Podcast Summary: "A Second Helping from Satan: Elizabeth Knapp’s Possession"
Podcast: The Devil You Know with Sarah Marshall (CBC)
Air Date: December 11, 2025
Host: Sarah Marshall
Guests: Elizabeth Seppi (Chair of English, Portland State University), Carolyn Kendrick (Guest Producer), others
Overview
This bonus episode centers on the mysterious historical case of Elizabeth Knapp, a 16-year-old servant in 1670s Puritan Massachusetts who was believed to be “possessed by the devil.” Host Sarah Marshall, guest producer Carolyn Kendrick, and academic Elizabeth Seppi dissect Knapp’s story, examining what it reveals about power, gender, labor, and social anxieties in early America. The conversation puts the possession narrative in the context of the later Salem Witch Trials, contemporary and historical “Satanic Panics,” and the ways marginalized groups, especially young women, have come to embody communal fears.
Main Discussion Points & Insights
Introduction and Set-up
- Elizabeth Knapp’s Story: A 16-year-old servant whose strange fits and declared “possession” became a sensation in Groton, Massachusetts (1671), predating the Salem Witch trials.
- The account survives entirely through the perspective of her employer and minister, Samuel Willard, emphasizing whose stories get told and how.
Who Was Elizabeth Knapp?
[02:48-05:54]
- Source: "Everything we know about her, we know from this narrative written by her minister, her master, Samuel Willard." – Elizabeth Seppi
- Descriptions from Willard include fits, speechlessness, animal-like behaviors (barking, crowing), and eventual claims of negotiation with the devil, including a blood covenant for powers and privilege.
- Her outbursts alternated with episodes of silence, which, as Seppi notes, "the obedient silence that would be expected of a servant becomes in her demoniac form...a sign of being potentially a Satan minion."
Servanthood, Authority, and Domestic Anxiety
[06:19-09:54]
- Servants in early New England households were “in the house, but not of the family,” creating both physical and psychological anxiety.
- The presence of non-familial young women in homes aroused suspicions and projections of transgression—especially around sexuality and defiance.
- “There was a discourse around the potential threat of having someone there who might, in a way, act like Satan does, you know, tempting the good child into misbehaviour.” – Elizabeth Seppi [07:12]
- Puritan societal model expected everyone to internalize hierarchical authority—servitude served as both economic reality and “lived metaphor for this relationship to God.”
- “Everybody was meant to sort of understand that they were both God’s child and his servant.” – Elizabeth Seppi [08:54]
The Puritans, the Devil, and Projection
[11:18-15:58]
- The Puritan worldview was rooted in the devil’s real spiritual threat; New England itself was a battleground for souls.
- “New England...is the place that used to be the devil’s territories and people of God have settled on it. And so he’s particularly looking to get it back.” – Elizabeth Seppi [11:50]
- Sarah asks whether belief in the devil was a projection of unacknowledged colonial guilt over displacing native peoples. Seppi references Hawthorne and the way metaphysical evil stands in for collective shame. [12:09-12:24]
- Witchcraft accusations pre-Salem were rare; Salem itself was a “perfect storm”—social conflict, gender tension, and crises of authority.
- “The one through line has to be the sort of crisis of authority...you can’t dismiss the gender argument, which is, you know, in the history of witchcraft, people think witches were burned at Salem because they were burned for thousands of years...women have been burned as witches.” – Elizabeth Seppi [13:12-14:57]
Gender, Power, and Ecstasy
[15:58-22:17]
- Most Salem accusers were adolescent girls—modern media tends to age them up or sexualize them for dramatic effect.
- “The media we have about them ages them up and ages the accused down so we can have as many hot women as possible.” – Sarah Marshall [16:17]
- Puritan and Medieval notions of female embodiment: women as inherently defective, more sinful yet also potentially more pious.
- “Women are viewed as kind of more sinful, but also more pious.” – Elizabeth Seppi [18:26]
- Knapp’s possession is considered alongside sainthood: being a passive “vessel” for God or Satan as two sides of the coin of female experience in a patriarchal society.
- “What’s the difference between demonic possession and being ravished by Christ? The idea of a kind of ecstatic, religious experience still does rely on this notion of being a vessel of some higher power’s will.” – Elizabeth Seppi [20:08]
The Possession as Protest and Public Service
[20:49-23:09]
- Knapp uses her possessed status to “take the stage”—not simply to get attention but to command authority otherwise denied to her as a servant girl.
