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[Assistant] Perhaps she stepped a bit farther off the curb, or maybe the next car was just a bit too far out of their lane. But a moment later, tragedy and the speeding car struck.


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[Assistant] It could have been earlier, too, but that's because no one really knows if it all happened. There are no police records of a woman struck by a car outside of the O. Henry Ballroom in the 1930s, and the story doesn't give us names to go on. All it does


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[Assistant] Is give us the backstory to a much more popular tale.


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[Assistant] For decades, drivers on Archer Avenue, a road that leaves Chicago to the southwest and heads toward Juliet, have reported picking up a woman on the side of the road.


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[Assistant] When she climbs into the car and they ask where she's headed, she always gives an address that keeps the car headed north on Archer. When they pass the old resurrection cemetery just a few miles away, the driver is always startled to see his passenger is gone.


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[Assistant] These are stories, local legends that have been handed down from generation to generation over the last few decades. They are that sort of local folklore that becomes a part of the cultural fabric of the area. If you grew up in Chicago's southwest suburbs, you've probably heard some version of these stories at some point in your life. But again,


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[Assistant] They're just stories, and stories of ghosts can't have an impact on the real world. Can they? I'm not so sure about that.


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[Assistant] Take the experience of William in 1935. He had borrowed his father's car for the evening and was driving along Archer Avenue at night when a woman in a white dress stepped off the curb near the O. Henry Ballroom and into his lane.


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[Assistant] William swerved to avoid her and crashed the car into a utility pole. When he looked back to the curb, there was no one there.


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[Assistant] Four years later, another area man had his own sighting of the ghostly hitchhiker. Jerry Palace met a young woman in a white dress at a nearby curb. He claimed to have danced with her and even kissed her before she asked for a ride home.


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[Assistant] Jerry wrote the address down and then headed north up Archer Avenue. When they came within sight of the Resurrection Cemetery, however, his passenger asked him to be let out there.


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[Assistant] According to Paulus, the woman exited the car and walked up to the gates of the cemetery and then simply vanished. He probably waited for her to return, expecting it to be some sort of practical joke, but she never did.


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[Assistant] He finally drove away, but the experience never really left him.


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[Assistant] The following day, he pulled out that slip of paper with the address on it and drove to the house to see if the young woman had made it home.


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[Assistant] The woman who answered the door was old enough to be his mother, but Paulus asked about his friend anyway.


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[Assistant] According to the story, she told Paulus that her daughter had died many years before in an accident on Archer Avenue.


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[Assistant] She even took him inside and showed him a photograph of the young woman.


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[Assistant] Paulus claimed she was the very same person he had met at the dance the night before. Then the woman added this one final detail. Her daughter, she said, was buried nearby. In Resurrection Cemetery, of course.


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[Assistant] Today the legend has a name. Most people refer to her as Resurrection Mary, and the stories about her are almost as plentiful as there are cars on Archer Avenue. It's one of those tales that has been told so often, and by so many people, that it feels like it must be true. Sadly, there's no way to prove any of it.


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[Assistant] It's much more likely that we, like the hitchhiker in the stories, have probably been taken for a ride.


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[Assistant] But Chicago has much more to offer to us than tales of ghostly women and late night drives. A story that is much more concrete and historical. But that doesn't mean it's safe.


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[Assistant] Charles had been in Connecticut back in 1820, but his mother died during birth and his father skipped town a short while later. As a result, he was raised by his grandmother in New York.


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[Assistant] But he didn't let the challenges of his childhood hold him back.


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[Assistant] The couple married and moved to the growing city of Chicago, where he began to build his reputation as a real estate developer.


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[Assistant] The couple moved into the massive brick house and began life there as a family.


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[Assistant] They had three children, two sons and a daughter, and Charles continued to build his fortune. The tragedy was standing in the shadows, just waiting for the moment to tear it all apart.


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[Assistant] First, the couple's youngest son died in 1852 at the age of one. Then, Millicent herself passed away in 1860.


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[Assistant] Six years later, their oldest son died at the age of 19, followed by the last remaining child, Frederica, just eight years later.


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[Assistant] Sometime after that, Charles decided to move away.


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[Assistant] The house was just too full of the ghost of the past for him to ever find happiness there.


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[Assistant] So when he left, the neighborhood collapsed in his wake. The wealthy upper class all decided to rebuild their lives on the open property that had been cleared by the Great Fire of 1871, and factories, brothels, and drug dens took their place around the mansion.


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[Assistant] The old house itself even became a sort of business park with store rooms and offices where living rooms and bedrooms once were.


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[Assistant] By the time Jane Addams found the house in 1889, it had a factory and a secondhand furniture store inside it. And something else, too.


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[Assistant] It was full of stories, tales of shadows, and barely visible shapes that had been seen moving throughout the house. Some believed that the ghosts of the past that drove Charles Hull away from his mansion just might have been real. At the very least, enough people had witnessed them to make a strong case for it.


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[Assistant] Adams wanted to use the building for something better, and she petitioned the whole estate to give her a 25-year lease so she could use the mansion as a settlement house. A sort of community center where she and others would live and work among some of the most poverty-stricken European immigrants of the area. And it worked.


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[Assistant] Today, Jane Addams is seen as the founder of modern social work in America, and her dedication to the cause earned her a Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, the first ever awarded to an American.


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[Assistant] She changed lives, transformed the community and gave the old Hull mansion a second life that would have made Charles Hull proud. But their work in that house wasn't without mysteries.


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[Assistant] The stories predated Jane Addams' time in the house. Even before Charles Hull moved away, rumors were already swirling that the bedroom, once occupied by his wife Millicent, had become home to unusual experiences and the sightings of a pale woman.


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[Assistant] Others claimed that noises could be heard at night, like the pounding of footsteps on the nearby stairs.


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[Assistant] The businesses that occupied the mansion before Jane's settlement house took over also felt as if there were otherworldly forces in the upstairs rooms. They were said to keep a bucket of water on the stairs, a sort of barrier that was meant to keep the spirits from passing over the water and down to the main level.


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[Assistant] Even Jane herself experienced some of these disturbances. After moving into the haunted bedroom in 1889, Jane told her partner Ellen about footsteps and noises during the night. She moved to a different room a short while later.


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[Assistant] Future guests at the house also saw things that disturbed them. One woman stayed in the haunted bedroom as a sort of challenge and claimed to have seen the figure of a woman standing beside her bed during the night. When she lit a lamp to get a better look, the figure, whoever it had been, simply disappeared.


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[Assistant] That was the year that a desperate mother was said to have appeared on the doorstep of the mansion and abandoned an unusual child.


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[Assistant] There are a few versions of her story, but the basic core tale goes something like this.


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[Assistant] A local Catholic woman married a man who turned out to be an atheist. When he caught her hanging a painting of the Virgin Mary on a wall in their house, the husband tore it back down and made a powerful declaration.


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[Assistant] I would rather have the devil himself in this house, he shouted, than this awful painting.


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[Assistant] The legend says that it was a short time after this that the woman discovered that she was pregnant. Many months later, she gave birth, only to be horrified by what she saw.


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[Assistant] Her child was said to have been born with pointed ears and a tail, along with a full set of pointed teeth and hooves where its feet should be.


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[Assistant] Overwhelmed by the horror of it all, the mother ran to Jane's charitable hulhouse and abandoned the child there.


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[Assistant] For nearly two months in 1913, the door of the Hull House never stopped knocking. Word had spread quickly of the Devil Baby and everyone wanted a glimpse. Jane, of course, turned all of them away and denied the story completely, but the crowds were passionate.


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[Assistant] Some made threats while others offered money for a chance to see the unnatural child. Jane, however, stood her ground.


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[Assistant] The stories persisted, as they have a way of doing. Some said that Jane herself tried to have the devil baby baptized, but it was so evil that it escaped the priest and danced away, shouting curses at them all. To protect themselves, the child was locked in the attic, where it was left to die and be forgotten.


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[Assistant] But no story is ever truly lost. The Devil Baby might have been hidden away like a box of unwanted photographs, but it's still there, thanks to the whispers that keep it alive.


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[Assistant] Chicago is a resilient city. The people who live there are very good at standing back up and continuing life amidst all the tragedy.


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[Assistant] Sure, the city burned to the ground a century and a half ago, but it was rebuilt more beautifully than ever before in the years that followed.


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[Assistant] Nearly all of the scars of that inferno are gone, washed away by the progress of time. All that's left now is story.


