The Thing About Witch Hunts

Alice Young was the first person executed for witchcraft in the American colonies, in Windsor, Connecticut, in 1647, before the Salem witch trials. Award-winning author Beth Caruso and playwright Lauren Cavanaugh join Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack to explore her story and the new play Windsor's Daughter that is bringing her life back into the light.
This conversation moves between historical research and present-day resonance, asking what it means to memorialize people whose graves were never marked, whose names faded from community memory, and whose persecution mirrors patterns still unfolding today.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
Why Alice Young's 1647 execution changed American history

Why her name nearly vanished from history

What made Windsor, Connecticut, a powder keg

How a play brings her execution to the stage without showing it

Why there is no grave to visit

What the 2023 exoneration meant for her descendants

How her story connects to persecution happening today

Where to follow Windsor's Daughter as it finds its stage

Links
Author Beth Caruso at OneofWindsor.com https://www.oneofwindsor.com/
Playwright Lauren Cavanaugh https://hartford.culturalyst.com/CavanaughLMC
Connecticutwitchtrials.org https://connecticutwitchtrials.org/
Listen to more CT Witch Trials Podcast Episodes https://connecticutwitchtrials.org/witch-hunt-podcast/
Support the Podcast Buy a Witch Trial History Book! https://bookshop.org/lists/connecticut-witch-trials

Elizabeth Bathory is one of pop culture's favorite monsters. Accused of torturing and killing hundreds of young women, she's inspired everything from Snow White's evil stepmother to Lady Gaga. But the actual historical record shows almost none of it happened.
Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack sit down with Shelley Puhak, author of The Blood Countess: Murder, Betrayal, and the Making of a Monster, to trace the documented history behind one of history's most sensationalized witch trial-adjacent cases. From the fractured Kingdom of Hungary to a Lutheran minister's invisible demonic cat army, this episode connects the Bathory case to the broader European witch trials and the religious and political warfare driving them.
What You'll Learn
What the preserved record actually shows

The witchcraft and magic accusations woven into the case

The political war that made Bathory a target

What the Palatine of Hungary stood to gain from her downfall

The one minister behind the witchcraft accusations

Why no bodies were ever found

What her own letters reveal about who she really was

The role of ointments, alchemy, and antimony

Why widowed noblewomen were especially vulnerable to accusation

The tension between a pop culture monster and a real historical victim

What justice could look like 

About Shelley Puhak
Shelley Puhak is a poet, essayist, and historian from Maryland. Her previous nonfiction book, The Dark Queens (Bloomsbury, 2022), was a national bestseller and Goodreads Choice Awards finalist. Her essays have appeared in The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, and Virginia Quarterly Review.
Links
Buy the book: Blood Countess by Shelley Puhak https://bookshop.org/a/90227/9781639732159
Learn about the Author on ShelleyPuhak.com https://shelleypuhak.com/
End Witch Hunts endwitchhunts.org
About Witch Hunts aboutwitchhunts.com
Salem Witch Trials History YouTube: https://youtube.com/@aboutwitchhunts

What does 1692 have to do with 1775? More than you might think.
The families of 1692 did not vanish from history. One to two generations after the Salem witch trials, descendants of both the accused and the accusers were drilling on village training fields, defying British soldiers, and dying on the same battlefields. Israel Putnam, one of the Revolution's boldest generals, was born in Salem Village, raised in a family at the center of 1692, and though he moved to Connecticut, he answered the call when Massachusetts needed him most.
From Leslie's Retreat in Salem to the Battle of Menotomy, Bunker Hill, the siege of Boston, Long Island, and Saratoga, the men of Essex County were present from the first confrontation to the wider war. And Benjamin Franklin's tie to the Salem witch trials runs closer than most people know.
This episode connects two of American history's most significant chapters and asks: what did the witch trial era leave behind, and how did it shape the people who built this country?
Danvers and Salem historian Dan Gagnon, author of A Salem Witch: A Biography of Rebecca Nurse, returns to The Thing About Witch Hunts to tell stories of the North Shore's role in the American Revolution as part of America 250. From a standoff at a toll bridge to the bloodiest stretch of road on Patriots Day 1775, the story of Essex County and the Lexington Alarm is one most Americans were never taught.
Hosts Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack trace the thread from the Salem witch trials through Lexington and Concord, from the Rebecca Nurse Homestead to the halls of the Continental Congress, and from the accused of 1692 to the soldiers of 1775.
What You Will Learn:
The through-line between 1692 and 1775 that changes how you understand both

Why Leslie's Retreat in Salem months before Lexington and Concord matters more than you have been told

What happened when Salem witch trial family names started showing up on revolutionary muster rolls

Israel Putnam: the founding-era general with Salem Village roots whose story was nearly erased from history, and why

