Lore - Legends 4: Witchy Women

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

The history of witchcraft, from the folklore to the legal trials, is dark enough. But for centuries, people have been whispering legends that are so chilling, they’ve never been forgotten. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by Harry Marks and research by GennaRose Nethercott. ———————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com ———————— This episode of Lore was sponsored by: BetterHelp: Lore is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/LORE, and get on your way to being your best self. To advertise on our podcast, please reach out to [e-mail], or visit our listing here. ©2023 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

Welcome to Lore Legends, a subset of lore episodes that explore the strange tales we whisper in the dark, even if they can't always be proven by the history books. So if you're ready, let's begin. Word Association is a powerful concept. It's that thing that happens when someone says a word and hearing it immediately triggers something else. If I say vampire, you'll most likely think of Dracula, despite popular culture being filled with other examples.

And the word clown, for most of you, triggers the image of the grinning monster from Stephen King's masterpiece, It. For Americans, if I mention witchcraft, the first thing that would come to mind is actually the name of a location. It's a place that has become synonymous with false accusations, kangaroo courts, and hangings that occurred during the early 1690s. Salem. But witchcraft wasn't confined to just one part of New England. In fact, witches were prominent all over the Eastern Seaboard, including some places you might not have expected. After all, a witch wasn't a witch because of where she lived.

As Brazilian novelist Paulo Cuegu once wrote, a witch is a woman that is capable of letting her intuition take hold of her actions, that communes with her environment that isn't afraid of facing challenges. And if there's one thing that women all over the colonies of early New England could count on, it was that they would always have challenges to face, which is why so many of their stories have such a familiar flavor. Unsubstantiated legends littered with superstition, accusation, and most of all, fear.

I'm Aaron Manke, and this is Lore Legends. In Central New Jersey, about 10 minutes from Rutgers University, there is a town. It was once home to a band of indigenous Lenape, known as the Rera 10, who were pushed out when the Europeans arrived during the 17th century. The village that was built there was called Piscataway Town, and at its center was the St. James Church. Piscataway town eventually broke up into several different settlements, mainly Piscataway, Raritan Township, and Woodbridge.

But in 1876, inventor Thomas Edison moved to the area and set up shop in a small, unincorporated community known as Menlo Park. Clearly, Edison made a name for himself, and folks were proud to call him one of their own. So in 1954 to honor the controversial inventor, Raritan Township was renamed after him. It has been known ever since, as Edison. A big part of Edison, New Jersey, is that St. James Church I mentioned a moment to go. Along with its accompanying burial ground, the Piscataway Town burial ground is amongst the oldest in Middlesex County, and the oldest grave within its borders dates all the way back to 1693. It belongs to the Hooper brothers, two young children who tragically died after eating poisonous mushrooms.

But the grounds are also home to many other notable individuals who shape the landscape of both the Garden State and the country as a whole. Among those in turn are members of the town's founding families, British Revolutionary War Soldiers, Civil War Soldiers, and a man named Thomas Harper. Harper apparently declined to move for an incoming tornado in 1835, refusing to give into the fear of the wrath of God, needless to say that didn't work out too well for him. But perhaps the most well-known burial of them all is that of Mary Moore, the witch of Edison. It's hard to know what of Mary's story, if anything, is true as there are contradicting variations, but much of her legend centers on several key details.

For example, Mary was a local colonial woman who was not on the best terms with her neighbors. They thought that she was, odd. According to the local historical society, Mary, and I quote, caused animals to do strange things, she grew strange plants, and she dressed like a witch. Unsurprisingly, Mary was formally accused of witchcraft and was executed in October of 1731. She was only 40 years old at the time. Now, according to some people, she was hanged for her crimes. Others believe that she was burned at the stake, although that's just an expression of the common misconception that American witches were burned. One version of events even claimed that she poisoned herself after murdering her own husband. But regardless of the method of her death, things started to take a dark turn after she

was gone. The prevailing story is that Mary was buried beneath a simple headstone in the back corner of the Piscataway Town burial ground. But that's not the tale known by locals. They heard that after her execution, the townsfolk feared that Mary would rise from the dead, so they did what any unreasonable mob would do. They cut her body into three separate pieces, and buried them in three separate cemeteries. Since then, her legend has only grown.

