The show you're about to listen to may contain themes of violence, occult activities, strong language, and other sensitive material.

With an emphasis on cult's murder and other adult matters, listener discretion is advised.

On cult leader, I strive for telling stories in a truthful matter, though press, media, and other resources cannot always be verified.

Sources can be found in the show notes. Hello and welcome back to cold leader.

I'm your cult leader, Spencer Henry, and I don't know about y'all, but I have been feeling a little witchy lately.

All right, maybe it's the time of the year. Uh-oh, it must be the season of the witch, and I love it. I don't know. Maybe it's the full moon. Wasn't it just full? I think it was just full.

Maybe it's the veil thinning and all the spirits crawling out of their summer lockdown,

dropping hints about my true calling as a necromancer.

And if you're thinking, what the hell is a necromancer?

Well, you've got to go hop on over to obituary, okay?

Or maybe it's just that nostalgic, trick-or-treat chill in the air with the side of seasoned spiritual psychosis.

Ooh, who knows? Or maybe it's that girl that I was at the coffee shop yesterday that had a ghost

keychain on her purse and she accidentally hit it and it went...

Ooh! Love it. Give it all to me. Who knows? Whatever it is, it caused me to spiral, as does everything,

down some rabbit holes the other night, and I found myself basically enrolled in what I'll call

witch trial law school. Okay, I feel like I earned my degree with this one. You know the phrase,

witch hunt. We've all heard it before. Politicians love to throw it around, but what does it actually

mean? Where does it come from? If you're American like me, your brain probably jumps to the

Salem witch trials. That's always where my head goes back to when

we first think about a witch hunt. You know, Puritans, pointy hats, various types of pox going

around. I don't know. But honestly, Salem was more like the messy season finale of the witch hunts,

not the pilot episode, okay?

...