SALEM WITCH TRIALS: KIM AKA 'Lady Steel' EXPLAINS REAL WITCHCRAFT in Massachusetts!

0:03 Speaker 1: Jishishsh Yeah, Johnny, just wait for it to light up, honey. Okay, whatever you want to do, we're not backing. Mh you know a second hand of yours.

1:31 Speaker 2: My name is Kim Branch. Around here, most people know me as either Lady Steel or the Pirate Witch.

1:38 Speaker 3: Why is that?

1:40 Speaker 2: I was part of Pirate Skilled at one time? So, and and I was I was born and raised on the water basically, so the water is my love.

1:51 Speaker 3: And so yesterday we were here. We filmed with Lee, and we filmed.

1:55 Speaker 4: With Emily, and they brought us into drink of the paranormal in this town.

2:03 Speaker 5: There seems to be some sort of bubble that when you enter into this town there's a different feeling.

2:09 Speaker 2: Oh definitely.

2:11 Speaker 5: On my way out, you had mentioned aliens, you have hoos and all that.

2:17 Speaker 3: So I want you to tell me you've been in Salem? What you're all right?

2:22 Speaker 2: Well, I don't actually live in Salem, but I've been working here almost thirty years, so.

2:25 Speaker 3: You've been working here for a very long Yeah. So you know the locals, you know, I do.

2:29 Speaker 4: And so let's start by talking about the wood Strides. Okay, So can you walk me through why it started? How it happened, and why it happened in colonial north of Erica.

2:44 Speaker 2: Okay, well that's pure at New England was very harsh. There were some pretty strict rules like you could wear bray, you could wear black, or you could wear brown, and that was it. So one of the first women accused of wore red hell shep scandal. She had four husbands, she owned a bar. She was pretty wealthy and independent, and that was a big no no in purit in New England. Now, imagine you're living in those times, times when as a young female, your father could literally be to with an inch of your life for doing something wrong.

3:20 Speaker 2: And you get caught doing something you shouldn't be doing, dancing naked in the woods doing a spell to see your future husband with your your slave. What's your answer going to be the devil made me do it. Yep, And that's how it started.

3:38 Speaker 3: So hysteria spread through this town.

3:44 Speaker 2: It absolutely did, like a pandemic.

3:47 Speaker 3: Next thing, you know, I think, so how long.

3:51 Speaker 2: Did it actually last a little under a year.

3:54 Speaker 3: So people think it lasted.

3:57 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, it was very brief. Yeah.

4:00 Speaker 4: And what led us here was there were in Dulrica, where I'm from, there were three nuns hanged for witchcraft, and I found a place where they were practicing it.

4:14 Speaker 3: Is there such thing as real witchcraft?

4:17 Speaker 5: Absolutely were people performing it then in the sixteenth late sixteenth century.

4:22 Speaker 2: Uh, sort of. I wouldn't call it witchcraft, however, it was folk magic. So have you ever seen Game of Thrones? You know when Brand falls out the window and then Mom is at his bedside, Yes, and she's making a wreath and what is on the reef? Do you remember stage?

4:43 Speaker 3: No? I don't remember.

4:44 Speaker 2: Little dolls And every one of those little dolls represented a stage of Brand's life. So she was literally charting his course, so to speak, you know, from birth to his change and on. Lots of people practiced all magic. Little girls to this day. They played with Barbie and ken Right and they create this homemaker believe world. They're actually doing doll magic. I'm Barbie, I have all these wonderful things. If it's fast car and a hot tub and a playhouse, they're literally doing doll magic. Everybody does it.

5:23 Speaker 2: I mean boys do it with their lego characters or their he man dolls, you know all that stuff. So were they practicing witchcraft? Now? They were doing some folk magic. But everybody did back then exactly. I mean, you didn't run to the doctor when you had a cold, you know, you usually went to see the local midwife, because the local wind wife, she would have been skilled in the arts of herbalism and healing, and that would have been a great thing.

5:52 Speaker 3: That's a lot of sense.

5:54 Speaker 4: So with that, they end up hanging burning, no burning, not here, no no no burning no. So uh, they end up pressing the gentleman and hanging women and mens children. Do you think that that was because the land itself is already different or is the land different because of the tragedy, if any makes sense?

6:27 Speaker 2: I think that so it escalated into a hysteria because once these little girls realized that that they literally had power over the entire town, and they were very you know, they were prepebescent, and they had all the power. You know, you don't like missus Jones fall on the floor, screams, she's pinching you, and she goes to trial. In the end, it also became very profitable to accuse somebody to witchcraft.

