Salem Witch Hunt : A Phenomenon Of Witch Trials

Imagine being the cleaning lady for a prestige family, you worry about making money and staying alive, but the family has a greater fear -witches. It was the 17th century, residents in the Salem area and others believed that witches live all around them, doing the devil's work. The witchcraft conspiracy theory is the witchcraft is fake. Two major reason back up this theory.

Witch-Hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials. Marc Aronson. (New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, November 1, 2003. 272.)

History generally regards the period of Salem witchcraft trials as a radical instatement of religious zeal which favored superstition over reason and targeted a large number of women over a much smaller number of men. Admittedly, the 1692 witchcraft crisis is a very complex historical episode, yet seeing as the majority of the people involved were women, it can be perceived as a gender issue, and illustrative for the definition of the role of women in New England. The present work's aim is to outline the colonial mindset concerning women and present relevant theories by means of analyzing three cases of witchcraft accusation together with delving into the accusers' perspective.

The Salem Witch Trials was a very dark period in our history that occurred in the colony of Salem, Massachusetts. These trials began in February 1692 and ended in May of 1693. There were over two hundred individuals who were accused of practicing witchcraft. Of those two hundred accused, nearly twenty innocent souls were lost. This was one of the most severe cases of mass hysteria in recorded history. There was a great effort exhorted by the Massachusetts General Court to declare a guilty verdict, that the framers of the United States Constitution went to great lengths to never let this type of tragedy occur again; commonly known as the eighth amendment. Remarkably so, some may argue that there were similarities in Salem and the

“Witch Hunt” is a term often thrown around whenever a group of people is being sought out and punished for their actions, regardless of whether they are actually guilty or not. Throughout history, there have been hundreds of different “witch hunts”, and not all of them have been hunting for witches. A few examples include the persecution of Muslims in post-9/11 USA, the sexual assault allegations of male celebrities and politicians being brought to light in 2017, and the search for communists through McCarthyism in the 1950’s. The most famous witch hunt that involved witches, though, occurred in a small village in Massachusetts called Salem, in 1692. But what caused these trials, and what made them so different from all of the others? There were no witches in Salem, but there was the impact of a sexist society on teenage girls, a desperate grab for land, and a malfunctioning legal system that allowed innocent people to be put to death. These are the three main causes of the famed Salem Witch Trials.

History shows the remarkable things that society has done over the years, it also shows where society failed and mistakes were made. This is the case of the Salem Witch Trials. The people of Salem experienced an event that would change them and the course of this country forever. The mass hysteria and rampant paranoia that swept New England in 1692, is what turned neighbor against neighbor. The Salem villagers would accuse one another of casting spells, consorting with the devil, and being witches, all of which was a punishable crime in the 17th century. ("Search")

In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, he writes, “We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!” (Miller 77). This partially fictionalized tale of the Salem Witch Trials points to one of the causes of the trials, vengeance, but the over dramatized tale 's early stages were quiet. The Salem Witch Episode had humble beginnings in the town of Salem Village, Massachusetts, but evolved into one of the most widely known witch trials in American History. The gallows in Salem claimed the lives of nineteen men and woman during the spring and summer of 1692 due to the accusations of witchcraft with over a hundred people who were accused. After all the terror and the uproar of the trials occurred, everything came to a screeching halt (Linder 1). Due to the unique circumstances of this particular set of witch trials, from the rampant accusations to the discontinuation of the trials mass hysteria does not seem to be fault as with other witch trials, but a variety of factors. The Salem witch trials were not just a simple case of mass hysteria, but a combination of factors ranging from poisons to superstitions to scapegoats, resulting in the outbreak of the Salem Witch episode.

The Salem Witch Trials began during the spring of 1692 after a group of young girls in Salem Village, MA, said they were being possessed by the devil and accused local women of witchcraft. With chaos running around the village, the special court began taking on cases. Bridget Bishop, the first convicted witch, was hung that June month. Many people of the Salem community had major consequences including death and harrassment. Belief that the devil could give certain humans, or witches, power to harm others in return for their loyalty emerged throughout europe as early as the 14th century. All of this chaos and phenomenon led to a pointing fingers game of who is guilty. Chaos also brought up the question of why it happened, malice, spite, or

Introduction - The Salem Witch trials was a time of hysteria and confusion. People were being accused and giving false confessions of witchcraft being performed on the people of Salem, Massachusetts.

In Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692, Richard Godbeer reconstructs a particular witch hunt that is less known than its counterpart, the Salem Witch Trials. This trial, which took place in the Stamford, Connecticut area in the seventeenth century, demonstrated the theologies as well as the natural and supernatural beliefs of early New Englanders. These factors played an important role in how these settlers viewed the world and its peculiar mysteries. The perspectives of key participants, such as Katherine “Kate” Branch, Daniel and Abigail Wescot, Elizabeth Clawson, Mercy Disborough, Sarah Bates, and Jonathan Selleck, displayed the range of reactions and thoughts of early New Englanders regarding the supernatural world. With

Salem Witch Trials was a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in the Salem Village of the 17th century New England. The trials caused executions of many people but mostly women. Salem Witch Trials exposed the different roles men and women were supposed to play during the seventeenth century. Women were supposed to take on “wifely duties” such as, be mothers and housewives. Women were thought to follow the men. The trials also revealed that there were strict religious norms during the seventeenth century. There was a rigid moral code believed that God would punish sinful behavior. Those who were under the covenant by the church of the Salem Village believed that Satan would select those to fulfill his work

Have you ever been accused before? Ever been someone you shouldn't be? Well there is this crazy thunderstorm at the Salem, Massachusetts about witches. There are witches that been accused and executed in 1692. Some witches were hanged but also one of them got piled up with rocks .

This essay assesses the claim that witch-hunting was rarely an uncontrollable or hysterical phenomenon. Witch hunts have traditionally been presented in the academic literature as the result of a panicked reaction to supposed malevolent devil worship (e.g., Trevor-Roper 1969; Thomas 1972). In support of this interpretation, it is possible to cite numerous cases in which large numbers of people were put on trial, imprisoned, tortured, and executed seemingly without reason and on poor evidence. It is sometimes argued that a number of the more famous trials were uncontrollable and hysterical in the way they were conducted. Examples include the North Berwick witch trials (1581-1593) in Scotland, the Salem witch trials in America (1692-1693), the Torsåker witch trials in Sweden (1675), and the Trier (1581-1593), Fulda (1603-1606), Bamberg (1626-1631), Würzburg (1626-1631) witch trials in Germany, among others (Briggs 2002; Ankarloo and Henningsen 1999). This argument has also been based on the development of a fierce culture of anti-witchcraft beginning in the 14th century, as evidenced by the publication of books on demonology and the emergence of professions such as ‘witch-hunters’ and ‘inquisitors’ (Ankarloo and Henningsen 1999). This essay argues that these select cases were the exceptions to the rule and that the incidence of ‘witch hysteria’ was relatively low. Contemporary perceptions of witchcraft have been misrepresented by focusing too narrowly on the most dramatic

We just finished reading the book Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem by Rosalyn Schanzer. A major witch hunt is going on in the town of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. A group of girls start having extreme spasms and visions of the spirits of friendly townspeople. This essay is about the trials and why the public allowed the trial to continue, like corruption or attention. Another reason is that there was

No one knows what this test is, but Logan is determined to know what it is. 5 years ago, Logan’s sister went to take the test and never returned. Now, Logan is turning 13, and he’s running out of time.