she thought Blue Hill Avenue had blue hills. That's can't be real.
BEN KISSEL
Those are more Yo Momma jokes. That's not so much about Massachusetts.
MARCUS PARKS
They're regional Yo Momma jokes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're regional Yo Momma jokes.
BEN KISSEL
Blue Hill, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You might think it would be blue to be honest.
MARCUS PARKS
You could make that a Bronx joke by saying like yo momma so stupid-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a Massachusetts joke! It's a fucking Massachusetts joke and it will not be changed!
BEN KISSEL
Yo momma so stupid she thought Cobble Hill was actually made out of peach cobbler.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Or that Forest Hills is-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that's a Manhattan joke. Again these are all New York jokes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why do all the trees in New York lean east? Cause Massachusetts sucks.
BEN KISSEL
That's a good one. That ones actually quite funny.
MARCUS PARKS
I like that. That's a good one, I like that.
BEN KISSEL
It's very good.
MARCUS PARKS
I like that quite a bit. I do. Where was I?
BEN KISSEL
The tree was leaning east.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay. But while Boston did have ample jail space at first, the cells had filled with witch suspects in just a few months. There was so many witches that the jailer had to make extensive repairs on the jail to fit everyone inside. And by the way at this time in Massachusetts, the people who were in jail, they were billed for any new locks, any new roofs, anything like that.
BEN KISSEL
Still the case today.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
If it was in your cell, you had to pay for it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic. Well I can just see the bailiff now. They're like go get a witch and he's like which one?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which witch?
BEN KISSEL
Which witch which?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow this is a really great way to close this out.
MARCUS PARKS
It really is.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely fantastic, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now I probably don't have to tell you that a jail and 1692 Boston was fucking awful but some of the details are worth mentioning. In 1686 a writer named John Dunton described the Boston jail as thus:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"A prison is a grave of the living."
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Tis a house of meager looks and ill smells for lice, drink, and tobacco are the compound. Or if you will tis the suburbs of hell and the persons much the same as there."
BEN KISSEL
Awesome. So I guess we're just going to improve the conditions then, seems kind of inhumane.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No!
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The goal is to make them worse.
BEN KISSEL
Oh they're supposed to get worse.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Worse and worse and worse and worse and worse.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay. All right. Can we also spend a lot of money on them?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Absolutely!
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Similarly a writer named Job Tookey described... Job Tookey is a great name, I love Job Tookey, yeah. He described the jail in much simpler terms. He wrote that he was almost poisoned by the stink of his own shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh. That's a self indictment.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And it's said that the stench in Boston jail of unwashed bodies, rotting food, vomit, and dead rats, they made it even more unbearable and unsanitary conditions led to a disease called jail fever which was probably just dysentery. I'm sure it is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nice. I thought that's why they were all dancing in that Elvis video.
BEN KISSEL
Jailhouse Rock, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they had jail fever.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And as it was the sickly Sarah Osborne who had been ripped from her bed, carted to Boston, and thrown in a cell, she died from prison fever.
BEN KISSEL
She just died.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the first one.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
Yup.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the first one.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yup. After being held behind bars for nine weeks and she left a bill of £1.03 for her family to pay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
In today's money it's about 300 bucks.
BEN KISSEL
Unbelievable.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. She died and everyone was out 300 bucks.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep. And it's with the first of 25 deaths that we'll leave Salem until next week where we'll pick back up with the witch trials themselves and the eventual executions.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Next week is all about how do you try a witch? How do you find out if it's witch and how do you make it stick?
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then most importantly of all, how do you kill a witch?
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you do it in many different ways. Yeah, many, many different ways.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez. Yo momma is so racist she went and married a Boston police officer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's an indictment of the police department.
BEN KISSEL
I know.
MARCUS PARKS
Interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
With a Yo Momma structure which kind of makes it in a way truly interesting, doesn't it?
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Yo momma so pink-skinned that she's Larry Byrd who was on the Boston Celtics.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, very good.
BEN KISSEL
All right. So thank you all so much for listening.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yo momma has such bad taste in food, her favorite meal is Boston baked beans.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. Yo momma had so much fun in high school her name was Boston cream pie. All right everyone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now that's disrespectful.
BEN KISSEL
Well that's fine. All right everyone.
MARCUS PARKS
You're really good at that, you're good at those.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is.
BEN KISSEL
I learned a lot from popsicle sticks. Thank you all so much for listening. This is gonna be a four part series which I can't wait to get more into.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
This has been awesome. Great job guys.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you.
BEN KISSEL
Let's see, we are going to be in Philadelphia.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
And we are going to be in Las Vegas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, we're gonna be there. August 13th we're going to be in Philadelphia.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think we're sold out, I'm not certain. But if not, get a ticket. If there's not, there's very few left. So go get a ticket.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then we are gonna be at Psycho Vegas.
BEN KISSEL
Can't wait.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know it's always important because I know that Mayhem needs us to open, they always ask us to open for them all the time.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, yeah. I mean they don't know who we are.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no. But they're always being like... Because one thing that metal audiences love is to stop all the metal and hear people talk.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That's what they truly love. And we can't wait to be that voice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
We actually usually tell people not to pregame because our show is actually, you do kind of have to listen. You can be hammered for the show in Vegas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. We're gonna fuck around.
BEN KISSEL
It's just gonna be gross.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm really very excited.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah it's gonna be super gross.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah it's gonna be really stupid.
MARCUS PARKS
And don't forget we have four more american shows this year actually, we're going to be in Buffalo, we're gonna be in Northfield, Ohio, we're gonna be in Pittsburgh, and we're coming home to New York City.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
New York City!
MARCUS PARKS
The Beacon Theater on September 22nd.
BEN KISSEL
Can't wait. All right everyone, thanks for supporting all the shows here on the Last Podcast Network. We absolutely appreciate you. Hail yourselves!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail Satan!
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein!
BEN KISSEL
Megustalations.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
High five a witch.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A real witch honestly, one that counts. This week on Side Stories I'm saying if you meet a teacher, give them $5.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you meet a witch that you love, buy them a milkshake or something.
BEN KISSEL
There you go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just fucking meet your local witch, just being like you're cool with me.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Pat 'em on the shoulder. Say atta girl or atta boy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Atta boy!
MARCUS PARKS
If it's your local warlock. Whichever.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And hail me as well.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or you'll be punishable by death.
BEN KISSEL
I'm so happy you weren't alive back then.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, honestly me too.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.