6:58 Speaker 6: Everything.

6:58 Speaker 4: Yeah, right, sense that that woman he talked about, she owned a business.

7:03 Speaker 3: Sure that was taken from yep.

7:06 Speaker 2: But as an accuser. You've got some of that. Oh so it became profitable, so there was a.

7:12 Speaker 3: Big for accusing someone. Yeah, okay, it makes a lot more sense.

7:16 Speaker 6: Yeah.

7:17 Speaker 4: Now do you think it's disrespectful or respectful that which is now hold the land and in memory and practice witchcraft openly invite instead of you not being able to flaunt your true self here now Salem embraces.

7:35 Speaker 2: All of that exactly.

7:37 Speaker 3: Do you think that is respectful or disrespect.

7:39 Speaker 2: I think it's very respectful too. I think it shows to the world that, uh, you know, we're just people. We just believe a little differently. But in the end do we right? You know, most witches lived by some form of do unto others as you would have done unto you. We call it harm none. But it's the same thing in the end, uh so, which is people, you know.

8:06 Speaker 3: So, so what you're saying is everyone in Salem at night doesn't get around a big cauldron.

8:13 Speaker 2: Absolutely not. Now, we don't do that.

8:17 Speaker 4: But you know, there are some peculiar peculiarities with the land.

8:21 Speaker 3: There are the same Salem land. It's on the way line.

8:25 Speaker 4: We know this to be. It induces something to whatever is inside of it. Yeah, there's something strong in the south. There have been UFO sightings, prominent UFO sightings.

8:40 Speaker 3: Her normal activity, of course.

8:42 Speaker 4: Can you go into some of the stuff that you know about, and you you've been here the longest that if anyone we've talked to, you've you've worked in the area. Can you tell us some stories.

8:53 Speaker 2: Sure. So Salem was not only known for its which is, but it was known for its pirates. It was equally famous for that. At the time, Salem was the richest port in the United States. It was a port town. Most of the sailors and all the other merchants and so on that lived in a port town were very tuned in to the local witches. Why because they could do spells for good weather. You know, everybody wants fair following seas, right, You don't want a hurricane to take you out. You go see the local witch.

9:27 Speaker 2: You have her do some sort of a spell to aid and keeping you safe while you're out at sea. You come back safely. She makes a little money off of it, hopefully you make some money off of it. So it was a very good trade.

9:39 Speaker 3: So it's harmonious.

9:40 Speaker 2: At one point it was absolutely harmonious and it wasn't.

9:44 Speaker 3: And so big pirate town comes with that. I mean that comes with a lot of stuff. It comes with a lot of stuff, right, a lot of good stuff and a lot of bad stuff as well. And how does aliens tie into all this?

10:00 Speaker 2: Oh, there were actually a few famous pirates that come from here, right. So you have Benjamin Hornegold who trained Edward Cheach black Beard and literally black Beard, and he also trained a very fine gentleman named Sam Bellamy, also known as Black Sam Bellamy, the richest pirate in the world at the time. She was only a pirate for about a year. And then on his return to Wellfleet on Cape Cod, he had a love there who had been scorned by her father because she was with child. She didn't do well, but she took up midwiffery, she took up herbalism, i e.

10:42 Speaker 2: Witchcraft, Okay, and she unfortunately the baby died and she was put on trial, but she escaped twice and then the towns started screaming she was witch. Well Sam Bellamy was on his way back. They were going to stop in Walfleet and then they were going to go to Maine. But he was coming by to get me his love Maria. In the process, they ran into a north easter. Now, he was on the on the Galley Widow, which was a very big ship, forty can and it was huge. It was really the cream of crop. It was carrying approximately six ships worth of cargo, gold, rum, wine, silver, the krem de la Creme.

11:24 Speaker 2: Yeah, so they run into a north easter just off the coast of the cape and he hit a shoal and the ship breaks and halfen sings. Two people's arrived and everything's spilt across the ocean floor. Now Maria is out on the dunes because she knows he's coming, and searching the next day along the shoreline for her love. Well, they can't find him. Only two people's arrived. Now howloo. Aliens tie into that. What do they say about the Annaki the creators? And why did they create us? Gold? What was on that pirate ship?

12:09 Speaker 2: There was gold. There was a lot of gold.

12:11 Speaker 3: I'm surprised, so you know, I do. So do you think they stepped in?

12:19 Speaker 2: I don't know if they stepped in, but they were certainly taking advantage of the situation.

