We explore a striking claim from within the crisis itself: that the afflicted may have been “dissembling.” We revisit Sunday, April 3, 1692, when Samuel Parris read aloud a note Mary Warren had posted at the Salem Village meetinghouse, inviting the congregation to offer prayers of gratitude for her deliverance—yet the note’s contents are unknown because Parris never copied it into his church record book. We also examine the puzzling gaps in Parris’s records during the most active months of the trials, raising questions about what was happening in the meetinghouse. Finally, we tease an April 19 court record showing Elizabeth Hubbard accusing Mary Warren of making the “dissemble” remark, which we’ll dig into next.

Note: We will soon publish Salem Witch Trials Daily only to its own podcast feed

00:00 Afflicted Dissembling

00:10 Daily Show Intro

00:17 Mary Warren Note

00:42 Parris Missing Records

01:22 Silence Raises Questions

01:38 Hubbard Accusation Tease

A Brief and True Narrative by Deodat Lawson

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The Thing About Witch Hunts / About Salem YouTube channel

⁠Salem Witch Trials Daily Hub

⁠The Thing About Salem

⁠The Thing About Witch Hunts

⁠Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692

Bernard Rosenthal, ed., Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt

⁠Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience

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

High Quality Scans of the Original Court Documents -Peabody Essex Museum Salem Witch Trials Collection