It's said that Mary more spirit haunts Piscataway town burial ground, and that if you walk around her grave three times and spit, her ghost will appear. Back in the 1970s, a local named Deborah once snuck into the cemetery with a few of her middle school classmates. They claimed that they stood a lit lighter on the ground in place of a candle in an attempt to conjure Mary's ghost. After a short time, the lighter began sliding across the ground as if being pushed by an invisible force.

They moved the good seven feet, although neither Deborah nor her friends had their hands anywhere near it. Panicked, the kids fled the scene, with one of them snatching up the lighter on the way out. Another witness remembered schoolchildren whispering about the terrible curse that would befall anyone who circled her grave while chanting, I hate Mary Moore. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to verify the accuracy of the claims today.

And now Mary's headstone is no longer in the cemetery, which honestly might be a good thing. Where did it go? Well, it was stolen by two teenage brothers back in 1975. It said that the boys had been dragging Mary's grave stone across Route 1, a major highway that runs from the tip of Florida through New Jersey and all the way to the Canadian border in Maine. And while doing so, one of the young thieves was struck by a passing

car, and killed. The other boy, terrified that Mary had placed a curse on them, smashed the marker into several pieces, destroying it. Then because of that, those who visit the cemetery today have no way of locating Mary Moore's final resting place. Of course, skeptics claim that this is just a convenient way to explain the absence of a grave that never existed in the first place. But many people still believe the headstone was indeed stolen. But why are they so sure? Because they remember the names of the boys who took it. John and Michael Purubsky. Sadly, John died when he was 19 years old, on Christmas Eve, no less.

And how did he die? He was hit by a car. Crossing Route 1. One last legend. It's been said that Mary's damaged headstone did eventually get returned to the cemetery, but what little remains of it has become overgrown over the years by poison ivy. It's poetic, isn't it? In a sad and morbid way, a woman deemed too toxic to live by her community buried beneath

a toxic plant. Thanks to the stories about her, it seems that even in death, no one is willing to get too close to her. Less they suffer. The consequences. The consequences. Eunice Cole was born in England around 1580. She and her husband William had worked as indentured servants for Matthew Craddock,

the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. But he allowed them to pay off their debts early and to join other settlers heading to the New World. And so in 1638, William and Eunice packed up their lives and headed across the Atlantic to start again. They first arrived in Quincy, Massachusetts, before finally settling in Hampton, New Hampshire on a gorgeous 40-acre parcel of land.

Now, back then, just like today, people who move to a new area often use the opportunity as a clean slate, a way to reinvent themselves and establish good relations with their community. Unis though, apparently didn't get that memo. In fact, she had numerous run-ins with the law after her arrival, which did not endear her to the local magistrates. Among her charges, being accused of slanderous speech, and it was that specific charge that would lead to one of the most dreaded accusations any woman could face at the time, that she was, in fact, a witch. She had become associated with witchcraft after making loud claims about knowing there were

witches in town and where they lived. To the other colonists, she must have been one of them if she knew so much. She was often seen mumbling to herself, and her appearance was disheveled, which her neighbors used as evidence against her. Looking back though, it's clear that Eunice, who everyone referred to as Goody Cole, was being targeted because she was just a rude, strong-willed woman who didn't shy away from speaking her mind. There were other rumors after that, like the claim that she had hexed two cows belonging to Thomas Filbrick after catching them grazing on her lawn. She told Filbrick that if she saw them on her property again, she'd hope the grass would choke them to death. And a short time later, those cows died.

Those rumors and accusations eventually culminated in her first witch trial, which was held in Boston in 1656. Much of the community made the trip to the courthouse to accuse her and testify against her. That's how unlike she was. Salisbury Constable Richard Orn's bee also conducted an examination of her body. He stripped her down and found a witch's mark on her skin, which he described as, and I quote, a blue thing like unto a teet hanging downward, about three quarters of an inch long.

