FtV - The Witches of Westerly
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Welcome, legendary listeners. Thanks for tuning in to From the Vault, a second look at some of our classic episodes. Look for a new episode every week. Now, can you go back and listen on your own at OurNewEnglandLegends.com? You bet. But you won't get the added bonus of an After the Legends segment featuring new commentary about that episode from your old pals Jeff and Ray. So let's open up the New England Legends Vault and revisit another legendary episode.

Welcome to The Vault. It is a very witchy vault this week. We go and revisit The Witches of Westerly. First aired July 23rd, 2020. Enjoy. Oh my God, what was that? It sounds like some kind of evil laugh. We must be getting close. Close to what? I mean, there's not much out here in rural Hopkinton, Rhode Island. Ray, the rural areas are often where we find the fringe of society. And in my experience, the fringe is the most interesting.

There was a time when Hopkinton was part of nearby Westerly, Rhode Island. And that was a time when some people on the fringe were thought to have magical powers. Ooh, what kind of magical powers? Ray, today we're searching for the witches of Westerly.

Hi, I'm Jeff Belanger. And I'm Ray Ogier. Welcome to episode 153 of the New England Legends podcast. If you give us about 10 minutes, we'll give you something strange to talk about today as we continue our mission to chronicle every legend in New England, one story at a time. Helping us in our mission is our Patreon patrons...

These legendary folks help us out with three bucks per month, though some choose to help out a little more than that. Thank you. And they get early access to new episodes, plus bonus episodes and content that no one else gets to hear or see. If you enjoy what we do each week, please consider heading over to patreon.com slash New England Legends to sign up.

This week, we'd like to welcome those folks who listen and subscribe to us through the Pandora Music and Podcast Service. Yes, welcome. We're honored to be included in their hand-picked library of podcasts.

Wherever you're listening to us, please hit the subscribe button on your smartphone. It's free, and we don't want you to miss a thing. And if you're listening on Pandora, go hit that thumbs up. We love that. We want you to become a bigger part of our community, so don't be shy. Please get involved. All right, Jeff, so we're looking for witches in Rhode Island. That we are.

Now, we've looked for witches before. We have. We've found them in Massachusetts, of course. Right. Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, and now here in Rhode Island. Though no one in Rhode Island was ever officially labeled by the courts as a witch, that didn't stop the court of public opinion. Now,

Now Jeff, I've read that the hill near Goose Nest Spring in North Kingston, Rhode Island is a place where witches held a high carnival. There you have it. So Rhode Island is a vacation destination for witches. Now as for the witchy women of the southern part of the state, I uncovered these stories while digging through a 1956 thesis from the University of Rhode Island called Supernatural Folklore of Rhode Island by Idola Jean Borghese. I'm sure I'm saying that wrong. Forgive me.

And that sent me on a quest to learn more. A quest that's brought us down here to southwestern Rhode Island to find the witches of Westerly. Then let's head back to the year 1740 and set this up. It's the winter of 1740 and we're heading inside the house of Thomas Potter of Westerly. Everyone in the house is a little nervous because Granny Mott is coming over.

And Granny Mott has a witchy reputation. Well, what is she up to? Locals will tell you she can ride a smooth-shod horse on ice with amazing speed. Now, a smooth-shod horse refers to the shoes on the animal. Some horseshoes have cogs or spikes to give them better traction. But Granny Mott's horse...

I guess as none. Nope. And the only way an old woman can speed across the ice on a horse like that must mean the horse is really her familiar. Which, of course, would make her... It makes her a witch. Right. Now, managing a horse at high speed on ice may not be explicitly spelled out in Cotton Mather's Malleus Maleficarum, but it doesn't matter. The other thing about Granny Mott is she's reclusive. A loner. Not to mention, a widow. It sounds like she's arrived.

Granny Mott makes her way to the sitting room and sits in a chair by the fireplace. Now I can see one of the children is playing in the corner of the room. Now it looks like one of the other kids is whispering something to the boy. She doesn't whisper.

Hmm. This kid is up to something. While Granny Mott is speaking with Thomas Potter, the boy is sneaking over to the other corner of the room and going through his mother's sewing basket. Hmm. He's pulled out a stitching awl. It's a sharp needle at the end of a small handle, and you use it to make holes in fabric. Okay, I just saw him put the awl behind his back. He's definitely up to something. But now the boy is sneaking up behind the chair where Granny Mott is sitting.

He's sticking the awl into the wood behind the chair. Okay, that was weird. Granny Mott just sat up pretty straight and her eyes have grown wide.

The boy stuck the awl in the wood. Not her, but she seems kind of frozen. And that would be another sign that she's a witch. Okay. The old pin in the chair, and she's stuck. Once Mr. Potter is finished interviewing Granny Mott and seems satisfied enough with her answers, one of the children pulls the awl from the back of Granny's chair, and suddenly the old woman practically jumps to her feet. Knock, knock, knock.