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[Assistant] A great example is the old O'Leary Farm, still considered by most as the origin point of the Great Chicago Fire.


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[Assistant] Today, the farm buildings are all gone. The last of them were torn down in 1956 so that the city could build a new structure. The Chicago Fire Academy. If you don't see poetry in that change, I can help you.


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[Assistant] And yet there's another layer beneath that modern urban exterior. After all, a third of the city is literally built on the ruins of tragedy and the rest of it? Well, it sort of comes with the territory. From killers like Al Capone and H.H. Holmes to unexpected tragedies like the Great Chicago Fire or the sinking of the Eastland, there have been no shortage of loss and pain and grief. And that's the danger of stories, isn't it?


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[Assistant] Story, as we've seen, has a way of spreading and burning deep.


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[Assistant] Whether it's the tale of ghostly hitchhikers or rumors of devilish creatures living in the attic of old mansions, some tales just have a way of smoldering beneath the surface, and they can do so for decades.


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[Assistant] Stories tease us with the possibilities of what might be true. They prey on our doubts and fears and leave us unstable and insecure.


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[Assistant] The fact that the Hull House was surrounded by thousands of poor, religious, mistreated people who firmly believed that God dished out punishment in horrible supernatural ways only seems to have fanned the flames.


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[Assistant] Like a lot of Chicago, the old Hull House that Jane Addams turned into an oasis for the broken and lost of the city has changed into something new.


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[Assistant] It's still there on the eastern side of the campus of the University of Chicago on Halsted Street, part of the College of Architecture and the Arts. There's a museum inside if you want to visit and stand in the house for yourself. But there are still stories that are whispered about the place.


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[Assistant] Even today, people claim to have an uneasy feeling inside.


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[Assistant] And more than a few people have walked by the mansion at night, only to see something that left them completely unsettled.


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[Assistant] They claim to have seen things in the attic window at the top of the house.


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[Assistant] Specifically, people passing by have seen a child, pale and ghostly, who stares down at them from above.


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[Assistant] They say the child's face is disturbing though, that it's somehow deformed or twisted, giving it the appearance of something evil.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research help from Marsette Crockett and music by Chad Lawson.


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[Assistant] If you're new around here, this is my friendly reminder that lore is a lot more than just bi-weekly audio stories. There is an ongoing book series from Penguin Random House, a television show available on Amazon Prime, a membership site with extra episodes, and so much more.


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[Assistant] And you can learn all about everything over in one place, theworldoflore.com slash now.


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[Assistant] You can also follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. When you do say hi. I like it when people say hi.


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[Assistant] About 20 miles to the west of the South African city of Umzinto, there used to be an old Catholic outpost called St. Michael's Mission. Along with serving as home to the missionaries working there, it was also the location of a small, peaceful orphanage.


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[Assistant] In 1906 though, that piece was broken by an extraordinary event.


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[Assistant] One of the older children, a 16 year old girl named Clara Germana Cella, began to act strangely. Although she'd never studied them, she suddenly became fluent in German, French, and Polish.


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[Assistant] Witnesses also reported that she somehow knew the darkest secrets of complete strangers, as if she could read their minds.


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[Assistant] They said she could levitate off the floor, sometimes as high as five feet, but the holy water would bring her back down.


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[Assistant] On more than one occasion, Clara even tossed a nun across the room as if she were a ragdoll.


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[Assistant] And the noises she made sounded as if, and, I quote, a herd of wild beasts orchestrated by Satan had formed a hellish choir.


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[Assistant] When they realized that Clara couldn't be near objects that had been blessed by a priest, they finally had their answer. She was possessed, they said, by a demon.


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[Assistant] Hers is one of countless possession stories told throughout history. They span centuries and cultures and religions.


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[Assistant] And all the while, people have been fascinated by them.


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[Assistant] Maybe it's the darkness. Maybe it's the loss of control.


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[Assistant] Perhaps it's just our love of a good old-fashioned scary tale.


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[Assistant] People are obsessed with stories about possession.


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[Assistant] Look no further than Hollywood, for proof. Films like The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby, along with every single episode of Supernatural, all hinge on the idea of dark forces taking control of innocent victims. It makes for great entertainment. Darkness sells, apparently.


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[Assistant] These stories, it turns out, are almost always about individuals. One person, possessed by evil, and the results of their condition. But what happens when there are more than one?


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[Assistant] Deep in the French countryside, about 20 miles to the south of the town of Chinon, is an ancient little village that's home to just a few thousand. The streets are picturesque, and the surrounding landscape is gorgeous, but there are darker things in Ludan than you might expect.


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[Assistant] In the early 1600s, Ludun sat on the border between two territories, the Protestants, also known in France as the Huguenots, and the Catholics. Like everywhere else in Europe and England at the time, there was a lot of hostility between these two groups of Christians, but it was different in Ludun.


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[Assistant] There, things seemed to be peaceful. Side by side, Catholic and Protestant lived and worked together.


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[Assistant] But being on the border between two regions meant that there was a lot of troop movement, and in the early 1600s, French troops were plagued by typhus. It's an illness sometimes referred to as camp fever because it flourished in the overcrowded, unsanitary conditions of military campaigns.


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[Assistant] And although the inflow of soldiers most likely brought a boost to the local economy, it also brought disease. 1632 was a hard year.


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[Assistant] The community had been battling the pandemic for over five months, and it was taking its toll on them.


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[Assistant] Some estimates report that about 26% of the population there died as a result of the illness. Because of that, two different things were happening.


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[Assistant] First, all of the people of wealth and importance were leaving town.


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[Assistant] Doctors, priests, officials, anyone who could afford to really, all of them were fleeing to the countryside.


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[Assistant] Second, those who remain behind set up quarantine measures to stop the spread of the disease.


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[Assistant] And one of the groups that closed themselves off from the rest of the world was a convent of Yerselin nuns.


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[Assistant] It wasn't an old convent, maybe six years old at the time, and so it was full of relatively young members. Most of the women there had come from wealthy, noble families.


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[Assistant] Made a lot of sense. Saint Ursula was said to have been the daughter of a powerful ruler who was killed while on a religious pilgrimage. Noble-born women of the time were drawn to that story, and as a result, the order was flourishing.


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[Assistant] In September of 1632, after months of quarantine and the death that surrounded it, the nuns began to report odd experiences.


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[Assistant] On the 21st of that month, one of the women woke to find a man standing over the foot of her bed. He was weeping, and begged her to pray for him. And he had a book, which he kept offering to her.


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[Assistant] Alarmed, the nun called out for her roommate to wake up as well. But when she did, the man vanished.


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[Assistant] The two women had trouble sleeping though, and stayed awake the rest of the night. And all the while, both of them claimed they could still hear the man, weeping and muttering quietly, as if he was still there, praying by himself in the shadows.


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[Assistant] A few days later, another nun claimed to see a black sphere that floated up and down the corridors of the convent.


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[Assistant] It even ran into one of the women, knocking her to the floor and leaving marks on her legs.


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[Assistant] A week after that, someone saw a skeleton walking around as if it were still alive.


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[Assistant] But these events seem to be the precursor to something darker.


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[Assistant] It was that hot, sticky wind that blows in just before a tropical storm slams the coast. Except this storm would turn out to be far more frightening. And it began with seizures.


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[Assistant] Many of the nuns began to have violent convulsions. When they could speak, they cried out that hands, invisible hands, were slapping and hitting them. They heard voices and witnessed ghostly figures in their rooms.


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[Assistant] Remember, this wasn't an isolated thing. The experiences were spread across a whole group of women. And that caught the attention of church leadership.


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[Assistant] When the Catholic confessor Jean Mignon arrived on October 5th, there were eight nuns exhibiting these unusual symptoms, including the convent's prioress, Jeanne des Anges. Actually, she seems to be the worst of the lot, convulsing through the night and screaming what seemed like nonsense the entire time.


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[Assistant] Suspecting a demon, Jean Mignon demanded it to speak and identify itself. But he wanted to be careful. If, for some extraordinary reason, the Prioress was faking it, he didn't want to make it easy to answer. So he spoke to the demon in Latin, a language that he knew Desange did not understand.


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[Assistant] One of the common beliefs in the 16th and 17th centuries was that a person had to strike a deal with the devil in order to obtain supernatural powers. People all across Europe were accused of witchcraft for hundreds of years, but the core accusation was always that these individuals had somehow struck a bargain with evil spirits.