And this birthmark, along with the community's testimony against her, were enough to convict goody coal of familiarity with the community's testimony against her, were enough to convict Goodie Cole of familiarity with the devil. She was sentenced to be whipped and then imprisoned indefinitely for her crimes. For the next 17 years, Goodie Cole moved in and out of jail. During that time, she was given repeated chances to return to life on the farm on the condition that she behaved herself, but you know Goodie Cole, that just wasn't possible. More jail, the death of her husband, and the loss of her estate pretty much took everything she had away.

In 1673, things came to a head when she was accused of the unthinkable, stealing someone else's child. According to one local woman, Goodie Cole had approached a young girl named Ann Smith and tried to bribe her with food to come live with her. When she refused, Goody Cole used threats of violence and even transformed into a variety of animals, but none of her efforts worked. This sorted tale, compounded with other accusations of witchcraft, was enough to put her on trial once more.

Surprisingly though, the court didn't think they had enough evidence to convict her, and so she was released yet again. No matter what she did though, she could not escape the scorn of the community. In 1680, she was hauled before the court for a third time and then thrown in jail. It seems a local mother was convinced that her new baby had been replaced with a changeling, and that goody Cole was responsible. Driven mad by this perceived loss of her child, the woman begged her husband to put the child in the fire, a common folk remedy for that sort of situation.

But thankfully, he refused, and she quickly came to her senses. Realizing her terrible mistake, she hurried to the courthouse to plead for Goody Cole's freedom. And it worked. The 90-year-old Goody was set free once more, although sadly she died about a month after her return home. According to the legends about her, the townspeak drove an iron stake through her heart following her death. Then her frail, lifeless body was dumped in a ditch at a crossroads, and her gray was marked

with a horseshoe, preventative measures often used in the burial of witches. Today her restless spirit is rumored to Haunt Hampton, perhaps as punishment for the way she was treated by her neighbors. But her story is also a miraculous one. Not only did she live to be 90, but she survived not one, but three witch trials, and was allowed to pass away in her own home. And more importantly, on her own terms. In 1691, a magazine called the Athenian Mercury published an article about a ship. It was called a recovery, and it had experienced a series of small disasters in its relatively short life. But those small disasters had started to add up to bigger problems while the recovery

was at sea. Parts of the ship started to break, the crew came down with a terrible sickness, and people on board were dying. Now clearly life on the high seas was rough, even more so back then. Not everyone was cut out for it, maybe these stories were just their way of coping with the fact that they couldn't hack it as sailors, or perhaps there was something more nefarious at play. It started on October 23rd of 1674, when the recovery first set sail from Plymouth, England bound for Virginia.

The ship was immediately met with bad winds that split several masts and sails, broke the running rigging, and caused the loss of the anchors. You don't have to know a lot about ships to know that the wind seemed to break everything. According to the captain, what was mended one day would the next be in pieces. But before long the winds calmed down and the ship continued onward, it was headed toward Portugal, where it was supposed to collect the shipment of wine, but the recovery's bad fortune seemed to follow it wherever it sailed.

The delivery couldn't reach the ship due to a series of mishaps, and the wine was lost to the sea. Around this time, the folks on land began warning the recovery's crew that they might be facing more than just some bad luck. They might have a witch on board. And the crew started to believe them, because after that their problems only got worse. Once they were back on the water, they noticed how pieces of the ship continued to break and fall off.

As the captain put it, neither iron, wood, ropes, or canvas would hold. Ironic that a ship called the recovery could not bounce back from its problems, no matter how hard the crew tried. But that wasn't all, because misfortune only escalated from there. Soon enough, the ship had to face its first death when a passenger fell overboard and drowned, and that event opened a proverbial can of worms, or maybe Pandora's box, depending on how you look at it. One death soon became two after a man was hurled off the main top mass toward the stern of the ship and drowned underneath.

