Terrifying & True | Thanksgiving in a Haunted Wilderness: the Pilgrims, the Wampanoag, and the First Feast
Every November we hear the cozy legend of the First Thanksgiving—Pilgrims, turkey, and a peaceful feast in the New World. But the real story behind Thanksgiving is much darker. Long before it became a holiday, the land around Plymouth was a plague-ravaged, haunted wilderness, where the Pilgrims saw the Devil in every tree… and the Wampanoag saw spirits in every swamp.
This is the terrifying true story behind the celebration we remember every Thanksgiving.
In this Thanksgiving horror history episode of Terrifying & True, we go back to 1620–1630, when the Mayflower arrived in a New England already emptied by a mysterious European plague. The Pilgrims believed God had “cleared” the land for them. The Wampanoag wondered if the strangers from across the sea carried a curse. As November winds howled and crops failed, both sides read every storm, comet, and sickness as a sign from the spirit world.
We’ll walk into Hockomock Swamp, the “place where spirits dwell”, where the Wampanoag said the powerful manitou Hobbamock gathered souls in the mist. We’ll stand with the Pilgrims on a freezing night, hearing “hideous and great” shouts in the darkness and wondering if it’s an attack—or a demon. We’ll sit inside Massasoit’s lodge as the Wampanoag sachem lies near death in 1623, while powwaws chant, English prayers rise, and a strange alliance is sealed when he survives.
This is the side of Thanksgiving you don’t hear about in school: secret midnight burials on Cole’s Hill, raided cornfields, rumors that the English kept plague in barrels, and a fragile peace that led to that famous 1621 harvest feast—a celebration held under a sky both peoples believed was full of omens and spirits. The Pilgrims saw themselves as a chosen people in a howling wilderness. The Wampanoag lived with a new fear: that a foreign God might be stronger than their own.
From these first Thanksgiving-era encounters grew a legacy of paranoia that reaches all the way to the Salem witch trials and King Philip’s War. The Pilgrims’ Thanksgiving miracle stories, the Wampanoag’s spiritual world of Kiehtan and Hobbamock, and the brutal reality of disease and hunger combined into one of America’s earliest haunted holiday tales. This year, as you carve the turkey, remember: the road to that “peaceful” feast was paved with ghost stories, curses, and fear.
Inside this episode:
- The real first Thanksgiving: How a fragile truce, a desperate harvest, and a haunted landscape created the feast we still celebrate every November.
- Pilgrims in a howling wilderness: Why early settlers believed New England was a devil-haunted forest and read every disaster as God’s judgment.
- Wampanoag spirits and Hobbamock: The Native cosmology of Kiehtan, Hobbamock, manitous, and powwaws—and why English colonists called it “witchcraft.”
- Plague, providence, and plague barrels: The 1616–1619 epidemic, empty villages, and rumors that the English stored disease as a weapon.
- Omens, comets, and curses: From strange lights in the sky to disturbed graves, how both sides believed the land around Plymouth was full of warnings.
- Miracle rain and a dying sachem: The 1623 fast and gentle rain, Massasoit’s near-fatal illness, and the moments both peoples thought their gods had spoken.
- From feast to war: How this haunted decade laid the spiritual groundwork for Salem, King Philip’s War, and centuries of Thanksgiving myths.
If you’re looking for a Thanksgiving episode that digs into the true horror behind the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag, this is your haunted holiday history—the dark story hiding behind the turkey and the pies.
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