- “She just refuses to play the role of the penitent; she says, like, it’s too late for me...and that’s just like a really...form of public service.” – Elizabeth Seppi [21:20]
- Knapp, while possessed, is excused from labor and given a voice—her experience contrasts with the hard, silent work of ordinary servanthood.
The Devil, Labor, and the Faustian Bargain
[23:39-34:47]
- The devil in Knapp’s tale offers what Puritan society does not: negotiation, leisure, material comforts, and personal agency—however illusory or “dangerous.”
- “It feels like part of what’s being revealed here is that Satan...it’s a better deal to go with Satan than to be in the roles that society has given you.” – Sarah Marshall [22:38]
- Signing with the devil is also a fantasy of literacy and self-ownership; for an illiterate or powerless servant, this is radical.
- Willard’s authority is boosted by Knapp’s story; after “curing” her, he receives a substantial salary increase from the town, showing how such moral panics can personally benefit patriarchal authorities. [25:41-26:20]
- Discussion of the “Faustian bargain”—the idea that desire for ease or pleasure is pathologized as satanic in Puritan thought, forming the root of American attitudes toward labor and class.
- “That is to my mind, a kind of secularization of Puritan exceptionalism, of American exceptionalism.” – Elizabeth Seppi [33:07]
Agency, Inscrutability, and the Legacy of the Case
[35:05-37:16]
- The real Elizabeth Knapp remains unknowable beneath layers of imposed narrative, projection, and historical distance.
- “You know that there’s a real girl…underneath or hidden behind this writing, and you’re drawn to it because you want to know about her. But then by definition, you’ll never know.” – Sarah Marshall [35:05]
- Knapp’s case offers one of the only glimpses into the lived experience of ordinary servant girls—ironically, through the extraordinary lens of “demonic” behavior.
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
-
On Projection and Puritan Guilt:
“That when you have this kind of intense introspection and you believe that you yourself are incapable of doing anything good without...the Holy Spirit working in you, then the default is pride, giving yourself a little bit of credit for being good. Or they were supposed to be suspicious of feeling too assured. That might be the devil whispering in your ear…”
— Elizabeth Seppi [30:53] -
On Agency and Possession:
“Elizabeth Knapp kind of makes the most of that opportunity...again, I don’t mean to instrumentalize her or suggest a kind of conscious manipulation...I just think it’s much more complicated, this question of, like, do I think she was faking? Like, I don’t. I think that’s too simplistic...”
— Elizabeth Seppi [20:49] -
On Labor and Social Hierarchy:
“The idea that the fruits of our labor properly belongs to somebody else is...one way of kind of acclimating people to wage labor.”
— Carolyn Kendrick [32:02] -
On Historical Unknowability:
“You know that there’s a real girl, like, underneath or hidden behind this writing, and you’re drawn to it because you want to know about her. But then by definition, you’ll never know.”
— Sarah Marshall [35:05]
Key Timestamps
- 02:48: Introduction to Elizabeth Knapp’s story by Elizabeth Seppi
- 05:54-09:54: Servanthood, household authority, and Puritan hierarchy
- 11:50: Puritan religious worldview: New England as “the devil’s territories”
- 13:12-14:57: The gendered structure and social function of the Salem Witch Trials
- 20:08: Possession versus sainthood: the vessel metaphor for women
- 21:20: Knapp’s subversive agency as a “possessed” girl
- 25:41: Willard’s personal benefit following his “role” in Knapp’s possession
- 32:02-33:14: Puritan labor values’ impact on American capitalism
- 34:06-34:47: The Faustian bargain and desire for pleasure—Satan as societal scapegoat
- 35:05: Limits of historical knowledge: Elizabeth Knapp’s unknowability
Episode Tone & Style
- Thoughtful, analytic, layered with wry humor and empathy for historical subjects.
- Language oscillates between scholarly depth and approachable, conversational reflections, with frequent allusions to pop culture and personal experience to frame historical material.
- The tone is self-aware about the limitations of historical evidence and critical about the patriarchal structures at play, both past and present.
Final Thoughts
This episode uses Elizabeth Knapp’s enigmatic case as a lens to explore the anxieties of gender, authority, and labor in early America. The hosts and guests emphasize the enduring power of “Satanic” narratives to both empower and endanger marginalized people, and the difficulty—and necessity—of reading between patriarchal lines for the suppressed voices of history. Ultimately, Knapp’s possession is neither entirely explainable nor dismissible; her story still “haunts” the American imagination, revealing as much about ourselves as it does about her.