And then a third death quickly followed when another man tumbled over the upper deck and also drowned. On top of these freak accidents, the surviving passengers and crew were also struck by illness. It didn't kill them, but it didn't make them stronger either. It left them weakened and incapacitated. And so the whispers about witchcraft continued to grow. One afternoon, words spread across the ship that there was not only one witch on board the recovery, but also two in England conspiring against them. The ship's master prayed for God to reveal the reason

for their miseries. And as though he were being answered by God directly, he spotted one particular passenger acting in a strange manner. Her name was Elizabeth Masters. She was the only woman on deck, and she was on her knees near the ship's tack, the rope holding down the lower corner of one of the sails, and her hands were lifted in prayer. The following day, that same tack snapped, despite there being almost no wind. Soon after, the fore-sale broke, and it looked as though someone was deliberately tampering

with the recovery. So the shipmaster did the only thing he could do. He locked Elizabeth Masters in Steerage, hoping that keeping her off the deck would prevent any further catastrophes. But moving her to a different part of the ship didn't help. As they headed toward the west indies, the crew decided to take stock of the beverages they still had on hand. Along journey required copious amounts of alcohol and water for everyone on board. As they inventoryed the hold though, they noticed that much of their beer was missing, and a short time later, the water ran out.

Meanwhile, more of the ship continued to break, as ropes snapped and sails collapsed. The one man, a passenger named William Reynolds, claimed that Elizabeth Masters had come to him in the dead of night asking him to join her gang, offering him vast riches if he complied. She claimed to have known his mother, who she declared was also a witch. There was just one problem. Elizabeth was still locked in Steerage,

with no method of escape. Reynolds refused her offer, of course. A decision that seemed to have an ill effect on the rest of the recovery. Ghostly black cats began to appear on board, running and disappearing before they could be caught. One passenger managed to corner one of the black cats and attack it with a sword. He hit it three times before it vanished into thin air. The demonic cats popped up sporadically after that, though, leaving everyone on edge.

Cornermaster Frederick Johnson reported that while out for a smoke late on the evening of December 6th, a black cat appeared from out of steerage, where Elizabeth Masters was still being held. According to his testimony, no cats had ever been brought onto the ship. And then one night, the hauntings became more tangible. A crew member named William Goodfellow awoke in the night to the strange sensation of something heavy walking on him. He opened his eyes and looked around, but nothing was there.

When he examined his body, though, he discovered something that sent a chill down his spine. Right there, imprinted on his thigh, in purple and black, like a bruise that was a weak old, was a curious mark he couldn't explain away. It was as if whatever had walked over him had been so heavy that it had gone right through his clothes. It was the footprint of a cat. Some stories are just too classic to be ignored. There's a reason Hollywood keeps coming back to vampires and monsters, after all. As the old saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and when it comes to witchcraft, that couldn't be more true.

The stories about witches that people have whispered over the centuries always seem to have a certain common element. They frequently feature women who were either outsiders or rebels against the common social codes of their day, and in most stories, the community was experiencing mysterious and unfortunate events. No one likes bad news, and everyone needs someone to blame for their troubles, and that's pretty much the core of most witch tales, and on the recovery, that was certainly the reality they were all dealing with. After William Goodfellow's mysterious cat-paw-shaped bruise, months passed by, and Elizabeth remained locked up in Steerage, yet despite being out of sight, she refused to let the crew put her

out of mind. In December of 1674, a woman on board named Mary Leary had discovered bruises along her lower back, hips, and buttocks. She was convinced that it was the witch's doing, but she also had an idea for a helpful remedy. Perhaps Elizabeth's blood could heal her. And it must have worked, too, because word of Elizabeth's healing blood spread among everyone on board. Pretty soon, sick and injured passengers were pricking the witch with knives and needles, drawing a bit of her magical blood to smear on themselves.

