Giles Corey and the Salem Witch Trials

Drinking with host Derek Waters, Allan McLeod tells the story of the curse of Giles Corey. In 1692 Salem, after a doctor declares a group of girls bewitched, elderly Giles (Rich Fulcher) and his wife Martha treat the witch trials like a night out, sharing popcorn in the meeting house. When Martha scoffs at the Puritans' urine-cake witch test, Ann Putnam (Elyse Cole) turns her criticism into an accusation. Caught up in the hysteria, Giles offers flimsy evidence against his own wife, including a dead cat and a troubled ox, then comes to his senses and defends her, which only gets him accused as well. Sheriff George Corwin (Joel McHale) chooses peine forte et dure, laying a board on Giles and piling on rocks to force a plea, while McLeod and Waters try out the pressing on each other in the living room. Over two days Giles answers every demand by asking for more weight, and before he dies he curses Corwin and the sheriffs of Salem. His gruesome death helps bring the trials to an end, Corwin dies a few years later, and in 1978 Sheriff Robert Cahill (also McHale), after his own heart attack, finds that Salem's sheriffs have suffered heart attacks and strokes for centuries, so the department moves out of town. McLeod wraps up by asking to press Waters one more time.

According to the legend of Giles Corey's curse, every Essex County sheriff after George Corwin, who died of a heart attack in 1696, either died or resigned with heart or blood ailments, and the curse was said to be broken when the sheriff's office moved from Salem to Middleton in 1991.