Well, they just sort of stopped. The witch hunts, I mean.

Salem may have been the peak of the madness when it came to hunting American witches, but

it was not the end. More trouble-follow, more elderly, eccentric, or just plain mean people

in small communities throughout the colonies were accused of witchcraft. Some of them were

placed on trial, a few were convicted, a few were hanged, and then it all just seemed

to fade away, and the 17th century became the 18th in the American colonies. Matters more

pressing took everyone's attention, war, droughts, religious conflicts, and revivals among

them. There had also been seeds of doubt planted about the fairness of the witch trials. Many

questioned the extraordinary ways they'd been conducted, the evidence that had been allowed

and the torture that had been used to extract confessions. Most admitted that they themselves

would confess to just about anything, if some of them was dumping them in a lake to see

if they'd float. But just because the witch trials ended, it didn't mean the suspicion

about some members of the community came to a halt. And it also didn't mean that witchcraft

wasn't practiced anymore, because folk magic and conjuring had never gone away.

Welcome to American hauntings, the podcast dedicated to the history, hauntings, and the

dark side of American history. And welcome to our newest season, Woods and Fields, Dark

and Wicked, which is hosted and produced by Cody Beck and written and performed by Troy

Taylor. That's me. We have a long road ahead of us this season, traveling to American

forests, farms and fields with tales of witchcraft and hexes, cults and curses, calamities

and cannibalism, massacres and mysterious disappearances, and more magic mayhem, sinners

and spirits than we've ever offered before. And this time, we'll take a jump ahead in

history and see how the fear of witchcraft in America never really went away and how

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