State of the Unknown | Exploring Paranormal Stories and Dark American Folklore

The Hartford Witch Panic | America’s Forgotten First Witch Panic

• Season 1 • Episode 6

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Robert Barber presents a chilling deep dive into one of America’s earliest witch trials.

Before Salem, fear gripped Hartford, Connecticut.

In 1662, unexplained deaths, superstition, and hysteria sparked the nation’s first witch panic — and left a legacy history nearly forgot.

In this episode of State of the Unknown, we trace the eerie and emotional story of the Hartford Witch Trials — a dark origin point in America's haunted past.



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They said the devil could slip through walls. That he wore the faces of neighbors. That he could whisper into your dreams and steal your breath before morning. They said a woman could kill with a glance. Spoil milk. Sour a newborn. Call down fever like rain. They didn't need proof. Only silence. A shadow. A name said too many times in the wrong kind of voice. In the spring of 1647, a woman was led to the gallows in Hartford, Connecticut. Her name was Alce Young. She had no defense, no jury, no surviving trial record, just the noose and a new precedent. Because what happened in Hartford didn't end there. It spread. across decades, across counties, across families. Long before Salem, long before the world was watching, the first witch was already dead. This wasn't Salem. This wasn't a cautionary tale from Europe. This was Hartford, Connecticut, a Puritan settlement still carving itself out of the wilderness. And in the mid-1600s, fear moved faster. than fact. Witchcraft wasn't a rumor. It was an explanation. And for more than a decade, it was law. Long before the infamous trials in Massachusetts, people were being accused, tortured, and executed in Connecticut. And when they died, history looked away. But their stories never really disappeared. They just sank beneath the surface, waiting. I'm your host, Robert Barber, and today we're going back further than Salem to a time when witches were real, the devil lived next door, and suspicion could get you hanged. This is the story of America's first witch panic, the one history tried to forget. This is State of the Unknown. In the mid-1600s, Hartford, Connecticut was still more wilderness than town. It had only recently been settled by a group of English Puritans, strict Calvinists who had fled Europe to create a religious community in the New World. They came with bibles, plows, and fear. Fear of the forest, fear of the unknown, and fear of the devil himself. Hartford was bordered by dense woods, where trees grew close and light seldom reached the forest floor. To the colonists, these woods weren't just wild. They were spiritually dangerous. They believed Satan lived in untamed places, just beyond the reach of their cleared land and cleared consciences. Their homes were timber-framed, simple and dark, huddled close against the cold. Chimneys smoked with green wood and the smell of damp stone. Inside, light came from candles and hearths. But it didn't chase away the shadows. Because the greatest danger, they believed, wasn't in what they could see. It was in what they couldn't. In this world, superstition wasn't a fringe belief. It was woven into daily life. If your child had died of a sudden fever, if your cow stopped producing milk, if bread spoiled too fast or your field failed, there was a reason. And if no earthly cause could be found, there had to be an unearthly one, a hex, a curse, or even the devil's touch. And behind all of it, they believed, was the witch. Witches weren't just women who practiced folk healing or midwifery. In Puritan theology, a witch was someone who had made a deliberate pact with the devil, trading their soul for power. They could fly, speak in tongues, send spirits to torment neighbors or kill livestock. It wasn't just folklore. It was a theological certainty backed by scripture. Exodus 22, 18, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. It was more than a line in the Bible. It was policy. So when things went wrong in early Hartford, when children got sick, when women miscarried, when dreams turned disturbing, the question wasn't if the devil was involved. It was who he was working through. And once suspicion took root, the fire would spread. Her name was Alce Young, spelled A-L-S-E in the colonial records, possibly short for Alice. She lived in Windsor, Connecticut, just north of Hartford. And on May 26, 1647, she became the first person known to be executed for witchcraft in colonial America. We don't know what she looked like. There are no surviving portraits, no letters, no confession. Only this, written in the diary of a Massachusetts clergyman. Alce Young was hanged. No reason given, no trial transcript, No defense record. We do know this. She was likely in her 30s or early 40s. She was married to a man