What became of them though, we don't know, because that's where the story of the recovery and its alleged witch, Elizabeth Masters, comes to an end. Was the ship truly hexed, or was this a case of superstition and paranoia simply run a muck, fueled by a poorly built vessel, and an old woman in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or, were still, was the entire story, only reported by the Athenian Mercury, simply the creation of someone's imagination? We may never get the answer, just like we may never know what happened to

Elizabeth Masters. The article ends without ever revealing her fate, but I think it's safe to assume. Whatever it was, it wasn't good. Legends of Witches litter the halls of history. Everywhere you go, it seems there are stories about them, so much so that they become caricatures of their former selves. Nothing more than old hags and black robes and a pointy hat, with a cauldron, a broom, and a black cat by their side. But that cat isn't always obviously evil. In fact, sometimes the question doesn't have an immediate answer, and one other legend

we've tracked down makes that clear. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Sometimes in life we're faced with tough choices choices and the path forward isn't always clear. It's normal to feel a little lost in life or a lot lost and full confession I've been there many times myself, unable to figure out what's next and what the right path forward for me should be. Whether you're dealing with decisions around career, relationships or anything else, therapy helps you stay connected to what you really want while you navigate life, so you can move forward with confidence and excitement.

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Elizabeth Masters may or may not have been a witch, but the men aboard the recovery certainly believed she was. According to their stories, she had been responsible for the mysterious deaths, the damages, and the sickness that plagued their ship for months. In all likelihood, they were simply blaming an innocent woman for the hardships of being at sea. But they also might have been on to something, because deep in the smoky mountains of Georgia, another group of men faced off against an invisible evil.

One that would stop it nothing, until they were all dead. The tale originally appeared in the Journal of American Folklore back in 1894, although its origins aren't very clear. It began with a mill, owned by a man known only as Mr. H. Now Mr. H employed a number of workers at his mill, all of whom were unmarried and lived there in the mill when they weren't on the clock. But after a while, Mr. H started to notice that the men working for him were getting sick and not recovering. In fact, three millers in a row had died only a short time apart. Doctors couldn't figure out what was causing these men to perish.

It was unlike any disease they had seen before. The workers didn't suffer long, though, and each one tried to say something to his fellow men before he passed on. It was like they were trying to let others know what was killing them. And as they died, one by one, the facility grew increasingly emptier. It developed a reputation of dread and foreboding among the locals, particularly the long, low room near the entrance, where all those dead mill workers had once slept. low room near the entrance where all those dead mill workers had once slept. After a while, nobody wanted to go near the mill for fear of what might be waiting there

for them to strike next, not until one neighbor volunteered to run the abandoned facility himself. He gathered his things, sharpened his axe, and arrived at his new place of employment ready to work. On his first night, he started a fire in the hearth. It warmed his cold, tired body as he fed it more wood to keep it going, and that's when he spied a dark figure in the shadows between the chimney and the door. It was a small, brown cat, crouched low

and watching him, presumably trying to get warm itself. The man paid the cat no mind, and continued to stoke the fire. And when it had finally come to a roar, he sat down in his chair and pulled out his Bible for an evening of study. But something was wrong, he could feel it, a growing sense of dread had washed over him, deepening and soon blossoming into outright horror. There was no reason for it, it was just a feeling. The cat, also sensing something, crept out from its corner and began yowling and scratching at the door.

It wanted out of the room. It turned to the man and rubbed against his legs before looking up at him. And the man went pale. He knew those eyes, set within the feline's skull like two glowing balls of fire. In a fit of terror, he grabbed his sharpened ax and raised it high over his head, bringing it down with a definitive whack across one of the cat's paws. It screamed, but not like a cat like Yelp, more like a human woman's pained shriek that fled the room up the chimney and vanished into the night. Immediately

the man left the mill as well and headed home, unwilling to spend the rest of his evening in such a haunted place. When he got home, he opened his door to discover his wife on the floor, writhing and pain, as she was bleeding to death, and one of her hands was missing. The animals we love and welcome into our homes are more than just pets,'re friends, even family, but they haven't always been seen that way. Because if the legends from folklore are any indication, that cat in the corner, looking at its paw, may not be the mouse hunting companion that we thought it was. It might be something else, or someone else.

Just waiting for the right time? Distrike. or someone else, just waiting for the right time to strike. This episode of lore legends was produced by me, Aaron Manke, with writing by Harry Marks and research by Jenner Rose Nethercott. Lore is much more than just a podcast, there's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both out if you want more lore in your life. Information about all of that, and more, is available over at lorepodcast.com. And for fans of video content, lore is also on YouTube.

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