It’s the middle of the night when you hear a banging on your door.
Suddenly you’re being dragged out of bed and shoved into a dark, cold prison cell. The reason?
One of your neighbors noticed your assortment of potted herbs and accused you
of witchcraft. You now face torture, impossible to pass tests, and imaginary evidence. The stakes?
Your life. Between the 15th to the 18th century, an estimated 100,000
people were prosecuted for witchcraft across Europe and America. Today on Nutty History,
follow along to determine if you have what it takes to survive the hocus pocus of a witch trial.
But first, we have to say the magic words. Please like this video and subscribe to our channel,
and let us know what hair raising history you’d like to hear about next.
Highschool never ends! It’s a darker fact of human nature that people point fingers at those who
are different than the norm. Witch trials were no exception, and not all people were accused evenly.
If you were a woman, your chances of being accused were much higher. In the European witch trials,
where an estimated 50,000 people were burned at the stake, 80% of victims were women. That didn’t
necessarily make you safe as a man, though. In certain areas, like Iceland, a whopping 92% of
the accused witches, or should we say warlocks, were men. Lower ranking members of society were
more often accused. Across Europe, a wife or widow of a poor farmer was the usual suspect,
especially if they were known to be quarrelsome or aggressive. AKA, if they had a personality.
Similarly, the victims of the Salem witch trials were generally outliers of society who didn’t fit
in or abide by the strict Puritanical lifestyle. It didn’t take much to be a deviant to the
Puritans. Bridget Bishop was tried and convicted of witchcraft in one day because she wore black
clothing and her coat was torn in a suspicious manner. Apparently not taking care of your clothes
equates to devil worship. Still, no one was truly immune from the witch hunts. Even nobility
and wealthy members of society were convicted if they ruffled the wrong person’s feathers.
In most areas with witch trials, having credible accusers was enough evidence to arrest you.
In Switzerland, for instance, public gossip between three or four neighbors
justified an arrest. In Salem, it just took one trusted community member and you’d find yourself
incarcerated. The next step was often torture. The pope even declared witchcraft a “crimen exceptum”
which essentially said that torture laws do not apply when it comes to accused witches.
As an incarcerated witch, you might face up to 40 hours of sleep deprivation,
Sulphur thrown on your feet, sitting on burning hot stools, or suffocating beneath
a pile of stones. These disturbing tactics were used to elicit confessions or to strongly
encourage people to name co-conspirators of their sorcery. Hmmm. Because confessions under torture,
are ALWAYS trustworthy… There were some skeptics of these methods and trials at the time,
but those who expressed their dissent often found themselves on the wrong side of a pointed finger.
So keeping your head down and your mouth shut was ultimately way less risky than speaking out.
Confessing might seem like an easy way to find yourself burning at the stake.
After all, aren’t you handing them their best evidence? Surprisingly, that wasn’t always the
case. In Europe, if you could withstand the torture for long enough without confessing,
you had a better chance of being released. But at what cost? One woman in Germany endured 56
torture sessions before her charges were dropped. Another in Austria died after spending 11 days on
a torture stool without confessing. Survival here wasn’t so cut and dry. In Salem, however,
every one of the accused that confessed avoided trial and execution. All 19 who were executed
refused to confess. It sounds like a simple choice for survival at that point. But to a Puritan,
confessing to witchcraft meant permanently ostracizing yourself from society and possibly
damning yourself to hell. To some, that was a fate worse than death. As an accused witch,
your legal options were limited, to say the least. For starters,
an alibi was useless because it was thought witchcraft could occur without the person
actually being at the scene. While some areas allowed the accused to have a defense lawyer,
more often they were left to fend for themselves. Their only option was to question witnesses.
This didn’t always accomplish much, as the accused didn’t know what to ask and were often confronting
unprovable evidence. How exactly does one go about proving they aren’t possessed by the devil?
The behavior of the alleged witches in court could also factor into the trial’s outcome. In the
popular 1486 book Malleus Maleficarum, essentially Witch Hunting for Dummies, it says that any woman
who doesn’t cry during her trial is definitely a witch. Get those onions ready, ladies.
One CLEARLY fool-proof test for witchery was called “The Prayer Test.” Accused witches would be
forced to recite a scripture from the bible from memory, without making any mistakes or slip-ups.