named John Young, a man of modest standing in the Windsor community. And she may have had one daughter, Alice, who was later also accused of witchcraft, years after her mother's death. But beyond that, silence. No surviving charges. There were no witnesses listed. and no court decision, just a rope. And the shadow had cast. Historians believe that Alce may have been swept up in a larger wave of fear because in the months leading up to her execution, Connecticut was experiencing a deadly outbreak. A flu-like epidemic had killed numerous residents, including the daughter of Governor John Haynes. As was often the case in Puritan communities, Unexplained illness and death demanded a scapegoat. And if the devil was to blame, then someone must have opened the door. That someone, they decided, was Alice Young. She was taken to Gallows Hill, just outside Hartford's town center, likely on foot, surrounded by a crowd. There were no formal executioners in the colonies then. Her death would have been handled by the town itself. No coffin, no grave marker, only a warning. And after the rope tightened and the crowd turned home, the panic didn't fade. It had only just begun. We know the first name, Alce Young. She was a wife and mother from Windsor, Connecticut, a quiet farming town along the river. In 1647, Alice became the first person executed for witchcraft in what would become the United States. She was hanged. There's no surviving record of her trial transcript, no detailed list of evidence, just a chilling line in a journal kept by John Winthrop Jr., governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Alice Young was hanged. She left behind a young daughter, Alice Young Beeman, who, remarkably, would later be accused of witchcraft herself in Springfield, Massachusetts during the Salem Hysteria decades later. But Alice wasn't alone. By 1663, the Hartford Witch Panic had reached its fever pitch. Between 1662 and 1663, at least seven women were formally accused of witchcraft in the region. Several were executed, Others died in jail. Among the most well-known was Mary Johnson, a servant from Wethersfield. She was arrested in 1648 and interrogated under duress for years. Eventually, she confessed, though how willing that confession was remains questionable. She said she'd made a pact with the devil, practiced witchcraft, and even unclean acts with Satan. These were familiar tropes by this point. Cultural scripts people began to internalize under intense pressure. Mary was executed in 1650, likely by hanging. She had been pregnant while imprisoned. Her child was born just months before her death. Then there were Nathaniel and Rebecca Greensmith, a married couple from Hartford. Rebecca was known to be bold, outspoken. and perhaps not particularly well-liked. But in 1662, she was accused by a young girl named Anne Cole, who had fallen ill and claimed to be tormented by specters, including Rebecca's. Under questioning, Rebecca confessed to dancing with the devil and consorting with other witches. Her husband Nathaniel was less cooperative, but he was found guilty anyway. Both were hanged together on January 25th, 1663. Other accused women during the Hartford Panic include Elizabeth Seeger, who was eventually acquitted, Goody Ayers, who fled, and Mary Sanford, who was also likely hanged. Unfortunately, the exact number of those executed is debated. Some records were lost. Others were never written. but scholars estimate that between four and six people were hanged in Hartford for witchcraft during this period. The most common method of execution in colonial New England was hanging, not burning. That's a European image, not an American one. Victims were often hanged from trees or makeshift gallows, typically in public spaces. Their deaths were meant to serve as warnings. And unlike Salem, where records, trial documents, and even names have been preserved, much of Hartford's witch panic was swallowed by silence. The accused were buried in unmarked graves. Their names were left out of church histories. And over time, the memory of their deaths faded from the town's conscience. But if we listen carefully, we can still hear what fear did to them, and what it nearly erased. To understand why the accusations took hold, why neighbors turned on each other and people confessed to impossible things, you have to understand what the Puritans believed. To them, witchcraft wasn't metaphor or myth. It was as real as the plague, as real as the forest outside their doors. They believed that the devil walked among them, not as a beast, but as a whisper, as a temptation. as a presence behind your eyes when you spoke ill of your neighbor or wished misfortune in your heart. And they believed that certain people could align themselves with them. Witches, they said, were not merely evil. They were chosen. Chosen to carry out Satan's will on earth. Chosen to poison children, spoil crops, and make cows run dry. to curse marriages, to