Or The Witch Who Wouldn’t Die
In 1684, in a Puritan town in Massachusetts, a woman named Mary Webster was accused of witchcraft.
Poor, outspoken, and “not the most placid,” she became an easy target for her neighbors’ fears. What followed was one of the strangest and most revealing stories of the colonial witch-hunt era—one that would echo through centuries of women’s resistance.
This Halloween bonus episode tells her story: the trial, the mob, and the myth that would later inspire Margaret Atwood’s poem Half-Hanged Mary.
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Sources
https://loadedliteraturepodcast.wordpress.com/2018/08/08/half-hanged-mary-by-margaret-atwood/
https://massreview.org/node/7575/
https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/mary-webster-witch-hadley-survives-hanging/
https://woodlawnschool.pbworks.com/f/The+Crucible+-+Half+Hanged+Mary+Poem+PDF.pdf