12:25 Speaker 3: They told us that never left.

12:32 Speaker 4: Actually, so there are some versions of the text where some say the left, but some say that they did not.

12:40 Speaker 2: Right.

12:40 Speaker 4: Are you under the impression that what we're seeing in the skies is them?

12:45 Speaker 2: I mean, I don't really have an opinion one of them one way or the other. I'd have to I'd have to see one. Actually, I'm gonna show me kind of girl.

12:54 Speaker 3: Right, I think that's very.

12:59 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting. And we're less than forty miles from the bridge wrought a triangle which you know sasquatch, you know, little fairy folk. There's all kinds of things that go on supposedly in the Bridgewater Triangle. We're spinning distance right, and we're going there next, are you? Oh? Oh have fun?

13:18 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's my next start.

13:19 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you'll enjoy that.

13:21 Speaker 3: But there there.

13:24 Speaker 4: Was there's clearly something about this region, yes, right, the beginning of the new land, right, creating a new uh like a new.

13:35 Speaker 2: Way of life, a whole new society.

13:37 Speaker 4: A whole new society, right, And it was one based off of.

13:43 Speaker 3: Not agreed but wanting to start.

13:48 Speaker 2: And the reason the Puritans came here was for religious freedom. And then it got all turned around and is it.

13:57 Speaker 3: Ah, that's how the irony worked, right, yep? How it all came full circle.

14:02 Speaker 4: Yep, because if those people then could see what was here.

14:07 Speaker 2: Now, Oh, should they be horrified?

14:12 Speaker 3: They would try to be killing you all.

14:13 Speaker 2: Oh yeah absolutely.

14:14 Speaker 3: But it's it's something. Is there is something about Salem?

14:18 Speaker 2: Yeah, so you mentioned the lay lines, but there's also there's what we call memory of place. So when the Puritans came, there wasn't native tribe here prior to that, well, they were pushed out. Okay. So there's bad incident number one. Okay, And then of course you have the witch trials, and you have there's other infighting. You've got the Revolutionary War, You've got there's all these things that leave a memory. Now, the most recent, as far as I know, big event was in nineteen fourteen, a big fire went through Salem.

14:56 Speaker 2: Yes, devastated a lot of well, there was a lot of death that and along with that, it's not like they had ladders, brooks and ladders back then, you know exactly exactly did.

15:09 Speaker 3: There's always been something.

15:11 Speaker 2: Always and the land naturally holds that.

15:15 Speaker 4: So you think, do you think that what we see as ghosts or maybe just echoes.

15:21 Speaker 2: I feel like some of them are. I think some of them are actual flesh and blood spirits. But most of what Salem is is it's a massive uh, it's a land memory and there's a lot of residual haunting, if you will. A lot of the homes here are haunted, a lot of the businesses are haunted. We all have our little spirit who runs around. We just kind of accept it.

15:45 Speaker 3: Have you ever seen anything like that? You can't explain.

15:50 Speaker 2: I mean here in.

15:52 Speaker 4: Pentagram around we are literally steps from one of the oldest great sites in the world.

16:01 Speaker 2: Yeah, if not well in the US, yes, especially Yeah, it's the second oldest in the United States.

16:09 Speaker 3: Have you ever seen anything?

16:12 Speaker 2: I've seen shadows and shapes. I've had people bring me pictures and some of the pictures are amazing. So, like I was telling you before, I used to work next door and I used to do spellcastings for people and people would bring me their cameras after they would be out over at the cemetery taking pictures. And I've had people bring me a camera and go, what is this. I've seen full body apparitions in their pictures. I've seen orbs. I've seen yeah, so little glorgs like yeah, yeah, you get a lot of those in the cemetery.

16:45 Speaker 2: After dark. Just stand there with camera and be patient. You'll get them. It's pretty active.

16:51 Speaker 3: Do you ever think do you ever think if we were to find out that we are not if.

17:01 Speaker 4: The government of the world, you know, came out let's just call it the United States, starts at the un and finishes it, we find out the first block is or not alone in the universe?

17:14 Speaker 3: Exactly what do you think that does the to society and to sale.

17:22 Speaker 2: I think it would hurt a lot of the larger religions in the world because it kind of blasts apart their whole creation story. If you will. You know, anthropologists and archaeologists all agree there's never been a time in history we didn't believe in magic. Yeah, you know, so there's that and if your mind is opened, you wouldapt and if it's not, you don't and you don't survive.

17:45 Speaker 6: See, we've been told by many people that in the next couple of years we will be finding out that we are not alone.

