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Legion of the Damned: Did Boudicca's curse cause 6,000 of Rome's fiercest warriors to vanish without trace? Over the course of its ...1,000-year history, Ancient Rome gave rise to many extraordinary stories which live on to this day. ...No wonder Hollywood has always loved Rome, whose ...sheer spectacle have given rise to great epic movies from Ben-Hur to Gladiator. Mystery: The unexplained disappearance of the 6,000 legionaires from Ninth Legion in Scotland is the inspiration behind two competing filmsYet the latest movies... comes not from the heart of Rome, but from a remote northern province...we now call Scotland, but which...

Religious persecution is nothing new to Massachusetts. But the commonwealth’s recent denial of a Catholic couple’s application to become foster parents because of their faith is a notable variation on the mass hysteria that once sent “witches” to the executioner.... In this instance, Michael and Catherine “Kitty” Burke were told they weren’t qualified to be foster parents unless they vowed to support a child should he or she someday identify as “LGBTQIA.” Talk about a litmus test. In fact, during a rigorous interview process with a social worker to determine their fitness as foster parents, the Burkes said they would...

SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS, October 31, 2002 - In the New England town of Salem, once considered the city of peace for the New World and the gateway to a glorious Christian commonwealth, the community prepares for the annual Halloween celebration, viewed by many as a triumph over the narrow-mindedness of Christianity. More than three hundred years after the now-infamous witch trials of 1692, Salem has become a Mecca for witches, as covens and practitioners of the occult arts gather from around the nation each October 31 to glory in paganism and identify with the city whose name has become synonymous with...

The Dark Haunted History of the Cursed Town of Black River Falls Brent Swancer August 4, 2019 Every once and a while a place will pop up that seems to draw to it an inordinate amount of strange phenomena and strangeness. It is not always clear why this should be, but looking at thier histories and records it can clearly be seen that they have been host to more oddness than most, as if weird forces are drawn to them. One such bizarre place is a small town in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, which for around a decade in...

The last Salem “witch” to be exonerated has been pardoned more than 329 years after she was convicted of witchcraft as part of the Salem Witch Trials. On Thursday, Massachusetts lawmakers exonerated Elizabeth Johnson Jr of witchcraft, making her the last “witch” to be pardoned. Between 1692 and 1693, dozens of women were hanged for witchcraft and hundreds more were accused of being “witches” at the trials in Salem.

On this date in 1688, colonial Boston hanged its last witch … or, its first Catholic martyr. Goodwife Ann Glover was an Irishwoman who had been among some 50,000 Catholics deported to Barbados* by Oliver Cromwell during the 1650s. 1688 finds her with a daughter, desperately poor, as housekeepers in Boston to one John Goodwin and his family. After one of Goodwin’s daughters accused the Glovers of stealing some linen, the daughter got cussed out and — per Cotton Mather’s credulous account of the washerwoman’s devilry — “visited with strange Fits, beyond those that attend an Epilepsy or a Catalepsy,...

This date in 1692 saw the last executions of the Salem witch trials. Eight souls hanged from sturdy trees at Gallows Hill on the occasion: Mary Easty (or Eastey) Alice Parker Mary Parker Ann Pudeator Wilmot Redd Margaret Scott Samuel Wardwell As well as: Martha Corey, days after her husband Giles was horribly pressed to death for refusing to recognize the court’s legitimacy by lodging any plea This group of mostly older women (and one man who married an older widow) had, like their predecessors over the course of 1692, been the victims of wailing children charging them (with afflicted...

On this date in 1692, the pious folk of Salem, Mass., hanged their first witch. Local bawd Bridget Bishop, pushing 60 and onto her third husband, was a natural target for the emergent civic insanity. She liked living it up down at the tavern with a red bodice and the occasional game of shuffleboard. When she entered the courtroom, all the little brats with the sorcery stories (strangers to the accused before all this started) fell down and howled. When the Salem goodwives were tasked with groping her for bodily disfigurements that might be a witches’ mark, they...

In January 1692, a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts became consumed by disturbing “fits” accompanied by seizures, violent contortions and bloodcurdling screams. A doctor diagnosed the children as being victims of black magic, and over the next several months, allegations of witchcraft spread like a virus through the small Puritan settlement. Twenty people were eventually executed as witches, but contrary to popular belief, none of the condemned was burned at the stake. In accordance with English law, 19 of the victims of the Salem Witch Trials were instead taken to the infamous Gallows Hill to die by...