And she's gone. Granny Mott does visit the Potter home a few more times in the coming months, but she never sits in a chair in the house again. Granny Mott's visits to the Potter family, or any other home for that matter, ends later the same year after a curious incident involving some chickens. One of Granny Mott's neighbors is not a fan of a group of hens that are constantly harassing him. The hens always seem to gather in front of Granny Mott's house, and their leader goes for the feet of the neighbor.

She pecks, she bats her wings at him and constantly torments him. And this neighbor, he's had enough. He fires his rifle. He's sure he hit the bird, but it has no effect. He fires again. Again he's sure he hit the bird, but she's still attacking. And that's when the man cuts a silver button from his coat. He loads it into his rifle, takes aim one more time. The bird drops dead. And the other hens, they flee the scene.

The next day, he learns that Granny Mott turned gravely ill yesterday and died with her daughter by her bedside. A few neighbors offered to help the woman tend to Granny Mott, but she wouldn't have it. She demanded complete privacy as she prepared Granny's body for the coffin. Folks in town believe the reason for the secrecy is so no one would see the gunshot wound and the silver coat button that took Granny Mott's life. From here, we're going to move ahead in time 50 years to meet another westerly witch. ♪

The year is now 1790, and Westerly's rumor mill is running at full steam because of the antics of one Rebecca Sims. Rebecca Sims loves to dance. Okay. And those who have seen her spin herself into a frenzy claim that when she really gets going, Rebecca can dance around the room on the edge of a chair molding that runs along the wall. What? That molding is like maybe an inch wide. No one could dance on that. There she goes.

Yep. She's a witch. I'm convinced. Dancing on sheer molding isn't all she's doing. There's a westerly man who keeps the night watch in town. He claims the witch, Rebecca Sims, often visited him on his watches. He said that she'd put her witch bridle on him and ride him like a horse for great distances.

She'd ride him until he was exhausted, then hitch him to a post for hours while she goes into a home where there's fiddling and dancing. Rode him like a horse, huh? That's his story, and he's sticking to it. I bet. And that brings us back to today. ♪

Of course, Rhode Island isn't immune from its share of witches. Now, before we leave southern Rhode Island, it's worth mentioning a place called Warden Pond, which is just 10 miles east of here. Because that quaint pond is a place where the witches of Westerly claimed that, quote,

fairies used to congregate and dance by moonlight in the olden time when the gods and goddesses made Atlantis their summer abode. Witches, fairies, gods, Atlantis, and deadly silver coat buttons. That's a lot of legends for one adventure. It is. And we've chased other witch stories throughout New England, Jeff. Yeah, we have. The one common thread is that the witches are

always outsiders. Right. They're often wards of the town, so neighbors have to take care of them whether they like it or not. And all of them lay some claim to have the ability to transform and hex others. And the witches of Westerly are no different. They're outsiders. They're eccentric. But above all else, we do remember them. Even centuries after their deaths, they can still cast a spell on us. And that is magic. Music

Well, we hope we cast a spell on you each week, enough so that you tell a friend or two about our show. Maybe share your favorite episodes on social media or post a review for us. That goes a long way in helping us find and document all these amazing stories. If you've got a story lead for us to check out, feel free to post it in our super secret Facebook group, contact us through our website, or you can call or text our legend line any old time at 617-444-9683.

You can also leave our show closing on there for us. And of course, our theme music is by John Judd. Hi, this is Caden Stiesko calling from Wood River Junction, Rhode Island. Until next time, remember, the bazaar is much closer than you think. We'll break it down right after a word from our sponsor.

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Get started with Line2.com slash audio or download Line2 in any app store today. Line2, your second line simplified. Witchy women in Westerly. I feel like that's a song. Could be. It should be. Witchy woman? Yeah. I don't know. Some band should get on that. We've covered many witch stories over the years. And the one common thread is always like, if you behave weird...

in any way and whatever whatever that society at the time says is weird yeah you're a witch she's a witch right um today i mean these women could have been on the spectrum or they could like yeah i just i just like to dance and like i gotta move my body or whatever free spirit right so whatever but you just go well that's not how we expect people to behave yeah therefore you're a

witch. Could that come back? I feel like that could come back at any given time. I feel like we're pretty sure we're there. You're not acting the way I want you to act. You're a witch. Yes. I saw that last social media post you made. You're clearly not, uh, you're not where you, we want you to be. So, um, yeah, which is funny, right? So, uh,

So we either have freedom to behave as we want, assuming we don't, you know, infringe on others' freedom. Right. Or break any laws while doing it. Which would break a law, right? Yeah. Like, you're free to live and work and breathe, and if I, you know, impede that, I should be punished. But if I don't get in your way and you don't get in mine, I don't know. Isn't that what freedom should be? Absolutely. Yeah. But anyway, I—yeah, we're living in a strange time where these stories kind of become relevant again.

