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Did you know the witch on your Halloween decorations might actually be a portrait of a medieval businesswoman? No, it's not. I don't know what the green gas is. It's the worst thing I've seen in any of these videos so far, and I need a timeline and algorithm cleanse immediately. I'm Mickey Brock, professor and historian of witchcraft and demonology. Let's fact-check some AI slop. Did you know the witch on your Halloween decorations might actually be a portrait of a medieval businesswoman? No, it's not.
Here's why that matters. For hundreds of years, women called alewives ran the beer industry across Europe. Now, that's true. Women have always been involved in the brewing industry, and were really important to the production of ale, which is what a lot of people drank in the period, given that water was often contaminated, not safe to drink. Beer was big business, and women were deeply involved in that. They wore tall, pointed hats. There is no evidence that the vast majority of alewives wore any certain hat. That is a fiction. So, customers could spot them in crowded markets. They stirred giant cauldrons of brewing ale.
Beer could be brewed in lots of things, not just cauldrons. It could be brewed in a sort of regular giant saucepan that people might use. It could be brewed in water buckets. It was not always being brewed in cauldrons. And also, I have to add, in the witch trial records, cauldrons are actually rarely mentioned explicitly, even though various domestic instruments of cooking and other things do show up. They kept cats to protect their grain from mice. A lot of people kept pets. A lot of people kept cats and dogs and other animals, but cats were associated with heresy and the demonic long before you have the sort of heyday of the alewife,
and long before the witch trials themselves, too. So, cats have this demonic association completely outside of the fact that they were owned by these brewers. But, I do enjoy the fact that this is very clearly playing on the black cat stereotype. That's an old one. When a fresh batch was ready, they hung a broom outside the door as a signal. Here's the thing about brooms. They have become one of these stock items that we associate with witchcraft. Walk down any street in Halloween, you see them on front porches and so on. But witches were believed to fly to demonic sabbaths on lots of different objects, right?
They could fly on a broom, but actually that doesn't show up as much as you would expect in the British records from England or Scotland. It's much more of a continental European idea. But people imagined that witches flew on pitchforks or sticks or rode animals, goats, other creatures, or just flew lifted by the devil's wind itself. So brooms have stuck around and I think they've stuck around because they are an object associated with domesticity and women were seen to occupy the sphere of the home during this period. So that connection between women and witchcraft is why the broom is so dominant in our imagination, but it has nothing to do with alewives. And there are lots of other ways that people could get to
these demonic parties. Enough of that. So I just arrived in Salem, Massachusetts 1692 and honestly, it's not as bad as I THINK WHICH IS GOLD. Gold would have been something surprising to see an ordinary person walking around the streets with in the context of Salem, but it's not because people thought gold or jewelry was demonic. It's because it was expensive and because they thought it was a sign of vanity, a sign that you were devoting your attention in the world to something ungodly. She bears the devil's mark. The other thing about this is that immediately this guy sees the necklace and says, "It's the devil's mark." That
is not how devil's marks worked. People certainly believed in this period that when a witch made a pact with the devil, she was marked in some way as his servant. It's kind of an inversion of the baptism ritual. But the devil's mark was something people searched for. It's certainly the case that in the Salem witch Hunts, accused people were stripped and searched for an insensible mark, a strange mark, a discolored mark that could be seen as evidence that they had engaged in a deal with the devil. Okay. Okay, the jury was a bad call. The jury was a really bad call. So, this building right here, this is where it all started.
It didn't start here. It started in the home of Samuel Parris because it was his daughter Betty and his niece Abigail who were the first girls to display signs of bewitchment. And the minister Samuel Parris didn't immediately say, "Oh my gosh, these kids, they are clearly taken with the devil or witchcraft." What he did first was call a doctor to say, "Hey, can we explain this by some other means?" And when the doctor couldn't figure out what was going on with these bewitched girls who were having fits, strange contortions, saying strange things, that's when people started to strongly suspect witchcraft. And once the accusations started, they didn't stop. Over 200 people were accused, 200. Most of them were just
women who didn't fit in. It is true that most of those accused in Salem were just ordinary people and most of them were women. But Salem is unusual. A lot of the women who do get accused in Salem as the trials progress, they actually do fit in. They actually are upstanding citizens. It's only early on in the Salem Witch Trials where Tituba, Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, the first three accused of witchcraft, they are the typical outcasts or misfits or people who are different. But later, as the trial goes on, you do really have some upstanding citizens who get named as witches. And that leads to a broader suspicion among some quarters of the Salem community about whether or not any of this is accurate at all.
