Episode 2" "Spirits of the Invisible World"

American Hauntings Podcast

Cody Beck and Troy Taylor

True Crime, Religion & Spirituality, Tv & Film, Spirituality, Film Reviews, History

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A war raged in the Puritan New England of the 1600s with both the indigenous people who first settled the land and against the “Spirits of the Invisible World” who used “horrid sorcerers and hellish conjurers who conversed with demons” to torment and persecute the faithful.

It was a time of sin, suspicion, wild accusations – and witchcraft. Those who had made pacts with the Devil were intent on the destruction of the “purified” world that the Puritans had created – and they would do anything to stop it.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	We will never know everything there is to know about the English colonists who first came to America's shores.
0:10.5	There are familiar names, some dates, and events, but otherwise, records are few, and we know almost nothing about the lives of the ordinary people who made up most of the population.
0:22.6	A few letters and diaries do survive, though, telling grim stories of trips across the ocean on ships that were crammed with people, animals, and whatever belongings they could carry.
0:35.6	Sickness plagued them from the near constant nausea caused by
0:40.0	being tossed around on the waves to worse things like scurvy, dysentery, and influenza.
0:47.8	They brought with them their traditions, ideas, and beliefs, including their beliefs in witchcraft, supernatural, and the devil.
0:57.8	It was the devil that troubled them most. One elderly New Englander, reflecting later in his life
1:04.4	about his decision to come to America a half century before, said that he believed he'd be
1:09.9	freer from temptation in the new world than in
1:12.5	England. But to his dismay, he said, quote, I found here a deviled attempt and a corrupt heart to deceive.
1:21.3	But was the devil really waiting for them in America, or did they just bring the devil with them?
1:27.9	In 1654, on a ship traveling from London to Maryland, sailors spread a rumor that a woman
1:34.2	on board named Mary Lee was a witch. The captain ignored their demand that she be put on trial
1:40.6	at first. Then when Gale Force winds began to blow and the ship began to leak, his attitude changed.
1:50.0	The sailors were permitted to search her body and they quickly discovered a blemish on her skin.
1:55.8	They were convinced was the mark of the devil. She was hanged from the yard arm and according to legend,
2:02.6	the ship safely reached its destination with no further storms, fearing she was bad luck,
2:09.5	like a latter-day Jonah, the crew had sacrificed her to the sea.
2:15.4	Stories, rumors, legends, and gossip about the devil and the witches in league with them
2:20.9	spread from farm to farm and village to village throughout the colonies that stretched along the Atlantic coast.
2:27.9	But there was no question that the devil wreaked his greatest havoc in New England.
2:36.7	The home of those who considered themselves the most religiously devout and the most willing and able to do battle against the forces
	...

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