A founding father with a direct family tie to the Salem witch trials, and what that connection reveals

What one brutal day at the Battle of Menotomy cost a single Massachusetts town, and why they brought their dead home

What you can see at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead today that quietly holds the story of two centuries

Dan Gagnon leads walking tours in Danvers and the Rebecca Nurse Homestead is open seasonally. 
#AmericanRevolution #America250 #IsraelPutnam #LesliesRetreat #BattleOfMemotomy #BattleOfBunkerHill #SiegeOfBoston #LexingtonAndConcord #LexingtonAlarm #PatriotsDay1775 #BattleOfLongIsland #FrenchAndIndianWar #BostonTeaParty #GeneralGage #GeorgeWashington #BenjaminFranklin #RebeccaNurse #RebeccaNurseHomestead #DanversAlarmList #Minutemen #ContinentalCongress #CoerciveActs #Marblehead #Menotomy #Arlington #EssexCounty #NorthShore #ColonialHistory #AmericanHistory #FoundingFathers #RevolutionaryWar
Links 
Rebecca Nurse Homestead: rebeccanurse.org
A Salem Witch: A Biography of Rebecca Nurse by Dan Gagnon: www.bookshop.org/Shop/endwitchhunts
End Witch Hunts endwitchhunts.org
About Witch Hunts aboutwitchhunts.com
Salem Witch Trials History YouTube: https://youtube.com/@aboutwitchhunts

Fairy history, folklore, and belief across two thousand years of European culture: that is what we are diving into today with historian of religion and belief Dr. Francis Young, author of the new book Fairies: A History
Dr. Young holds a doctorate in History from Cambridge University, is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a folklorist, a Balticist, a lay canon of St Edmundsbury Cathedral, and a series editor for Cambridge University Press. He teaches for Oxford University's Department for Continuing Education and broadcasts regularly for BBC Radio on history, religion, and folklore. He is the author, editor, or co-author of over two dozen books.
Fairies: A History is a complete survey of fairy belief from prehistoric animism through the Middle Ages, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and into the present day. In this episode, Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack ask Dr. Young the big questions: What are fairies? Where do they come from? How do fairy beliefs vary across Europe? What is the relationship between fairy folklore and witch trial testimony? And why is fairy belief still very much alive today?
In this episode you will learn:

In this episode you will learn:
What exactly is a fairy?

What do fairies want from humans?

How is a fairy different from a ghost, a witch, or an angel?

Why should you never eat food in fairy land?

Where did the fairy godmother really come from?

Have fairies always had wings?

Why do children seem more attuned to fairy belief than adults?

Could fairies be a feature of human consciousness itself?

Are people still seeing fairies today?

Links:
drfrancisyoung.com
Fairies: A History is available for pre-order in our online bookstore
Learn more about witchcraft accusations past and present at endwitchhunts.org and aboutwitchhunts.com
The Thing About Witch Hunts is hosted by Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack.
#fairyhistory #fairyfolklore #fairybelief #witchtrials #folklore #folklorehistory #witchcraft #fairies #changeling #fairytales #historypodcast #folklorepodcast

What did the scholars who studied witchcraft most seriously actually believe? And why did their conclusions so often cut against prosecution?
Professor Darren Oldridge of the University of Worcester joins Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack to examine the intellectual world that produced English demonology and shaped witch trials on both sides of the Atlantic.
In this episode:
Why the devil mattered far more than witches to learned English Protestants

The demonological writers whose work traveled directly to colonial New England

What Reginald Scott and George Gifford argued, and why it surprised their contemporaries

The specific figure whose writing brought popular and learned ideas into dangerous alignment

Why the demonic pact was central to prosecution and nearly impossible to prove

What the Massachusetts law code of the 1640s reveals about biblical influence on colonial legal thinking

How Increase Mather's skepticism at Salem connected to a century of English Protestant thought

Why the "good witch" was considered more dangerous than the harmful one

Learn more at endwitchhunts.org and aboutwitchhunts.com.
#WitchTrials #SalemWitchTrials #Demonology #WitchHunts #DevilHistory #WitchcraftHistory #EnglishHistory #HistoryPodcast #EarlyModernHistory #WitchcraftPodcast #EndWitchHunts #ProtestantHistory #ColonialHistory #SalemHistory
Links
Professor Darren Oldridge https://www.worcester.ac.uk/about/profiles/professor-darren-oldridge
Buy Books by Darren Oldridge https://bookshop.org/lists/guests-of-the-thing-about-witch-hunts-podcast
Learn more at endwitchhunts.org and aboutwitchhunts.com
Sign the Boston Exoneration Petition change.org/witchtrials

We're on Youtube too! www.youtube.com/@aboutwitchhunts