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[Assistant] So it wasn't odd for Zhao Mengyang to ask his next question. How were you invited into this convent?


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[Assistant] It was an answer that Mignon had no problem accepting as true.


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[Assistant] Why? Well, to understand that, we need to take a moment to get to know your Bon Grandier. Because not only was he real, he was right there in the convent. Grandier, you see, was a priest.


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[Assistant] This guy was handsome, suave, even seductive. Think Jude Law in The Young Pope. He'd been in Ludan for at least 15 years, and in that time, he'd built himself quite a reputation as a ladies' man.


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[Assistant] Rumor had it that Grandière had fathered a child with the daughter of a local lawyer. She was conveniently married off to someone from out of town, they say. But that didn't stop his seemingly endless string of mistresses.


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[Assistant] Just two years before the possessions began, Grandier had been brought before the court. Other priests claimed to have seen him with women, married and unmarried alike. Some of these women had even gone to Grandier's own room to visit him, alone.


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[Assistant] But thanks to some powerful connections in town, he was released without conviction.


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[Assistant] Which didn't sit well with the judge, a man who also happened to be the local representative for the pope, the bishop of Poitiers. And Poitiers, it turns out, was a close friend of Jean Mignon. Which begs a lot of questions, doesn't it?


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[Assistant] Was there really an epidemic of demonic possession taking place? Or was it a plot between Jean Mignon and Jeanne de Songe to finally get rid of Grandier?


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[Assistant] I know, that's a lot of names, a lot of French, and a lot of intrigue, but real life is always more complicated than fiction.


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[Assistant] Real or not, the evidence of demonic possession went on for months, and with it all came more exorcisms. Every time a priest asked who the author of the pact was, Grandier's name would come up. Over and over, the testimony against him, however unbelievable it might have been, was stacking up.


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[Assistant] But at the same time, these unusual experiences pointed towards something, well, supernatural.


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[Assistant] Witnesses reported that some of the afflicted nuns would shout expletives, something unbecoming of noble women, let alone ladies of the church. Some of them barked like animals, while others uttered long diatribes in broken Latin.


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[Assistant] Many of the nuns would expose themselves during their demonic fits or contort into positions that the priests considered obscene.


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[Assistant] Naturally, word of these events eventually spread outside the convent walls. With the town-wide quarantine finally removed, dozens of people visited the convent with hopes of seeing for themselves what was really taking place.


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[Assistant] News always has a way of spreading, just like a disease. And in Ludan, it passed from mouth to ear, person to person, and finally made its way out into the countryside.


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[Assistant] That's about the time when Grandier stepped in and tried to establish his own quarantine.


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[Assistant] He didn't want news of the possessions and exorcisms to spread, and tried to shut off the convent from the rest of the world. But Jean Menon and the prioress wouldn't allow it.


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[Assistant] Let me say this. I know Grandier's story isn't the most frightening and dark. I get it. He's political and religious and nothing different from anything we can find in the news today.


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[Assistant] That doesn't make for the most interesting story, admittedly. But if these demonic possessions were the elephant in the room, so to speak, then Grandier was the noose from which that elephant was hanged.


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[Assistant] In November of 1633, the Ludan events finally reached the ears of King Louis XIII, who told his advisor about it. And that advisor was none other than Cardinal Richelieu, a man with both immense political power and a deep personal grudge against, you guessed it, your ban grandier.


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[Assistant] By mid-December, the authorities had arrived at the convent to help. But they weren't there to end the exorcisms. No, they came solely for one purpose. To arrest Grandier.


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[Assistant] He was immediately taken into custody and by the 17th, he was on trial. But the word trial might be misleading.


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[Assistant] What happened next was more of an exhibition of the worst of human nature. Looking back, it even put the demons to shame.


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[Assistant] The trial began like you might expect. Evidence was brought against Grandier, accusing him of a pact with the devil.


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[Assistant] But as difficult to prove as that might sound today, the Ludun trial seems to have allowed almost anything to stand as evidence.


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[Assistant] The nuns were all brought into the courtroom and given a chance to testify. The prioress, Jeanne des Anges, did more than speak though. She was said to have levitated two feet off the floor.


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[Assistant] Later, she also somehow stretched her body to a height of seven feet before shrinking back to normal.


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[Assistant] One of the nuns reported horrible dreams, in which Grandier appeared to her and forced her to do unspeakable things.


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[Assistant] Once, when all the nuns involved were in the courtroom together, they passed out in unison, collapsing on the floor in a bizarre synchronized wave.


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[Assistant] Not wanting to leave anything to chance or fraud, the court also separated the nuns and questioned them individually. But when they spoke, it was the demon inside them that communicated.


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[Assistant] And these demons knew things that the nuns wouldn't have.


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[Assistant] They knew, right down to the day when some of the visiting priests had last confessed.


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[Assistant] They even knew what was being said between two exorcists in another room across the building.


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[Assistant] If the women were faking their symptoms, they were doing an amazing job. Uncanny really. But the court didn't just test the nuns.


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[Assistant] No, Grandier himself had to endure some very unusual treatment as well. All in an effort to prove whether or not he was in league with the devil.


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[Assistant] And the primary way they did this was through a search for what they called devil's marks, sometimes referred to as a witch's mark.


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[Assistant] These were thought to be the markings made by the devil himself on the people who struck bargains with him. These spots were numb and never felt pain or bled.


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[Assistant] Conveniently, they were also said to resemble normal scars, dark moles, unusual birthmarks, or even freckles. Obviously, this made it impossible for the accused to prove their innocence, and the court knew this.


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[Assistant] On December 7th of 1633, they imprisoned Grandier, and then shaved his body and pricked him with needles all over, looking for all the places where he felt no pain or didn't bleed. But they cheated.


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[Assistant] According to a historian writing about 60 years later, it was well known that the surgeon in charge simply turned his needle around in certain places to avoid causing pain.


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[Assistant] The crown jewel of their evidence, though, was the pact. The actual paper pact that Grandier was supposed to have made with the devil.


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[Assistant] It was covered in the text of the agreement as well as the personal seals of seven demons and signed, they said, by Grandier using his own blood as the ink.


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[Assistant] All of this was enough to convict Grandier, and he was sentenced to death. And we can thank Cardinal Richelieu for that.


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[Assistant] Because of his involvement, the case was never tried in a secular court. Instead it was a committee of his own creation that handled the whole proceedings.


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[Assistant] Which meant Grandier's death sentence was incontestable. He had no chance of freedom. No hope. No chance to prove his innocence. They tortured him before his execution.


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[Assistant] They used a device called the boot to crush both his legs.


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[Assistant] They took all his money and possessions and delivered them to the king. They beat him. They pressed pins into his skin so deeply that they struck bone. And not once did he give in and confess.


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[Assistant] Where most people accused of witchcraft would give in and name other witches in an attempt to save themselves from pain, Grandier refused.


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[Assistant] 72 people gave false testimony against him in court, and yet he never once returned the favor.


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[Assistant] The day of his execution, they carried him out of the prison toward the place where he would die. Sort of a gallows built over a large pile of brush and kindling. It was a simple, yet cruel system. First, he would be handed a lit candle, and then the trapdoor would open, hanging him.


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[Assistant] Once dead, the candle would fall from his hand and onto the kindling, where it would ignite and burn his corpse.


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[Assistant] It was, in essence, a deadly Rube Goldberg machine.


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[Assistant] But once he was brought to the platform, the crowd became hysterical. They wanted violent justice. They threw holy water at him when he tried to address the crowd.


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[Assistant] We can go back into the depths of history and find countless examples of it in all shades and interpretations. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, even Buddhism, all of them have been a lens providing a subtle twist on an old story. Even the spiritualist movement of the 19th century added its own flavor.


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[Assistant] Because of this long and winding thread woven into the tapestry of human history, many people can't help but see possession as a real thing.


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[Assistant] Its history is the evidence. The sheer volume, at least to them, has to account for something.


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[Assistant] People like the former official exorcist of the Diocese of Rome, Father Gabriel Amorth. Before he passed away in 2016, he claimed to have performed over 160,000 exorcisms in his career.


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[Assistant] Others look to modern psychology, to diagnoses like schizophrenia or dissociative identity disorder. The human mind is complex and fragile. You don't have to be a psychologist to understand that either. Looking around at our friends and family, many of us know firsthand how destructive mental illness can be.