Okay, so this is the part that genuinely messes with my head a little. Like, look at this, it's just a normal market. People buying vegetables, kids running around, people haggling over carrots. If you look at this scene and you look at the fact that there are people going about their business, buying and selling wares and food, talking to one another, it's a good reminder that even though there were these moments of which panics, even though there were periods where people were tremendously anxious about the harm that witches could cause to their lives, people also lived as normal. People weren't thinking about witches 24/7.
People sometimes lived for years without even seeing a witch trial or even hearing of one from a relative or a neighbor. Can I ask? What did they say you did? My neighbor's cow died the morning after we argued. That was enough. The thing about this, my neighbor's cow died the morning after we argued and that was enough. The problem with that is it suggests that all it took for someone to be accused of witchcraft was one act. And it's certainly true that in moments of which panics where lots of people have been accused, people could be swept up quite easily for small means. But typically a witchcraft
allegation came after someone had built a reputation over the years or had gotten in lots of quarrels and fights with their neighbors. And I think to say a cow died and it's immediately a threat of witchcraft kind of undermines how seriously people in this period took it and really wanted to understand why bad things were befalling them. And did anyone speak up for you? Also, no one would have been in jail by themselves. Jails were crowded. Jails were full of vermin. People were sleeping on straw that was often damp, crawling with mice and other things. And here her having a bench and a jail cell
to herself, even though it doesn't look very nice, would have been much better conditions than the average accused witch would have been subjected to. My husband has mouths to feed. He cannot afford to be associated with me now. She's been abandoned by everyone she knows. For a cow, 19 people were executed here. 19. At least this video gets the hanging part right. I'll give it that. And not one of them was a witch. Like obviously, they were just people accused by other people.
It is true that witches were just people accused by other people. But I think we have to be careful in any sort of suggestion that people in the 16th, 17th century were more credulous than we are, just believed whatever. They were more gullible, more irrational. That's not true. In the context of their perceived reality, witchcraft was a serious threat. They were genuinely afraid about what might happen to their futures, to their families, to themselves. Witchcraft at its core was about fear. So, without question, the people who died for this imagined crime of witchcraft were people. But, the accusations that brought them to the gallows, they were rooted in people being afraid. Fear is a
really dangerous thing, and we should be careful in not assuming that we as a society are any more insulated from the power of fear or not knowing or otherness making us do really horrific things to our loved ones and to our neighbors. Enough of that. Eyes down. Don't look at her. the woman from the woods? So, one of the things that's really interesting to me about this video is the kid ask, "Is she the woman from the woods?" But, the thing about witches in the early modern period is they didn't live apart from the community. They were believed to be your neighbor, your friend, an intimate, an acquaintance. And that's what made them so terrifying.
They could be the intimate enemy. So, I think this idea of is that the woman from the woods, is that the witch from the woods, that is very much coming from fairy tales, that's coming from pop culture. Even though, of course, witches in this period were believed to congregate in the woods, they didn't live there. They lived among you. Witch. She cursed the miller boy. So, when that guy crosses himself, when this supposed witch walks by, the Puritans, which I think this is depicting, would have found that appalling, right? The sign of the cross, making it over your body, was seen as a very Catholic, even popish symbol, and for the Puritans, that was a no-go.
No one knows that. Stick her. from her. The clothing is all wrong here. Let's take a closer look. This little girl is wearing a very cute, but very inaccurate sweater. The pattern that she has on is sort of this fair isle print, the type that gets developed in Shetland in Scotland in the 18th century, primarily first for fishermen's hats. No one in the context of 17th century New England was wearing this pattern with this saturated of colors. The style is great, the history is bad. I feel your pain. Let me also say that if this woman was genuinely believed to be a witch, there is no way this mother would just stand there and let her child be touched by her. People were afraid of witches. They
believed witches could do harm. And a lot of that fear was rooted in this idea that witches could harm children, could impede fertility, could cause babies to wither and die. So, unless this is the world's worst 17th century mother, I highly doubt she would be putting her child before this purported witch. Mama, I can feel my legs again. And one of the things that is really important to know about the witch hunts is that even white magic, even good and healing magic was considered by authorities to be something that involved a deal with the devil. That's how people understood that ordinary Jack and Jill peasant would be able to perform magic at all. They thought they had made a pact with Satan. So, therefore magic in all of its forms,
according to most authorities during this time period, was in fact demonic. Let's move on to the next video. If you take this, you'll feel better. One of the things that this video is already insinuating is that the accused witch was actually a witch. The thing is, while there were of course some wise women and cunning folk who were accused of witchcraft during the 16th and 17th centuries, the vast majority of those accused were not. Most people were just ordinary men and women, mostly women, who got caught up in fear and reputation and in this sort of chain of events, this perfect storm that led to the
deaths of so many. So, I think it's really misleading to suggest that an accused witch is waking up, opening a book, doing a potion, doing spells. That takes away from the fact that these truly were innocent people who were believed to be engaged in a very deadly demonic conspiracy. No, there's no way this street would be so clean. It would be covered in horse and other animal I would like to add. So, this is a very pristine, washed street that would not You would not have found it anywhere in the 17th century, much less up until the 20th. I'm not a witch. She poisoned my daughter.