No pressure or anything, it’s not like your life depends on it! Many of the accused were
illiterate or unaccustomed to public speaking in general, so perfect speech didn’t come easily.
Of course, like most witch tests, passing doesn’t necessarily ensure your survival.
An accused sorcerer George Burroughs perfectly recited his assigned prayer
from the gallows just before he was set to be hanged. Naturally,
this was deemed a devil’s trick, and Burroughs was executed anyway. You really can’t win.
Hey, if drug sniffing dogs are a thing, why not witch sniffing dogs? At least that was the
logic that led to the creation of “witch cakes.” Ingredients of a witch cake included rye meal,
urine from the cursed or afflicted parties, and ashes. Wait, isn’t making weird potions
a witch thing? This appetizing dessert was then fed to a dog, as dogs were seen to have a close
association with the devil. Clearly, they’ve never seen All Dogs Go To Heaven. If witches were near,
the dog would supposedly go under a spell and turn full Kujo before sniffing out the witch herself.
In Salem, a slave woman Tituba was instructed to help prepare such a cake. Shockingly, it didn’t
work, and her knowledge of recipes was later used against her in her own witchcraft trial.
Often called a witch’s teat or devil’s mark, it was believed that witches received a bodily mark
to seal their deal with the devil. As an accused witch, you were often stripped and examined
for any abnormal skin blemish. The devil’s mark could supposedly change size and shape over time.
You know, like moles do. The mark was also supposed to be insensitive to pain,
which led to the creation of witch-prickers. Witch pricking amounted to stabbing the spot
with needles. If it didn’t bleed, it was a witch’s mark. Sometimes,
if the accused had no obvious birthmark or skin spot, the witch-prickers would just stab all over
the skin until they found an area that didn’t bleed. Professional witch hunters moved from
town to town in Europe, earning money to track down and unmask witches. For the prick test,
they would often carry a trick needle with a sharp end and a blunt end, flipping sides
when they needed to show the mark didn’t bleed. Once again, the system is rigged! Some people
tried to avoid diagnosis of the devil’s mark by attempting to burn or cut off any skin markings.
Ironically, this kind of DIY operation usually ended up resulting in a worse marking than before.
A popular test in Europe, a “trial by water” was determined by binding the accused, or sewing them
into a sack, and throwing them into a nearby lake. From there, it was truly sink or swim.
If the person sank like a rock, they were not a witch. If they floated they were guilty,
Since witches were seen to have spurned their baptism, the water would reject their body and
prevent them from submerging. Of course, some of the accused sank to the bottom
and then drowned anyway... Whoops! A Virginian woman, Grace Sherwood, underwent a trial by water
only to find herself inconveniently buoyant and floating on the surface. Another reason
to cut back on the butter - body fat increases buoyancy. Funnily enough, women and older people
tend to have the most body fat, and were the most often accused demographic. In the touch test,
those who were suffering from a spell would be touched by the accused witch or sorcerer. If their
fit subsided, it meant that the person who touched them was the one who initially cast the spell.
They supposedly placed the curse through their eyes, and through touch, removed the invisible
poison. You really can’t make this stuff up. Two English women, Rose Cullender and Amy Denny,
underwent the touch test at trial. The supposedly bewitched parties were two young girls, who had
fits that left their fists so tightly clenched that not even a grown man could pry them apart.
When Cullender and Denny touched the children, miraculously their fists loosened. To prove
the legitimacy of this super scientific test, judges had the girls blindfolded and touched
by other people in the court. They didn’t pass the control test and still unclench their fists.
But rather safe than sorry, Cullender and Denny were hanged as witches anyway.
Here’s where flying off on a broomstick would come in pretty handy. If you’re not convinced
that you’d be able to endure lengthy torture, perfectly monologue the bible,
safely remove all of your moles and birthmarks, sink to the bottom of any body of water,
or avoid curing an imaginary curse, your best option is to run for your life.
After witnessing the horrors of the witch trials, some people chose to flee
as soon as the accusations started to fly. This was a more feasible option for transient people,
as it meant leaving behind all of your possessions, land and family. So,
would you run for the hills at the first whiff of a nosey neighbor? Or perhaps you’d prefer to
stick it out because you intimidate dogs and have blemish free skin. Let us know in the comments,
and be sure to subscribe to follow along with more historical nuttiness.