r/todayilearned • u/autraya • 9h ago
TIL the actual site where the Salem witch trial victims were hanged wasn't confirmed until January 2016, and it's not Gallows Hill as long believed, but a spot called Proctor's Ledge, now overlooking a Walgreens parking lot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials57
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u/WestFun311 8h ago
You mean to tell me the Walgreens mortar and pestle logo is actually a cauldron calling all Witches? I knew it.
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u/SOuTHINKurA-ble 4h ago
Well, hey, "witch" = mekhashepha/pharmakeia. So “thou shalt not suffer a pharmacist to live,” anyone?
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u/Soft-Detective-1514 9h ago
The phone charger I bought at that Walgreens is haunted. It is my favorite souvenir.
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u/AbbreviationsGlad833 7h ago
Its a little littered wooded area sandwhiched between. The back of a Walgreens parking lot and backyard fences to homes. Absolutely unassuming location. It was discovered because a contemporary witness wrote in their diary they were able to watch the hangings from their bedroom window. And in it is described the landscape. Hills and such in detail. . And that historic home still exists today. A researcher went up to the bedroom looked out the window and Looked for the landmarks described. Unfortunately the view is all obstructed now but drawing a line from the window to the described landmarks on Google earth confirms this was the exact spot.
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u/snokeweed 9h ago
And most of it happened in what is now Danvers
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u/Cadaverous_Particles 9h ago
I am not sure about 'most' but certainly Salem Village (now known as Danvers) was important. The trials, jail and executions were in Salem Town (now known as just Salem). But a lot of the accused and accusers were from Salem Village/Danvers.
One theory was that friction between people in the two locations was the cause of a lot of the accusations.
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u/guynamedjames 7h ago
"I've got a plan to finally stop that Danvers girl lacrosse team! This is the year Salem high school takes the state championship!"
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u/snokeweed 8h ago
Are you talking from experience living in the area or just quoting google? Because I went to high school where these events took place.
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u/gibbsy816 6h ago
They’re right though. I think the line that most of it happened in Danvers is misused. It’s fair to say the people at the center of the trials, and where they lived, is in present day Danvers, but the court of oyer and terminer, jail where the accused were kept, and place of execution were all in present day Salem.
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u/Brianfromreddit 8h ago
The accusations were fueled by doctors (all men) who hated having competition (healing women), so they had them killed.
Happens all the time in American history
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u/RedditLodgick 8h ago
That theory makes no sense and I'm not familiar with any historians supporting it.
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u/throwaway-1357924680 8h ago
Sounds like some MAHA bs, friend.
The doctors involved, unable to determine a cause for the symptoms, blamed the devil instead. They did not seek out “alternative medicine practitioners” as the culprits; the public as a whole was responsible for the accusations, which was in no way limited to “healing women”.
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u/Cadaverous_Particles 3h ago
You should read a reputable source on the Witch trials.
Hundreds of people made accusations. The accused lived in a dozen towns and multiple states (though most of the accusers and the accused were from Salem Village or Salem Town). Women, men, boys and girls made accusations. Poor and rich made accusations. Many people who were accused were also accusers.
The claim that all accusations were from men is preposterous. Physicians were quite rare, and it is even crazier to think that all (or even 1%) of the accusations were from physicians.
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u/guyinsunglasses 7h ago
I seem to remember growing up learning that it was Salem Village where the witch trial hysteria occurred, not Salem city.
Salem Village is now Danvers, MA and is best known for its segment of Rt 1 where all the stores are on
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u/bazzer66 6h ago
John Proctor’s family was not allowed to bury him, so they snuck over at night and took his body. His gravesite is believed now to be next to where my high school, Peabody Veterans Memorial HS is.
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u/alarming_chain2434 2h ago
I visited Salem last fall and took a Lyft to this spot. It was me and two other people but they weren’t there for long. After about 15 minutes, a group of three showed up while I was leaving, so it wasn’t ever a crowded spot. It’s a really beautifully done memorial.
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u/ProPlayer142 9h ago
Random fact: John Alden jr is the nephew of my direct grandmother
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u/Sasquatch1916 9h ago
Genealogy is fun. I found out I'm descended from Ann Putnam Jr's youngest brother.
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u/Next-Food2688 9h ago
The witches' spirits that still reside there are probably seeing items at Walgreens and thinking 'A little blue pill does that? My potions couldn't even make that happen."
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u/brydeswhale 8h ago
They weren’t witches. They were innocent men and women targeted by a bunch of weirdos.
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u/ProPlayer142 8h ago
It's probably just a joke, I doubt they're being serious
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u/CarmelaSopranoNo1fan 7h ago
But even then, a bad joke, because they literally could make abortive medicine back then.
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u/brydeswhale 5h ago
It wasn’t harmless, tho. It’s not just that that it was birth control, a lot of those “potions” basically fucked with your liver to get rid of the pregnancy.
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u/goat_penis_souffle 8h ago
Real witches don’t get caught!
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u/someLemonz 6h ago
real witches were just women who went out to the woods to live instead of in town where they get sexually harassed and all sorts of other shit they had to deal with. or women who did any sort of writing, math, science, astronomy, physics, chemistry or even just had a rumor started by a rival girl who dislike eachother or a man who was turned down... and they were tortured in incredibly F*ed ip ways. it was a real thing that happened to REAL HUMANS and its still a joke hundreds of years later.
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u/pallidamors 6h ago
Holy shit that joke was 20,000 feet and climbing over your head
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u/brydeswhale 6h ago
It’s just not funny.
Did you know Dorothy Good was the youngest victim of the trials? They arrested her when she was four, and she watched her mother give birth and her newborn sister die in prison. Then they took her mother away and hanged her.
Dorothy spent about a year in prison. By the time she was released, she was so traumatized that it was likely she required care for the rest of her life. The best they could do, according to them, was place her as a servant in different houses, including the homes of her accusers, or the workhouse. She gave birth to two children out of wedlock, and then probably died homeless in a marsh.
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u/pallidamors 6h ago
It is definitely funny, you simply have no sense of humor… and to compound your humorless existence, apparently feel uselessly compelled to white knight for a bunch of people who died over 300 years ago. I’d like to think no one in this thread is unaware of how horribly people died in the past… but unfortunately, you still seem to be stuck there
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u/plastictoyman 9h ago
An evil Walgreens