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Salem gets all the credit — but the real story of American witch hunting starts almost sixty years earlier, in Connecticut, and doesn't end until a healer named Grace Sherwood is bound and thrown into a Virginia river. This episode traces the fifty-year Connecticut panic that quietly wrote the legal playbook Salem would later run off a cliff — and the woman who survived the very last chapter of it.

Content note/Trigger warning: This episode includes references to death, executions, and historical violence, discussed in a folkloric and historical context including the death of a child. Please take care of yourself and skip this episode if needed.

Sources Still curious? I’m thrilled to aid and abet a deep dive. Here are some of the sources I used, and a couple extra that I only scratched the surface:

• VISIT: Connecticut Witch Trial History Trail • Ferry Plantation House • Witchduck Road • Witchduck Point • Grace Sherwood Statue • Colonial Williamsburg
• READ: Before Salem • Entertaining Satan • The Devil in the Shape of a Woman • The Witch of Pungo
• WATCH: Grace Sherwood: The Witch of Pungo (PBS) • Our Place, Our Time (PBS) • Cry Witch (Colonial Williamsburg) • Pungo: A Witch's Tale

Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration (2023)

• Associated Press. (2023, May 26). Connecticut absolves 12 people convicted of witchcraft, apologizes for 'miscarriage of justice'. Fox News.
• Associated Press. (2023, May 26). Lawmakers absolve accused colonial-era witches, apologize in Connecticut. WSAZ.
• Associated Press. (2023, May 27). 'Miscarriage of justice': Connecticut lawmakers absolve accused colonial-era witches. The Daily Record.
• CBS News. (2023). Connecticut weighs exonerating accused witches who were executed in the 1600s: "This was wrong."
• Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration Project. (n.d.). Home / Press. connecticutwitchtrials.org
• NPR (1A). (2023, June 26). 370 years later, Connecticut is exonerating accused witches.
• The Middletown Press. (2023, March 3). Lawmakers consider exonerating people convicted of witchcraft in 1600s. PressReader.
• Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. (2023, February 19). Connecticut apology for witch trials gets a look. PressReader.
• Connecticut Particular Court Records, 1639–1663. Hartford, CT: Connecticut Historical Society. Museum & Library Holdings.
• Dayton Daily News. (2023, February 26). Connecticut considers an apology for witch trials. PressReader.

Grace Sherwood / The Witch of Pungo

• Encyclopedia Virginia. (2023, July 19). Grace Sherwood (ca. 1660–1740).
• Infinite Women. (2025, March 2). Grace Sherwood.
• Library of Virginia. (2023, October 2). Good witch or a bad witch?: The Grace Sherwood trial and pardon. The UncommonWealth.
• Neptune Ghosts. (2026, January 12). The Witch of Pungo.
• Neptune Ghosts. (2026, January 13). Witch Duck Road in Virginia Beach.
• Salem Witch Museum. (2023, July 28). Grace Sherwood: The "Witch" of Pungo.
• Virginia Museum of History & Culture. (n.d.). Grace Sherwood: The "Witch of Pungo."
• Wikipedia. (n.d.). Witchduck Point.
• Wood, K. L. (2014, July 23). Ducking the witch... Grace Sherwood's trial by water. [Blog post.]