bring down entire households with nothing more than a muttered word. They also believed in spectral evidence. This meant that a person could be found guilty of witchcraft based on, not physical proof, but on visions, dreams, hallucinations, or the testimony of someone who claimed to have seen a spirit that looked like the accused. If a woman appeared in your dream whispered in your ear or sat on your chest while you slept, that was evidence. If a sick child cried out someone's name in the middle of a fever, that was evidence. If a witness claimed they saw your specter walking through the woods when your body was at home, well, that was enough. Witchcraft was often tied to sickness and death, especially among infants and young children. A child born sickly could be seen as a sign that the mother had sinned, or that a witch had cursed the womb. Stillbirths were explained not by disease or poor nutrition, but by hexes. A cow's sudden death wasn't natural. It was the work of an invisible hand. Milk that turned sour overnight was a sign. In many towns, if two or three unexplained deaths occurred in close succession, a witch hunt was all but guaranteed. They even looked for witch marks, small moles, skin tags, or birthmarks believed to be teats for feeding demons. Midwives were often examined, stripped, and inspected for these marks. So were elderly women, even children. Pain, shame, Dignity? None of that mattered when the soul of a town was at stake. And still, belief wasn't the only fuel. There was also power. Accusations could be weaponized, used to settle land disputes, to punish outspoken women, to target those who didn't conform. And once accused, there was little you could do to save yourself, except confess. and name someone else. And so the fire spread, not just across towns, but inside homes, turning neighbor against neighbor, family against family. Because what they feared wasn't just the devil outside, it was the possibility that he was already inside someone you loved. Not all fear lived in the courtroom. Some of it lived in the corners of homes, under the hearthstones, behind chimneys, or buried beneath the barn. Because even as the Puritans clung to scripture, many still held on to older beliefs. Rituals passed down from England and whispered across generations. Folk magic, protective charms, ways to keep evil out when prayers didn't feel like enough. One of the most common protective practices was the use of witch bottles. These were small glass or ceramic containers filled with a mixture of pins or nails, hair or fingernail clippings, pieces of fabric, and even urine. The idea was that if a witch sent a curse your way, the bottle would trap it. The sharp objects inside would impale the spirit, And if you buried the bottle beneath your threshold or fireplace, the evil couldn't enter your home. Hundreds of these bottles have been found across New England and the UK. Still buried. Still intact. Some as recently as the 2000s. Other homes used iron nails, horseshoes or daggers, hidden inside walls or nailed above door frames. Iron was believed to repel dark spirits. especially if it was old or forged by hand. You might also find shoes, especially children's shoes, concealed inside walls. They were believed to absorb bad luck or disease, decoys for curses. And in some homes, especially those near the woods, you'd find marks carved into wood, symbols meant to confuse spirits or ward off witches. Circles, crosses, Interlocking Vs thought to stand for Virgo Virginum or the Virgin Mary. Even those who would never call it magic still practiced these rituals. They were, after all, a form of home security. They didn't challenge the church. They didn't name the devil. They just helped or seemed to. Because if a child fell sick and you had no protection buried underneath your hearth, what would your neighbors think? And if your barn caught fire and you had no marks on your doors, what would you think? Sometimes the only difference between being accused of witchcraft and protecting yourself from it was whether or not someone was watching. When most people hear American witch trials, they think Salem. They picture 1692, the gallows, the accusations, the hysteria. But the truth is, Salem didn't start the fire. It just made it impossible to ignore. By the time those trials began, Connecticut had already executed at least 11 people for witchcraft. And unlike Salem, it wasn't a single year of panic. It spanned more than 15 years across multiple towns. So why don't we remember? Part of it is the record. Much of what happened in Hartford was poorly documented or never recorded at all. Court notes were sparse. Confessions were rarely written down. And some trials were held in secret to avoid scandal or public unrest. Unlike Salem, where the trials were a media spectacle even in their own time, Connecticut's panic was quiet, local, and politically inconvenient. But it wasn't just lost. It was buried. In the