Guilty. I will note that in that video they have American accents as they're saying, "She poisoned my daughter, she's guilty." That would not have been the case in the 17th century. The colonists of New England still very much held on to much of their English dialect. I'm innocent. Witch. A lot of things going on here in this particular scene. The way that hangings worked in this period is that the accused climbed up a ladder and then was turned off the ladder. The hanging was slow. It was painful. It was in some ways sort of horrific to watch, but it wasn't a sort of lights out moment like you have as later scaffolds get developed and trapdoors and other things are sort of built into these sort of
structures of state-sanctioned murder. So, this scaffold, too, is inaccurate for a range of reasons. You brought this on yourselves. And here again, this video is suggesting that this was a real witch. And the subtext is that they were right to execute her. These were ordinary people. These were not witches. I don't know what the green gas is. I got questions about that. That again is clearly pulling from pop culture. And of course, this is how AI slop videos work, right? They scrape what is ever is available in the public domain and sometimes things that are not available in the public domain, things that are stolen. And this is clearly sort of a Disneyfication of this particular video. And I hate it. All right, next. So this one already is fascinating
because here we have kind of quintessential images of the witches' sabbath. These nocturnal gatherings which is were believed to have under cover of darkness on a mountain, in the woods, away from human sight. And people believed at these witches' sabbaths that all sorts of dastardly deeds were being done. People were committing cannibalistic infanticide, having ritual orgies with Satan, and other various and sundry acts. But here we have women sort of dancing happily without any sign of the demonic or of the things about witchcraft that people were really terrified of. So I think this is a really good example of people reclaiming today the idea of what witchcraft is.
The idea that when women together it can be powerful and not necessarily frightening. One of the things that is the most sort of archetypal, the most stereotypical when we think of witches is of course the pointed hat. Some people think that the pointed hat comes from anti-Semitic stereotypes about what Jews were purportedly meant to wear in the late medieval period. Other scholars say the pointy witches' hat is kind of a bastardization of typical headwear that sometimes Puritans and others wore that had that kind of triangular shape. But regardless, the pointed hat doesn't actually become a mainstay of the witchcraft stereotype until the 18th century, until after the witch trials
have reached their heyday and have begun to end. When you see a pointed hat, know that it's a feature of popular culture that has maybe some roots in history, but is more the product of later depictions of the witch. Let's move on to the next video. Day three of not being a witch, but apparently my herbal tea cured a headache, so now I'm on trial. So this video suggests that this woman gives herbal tea to someone, it works, and then they are on trial. That is totally bogus. If you were an ordinary neighbor, if you gave a friend or a loved one a tea because their head hurt, that's normal herbal medicine. Most people practice that. Most witchcraft allegations start with a misfortune.
Your baby dies of a mysterious illness in the course of two days and you don't know what happened to them. Your husband becomes impotent and you worry about the future of your line of your family. Your cow is unable to produce milk like normal. There's a freak frost that causes your crops to die much earlier in the season than they should have done. These are the sorts of things that made ordinary people think to themselves, "What's the cause of this?" And they didn't immediately go from zero to she's a witch, right? They wondered about natural causes. But in ruling them out, and if there was someone in their lives who they didn't trust, who had a negative reputation, that could then
spiral into accusing a neighbor, someone who's in the village, of causing that harm to themselves, families, livelihoods. All right, next. Come closer. Don't be afraid. I'll show you what real magic is. So this video has nothing to do with the actual history of the witch hunts or even historical ideas about witches so much as our modern pop culture idea of what a witch is. Everything here is stereotypical, right? The green potion, the scary face, the hot, you know, people did believe that some witches brewed potions and poisonous ointments and these sorts of things, but the way this video is presenting it is very much
fantastical, very much Disney-fied, although a scary Disney. Disney married with the Brothers Grimm. It's not actually about the history. Let's move on. Mistress Hale, you are accused of covenanting with the devil. Right off the bat, there are a couple things wrong with this video. Number one, why are they holding a hearing outside? It's Puritan New England. It is cold AF half the time. They're not meeting outside. They're not meeting outside in the summer or the winter. Typically, the trials were held in the Salem Town House, which was a municipal building that functioned as a courtroom.