17:57 Speaker 3: Do you think that that, Well, you've seen a that.

18:00 Speaker 4: He increase in visitors to sail and oh yeah, in Halloween.

18:04 Speaker 3: Time, all the time, all the time. Yeah, do you think that?

18:09 Speaker 4: Do you think that the people will start flocking here even more.

18:16 Speaker 2: I think, you know that that's an interesting question. I think if there was like a really big sighting over a Salem, absolutely because we would have hords of people from all different interest groups. You know, we get the people that you know, they come and they want to see all the hocus pocus stuff, or they want to see the witches and the black hats and the long dresses. And sometimes we don't dress like this. Sometimes we wear blue jeans and workers, you know, because we are just people, sometimes with a telerate, your bank, you know.

18:50 Speaker 2: Right, A lot of people understand that exactly, which is normal people.

18:54 Speaker 3: And that's what out of.

18:56 Speaker 4: All the interviews that we've done here, I think that's what we get to is Salem is full of now just regular people, but it's a special, special.

19:06 Speaker 2: Place, and some of them are regular people who have to practice magic. And it's not a bad thing. It's not a bad bad it's not a bad thing. There's no such thing as good or bad magic. There's only good abroad people. And that doesn't matter your belief system. It doesn't mean it's just good and bad people.

19:23 Speaker 3: Do you believe in a god?

19:25 Speaker 2: I believe lots of them.

19:26 Speaker 3: Lots of God. They always told us they to return.

19:30 Speaker 2: Mm hmm.

19:32 Speaker 3: Salem seems to be into the places that they might return to.

19:35 Speaker 4: You.

19:36 Speaker 2: Well, they'd certainly be welcomed with.

19:38 Speaker 4: The Great Bear and the te Guisa right stone end, there's places that seem to draw people. Yes, right, So when you say, I think if a good sighting happens, I think they're not going to show themselves over Washington, d C. So they can get shot down at the miss right, They're going to show themselves.

19:59 Speaker 2: Well, they'll be except So I think that's true in the next couple of years.

20:03 Speaker 3: I think you may.

20:07 Speaker 2: It's not a bad thing. My brother used to tell me I was an alien, So tell me more. So I was born as an rage factor, baby, what does that mean? So my blood was a different r age factor than my mother's so at birth, like her blood tried to kill my blood. Oh god, so I needed a bunch of transfusions. Now, it said, and I don't have empirical proof, but most of the royals have urge factor of blood negative our age factor blood. And that's why they intermarried, you know, they marry. That's why it keeps the bloodline pure.

20:44 Speaker 2: It also keeps you from losing your children, because if you have an RAGE positive and an RH negative, be a good killed child. Like I was a medical impossibility. But here I am so.

20:57 Speaker 4: M what.

21:00 Speaker 2: We could be. You know, someday we'll know.

21:03 Speaker 3: Someday we'll know.

21:04 Speaker 4: But has a medium said, you don't practice openly?

21:08 Speaker 3: Oh?

21:09 Speaker 2: I do?

21:10 Speaker 3: So you don't do it for my No? What do you? What is the other side telling you? Is there something called me?

21:19 Speaker 2: I think there's lots of things happening, and I think sooner than we think, because I think, especially in America, things are at a tipping point right now. It's a very serious tipping point. It's the worst it's ever been. People are in a panic, you know, and we notice it here too, you know, we get the crowds, but they're hesitant, you know, there, hesitant to you know, spend their money or stay or you know, because I think people are afraid and we're at that point where something bigger.

21:54 Speaker 3: Has to happen, a big confirmation.

21:58 Speaker 6: Yeah.

21:59 Speaker 3: Uh.

22:00 Speaker 4: One of the mediums yesterday said she first first shadowed a title way. Now we could suggest that that's the title wave literally or metaphorically exactly right, a title wave of information.

22:20 Speaker 2: Of people fleeing a repressive area where they live.

22:24 Speaker 7: So any of those kinds of things coming from the way, any of that, I mean, I've been on edge for a month, three months, so there's something coming.

22:36 Speaker 2: There's something, there's something I think.

22:40 Speaker 4: And just to go back to the witch trials, Okay, do you think that they targeting specifically educated women.

22:52 Speaker 2: Well, in a Puritan man's viewpoint, they were a threat to their manhoods, to their hierarchy. You know, thousands of years ago things were basically a matriarchy, and now the men run the show. And look where we are.

23:10 Speaker 4: I mean, they came here to start that and ended up turning on its return.