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[Assistant] Whatever the cause, it hasn't stopped people from reacting like monsters. The execution of Urban Grandier was far from the first of its kind, and sadly, it wasn't the last. When faced with events that are unexplainable, frightening, or contrary to our belief system, people have a tendency to overreact. We quarantine.


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[Assistant] She was there to visit her brother but during the mass she giggled uncontrollably.


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[Assistant] The local psychiatrist wanted to treat her for schizophrenia, but the monastery's priest had other plans.


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[Assistant] The woman was chained to a large cross and gagged before leaving her alone in a cold room for three days. She died as a result.


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[Assistant] The execution of Grandier was supposed to stop the possessions. But it didn't.


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[Assistant] The prioress, Jeanne des Anges, continued to convulse and shout in Latin. Others seemed to suffer the same symptoms around her. Then, in October of 1637, she seemed to get better. It was a miracle, they said.


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[Assistant] Healed of her condition, she went on a pilgrimage to Rome. And then back to France, where she stopped for a visit with, of all people, Cardinal Richelieu.


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[Assistant] After that, she traveled France all over, telling her story and earning a living.


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[Assistant] When Desange retired back at the convent years later, she became the local mystic and claimed to be able to communicate with angels. All of which brought her quite a lot of fame. How nice for her.


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[Assistant] Modern historians have since revisited that paper document, the one that was presented at Grandier's trial as his actual signed pact with the devil.


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[Assistant] They brought in handwriting experts and dug into contemporary documents at the Ludan Archives in an effort to determine if he really did sign it. Surprisingly, they found a match. But it wasn't Grandier. It was the Prioress. Jeanne des Anges.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke. Research assistance was provided by the talented Marsat Crockett.


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[Assistant] Tickets for the West Coast tour are selling fast. So if you've been holding off, don't wait too much longer. Visit lorepodcast.com slash tour 17 to find links and info for each of those four cities that I'll be coming to in June. That's lorepodcast.com slash tour 17.


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[Assistant] You can stay up to date on all things Lore by subscribing to the Epitaph, the official Lore newsletter. Learn more about that over at lorepodcast.com slash newsletter. And of course, you can always follow along on social media. Lore is on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for the word Lore Podcast, all one word. And when you follow along, say hi. I like it when people say hi.


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[Assistant] There's a fine line between belief and obsession.


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[Assistant] From a distance, that line looks to be a mile wide. After all, no one expects to behave irrationally. But people throughout history have found that line all too easy to cross.


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[Assistant] Take William Dowsing. He was a parliamentarian soldier during the First English Civil War. And he was a believer. Specifically, he was a Puritan, a Protestant Christian who wanted to purge all remaining Catholic Church elements from the relatively new Church of England. He believed deeply in this cause.


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[Assistant] But as I said before, some people take belief too far.


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[Assistant] In August of 1643, he was given the authority to travel all over Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, literally destroying the physical reminders of old Catholic England. Stained glass windows, stone carvings, altars, crosses, and anything else that came remotely close.


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[Assistant] Dowsing did this for a full year under the self-appointed title of Iconoclast General, eventually vandalizing over 250 churches.


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[Assistant] Think about it, a believer so driven by his convictions that he actually destroyed places of worship within his own faith.


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[Assistant] Like I said, passion shares a very thin, very fragile wall with madness, and it's all too easy to hear its voice on the other side.


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[Assistant] Our society is built on the unspoken assumption that everyone will behave rationally. The people will make decisions that are based on common sense and logic and weighed against their impact on the people around us.


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[Assistant] It's a noble assumption, but it doesn't take people like William Dowsing into account. And sadly, he was mild compared to others.


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[Assistant] Because given the right mix, that perfect sweet spot between politics, religion, and superstition, one person's irrational obsession can lead to a much darker outcome. Especially if you're a witch.


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[Assistant] King James I had some pretty big shoes to fill.


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[Assistant] He succeeded Elizabeth I after a long 44-year reign, and when he did, he maintained the Protestant England that had flourished under her rule. But where Elizabeth was the voice of reason, James leaned more than a little toward the irrational.


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[Assistant] Most historians think it began on his return trip from Denmark in 1589 when a storm forced his ship to take shelter in Norway. A storm that was so unusual and unexpected that it was blamed on the work of witches. The resulting witch trial left quite the impression on King James.


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[Assistant] Less than a decade later, he published his own scholarly work titled Daemonology, where he explored the connections between witchcraft, sorcery, demons, and black magic. His source material was a little sketchy though, consisting mostly of confessions from accused witches.


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[Assistant] But one paragraph in particular caused most of the problems to come.


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[Assistant] Witchcraft is real, and if you find a witch, you should punish them.


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[Assistant] This was clear, unfiltered permission for violence straight from the mouth of a powerful ruler. And again, while most people prefer to stay comfortably inside the realm of common sense, there are always a few outsiders. It was just as true then as it is today.


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[Assistant] As I mentioned earlier, the Puritans were sort of an activist group within the Church of England, who believed that the Church hadn't gone anti-Catholic enough. It needed purifying, hence the name.


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[Assistant] Puritans were extremists, in a sense, with zero tolerance for anything remotely heretical, and they adored the anti-witchcraft message of their king.


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[Assistant] But then, their king died. And when King Charles I took the throne in 1625, he began to slowly move the Church of England back toward Roman Catholic elements. For the Puritans, it was their worst nightmare come true.


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[Assistant] Rather than being the law of the land as they had for so long, their worldview was now under attack.


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[Assistant] This is the world that Matthew Hopkins was born into. His father, James, was the Puritan vicar of St. John's of Suffolk, right in the heart of Puritan territory.


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[Assistant] He was one of six children, and all of them were raised to hate heresy. In fact, it's most likely that they had a copy of Daemonology on hand in their home. That would have certainly explained a lot of what was to come.


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[Assistant] In 1635, Matthew's father passed away suddenly, leaving the family to support themselves on their own.


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[Assistant] Matthew stuck around for a while, but in the early 1640s, he took his small inheritance and moved 10 miles west to Manning Tree, where he purchased a local inn. And it was there, in the early days of the English Civil War, that something life-changing happened to him.


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[Assistant] The wife of Richard Edwards, a wealthy landowner and the town's chief constable, had recently given birth, after which she placed the newborn in the care of a wet nurse.


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[Assistant] But when the baby died unexpectedly after days of unnatural fits, they grew suspicious of Elizabeth Clark, the 80-year-old one-legged woman who lived next door.


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[Assistant] Around the same time, some cattle belonging to Edwards were driven past Clark's house, and two of them died suddenly, right there on the trail. That was all the proof the community needed to start whispering.


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[Assistant] After all, few in town really cared for Elizabeth Clark, and so it was easy to accuse her of using witchcraft to kill the cows and the Edwards child.


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[Assistant] On Friday, March 21st of 1645, four local women were sent by the magistrates to Clark's house to inspect her for witch's marks. These were markings that all witches were said to have on their skin, evidence of suckling dark creatures.


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[Assistant] We don't know whether or not Elizabeth put up a fight, but we do know that when they were done, they claimed to have found not one, but three of those marks.


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[Assistant] Which gave them the authority to keep her under house arrest while they waited for her to confess.


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[Assistant] All through that weekend, the women sat with Clark in silence, waiting for her to speak. But she refused, and the silence went on for days.


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[Assistant] On Tuesday, March 24th, two men arrived to help.


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[Assistant] The older of them was John Stern, a local business owner and a staunch Puritan.


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[Assistant] With him was young Matthew Hopkins, and together they set about interrogating Clark with a more direct and deliberate intent.


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[Assistant] Finally, after hours of working, she gave in and confessed to a whole laundry list of offenses, including a seven-year-long relationship with the devil himself.


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[Assistant] She also began to call for her familiars, those supernatural creatures who assist witches in their evil efforts. And both men watched as a series of animals entered the room, one by one.


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[Assistant] Later, when the local magistrate, Sir Grimston and Sir Bose, announced that they would be available to hear testimony from anyone willing to share it, Stern approached them and handed over a transcript of Clark's confession.


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[Assistant] Sir Grimstone had a long history of presiding over trials of accused witches, so he was more than a little impressed by the initiative of the two men. As a result, he issued them a warrant instructing them to go and find the other witches from Clark's group.


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[Assistant] Matthew Hopkins, born and raised in a zealous religious home, was in heaven. They were witch-finders now. And England would never be the same.