I worked on an episode, I worked on every episode of Ghost Adventures, but one that's really stuck out over all 17 years of working on that show is Pennhurst Asylum, right outside of Philadelphia. And it was a, there's a federal law that has to do with how you can and can't treat people with mental disabilities based on atrocities that took place at Pennhurst in the 1970s. 1970s, not 1870s, like 1970s, right? And so...

It was awful, like absolutely awful. I mean, I spoke to nurses that said their job was to change adult diapers on about 100 patients who were chained to beds. And she said, by the time you were done, it was time to start again. Right. Because they just... And some of them would like wipe their feces and their hair. But they did that not because they don't know what they're doing. They did it because they knew they'd get a bath. Right. And touch. Well, it's still...

a weird thing to do but i get it but they had no otherwise you just lay in bed all day chained to the bed and it was inhuman the way they treated people i interviewed one of the doctors that ultimately ended up on the show and in this line ended up on the show too which i thought was really powerful and he said i said you know how does this happen i mean there were there were patients in dog kennels like they would act wild so they would cage them up into a dog kennel and i said um

I said, how does this happen? You know, and he said, you know, the minute you think of another person or another group of people as something less than yourself, there's no limit to how poorly you can treat them. And I got a chill. I was, I mean, like everything, right? What from like Nazis, right? To, uh, to, to the othering we do with like politics and, and, uh, you know, even sports teams, like you're rooting for the wrong team, right? Like suddenly, like you're a Yankee fan, you're less than me.

You know what I mean? And you're like, no, you're not. You're just like a different baseball team. Right, right. Yeah, but that's the thing. Like, as soon as you think of someone as like, you're truly below me, then, well, violence against them is justified at the least. It's easier. It's whatever. Again, we're seeing that today, unfortunately. Yeah, it's terrible. I mean, we've always seen it, but it just seems to be very...

Right. Very much so today. You're less than me. So therefore, who cares what you think? Your rights don't matter. Your freedoms don't matter. And therefore, we're going to just, you know, do whatever we want to because you're less than.

And that's a slippery slope, right? I mean, you know, because eventually you might be on the less than list. You know what I mean? Well, the way you're acting above somebody else might be the weird way of acting. How do we know that the witch is dancing and, you know, playing the fiddle? How do we know that that's not the way we should be acting or the way we were intended to act? Way to bring it back. You know what I mean? Well done. Yeah. No, you're right. Hey, look, hey, we're all made and built differently and have different ideas and concepts and

different struggles and all that other stuff. But, uh, but I love stories like this and I love how extreme it gets. Like the idea that she could dance on a chair rail, which if you've ever seen a chair rail in a house, I mean, that thing doesn't stick out more than an inch. Yeah. And, um, but what, how fun, right? Like what a funny story. And, uh,

And then, you know, we've covered other stories. In fact, the dinglehole last week, we talked about the same thing where someone could transform into an animal. And in this case, it was a chicken. Right. And could take a gunshot. Didn't matter until there was silver in it. I thought the pin in the chair was interesting because it wasn't in the witch. It wasn't in the woman. That's right. But it was in the chair. Have you ever heard a story like that before? Who thought of that? She couldn't move because a pin was in the chair. Did the kid come up with that on his own? Right. Because everything's discovered for the first time. You picture the whispering like, I think

I think she had... I got a test. Watch this. I'm going to put a pin in the back of the chair. Why would you do that? How would that... Who thought of that? You're right. I have no idea. How would that prove anything? I don't know. I don't know. It's like the Monty Python thing. We're like, well, if she's in the water and she's made of wood and she's... She's a witch. She floats. Build a bridge out of her. Right? Like, no, that's not... You can't build a bridge out of a person. Yeah. But yeah, the witch craze. And keep in mind, you know, when you go back far enough...

you know, things like the Salem witch trials was not that far of a distant memory. And you know, there are witch trials we never heard about. Oh yeah. There was like small communities where they were just like, she's a witch burner at the stake. Tell no one. Yeah. Right. Just keep the press out of this. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no cameras. Yeah. No cameras. You know, everyone shut your phones off. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, Oh,

Are you on Facebook right now? Shut that down. Are you crazy? But yeah, you know there were little communities and stuff that did this. And they just, they never, it was never like written down. And the story never got passed beyond like a generation or two. Yeah, for sure. So it's scary when someone starts labeling you this thing and you go, oh no, anything could happen to me now. Yeah. Because I'm a witch. Yeah. So I don't know. Yeah, it's weird how a 200-year-old story suddenly gets relevant again, isn't it? It is. Here we are.

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