decades that followed, Connecticut's leaders sought to distance themselves from the era of suspicion. They embraced Enlightenment thinking, scientific progress, in religious moderation. In the witch trials, they became an embarrassment. Even churches stopped mentioning them. Histories written in the 1700s and 1800s left out the names of the condemned entirely. In public memory, the gallows vanished. Alice Young's name was nearly erased. For centuries, she was just a line in a diary. Alice Young was hanged. No grave, No memorial, no apology. It wasn't until 2006, over 350 years later, that efforts began to formally exonerate her and others who died in Connecticut's witch panic. And even then, it took years of advocacy before Connecticut's General Assembly officially acknowledged the injustice. Not until 2023, just two years ago, did the state formally exonerate all of the known victims, including Alice Young, Mary Johnson, Joan Carrington, and others. After nearly four centuries, they were finally believed. The Hartford Witch Panic may have vanished from the history books for centuries. but its shadow never fully left. It lingered in New England folklore, in whispered stories passed down in families, in churchyards where no markers stood. And slowly, piece by piece, it began to return. In Hartford's ancient burying ground, there's no monument to Alice Young, no stone carved with her name. But researchers and historians have worked to document her life and her death. Genealogists traced her descendants. Advocates petitioned the state for recognition. And artists, writers, and educators began to reclaim her story. Books, podcasts, historical fiction, and local tours have begun to give voice to the women and men who are silenced. In 2023, after years of pressure from descendants and historians, the Connecticut state legislature passed a formal resolution. It exonerated all known victims of the Connecticut witch trials, acknowledging that they had been wrongfully executed or imprisoned, and that no evidence had ever justified the charges against them. It was late, but it was real. And in a country that so often forgets its darker corners, that act of remembrance mattered. But the legacy of the witch panic isn't just found in plaques and politics. It lives in the way we tell stories, in how we treat outsiders, in the fear we still carry of women who are too bold, too strange, too alone. The same dynamics that fueled Hartford's panic in 1647, grief, suspicion, control, still shape the way that we respond to uncertainty today. It's easier to blame a person than a system, and it's easier to burn a body than to face a fear we can't name. What happened in Hartford wasn't a spectacle. It wasn't a trial by fire like the ones we so often hear about in Salem. It was quieter. But maybe that's what makes it worse. Because when fear takes root in silence, when accusations spread without torches, without mobs, it becomes something else entirely. It becomes normalized, acceptable, hidden in plain sight. The Hartford Witch Panic didn't ignite the nation. It didn't go down in history books. But it should have. Because it was first. The first executions for witchcraft on what would be American soil. The first time a town turned on itself in the name of invisible evil. And it set the stage for what would come later. We don't know the full stories of every woman accused. We don't know how many families were torn apart, how many children were left behind, how many apologies came too late, if they ever came at all. But we do know this. These were not monsters. They were mothers, midwives, neighbors, ordinary women caught in an extraordinary storm of grief, fear, and belief. And we owe them more than silence. Their names may be hard to find. Their graves may be unmarked. But the fear that surrounded them? That's easy to recognize. Because it's still with us. We still search for someone to blame when life stops making sense. Still demonize the different. Still use fear to explain the unexplainable. And maybe that's why stories like this still matter. because they remind us how fragile justice is when it's twisted by belief, and how quickly a neighbor can become a threat when you're afraid of what you can't see. This is State of the Unknown. Every other week, we travel to another corner of America, mapping the haunted highways, hidden legends, and unnatural stories buried just beneath the surface. If you're enjoying the show, take a second to follow, rate, and share it with someone who loves The Strange as much as you do. It helps more than you think, especially in these early weeks. And it helps these stories reach people who may never have heard of them. The Hartford Witch Panic isn't just history. It's a reminder that fear doesn't always arrive in flames. Sometimes, it slips in through the cracks, quietly, methodically until the people you know aren't safe to know anymore.

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