FULL TITLE: Salem witch trial victims are honored in two different communities on the 325th anniversary of the tragedy Two communities in Massachusetts where 20 people suspected of witchcraft were put to death in 1692 honored the victims on Wednesday. The ceremonies in Salem and Danvers comes 325 years to the day when Sarah Good, Elizabeth Howe, Susannah Martin, Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Wildes were hanged at a site in Salem known as Proctor's Ledge. It was the first of three mass hangings at the spot. The 20th victim was crushed to death. Salem unveiled a memorial at noon on...

This is not America’s first brush with cancel culture, but we can bring it to a better, quicker end if we show courage now rather than hoping it burns itself out. In 1692, a group of hysterical teenage girls in Salem, Massachusetts, began denouncing girls from rival families as witches. Accusations of witchcraft soon multiplied and spread throughout the town; some of the accused were as young as four years old. Ultimately, 200 people were tried, and dozens executed, for fictitious crimes. The court did not require evidence, as the accusations themselves were considered proof of guilt. There are obvious...

Attorney Greg Jarrett recently wrote, “It is Pelosi and Schiff who are abusing the power of impeachment in their latest ‘witch hunt.’” This is wildly historically inaccurate. Jarrett should immediately apologize to the memory of the prosecutors of the 17th-century Massachusetts witch trials. This is because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff are currently running their Ukraine impeachment farce with far less due process than the superstitious and backwards legal system offered the “witches” of Salem. Below are a few examples of how Jarrett has unfairly slandered the jurisprudence of 17th-century Massachusetts. 1. The Right to Be Informed...

President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani breaks down the media's Ukraine errors on 'Hannity.' #Hannity #FoxNews

On Monday, the FBI raided offices of Michael Cohen, Esq. to get the lawyer’s records, all his client records, business records, memos to the file, etc. what happened yesterday is appalling. As working lawyers, most of us have within our files our own memos dealing with information on the private lives of husbands, wives, messy family disputes, with all kinds of claims and cross claims, in criminal; cases of defendants (guilty and innocent), corporate people (naughty and nice), etc. Everyone has a right to counsel and to exercise their attorney-client privilege, and everyone has a right to be honestly and...

Donald Trump Jr. “can’t help but think” the team of Democratic donors on special counsel Robert Mueller’s team are on a “witch hunt,” according to an exclusive video interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation.“In fact, it’s the greatest witch hunt since Salem,” Trump said in the January interview. He explained that the media has staked its credibility on the notion that Russian collusion has to be real. They have pushed this narrative for so long , they need it to be true, and they will do whatever it takes to make it so.After a major investment of time and...

Just a note: We often think of the men who conducted the Salem witch trials. They were the judges and jurors. But they weren't the accusers. The accusers were a nine year old girl, an eleven year old girl, and a twelve year old girl. It's important to remember that. Young people, especially young girls in a male-dominated society, may feel powerless. And may feel more acutely any ambient paranoia in a community. Immature people of all genders and ages might be prone to this. Lodging a hysterical accusation suddenly makes the powerless powerful, and the marginally noticed suddenly the...

How did Salem, Massachusetts become a Halloween destination? For centuries, the New England town avoided any association with its infamous Puritan ancestors, who executed 19 people under suspicion of practicing witchcraft. The surprising answer, author Stacy Schiff writes for The New York Times, has a lot to do with the sitcom "Bewitched." These days, Salem is rife with kitschy witches and Halloween attractions. But before the late 20th century, town citizens rarely acknowledged the Puritan trials. When playwright Arthur Miller visited Salem to research "The Crucible" in 1952, locals refused to help him. "You couldn't get anyone to say anything...

SALEM, Mass. — Police arrested a homeless man in connection with vandalism of the "Bewitched" statue in downtown Salem on Monday. Police were called out to the intersection of Essex and Washington streets late Monday afternoon after a witness called in "saying someone was spray-painting the statue," said Salem police Lt. Dennis Gaudet

The middle of Oklahoma is a long way from Salem, Mass., and it had been more than 200 years since the witch trials. But an elderly Seminole Indian woman was condemned to death as a sorceress in Wewoka in 1880 and came within two hours of facing a firing squad. She had been accused of causing a long-sick woman to choke to death -- by blowing on a piece of bread given to the ill victim, who tried to eat it. The story of the Oklahoma witchcraft case was told in the 1923 memoirs of former mission teacher Antoinette C....

A little girl told her mother 'I love you’ in an attempt to stop the woman torturing her to death in a day-long church ‘exorcism’, newly released court documents reveal. Three-year-old Arely Proctor pleaded for her life and struggled to escape as she was battered and strangled by her mother Claudia Hernandez, 27, and her pastor relatives. Two years after her body was found by police on the altar of a Pentecostal church in San Jose, California, authorities have still to decide whether her killers will stand trial. ‘Over the course of approximately twenty hours Arely Doe fought for her...