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About



What we choose to remember—and how—has a profound impact on how we understand ourselves and our world.

Since 2019, Margaux Crump and Jake Eshelman have been traveling across present-day America to document the locations where records indicate fifty-four individuals were accused of witchcraft and executed by the state. Operating on the premise that places hold memory and that cultural memory can be deeply political, this project investigates how the land and the people in these sites have honored, altered, hidden, perverted, or neglected the memories of these persecutions.

Richly imagined by Western culture, the archetype of the witch occupies the liminal spaces between past and present, real and fantasy, fear and desire. It exists in the periphery—a metonym for danger and difference. Hag, healer, beggar, heretic, seductress; the witch has long haunted our stories. Yet we have not made it a priority to remember those who were condemned and executed. Why is this? Why does the witch thrive as a cultural construct, while individuals executed for witchcraft are largely forgotten or excluded?

By confronting these questions, Echoes of the Witch strives to help bring these memories back into our collective consciousness, contributing to the process of (un)learning, healing, and evolving together.



Acknowledgements



Thank you to everyone who has extended their enthusiasm and support for Echoes of the Witch—especially those who graciously offered their time, resources, skills, and hospitality over the course of this project.

Carol and David Allen
Beth Caruso, author of One of Windsor: The Untold Story of America’s First Witch Hanging 

Tasha Dorsey
Bob and Carolyn Florek

Susan Graham

Paul Joy of Goody Bassett’s Ice Cream 
Daniel Pagan

Elizabeth Rose 
The Fairfield Museum & History Center

The Salem Police Department, especially:
    Chief Mary Butler

    Chief’s Asst. Robert Mulligan

    Officer Ryan Arundel

Kristina Stevick and The History Alive Theater Company

David Wright




The Artists




Margaux Crump
is an interdisciplinary artist who explores the entanglements between ecology, magic, and myth. She is particularly invested in the phenomena of unseen worlds, from the microscopic to the parallel mythic realms. Inspired by the same historical moment when some gazed into crystal balls to tell the future while others peered through tiny glass balls in early microscopes to reveal microbes for the first time, her recent sculptures, photographs, and time-based works consider how unveiling that which is beyond our gaze can shape how we view and understand our world at large.

You can view her work at margauxcrump.com
and keep tabs via instagram



Jake Eshelman
is a photo-based artist and visual researcher whose work considers the complex relationships between humans and other-than-human beings. He asserts that our curious dissociation with the natural and spiritual worlds provides a palpable backdrop in which we can more fully (re)consider humanity’s role in ecology. Through a documentary and intuitive practice, his recent work investigates interspecies relationships in industry, agriculture, and conservation in order to question the tenets of anthropocentrism and the implications behind the Enlightenment rationalization of “nature.”

You can view his work at jakeeshelman.com
and keep tabs via instagram