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[Assistant] Hopkins and Stern did their job exceedingly well. After conducting an investigation in town, they presented five more names to the magistrates there, including Anne West and her daughter Rebecca, both of whom had been accused of witchcraft in the past, but had managed to escape conviction and execution.


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[Assistant] Those five women were tortured in the same way Elizabeth Clark was, by depriving them of sleep and food, and keeping them in isolation until they gave up and handed over names and evidence.


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[Assistant] Soon, the initial group of five women grew to a crowd of 23.


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[Assistant] When the trials were done, 18 of the women were sentenced to death by hanging.


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[Assistant] Four others died in prison before their trials even began. But Rebecca West managed to slip out of her sentence because of how helpful she was in court.


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[Assistant] This was the moment the lightbulb flickered on above the head of Matthew Hopkins. With the law on their side, he and Stern would be able to do this elsewhere. Witch-finders on the road, seeking out anyone who had dealings with the devil, purging the church of heresy and sin. It was their calling. It was their duty.


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[Assistant] It's also important to point out the hypocrisy in Hopkins' actions here.


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[Assistant] This was a man who proclaimed piety, with a mission to bring the English Church back to its pure essential roots. Yet his official title, Witchfinder General, was a personal fabrication.


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[Assistant] He even told towns that he had the backing of the parliamentary leadership, which was a lie.


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[Assistant] Farse or not, they had a pretty methodical approach to their mission. He and Stern traveled with a handful of women, who were there to inspect anyone accused of witchcraft for witch's marks. They would then be denied food and sleep and kept isolated until they confessed.


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[Assistant] And the craziest part of their operation, I think, is that they charged for this work. It was, in their eyes, a service to the community. Historians estimate that each village paid an average of £20, equivalent to about $5,000 today.


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[Assistant] Which finding was apparently a really good way to get rich. And fast.


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[Assistant] When Hopkins and Stern arrived in the Suffolk village of Brandiston, they found a victim in the most unlikely place, right inside the local church.


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[Assistant] Villagers came forward to tell them about the unlikable and unsocial nature of their vicar, John Lowe's. Worse yet, they said, he was very fond of all those old high church rituals that the Catholics were known for.


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[Assistant] But Lowes was an 80-year-old man who had served in his church for over five decades. Of course he preferred the old traditions of formal Anglicanism, because he'd lived through them.


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[Assistant] Still, in 1645, that was enough to earn you an accusation as a witch, and so Lowe's was taken into custody by the Witchfinders.


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[Assistant] And that's when Hopkins pulled out his usual bag of tricks. Lowe's wasn't allowed to sleep, and the interrogators kept him moving the entire time, wearing him out physically and mentally.


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[Assistant] For days they took shifts torturing the old man with sleep deprivation until he finally became desperate enough to say anything as long as it ended his suffering.


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[Assistant] His crime, according to his own confession, was that he ordered his familiars to sink a ship off the coast of Ipswich. He gave a convincing laugh when he told Hopkins he had made 14 widows in a quarter of an hour. Then, he named names.


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[Assistant] More accused witches were brought in. They were examined by Hopkins' female assistants and then subjected to the same torture as John Lowes. When they confessed, the process was repeated.


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[Assistant] Over and over, the list of accused grew exponentially, until at the end, between 150 and 200 people were in jail awaiting trial.


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[Assistant] But you can't do that sort of thing and not get noticed. Hopkins had walked into town and rounded up hundreds of people and all of them, he said, were at risk of execution for witchcraft. When parliament caught wind of what he was doing there in Suffolk, they stepped in and took over the trial process.


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[Assistant] A special Oyer and Terminer session, sort of a trial for major crimes, was called for.


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[Assistant] It would be held in the western county seat of Suffolk, in the town of Barry St. Edmunds. The government felt that Hopkins had generated too many unwilling testimonies and lacked solid legal evidence. For their trial, they said, things would be run more carefully.


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[Assistant] They would no longer allow for confessions received under torture. What they wanted to see was proof of a pact with the devil, or of working with familiars to carry out their dark magic. It still sounds like fantasy to our modern minds, I know, but it was conservative and reasonable enough that it upset Matthew Hopkins to no end.


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[Assistant] In August of 1645, John Godbold, a local member of parliament, served as judge over the trial.


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[Assistant] Evidence was heard, and convictions were handed out. In the end, 16 women and two men were sentenced to death for involvement in witchcraft.


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[Assistant] All of them were imprisoned inside a local barn on the night before their execution. It said that they came to a unanimous decision to confess nothing but their innocence at the gallows. Then they passed the night in song and in prayer.


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[Assistant] On the morning of August 27th, all 18 were hanged, and then the court proceedings stopped. It's easy to think that it had ended.


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[Assistant] The government had stepped in, after all. More common sense had been applied to the panic than Hopkins would ever have allowed himself.


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[Assistant] But there were still 120 people in jail awaiting trial.


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[Assistant] The break, it turns out, was simply a byproduct of the ongoing civil war.


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[Assistant] It was announced that the King's forces were approaching, so the people of Bury St. Edmunds had to stop and tend to military matters.


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[Assistant] But when that was over three weeks later, the court reconvened and the remaining accused were brought before the judge. Of the 120 who remained,


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[Assistant] Sixty more were convicted and sentenced to death by hanging.


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[Assistant] Among them was the old brandist in vicar, John Lowe's.


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[Assistant] Long before the executions in Suffolk, Matthew Hopkins had moved on.


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[Assistant] He'd done his job, gathering all the evidence he could.


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[Assistant] He was seen by many in his day as a man of action He was passionate and driven and believed he had more work to do than time to do it


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[Assistant] By August, he was ready to tackle his next challenge, so he headed elsewhere. But his reputation was beginning to travel out ahead of him.


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[Assistant] Word was spreading about Matthew Hopkins and of how his arrival in town could signal God's divine justice or the release of a hate-filled mob looking for someone to blame for their own unhappiness. I suppose it's all in the eye of the beholder.


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[Assistant] Some towns saw the upside to his work though. If there was someone in town that had caused problems, disrupting the social order or wielding too much power, Hopkins represented an opportunity


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[Assistant] And draw up enough false testimony and anyone could be accused of witchcraft. So it's no wonder that almost everywhere they went, villagers eagerly threw neighbors, friends, even family under the proverbial bus. And Hopkins reveled in it.


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[Assistant] He continued to call himself Witchfinder General and claimed that he owned a scroll that contained the names of all the witches in England.


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[Assistant] The truth was though, he and John Stern were just sort of making it up as they went along. But they weren't about to tell anyone else that, were they?


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[Assistant] When he arrived in Ipswich, the people there told him a story.


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[Assistant] Mary Lakeland, the wife of a prosperous barber, had apparently conspired with another local woman, Alice Denham.


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[Assistant] Their purpose, according to town gossip, was to harass a local man named William Lawrence. Mary apparently owed Lawrence some money, and rather than paying it back, the two women sent a pair of familiars, in the form of dogs, to attack him.


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[Assistant] The trouble was, Mary Lakeland had a spotless reputation. She was known throughout Ipswich as a professor of religion, and was solid in her Christian faith. But this was the 1640s, and no matter how secure someone might have thought they were, all it took was a few suspicious people.


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[Assistant] Priest or beggar. Any reputation was at risk of evaporating over the heat of all that hatred.


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[Assistant] Mary Lakeland was not immune to that gossip. And that's when a series of unfortunate events struck the household of William Lawrence. He, his son, and their maidservant all died unexpectedly.


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[Assistant] Another rumor said that Mary had been upset at a sailor named Henry Reed, who had pledged to marry her granddaughter but then backed out of the arrangement. Mary confessed to sending her familiars to burn Reed's ship off the coast of Ipswich, but things got worse after that.


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[Assistant] Reed developed a series of large tumors and sores that seemed to consume his body from the outside. One of those tumors was said to be on his leg and had taken a shape that resembled, of all things, a dog, just like Mary's familiars.


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[Assistant] Pain from that tumor, they say, was so unbearable that he couldn't even walk upright.


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[Assistant] But it was one accusation in particular that sets Mary apart from all the other witches Matthew Hopkins hunted down.


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[Assistant] Town gossip said that Mary had tortured and killed her own husband, which in her day was considered treason, and traders were burned at the stake.


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[Assistant] Which is how Mary ended up in custody in the hands of Matthew Hopkins, where she endured the same torture he was known so well for.


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[Assistant] Days of sleepless nights and growing hunger eventually drove her to fabricate an elaborate tale of taking the devil to bed. He then cut her hand with one of his claws, she said, and scratched out a covenant with her own blood.


