This week we were interviewed by a 7th grade student for a school project and we think the questions they asked are important, so we want to share them with you.

Hi, I'm Josh Hutchinson and welcome to The Thing About Salem.

Hi, I'm Sarah Jack, a 7th grader working on their National History Day documentary about the Salem Witch Trials.

Reached out to us after watching our interview on The Thing About Witch Hunt's podcast with screenwriter Tom Phillips from the production Salem Aftermath.

That conversation got them thinking and their questions were so good that we knew we had to turn this into an episode for all of us.

So today in The Thing About Salem, we're diving into these questions because they gave us some important things to reflect on.

Josh, this was a really great question that you were asked about your ancestor Joseph Hutchinson.

He had accused Tituba first and then later defended Rebecca Nurse.

Do you think Joseph Hutchinson started to question the whole thing?

Thank you.

I think this is an important question because it's important to understand the thoughts and feelings and actions of the average person involved in the witch trials.

They weren't necessarily fully committed to one side or the other.

And I think that most people fell into the middle where they weren't a die hard witch hunter, but but they could in the right context accuse someone of witchcraft because they all it was a universal fear.

Everybody was afraid of witches and knew that they were real.

So it didn't take a whole lot to convince people that a misfortune was caused by witchcraft.

So yeah, Joseph, he was willing to go along when it was Tituba who was an enslaved person and Sarah Goode, who was a beggar and Sarah Osborne, who had a scandalous reputation.

But then they accused his neighbor, Rebecca Nurse.

They live, they share their property, share corner, and they know each other.

They go to the same church every week.

And he didn't think that she was a witch.

So he had changed his mind about it.

He never accused anybody else again, except that he accused an accuser, Abigail Williams, the afflicted girl, because she said that she could speak to the devil just as easily as she could speak with him.

And that was something that witches could do, would speak with the devil.

So they're blaming the witches for doing that.

And then she admits that she's doing it.

So what does that make her?

Exactly, and I thought it was just Abigail Hobbes.

Oh yeah, those Abigail's.

Yeah.

Your ancestor, Rebecca Nurse said something like the world will know my innocence before she was hanged.

Can you tell us what that means to you?

So he asked me this question because I referred to this when I was interviewing Tom Phillips with you about the Salem Aftermath production on the other podcast, and I was really glad that he wanted to hear about that.

I was paraphrasing the point that everyone will know she is innocent eventually.

She did have the first memorial monument of the Salem witch trial victims in the 19th century, and she is known from the Crucible as a fictional character, but it was an innocent character.

And as a descendant, as I've been teaching about the witch trials and her innocence, I feel really connected to these following quotes that I believe reflect that she was looking at this bigger picture of her innocence, which really strikes me because I think, oh, her world must have been so small, but she was thinking very broadly and eternally.

On March 24th during her examination, it's recorded that she said, I can say before my eternal Father, I am innocent and God will clear my innocency.

Her belief in God's judgement that she is innocent is her saying the world's going to see him declare me innocent.

And then later on June 28th, she petitions the court.

She writes a letter to them and says, I humbly beg that I may have liberty to manifest it to the world, partly by the means above said to the honored Court of Voyeur interpreter now sitting in Salem.

So she addresses the Court of Voyeur Interpreter and says, I'd like the world to know about my innocence.

We sure had some fun general questions to talk to the student about also.

We did right from the start.

All of the questions were so meaningful.

They were insightful.

They looked at things that are important to understand when you're trying to know about witch trials and what makes them tick and what makes the people tick in them.

This first one I love because it puts it into a framing that I hadn't thought of before.

This question goes, were the people in Salem caught in a panic, for example?

Like when you watch a scary movie and every noise makes you jump.

How does fear play a huge role and was it like this?

Yeah, fear was just such a big part of a witch child because the whole reason that you went after witches was because you feared them.

And so the people in general were afraid that a witch was going to hurt them.

And they could see in their community what was happening with the afflicted girls and all those afflicted people acting the way that they were.

They didn't.

Nobody understood what was going on.

So it's a very fearful situation.

You're like, children are actively being hurt in front of my face by witchcraft.

So you're chilled by it.

Your spine is tingling the whole time you're there, sitting on the edge of your seat, just waiting for the next scare to happen because you know that more witchcraft is a foot in your community.

But unlike a scary movie where you can put that fear away when the movie's over, in Salem, the witch trials lasted.

Well, the whole event started in January 1692.

The last trials were held in May 1693.

So that's a year and a half, a year and a half that people are freaking out.

Basically.

They're not going hysterical.

They're going through proper court legal motions, but they're clearly panicked by what's happening and it's very stressful and accusations are flying because anything could be interpreted as being witchcraft.

One of the victims that was part of this project was Bridget Bishop, and the question was how did Salem react after her conviction and execution?

Her execution was maybe not shocking, might not be the right word because people were expecting it to happen.

But still, once it happened, it gave the witch trials that very real feeling, that heaviness that comes with knowing that this is really going down.