No one is standing barefoot out in the dirt because, of course, the judges themselves would not want it to have conducted trials in the elements. So, the location from the outset, wrong. What say you? I swear before God I have done no such thing. This part is accurate, right? A lot of the people who were accused of witchcraft in Salem and elsewhere really attested to their innocence. And they didn't want to confess to something that they hadn't done. These people were concerned about their salvation. They wanted to be right with God. So, when asked, "Have you met the devil? Have you done his deeds in the woods? Have you harmed these children?" They often said
no. Until, of course, in certain times and places, other sorts of pressure was applied that led to some people confessing. So, this video is set in Salem. And in Salem, something interesting happens. People who are accused of witchcraft and confess, they actually stay alive because they are used as witnesses for the prosecution. The first accused witch, Tituba, is really a prime example of this. She confesses, and then that's more fodder for those who want to go after the scourge of witchcraft in the community. That's unusual though. In other places in Europe, if you confess, it's the most important, most surefire evidence to send you to the gallows or to the fire.
The testimonies claim otherwise. Will you confess and seek mercy? I AM NO WITCH. THAT LINE, I am no witch, we have records of people in Salem saying that very thing. I'm not a witch. I've never met the devil. I would never do this. I'm a godly woman. So many of these AI slop videos are purportedly set in Salem. Now, of course, no Salem that would have been recognizable to people in the 17th century, but regardless. And this should cause us to ask, why does Salem loom so large in the popular imagination and in all of the sort of material out there that AI is vacuuming up and slopping out into these truly questionable and terrible videos. And that's because of the prominence of
America in the pop culture market. It's because of Arthur Miller's The Crucible and the film that got made. It's because of the popularity of the 2015 film The Witch. It's because when people think of a phenomena, America looms really large. But Salem is a drop in the bucket of the broader story of the early modern witch hunts. Salem, 20 people die. Now, any loss of life is tragic, right? 19 people hanged, one is pressed to death. Lots of other people languish in jail. A lot of other people's lives damaged because of accusations. But that's a small number if you look at Europe as a whole, and you realize that hundred thousand people were accused in Europe between the late 15th and early 18th century. And of
those, 50,000 people, mostly women, lost their lives. Enough of that. The first thing I'll say about this video is it suggests that there is a cohesive idea of a witch prior to the 14th or 15th century when the idea of the demonic witch really develops and solidifies. So, you don't really have the idea of the witch prior to that in Europe, at least not in the way that leads to the witch hunts. So, that alone is inaccurate here. So, here we're in the heyday of the witch hunts, right? By the time we get to the second half of the 16th century. And this video is depicting all of these witches purportedly over time as being young, as being beautiful, at the height of their beauty, which I think is sort of the creator's way of well, the
AI's way of making this a tragic heroine figure. But in reality, most of those accused of witchcraft, insofar as we know their ages, and I should say often we don't. were middle-aged, right? In their 40s, in their 50s. Now, that's not true everywhere, but it is a pattern. And it's a pattern that matters because often someone was first suspected of witchcraft when they were young, the purported age of some of these AI figures, but they weren't actually accused until decades later once that reputation, once that suspicion among their neighbors had built up and crystallized into something that could lead to a deadly allegation.
Here, actually, you have an image of a supposed witch that's I think meant to be kind of a Puritan-esque witch in the black and white garb. But, 1715, the witch trials had ended in a Puritan New England, and ordinary people weren't typically wearing black garb. It was expensive. They might wear it when they went to church, but it wasn't the normal common dress. The only good thing about this video, and I mean the only, is the fact that we have very cute cats on display. And cats are associated with witchcraft for a couple of reasons. Cats were associated with heresy even before the witch trials
began because cats are mysterious creatures, right? They're both domestic and wild. They behave in sort of unpredictable ways. If anybody has ever heard a cat get in a fight, that is an unholy sound. And actually, in the '90s, a representing this kind of goth phenomenon, you start actually to see in some of the later depictions in this video, a much more modern understanding of witchcraft as something potentially empowering, something that you opt into. That's enough AI slop for today and forever. I hope I cleared some things up.