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[Assistant] Her confessions led to the arrest of Alice Denham and four others, and all six of them were moved to jail.


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[Assistant] Denim was later hanged after being paraded through town in front of everyone who cared to see her. Mary, though, was sentenced to death by fire.


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[Assistant] The only witch in Hopkins' entire campaign to be burned alive.


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[Assistant] On September 9th, a crowd was gathered at the southeast corner of town to watch her execution.


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[Assistant] Now, when most people think of witch burnings, they think of someone being tied to a tall pole surrounded by a pile of kindling, which is partly true. Mary's burning, though, was slightly different.


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[Assistant] When she arrived, the executioner first placed her inside a barrel of hot pitch, coating her body in flammable black tar.


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[Assistant] Then she was pulled out and chained to the post where her body was surrounded by brush and wood planks. The fire burned hot and black, fueled by the thick tar and Mary's own body.


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[Assistant] The following morning, the small pile of ash was carefully cleaned up. Because even the smallest fragment of a witch could do irreparable harm. Which, of course, is nonsense. Because witches aren't real. They're an excuse. A weapon swung around by angry, bigoted people who allow hate to override their common sense.


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[Assistant] Mary Lakeland was no witch, just an innocent woman caught at the intersection of superstition and circumstance. Except, well, fate didn't help her reputation much after her death. You see, something happened the very same night her body burned in front of that angry crowd.


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[Assistant] Henry Reed, the sailor who had spurned her granddaughter, the man who lay at home in pain, dying from the tumors that were eating him alive, suddenly took a turn for the better. His symptoms vanished, and he quickly returned to health.


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[Assistant] Today we have the benefit of 350 years of distance between Matthew Hopkins and ourselves. We can look back and study it.


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[Assistant] We can roll it around in our fingers and feel the rough edges and flaws in a way that maybe his contemporaries were just a bit too personally invested to see.


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[Assistant] So it's easy for us to see everything that went on across southeastern England from 1645 to 1647 as pure madness. Madness that acted like a wave.


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[Assistant] And Matthew Hopkins wrote it like a pro.


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[Assistant] His mission didn't stop in Ipswich either. After Mary Lakeland's execution, he stopped in at Stowmarket for more of the same. Then he headed to Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire after that. As sad as it is, Hopkins got around.


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[Assistant] There were sane voices, though, standing firm against that wave of madness. One of them was a minister named John Gall from the village of Great Stoughton. He held the unpopular opinion that the people involved in these trials were just blaming other people for their own misfortunes, then using superstition as an excuse.


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[Assistant] When Hopkins read the paper, he sent a letter to Gull promising the minister that he'd be visiting him soon to hunt for witches there. I don't know about you, but I'd call that a threat.


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[Assistant] For over a year, Matthew Hopkins and John Stern visited dozens of villages and guided scores of innocent people to the gallows. By some estimates, more than 300 men and women were charged with the crime, and over one-third of them were convicted and executed.


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[Assistant] Let's put that in perspective. In just over a year, Hopkins had more people executed for witchcraft than in the entire century before. Thankfully, he eventually retired. There's a lot that went into the reason why. Part of it has to do with the expense of it all.


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[Assistant] When Hopkins entered a town and set the wheels in motion for a trial and execution, those things were expensive to the community, and they were already struggling under the tax burden required to pay for a war.


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[Assistant] Then, in the summer of 1646, something else spread across the area. The plague.


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[Assistant] London was seeing more than 200 new cases each week, and people were getting very worried. Maybe Hopkins found the villages to be a lot less receptive to his message, or maybe he just decided to stay home and not get sick. I wouldn't blame him if he did. A year later, he was dead. There's a lot of folklore surrounding that death, too.


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[Assistant] Some say he was subjected to his own infamous ducking test, where the accused were tied up and tossed in a lake or river. Because witches were said to literally repel Christian baptism, people believed that the guilty would float, while the innocent would drown.


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[Assistant] Another legend says that after his death, someone found that mysterious scroll he carried around with him. The one with the names of all the witches in England. They say Hopkins' name was listed among the guilty.


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[Assistant] But there's no evidence that Hopkins was ever tried and convicted as a witch. No evidence that a scroll ever existed. Like so much of his own mission and work, even the stories of his death are filled with lies and hearsay. The truth is a lot less supernatural and a lot more boring.


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[Assistant] It's easy to think that all of this was just primitive behavior, and that we've gotten better in the years since. We've had over three centuries after all. Surely, we've evolved. And yes, in some ways, we have. But don't miss the point here. When people are scared enough,


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[Assistant] When their worldview is threatened and everything they know and believe is put at risk, they lash out and hurt others. Given the chance, people will do anything to end the madness, even toss their own family into the arms of a murderous zealot, and they'll justify it better than any criminal defense lawyer ever could.


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[Assistant] I wish we were better now. I really do. But sadly, very little has changed.


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[Assistant] Sure, most people no longer believe in witches, but for those who are easily swayed by hatred, there's a whole new list of others to focus their obsession on. The madness, it seems, is all too familiar to us.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke. Research assistance was provided by the talented Marsat Crockett.


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[Assistant] Lore is a lot more than just bi-weekly audio stories, but rather than have me tell you all about it, why don't you go look for yourself? There's a brand new home for all things Lore. TheWorldOfLore.com slash now.


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[Assistant] Fans of Lore can follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just go to your favorite social network, search Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi.


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[Assistant] And I've said it many times before, but I'll repeat myself one more time. I love and appreciate each and every one of you, and I'm grateful for what you do to support this show. As always, thanks for listening.


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[Assistant] Simeon Smith was one of the early settlers of New Hampshire in 1772. He built a farm there on the border between Wentworth and Warren and held a local office. By trade, he was a tailor, but like a lot of men of that decade, he fought with the Continental Army.


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[Assistant] It's easy to look back at Simeon Smith as a typical pioneer from the late 1700s.


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[Assistant] He was patriotic and a stereotypical New Englander, I'm sure. But few people in town liked him. Why, you might ask?


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[Assistant] Because Simeon Smith, according to all the local stories, was a sorcerer.


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[Assistant] It was said that Simeon would saddle and bridle a random neighbor and then ride them all over the countryside, just to spite them.


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[Assistant] When women were having trouble churning butter and it simply wouldn't work, it was because, they said, Simeon Smith was in the churn.


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[Assistant] If children in town behaved badly, it was because he had bewitched them. He could become as small as a gnat and move through the keyholes of your locked doors. He could become larger than a giant and would stalk through the forest at night. Or so they said.


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[Assistant] Stories like these were common in early America. They were a weird mixture of fact and fiction, of historical truths and hysterical superstition. In an effort to explain the unexplainable, sometimes neighbors and prominent figures were thrown under the proverbial bus.


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[Assistant] The era between the mid 15th and late 16th centuries was precarious for many people. This wasn't the age of Harry Potter. Witchcraft wasn't something that was spoken of lightly or with a sense of wonder and excitement. It caused fear. It ruined lives. It made good people do bad things. All in the name of superstition.


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[Assistant] Superstition was common in the late 1600s. If something odd or unexplainable happened, the automatic response from most people was to blame the supernatural. But most scholars agree that these beliefs were merely excuses to help people deal with neighbors and family members that they didn't care for.


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[Assistant] If you didn't like somebody, it was common to accuse them of witchcraft.


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[Assistant] In the most famous historical example of this, the witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts, we can see a clear pattern in the events. Many of those accused of being witches were wealthy and held religious beliefs that were different from their accusers.


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[Assistant] Once a subject was convicted, their estate would be confiscated by the court. And in a community that was known for property disputes, grazing rights, and religious arguments, that became a recipe for disaster.


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[Assistant] And what happened in Salem happened elsewhere around New England, just on a smaller scale. Neighbors accused neighbors constantly. Stories were told, lives were ruined.


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[Assistant] In one story from Exeter, Rhode Island, a farmer was said to have been carting his lumber to market when a cat ran across the road.


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[Assistant] For some unknown reason, this farmer immediately jumped to the conclusion that the cat was actually a neighbor of his. A woman who he insisted was a witch. She had, of course, transformed herself into the cat in order to meddle in his business.


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[Assistant] This farmer, though, was fast on his feet. Not only did he see the cat running and then make the connection to his witchy neighbor, but he then managed to pull out his gun. He was said to have fired a silver bullet at the cat, something well known at the time to be effective against witches, and struck his target.