And so for the people who were in jail, this was terrifying because they know that they're going to get tried next.

Especially the people who were physically examined with Bridget Bishop on June 2nd, they knew that they were going to be called into court to answer for witchcraft charges and that this fate was probably what awaited them.

So it's terrifying.

And although things were propelling forward with heightened energy, a judge walked away from the bench.

Judge Nathaniel Saltonstall resigned from the court of lawyer Interminer.

Yeah, he's germs out.

Apparently.

He didn't really leave anything in writing first.

You know exactly why.

But we can surmise that he was just unhappy with the way the court was proceeding with the evidence against Bridget Bishop and the decision that they made to execute her.

He clearly didn't want to be around for the next convictions.

Yeah, he maybe it was Rebecca Nurse and just the general quality of the other people being accused and he said, no, if you're going to do what you did to bridge a Bishop to Rebecca Nurse and some of these other good folks here that that have a reputation that reaches beyond their community, I'm not going to be part of that.

And with something still resigning, that seem to embolden people to speak out against the witch trials and certain elements of them.

Because after that we start seeing petitions coming in to the General Court and to the Court of Warrior and Germanor.

You have ministers sending in petitions, you have accused people sending in petitions, families, communities sending in petitions.

So resistance started to develop after Bridget Bishop's execution.

Here's the next question.

It didn't shock me, but it is a shocking inquiry.

Why do you think people took their children to watch someone be hanged when that would be terrible?

I think this question is really the key here.

We understand looking back that that was a family affair.

They were watching punishment play out.

They wanted their children to be a part of experiencing the warning.

But also watching the individuals who had done wrong be punished was a natural outcome of sin, and that was the behavior that came across from Europe.

Remaining focused on the execution of Bridget Bishop, but also looking at the bigger picture, this question was do you think there were any unintended consequences of Bridget Bishop's execution or of the trials?

And yeah, there were a lot of unintended consequences.

There was a resistance movement that came after Bridget Bishop's execution, with Salton Stahl's resignation being a big turning point in that.

And there was a lot of innocent people lost their lives.

They were intending to execute witches and remove them from the community so that everybody else could be safe, but they didn't make their community safer.

No, it disrupted their economics.

It caused community division that I'm sure they didn't want.

In 1695, just a couple years after the end of the witch trials, Governor Phipps was in England.

He had been recalled because he needed to be told some things by the king, namely he was fired.

So he was about to get fired, but unfortunately passed of, I think, the flu while he was waiting for the king to see him.

So that was an unintended consequence.

It was costing people political careers.

And then if you go forward to now, there's actually so much witch culture in Salem that it's very ironic, I think, to look at it and say these people's intention was to eliminate witchcraft.

And now it's this thriving hub of witchcraft.

It's the witch city, it's the Halloween capital.

There's people in costumes, there's people practicing the faith of witchcraft.

It's a beautiful, beautiful place for tolerance and getting along with each other.

This next question, you know, is really insightful as well because it it asked did the Salem witch trials make them want to reform anything about their society or about their courts?

And obviously all courts are still going through reform as citizens are seeking just courts today.

How did Salem reform their courts?

During the midst of the Salem Witch Trials in the fall and winter of 1692 to 1693, the government of Massachusetts established its new courts.

Entirely new court system was established, and so they moved the Salem Witch Trials from the Court of Oyer and Terminer, which was a temporary court in Salem, to the Superior Court of Judicature, which was a permanent court and still is.

Basically, the Supreme Court of Massachusetts today was established then.

So they established this new court system and got rid of the court of Warner Interminer.

And then they also changed the witchcraft law.

They banned spectral evidence.

They said that you needed two witnesses to an act of witchcraft.

They put in other reforms to the instructions that they gave to the judges and the jury of the Superior Court that enabled them to not execute anyone else for witchcraft.

Out of some 50 trials that were held in 1693 and that Superior Court, there were three convictions and those 3 individuals all were reprieved shortly after that.

So everybody was cleared by the Superior Court.

These history projects that are out there are critical for our students.

I was thinking about how this student got to interact with guardians on this research.

When we were talking to the family, you could see it been a whole family project and all of this really meaningful reflection was being done on history.

So I'm just really glad that the witch trials are finding themselves to these projects.

We really want to encourage anybody who has an opportunity to do a school project that can make it be about the witch trials.

We want to encourage you to do that because, as seen in this episode, there's so much to think about when you get into this.

The witch trials affected every aspect of Massachusetts society, New England society in general at the time that they happened, and the effects of that have lingered for centuries.

We're still talking about it, and we're not going to stop talking about it anytime soon.

I can see people another 300 years from now doing school projects on the Salem witch trials, but it's it's just such a rich topic.

We've done hundreds of episodes on witch trials and we've gone in depth, but there's just so many layers to this that we're still peeling back layers ourselves.

So there's so many ideas.

It's just a rich area for study.

So keep asking those questions and talking to your family and community.