I’m turning 46, and while early June brings beautiful summer sunshine and blooming gardens, as a practicing witch, I know that every calendar date sits on top of a mountain of history and ghosts. Tonight, we are blowing out the birthday candles and stepping back to this exact week in June of 1692, when the air in Salem, Massachusetts, was thick with ocean mist and pure, unadulterated paranoia.

We’re diving into the exact week the Salem Witch Trials turned into a lethal machine by legally allowing "spectral evidence"—meaning your neighbor's nightmare could literally send you to the gallows.

We’ll also look through a real practitioner’s lens at Bridget Bishop, a fierce, independent tavern owner who wore a scandalous scarlet bodice and became the very first victim hanged on Gallows Hill. ...