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[Assistant] At that very moment, according to the story, the suspected witch fell in her own home, breaking her hip.


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[Assistant] In the town of Salem, New Hampshire, a man decided that his cow looked strangely different from how he remembered.


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[Assistant] And he made the most logical conclusion he was capable of.


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[Assistant] He cut off the cow's ears and tail and then burned them. Soon after the farmer's neighbor was found dead, victim of a house fire.


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[Assistant] In West Newbury, Vermont, a farmer had settled in for the evening beside his fireplace. Perhaps he was enjoying something alcoholic and refreshing. Or maybe he was just trying to read a book.


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[Assistant] While he was there though, he witnessed what he called spectral shapes that danced and moved inside the flames.


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[Assistant] The farmer immediately thought of one particular woman in town, a woman known to be a witch, and he took some tallow and beeswax and sculpted a careful likeness of her.


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[Assistant] Then, taking a branch from a thorn bush, he pierced this little figurine before tossing it into the fire. At the same time across town, the suspected witch apparently tripped on her stairs and broke her neck.


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[Assistant] And back in the New Hampshire town of Wentworth, our old friends Simeon Smith received his own fair share of retribution. It was said that a local boy named Caleb Merrill was struck deaf by the sorcerer. After that, he began acting strange, running up the sides of houses like a squirrel and writhing on the ground in agony.


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[Assistant] After some trial and error, Caleb's parents put the perfect combination of ingredients into a witch bottle, a sort of homemade talisman designed to combat sorcery. They buried the bottle beneath their hearth and soon after the town was burying Simeon Smith.


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[Assistant] These stories of neighborhood witches and the ways in which the good citizens of the towns defeated them were common all across New England. They border on the cruel and cast these people, often simply the poor or non-religious among them, in a horrible light.


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[Assistant] For many people, suspicion was a convenient excuse to hate your neighbor and wish them ill.


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[Assistant] In no other place was that attitude more pronounced, though. More dominant and more extreme than in the town of Hadley, Massachusetts. In Salem, the townspeople worked within the legal system.


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[Assistant] In Hadley, however, the people took matters into their own hands, and the results were horrifying.


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[Assistant] When Philip Smith was dying in 1684, the town went looking for answers.


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[Assistant] It was hard to blame them. Smith was a model citizen and leader in the community. He had been a deacon of the church, a member of the general court, a county court justice and a town selectman. He was respected, trusted and maybe even well loved.


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[Assistant] The sole subject of the crime was an old woman named Mary Webster. She and her husband were poor. They lived in a tiny house in the middle of some of the pasture land outside of town.


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[Assistant] Sometimes when things got tough, they even needed assistance from the town. Colonial-era welfare, so to speak.


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[Assistant] It was easy to blame Mary Webster. She and Smith had not been on the best of terms, although few people in town were on good terms with her.


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[Assistant] Her fierce temper and stinging tongue had earned her a reputation as the town witch. Apparently, she wasn't much of a churchgoer, and that did little to help her case. But the clincher was that she had just gotten back from Boston one year earlier. Why Boston? Well, she had been there on trial. For witchcraft.


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[Assistant] She'd been taken to Boston in chains, sometime late April of 1683. Mary, an old woman with a foul mouth, had been accused of having congress with the devil, of burying his children and suckling them.


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[Assistant] These children looked like black cats they said. She had strange markings on her body they said. It was all conclusive and obvious they said.


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[Assistant] There were other stories of Mary Webster as well. It was said that when teams of cattle were driven toward her property, they would panic and bolt in the opposite direction. They claimed that when this happened, the men would approach the house and threaten to whip her, and only then would she let the animals pass.


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[Assistant] Once a load of hay toppled over near her home, the driver of the wagon went to Mary's house, literally went inside without permission, and was about to give her a piece of his mind when the cart magically righted itself. Or so they say.


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[Assistant] Another story tells how she entered the home of some local parents and when she set eyes on the infant in the cradle, the baby levitated out and touched the ceiling. Not once, but three times.


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[Assistant] There's even a story about some people who were inside one evening, boiling water and getting ready for dinner. All of a sudden, a live chicken came down the chimney and landed in the pot, only to escape from the house moments later. The next day, it was discovered that Mary herself had been scalded the night before, though she wasn't telling people how it happened.


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[Assistant] And so Mary had been transported 100 miles to Boston, along with a sheaf of those eyewitness accounts that had been written by her accusers and brought before a judge and jury.


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[Assistant] And that jury listened. They read those papers. They looked everything over and did their best as impartial, rational individuals. They disgusted among themselves. And when they returned to the court, they had a verdict. Mary Webster was not guilty.


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[Assistant] Maybe this pissed off her neighbors. Maybe they thought they were finally done with her when she was taken away. I can only imagine their surprise when she rode back into town. A smile on her face and a fire in her belly. She had beaten the odds.


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[Assistant] But when Phillip Smith, her old adversary in Hadley, took sick just a few months after her return, that newly won freedom looked like it might be in jeopardy.


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[Assistant] The winter after Mary's return from Boston, Philip Smith began to look ill. The people of Hadley didn't know what the cause was at first. What they did know was that Smith was in a bad way. He had frequent seizures and seemed delirious most of the time.


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[Assistant] The people caring for him, his families and friends and nurses, were all deeply concerned.


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[Assistant] Whatever it was that he was suffering from, it didn't appear to be normal. In fact, it appeared to be the work of the devil. What else could possibly cause a man to suffer fits and scream and babble for hours in an unknown language?


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[Assistant] When Smith could be understood, he cried out that someone was pricking his arms with nails, hundreds of them, over and over, painfully.


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[Assistant] His nurses looked for the nails, but they never found anything that could be causing the pain.


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[Assistant] And most suspiciously of all, he claimed that a woman was in the room with him.


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[Assistant] Some of the young men in town had a theory though. They had been talking about it for a while and they decided that they needed to give it a test. You see, they thought Mary Webster was behind the man's illness. In their minds, there was only one way to find out.


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[Assistant] One of the men stayed with Smith, while the others went to Mary's home. Three or four times they knocked on her door and bothered her, thinking that if she was indeed casting a spell over Smith, this would break her concentration.


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[Assistant] When they returned, the man who had been tasked with watching over Smith claimed that the sick man was at ease three or four times while they were gone.


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[Assistant] There were other things they noticed too. The small pots of medicine that had been laid out for Smith were mysteriously empty as if someone were stealing their contents. They frequently heard scratching beneath the man's bed.


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[Assistant] Some of the men claimed to have seen fire on the bed, but when they began to talk about it, it would vanish.


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[Assistant] The details of the events surrounding Philip Smith's illness are rife with superstition and fear. These young men even claimed that something as large as a cat would stir under the covers near the sick man, but whenever they tried to capture it, it would slip away. Others said that the bed would shake enough to make their teeth rattle.


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[Assistant] All of this was just too much for them. Convinced that they knew who was causing Smith's illness, the group of young men returned to the home of Mary Webster. This time though, they had more than disturbing her peace on their mind.


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[Assistant] They dragged Mary from her home and out into the snow and cold of the New England winter. They beat her. They spat on her. They cursed her in whispers and in shouts. And then they carried her to a nearby tree.


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[Assistant] One of the men slung a rope through the branches, while another fashioned a noose. And there, in a snow-covered field outside her own home, Mary Webster was hanged.


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[Assistant] When she stopped moving the men cut her down. They took her body and rolled it in the snow, burying it. And then they left.


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[Assistant] They walked back into town, back to the home of Philip Smith, back to the others who knew what they had done. And then they waited. They waited for Smith to get better.


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[Assistant] The world of the 17th century was tense and harsh, especially for the people trying to carve out an existence in colonial New England.


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[Assistant] The Protestant Reformation of the century before had left most Europeans with the belief that bad things happen because of the devil. Everything that went wrong, and I mean everything, was caused by something supernatural.


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[Assistant] This was a time when misfortune, loss, and even a simple illness would be blamed on the work of witches and sorcerers. Because of this, everyone in town was on the lookout. If something went wrong, there was always someone to blame. It seems there was a devil in every community.


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[Assistant] History is full of people who took things too far. The events that took place in Hadley in the winter of 1685 are just one of countless examples of what superstitious people are capable of when their fears get the better of them. Sadly though, it didn't work.


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[Assistant] When friends arrive the next day to look in on Philip Smith, he was dead.


