EP: 370 The Salem Witch Trials: 19 Hangings, Spectral Evidence & The Death of Enchantment with Brian Dedmon

Blurry Creatures

Nature, Christianity, Science, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 4.5K Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2025

⏱️ 98 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

January 1692. Two girls wake up screaming with unexplained burns on their skin. Their bodies contort unnaturally. Doctors reach a chilling conclusion: they're "under an evil hand." What unfolds over the next nine months doesn't just claim 23 lives—it murders something far more profound: the Western world's faith in the supernatural itself.PhD candidate Brian Dedmon has discovered why Salem—out of hundreds of witch trials that killed far more people—became the one everyone remembers. The answer is chilling: Salem happened at the precise moment Western civilization was poised to abandon God. The timing was devastating. Nineteen souls hanged. One man crushed slowly beneath stacking stones, gasping his final words: "More weight."But here's the twist that changes everything: the guilty walked free while the innocent died. "Spectral evidence" allowed convictions based on dreams alone—no physical proof required. Wealthy families weaponized the hysteria to eliminate rivals. A minister quoted the Lord's Prayer perfectly at the gallows (something witches supposedly couldn't do) and was hanged anyway.By 1700, historians across every ideological spectrum agree: Western culture abandoned belief in the supernatural almost overnight. Salem became exhibit A that Christian faith breeds dangerous superstition. SThe real question facing us now: How do we reclaim biblical supernatural faith without triggering new witch hunts? How do we acknowledge spiritual warfare when most Christians treat it like embarrassing folklore? Salem's message echoes across three centuries: The church must remember what it lost after 1692—before what's coming makes us wish we had. This episode is sponsored by:https://brooklynbedding.com — Get 30% off site wide when you use code BLURRY at checkout!https://uncommongoods.com/blurry — Shop early to get 15% off your next gift!https://livemomentous.com — Get up to 35% off your first order with promo code BLURRY at checkout! - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	How do we worship a Christ who defeated the grave and ignore the supernatural?
0:06.0	We're worshiping something supernatural while ignoring the supernatural.
0:10.0	That doesn't make any sense.
0:11.0	And so, and that's the challenge that I give people all the time is going,
0:14.0	hey, have you ever sung like Jesus paid at all?
0:16.0	You're singing about supernatural things.
0:19.0	You can't deny the supernatural and believe in Jesus.
0:23.7	He is supernatal. He's the definition of supernatural. He is God become man. I say it all the time.
0:30.2	He's God in a man suit. Right. Like that's supernatural. That's God literally, literally breaking the
0:36.4	rules of the universe that he made so that we could have salvation.
0:39.9	That is supernatural.
0:41.2	So I think it's absolutely detrimental that we've, we've allowed the Enlightenment and all these other things to infiltrate, you know, philosophy and everything has infiltrated the church to the point where we said we only believe in the things that we can explain.
1:00.0	The history of our earth is so different from what we can imagine.
1:04.0	The Smithsonian that if they found out about a large skeleton somewhere was to go get it.
1:11.6	I'm going to assume at least one person is right, because if one person's right, it bust the paradigm.
1:17.6	It all goes back to the fallen church.
1:20.6	And the problem with the modern-day church, they have a very truncated view of the supernatural.
1:24.6	This backdrop that's just pregnant with all kinds of meaning associated with this Mount Herman event.
1:34.6	And this guy defects from the kingdom. That's a big deal.
1:47.0	Welcome to Blururry Creatures.
1:49.1	I'm in the middle of a nerd sandwich.
1:54.1	I got master's degrees on my right and left, and I got a degree in recreation.
	...

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