Half-Hanged Mary of Hadley
New England Legends Podcast
Jeff Belanger
4.9 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 18 August 2022
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In Episode 261, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger explore Old Hadley Cemetery, in Hadley, Massachusetts, which is the final resting place of accused witch, Mary Webster. A ward of the town, Webster was accused of witchcraft in 1683 but found innocent. Though the court’s verdict wasn’t good enough for the people of Hadley. When a prominent church deacon fell under a strange illness in 1684, some locals were sure he was under a spell of Mary Webster, and they took matters into their own hands. They attempted to hang Webster, but she survived to go on an inspire author Margaret Atwood to write The Handmaid’s Tale.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Oh, we do spend a lot of time in old New England cemeteries, Jeff. |
| 0:07.3 | Yeah, we do, Ray. |
| 0:08.2 | It's where a lot of our stories begin, right here at the end of the line for, you know, everyone |
| 0:13.3 | else. |
| 0:13.6 | Now, we're currently standing in Old Hadley Cemetery in Hadley, Massachusetts. |
| 0:18.1 | And when they say old, I mean, they mean old. Yeah. We just passed a |
| 0:22.2 | headstone that was dated 1661. This is the oldest cemetery in town. It was established in 1660, |
| 0:28.5 | just one year after the town's founding. The cemetery is in a pretty spot. Surrounded by farm fields. |
| 0:34.8 | The Connecticut River is about a quarter of a mile over there. I mean, it's |
| 0:37.8 | really peaceful here. It is. And though the person we're looking for doesn't have a headstone, |
| 0:42.5 | she's buried here somewhere close by. Now, who are we looking for? Ray, we're looking for a local |
| 0:47.1 | woman who was hanged for witchcraft, but survived. We're on the hunt for half-hanged Mary. |
| 0:57.6 | Hi, I'm Jeff Belanger. And I'm Ray Oger. Welcome to episode 261 of the New England Legends |
| 1:03.2 | podcast. Thank you for joining us as we explore the ghosts, monsters, witches, warlocks, and |
| 1:07.8 | other oddities of New England. We're a community of legend seekers who |
| 1:11.2 | love exploring the weird side of our region, and there's plenty here. We love when you get involved |
| 1:16.7 | because most of our story leads, well, they come from you. You should join our super secret |
| 1:20.9 | Facebook group, follow us on social media, and of course subscribe to our weekly podcast because |
| 1:25.7 | it's free wherever you get your podcast, and we don't want you to miss a thing. Now, before we go looking for this witch of Hadley, we want to take just a minute to tell you about our sponsor, Nuadi Erbles. It's been a while since we've heard from Nuadi Erbles founder, Rod Jackson. Rod, what have you guys been up to? Last weekend, Kimberly and I got a rare moment to go camping. We always |
| 1:45.5 | get to know the people around us, so when we set up camp, we introduced ourselves to our neighbors, |
| 1:50.9 | and one of the couples told us that the mosquitoes were pretty bad, and we might need some of this. |
| 1:56.3 | They handed us a bottle of Nostquito. Kimberly and I laughed and told them, well, we have our own. |
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