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[Assistant] What they found, though, gave their superstitions new life.


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[Assistant] Who beat the man overnight? Who kept his body warm against the creeping chill of winter? Who put the holes in the flesh of his back while he lay there dying in bed?


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[Assistant] I imagine the people who visited him that morning were disappointed. He was respected by most of the town. Many people there most likely depended on him for something. They'd done so much to take care of him, even gone as far as to murder another person. And yet it hadn't worked.


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[Assistant] Philip Smith was dead, and all they had left were questions.


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[Assistant] But something else would soon disappoint them. You see, although Philip Smith had died, Mary Webster hadn't.


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[Assistant] Even though she had been beaten and hanged from a tree before being buried in the snow and left overnight, Mary had somehow survived.


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[Assistant] In fact, she went on to live 11 more years before passing away in her 70s.


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[Assistant] It turns out that Mary was also an ancestor of the well-known novelist Margaret Atwood. And in 1995, Atwood published a poem entitled Half-Hanged Mary. It was written in sections, each one covering an hour of her torture, beginning with the hanging and ending with her return from the dead.


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[Assistant] And this poem, written from Mary's point of view, ends with a line that makes a person wonder.


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[Assistant] There have been many stories of witches recorded throughout history, and clearly the tale of Meri Webster is one of the most powerful. But not because of the violence or accusations, but the victory she finally had over a community who shunned and abused her.


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[Assistant] But there are others like it. In fact, I've tracked down one more that I think you'll enjoy. And if you stick around through this brief sponsor break, I'll share it all with you.


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[Assistant] Simsbury, Connecticut had been established in 1670, but just five years later, King Philip's War broke out. A violent conflict between the English settlers and the Native Americans that would last for years.


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[Assistant] In 1675, the colonial authorities warned Simsby that it was at risk of attack and that everyone should move out, which they obediently did. Weeks later, the town burned to the ground.


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[Assistant] When they returned in 1676 to rebuild and start over, Debbie Griffin was already there, living in a small hut on the edge of the old settlement. As the townsfolk all returned and settled in though, they found ample excuses to avoid her and speak ill about her.


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[Assistant] That's what people tend to do to outsiders, isn't it? We always have, however wrong it might be, and it shows no sign of stopping anytime soon.


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[Assistant] Their list of reasons grew faster than their summer crops. They said she spent an unusual amount of time in the woods, tending to herbs and berries and all sorts of items that might be considered the ingredients of some dark forbidden spell. She hunted, much like the rest of the community there, but she was said to be supernaturally gifted at it. Then there was the yarn.


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[Assistant] You see, every now and then, Debbie Griffin would show up in town with a large bag full of the most luxurious yarn, which she would then use to trade for supplies she needed. But the people who held that yarn in their hand claimed that there was simply no way that a backwoods woman could possibly have made something so beautiful. Not without the help. From the devil, that is.


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[Assistant] There were other stories, of course. A black cat was said to be seen around her cabin in the woods. There was a large goose that would make noise and flap its wings at people who passed too close.


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[Assistant] And both of these creatures fell neatly under the Puritan idea of a familiar, the supernatural creatures that took the form of animals and lived in the company of witches. Rumors and gossip have a way of adding up though.


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[Assistant] They seem small at first, like pebbles tossed into a bucket. But given enough time, those pebbles can add up, and whoever might be carrying the bucket might get crushed beneath its weight. So it wasn't long before all those stories about Debbie Griffin led to a horrible confrontation. Just who got crushed, though, is open for debate.


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[Assistant] The story tells us that the community showed up for church one Sunday morning to find that someone had broken in and stolen a golden communion cup from the sacramental chest. Deacon Slater managed to conduct a quick cleanup before moving forward with the service as if nothing had happened.


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[Assistant] That evening, a number of angry young men gathered at the home of Deacon Slater to talk about what had happened and to voice their suspicions about who the culprit might be.


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[Assistant] The accusations were unanimous too. The thief had to be Debbie Griffin.


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[Assistant] Armed with their belief and half a dozen rifles, the men left Slater's home and went to set up watch at the church building.


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[Assistant] In the middle of the night, one of the men watched from a safe distance as the tall, thin figure of the town witch strode up the road and mounted the steps to the front doors of the meeting house. She paused for a moment and then, at least according to the witnesses, vanished in a gentle puff of smoke and slipped through the keyhole into the church.


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[Assistant] A moment later, she was back, this time with a communion plate shimmering in her hand.


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[Assistant] The men gave chase, but the woman was fast. It wasn't until they had all reached the local body of water known as Three Cornered Pond when they caught up with her. One of the men took aim and fired, and it said that the bullet cut a hole through Debbie Griffin's chest so wide that the other men could see the moonlight reflecting off the pond through it. That's the legend, anyway. She didn't fall over, though. Not right away.


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[Assistant] Raising the golden plate over her head, Debbie Griffin was said to have jumped high into the air before landing head first in the dark waters of the pond. And she never resurfaced.


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[Assistant] It's been nearly 350 years since Debbie Griffin took her final dive into the pond there outside of Simsbury. But even though she never resurfaced, her story has floated over the community ever since. And if the stories are true, you can still catch a glimpse of her final deed every full moon.


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[Assistant] If you're brave enough, they say you can wander out to the pond at night and stand on its sandy shore.


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[Assistant] As the moon rises high in the sky, some of its lights might penetrate the dark waters to glint off that gold communion plate, still resting firmly out of reach from the local church, and a constant reminder of the one who got away.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was researched, written, and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with music by Chad Lawson.


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[Assistant] Lore is much more than just a podcast. There's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both out if you want more lore in your life.


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[Assistant] I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd enjoy. My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical. You can learn more about all of our shows and everything else going on over in one central place. Grimandmild.com


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[Assistant] And you can also follow this show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. When you do, say hi. And I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.


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[Assistant] For many cultures, the funeral is the last goodbye. It's the final chance we have to say what needs said or do what needs done in order to honor the ones we've lost. But while the methods and purpose behind these rituals can vary drastically from one culture to the next, one thing is common among the vast majority. The burial. We bury our dead.


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[Assistant] We've done it for an incredibly long time, and we've gotten very good at it.


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[Assistant] Every year, archaeologists open new tombs that date back millennia, each one teaching us something new about the cultures that time has caused us to forget. And central to each of these discoveries is the burial itself, the techniques, the beliefs, the ritual. But it's not just about the dead.


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[Assistant] The practice of honoring and burying our loved ones is just as much about our own feelings of loss and grief as it is about our responsibility to care for those who have passed away.


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[Assistant] No place personifies the active burial more than the local cemetery. With their green lawns and neat rows of pale stones, the graveyard is unique among urban constructions.


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[Assistant] They are respectfully avoided by some and obsessed over by others. But whatever beliefs you might hold to or opinions you might have about them, graveyards are a special place.


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[Assistant] Stephen King explores the allure and power of the graveyard in his novel Pet Cemetery. In his story, the cemetery is a portal between our world and another. It's a place of transformation, of transition.


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[Assistant] And of mystery. And while we might not be digging shallow graves for our pets in hopes that they'll return to us in the night, we've never lost our fascination with those places.


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[Assistant] Cemeteries have always been seen as the end of the journey. Whether you believe in heaven or not, the graveyard is where most of us will go when our time is up. For some, however, the story doesn't always end there. Some things, it seems, can't be buried.


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[Assistant] For a very long time, burial in Europe was limited to churchyards. It made sense. With the vast majority of Europeans holding to the Christian faith, all of them wanted to be buried close to their place of worship.


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[Assistant] Politics held sway even in those quiet, humble places of burial, though. Throughout Europe, it was common to find cemeteries that separated Protestant and Catholic graves.


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[Assistant] There's a touching example of this near the Dutch town of Roermond, where a couple was buried in the late 1800s.


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[Assistant] The husband had been Protestant, while the wife held to the Catholic faith. Despite strict rules regarding their burial, the couple managed to cheat the system by picking graves on opposite sides of the dividing wall. Their tall headstones each included carved hands that reached out to touch each other.


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[Assistant] Economic status played a part in burial as well. Those wealthy enough could purchase space inside the church itself, while the less well-off had to settle for graves outside the church walls.


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[Assistant] And even then, social status determined where in the yard a person might be buried. The higher the status, the closer to the chapel. But no one wanted to find themselves in the north corner. That was where people of uncertain birth, strangers from out of town, and stillborn infants were all buried.