23:16 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so weird to me.

23:19 Speaker 4: That's why I can't wrap my head around the whole thing. Yeah, the fact that.

23:24 Speaker 3: There was that harmony, right, ask for blessings for my ship.

23:30 Speaker 7: Exactly to turn on them just as quick you and to have such a savage moment in history, well exactly.

23:38 Speaker 2: But imagine you leave, you leave England and you have all these rules and all these regulations, which is really what they were fleeing. It was less about religion, I think, and more about just fleeing the oppressiveness. Okay, they come here, they got their freedom, They can practices they want, they can do what they want. But unfortunately, how are breeds and corruption?

24:02 Speaker 3: Corruption?

24:04 Speaker 2: So and when you're the only big guy in town, you know, it's pretty easy to go corrupt pretty quick.

24:11 Speaker 4: So the census I get is that the witch trials were a witch hunt, yes, for something that didn't really exist exactly.

24:21 Speaker 2: Can I address that for a minute, because I hate hearing the term witch hunt in the media. Yes, And I absolutely hate that because, first of all, the people that are using those words are getting trials, fair trials, They have legal representation, they have billions of dollars these women and men on their back. Yeah. And they stood right there at the gallows and recited the Lord's prayer and it didn't matter because the decision had already been made. All you needed was empirical evidence.

25:00 Speaker 3: How do you think? How do you think? Why do you think the town stepped in and said, no.

25:09 Speaker 2: This is not well, they started accusing powerful people.

25:12 Speaker 3: It's not how it stopped. How did it stop?

25:16 Speaker 2: Accused the governor's wife and he said, he said, that's it done.

25:21 Speaker 3: Cut the corn.

25:21 Speaker 2: Yeah, isn't done. Yeah, And because everything was based on spectral evidence. So Cotton Mather, who was very well known, can you say that Cotton Mather stepped in and said, you have to have more proof than somebody saying that they saw or that you're pinching me. I can't see you pinching me. You can't just say something without backing that up.

25:51 Speaker 4: So that's it's funny how it ended. Yeah, because it got too close.

25:57 Speaker 2: To home exactly.

26:00 Speaker 4: I wonder if do you ever wonder if his wife was never accused, how much longer it would.

26:05 Speaker 3: Have went on.

26:06 Speaker 2: I think at some point there would have been a very big rebellion.

26:11 Speaker 4: But I guess that's I guess I said last question a while ago. But was safe the only place where this was happening?

26:23 Speaker 3: Where was this happening?

26:25 Speaker 2: There were there was a woman named Sarah Spencer who was hanged in Connecticut, There were hanging in Rhode Island, and name so people were being tried all over the place. It wasn't just Sialement's just that in Salement was such a large amount in such a short little time that it was like this blaring alarm that something is wrong, right.

26:48 Speaker 3: And it ended up in my backyard, Yeah.

26:51 Speaker 4: Where a group of three nuns were hanged for practicing, which now again I have evidences that they were, But was it the folk magic?

27:04 Speaker 2: You're exactly exactly, because again none just do what they take a vow of poverty. Well, if you're poor, what do you do heal yourself? You know, you have to do your own things. You grow your herbs, you make your own medicine, you do everything you can to survive.

27:24 Speaker 3: If I could show you some of.

27:25 Speaker 4: These sites, the site that I found, would you be able to tell if something possibly?

27:32 Speaker 3: Okay, So when.

27:34 Speaker 4: I I'm gonna show you a couple of things later, okay, okay, yeah, and.

27:41 Speaker 3: I just want your take on them. Okay, that's off camera.

27:45 Speaker 3: But you've been really, really fun to talk.

27:49 Speaker 2: Oh, thank you.

27:52 Speaker 4: Next time, next time we're here, we're definitely gonna come excellent, because I would love to go to the Bridgewater Triangle and be able to show you what.

28:04 Speaker 3: I can bring up.

28:05 Speaker 2: Yeah, that would be great. I would appreciate that. But would.

28:10 Speaker 3: Wow, this is the real last question.

28:13 Speaker 4: Do you think the government or some sort of entity should come into sale and reinvestigate the paranormal science to see if it's really.

28:26 Speaker 2: I don't think they're interested. Why not well, because they don't want us.

28:29 Speaker 3: To know anything, they can't protect us.

28:32 Speaker 2: Well, there's that, I mean, certainly, but they just they want to keep us. I mean, you know, in their eyes, we're sheep. That's a good way, you know, they don't want to tell us b