The Salem Witches: Real or Imagined?
The Salem Witch Trials began because of a mysterious illness contracted by 11-year old Abigail Williams and her cousin Betty Paris (Burgan). Instead of looking for a logical explanation, the community immediately jumped to the conclusion that witches caused the girls curious behavior. Doctors commonly would diagnose an unknown illness as witchcraft, rather than looking for other explanations (Wolfinger). Erot of Rye, which causes severe contortions and hallucinations, could have caused their strange behavior (Burgan). Abigail and Betty also could have faked their bewitchment to receive attention or avoid work. The Salem Witch Trials took place based accusations, rather than solid evidence.
Though frowned upon by many in modern society, people considered witchcraft a terrible crime, punishable by death during this period in time. Many scholars in Salem believed that witches actually signed away their soul to the devil in return for earthly favors and special powders (history.com). Tituba, an accused slave girl acknowledged this belief, and confessed to have written her name in blood within the devil’s book. She only evaded execution because she saw others also writing their names in the devil’s book. With Tituba still alive, she could identify other potential witches.
Soon after the “bewitched” girls accused the first witch, Tituba, many more followed. Among the suspected withes, Rebecca Nurse and Giles Correy held strong to their
The first reason the Salem witch trials occurred was mainly because people were scared of the devil. The people of Salem were all Puritans and were extremely scared of Satan. Since they were so scared, once one person was accused, everybody became spectacle and believed that there was witchcraft in the village. The smallest little suspicions caused people to think that you were a witch. Even by the way you acted in one little way, the town would freak out
The girls claimed that Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne were the girls who bewitched them. While Magistrates John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin were examining them, Tituba confesses to practicing witchcraft and confirms that Good and Osborne also practice witchcraft, they are put in jail. Tituba also said that there were many more witches in the village, this made people paranoid and so they continued looking for more “witches.”
Many people were accused of being witches in 1692 and hung or pressed to death for their crime, many others were thrown in prison for life. When the Salem Witch Trials Hysteria of 1692 swept Salem Village and surrounding areas, it was not a happy time. Many of the people living in Salem at the time were Protestants seeking religious freedom. Protestants were very religious people and looked to the Bible for help as God’s words were all true. One of the subjects that the Bible addressed was the Devil and how he possessed people to make them witches. When two young girls asked a West Indian slave woman be the name of Tituba to show them their fortunes, they begun to get more curious about her abilities. Tituba showed them the “magic” she knew from her former tribe, but when the young girls started acting strangely, she was accused for being a witch along side two other local white women. Instead of pleading guilty, Tituba confessed that she was a witch and told the audience of her trial that there were 6 more witches amongst them. This lead to a hectic frenzy to find the remaining witches and it turned neighbors onto each other, husbands on wives and entire families were thrown into prison for their crime. The three main reasons for the Salem Witch Trials Hysteria of 1692 were a group of young girls looking for attention, neighbor conflicts and gender/status/age.
In the evenings Tituba entertained little Betty and her cousin Abigail Williams by the kitchen fire. She played fortune-telling games and told them stories of magic and spirits from the Caribbean. Tituba was pointed out by the three girls and accused of teaching them witchcraft and fortune telling, which resulted in their strange behavior. Tituba did not deny the allegations. She confessed to being a witch after Reverend Parris beat her.
The Salem Witch Trials were a time of paranoia and mass hysteria. In this small town of Massachusetts hundreds were accused of witchcraft and 19 people were executed. Salem was home to very devout Puritans. The worries arrived when young girls would become sick with no explanation or cure. The doctors not knowing what the cause of the illness was, quickly pronounce the girls bewitched. It spread terror through the town. The girls, as well as other residents, started accusing others of witchery. Many accusations were because of vengeance or self-interest. There were rivalries between families over land or wealth. Neighbors started accusing each other in order to gain their land. The religious community had an intensified sense of fear that the Devil was walking among them. They believed witches were out to destroy the Puritans. In order to purify the village of evil they had trials for the accused.
The Salem Witch Trials were a series of accusations, trials, and executions based on the supposed outbreak of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts. The trials began during the spring of 1692, and the last of them ended in 1693. It all started when two young girls, Abigail and Betty Parris, began experiencing violent convulsions and outbursts, which were thought to be brought about by witchcraft. Whether they were faking these symptoms, were afflicted with an actual sickness, or were experiencing them because of some sort of psychological reason is widely debated, though it is known that the sisters accused their maid, Tituba, of forcing them to participate in witchcraft with her. Some who theorize about the causes of the trials dismiss the Parris girls involvement in the beginning and instead attribute the outbreak of accusations to judgement upon the members of society who break social or religious rules, or who struck the upright members of society as ‘strange’ and ‘suspicious’, such as the homeless, the poor, and old or widowed women. The cause of the hysteria that went on in Salem after this is what is speculated by so many. There are probably hundreds of theories out there, but a few in particular are more widely known, accepted, and supported than others.
Elizabeth Parris and Abagail Williams, the pastor’s daughter and niece respectively, were two of the six young ladies that Tituba watch over. In the beginning, Tituba would perform witchcraft in an attempt to lure the girls into witchcraft but the girls rejected Tituba’s actions. Eventually, the girls would begin to act out and were proclaimed to have become bewitched. After Parris discovered that his girls’ actions were not of physical nor mental disease and of spiritual doings, an aunt of one of the afflicted girls used Tituba to experiment using a urine-cake (eventually this aunt would be scorned for practicing counter magic) to determine who bewitched the young girls. When the girls cried out that it was Tituba’s doing and made several accusations of her acts of witchcraft, Tituba rejected all allegations. In theory, Tituba made herself out as a witch. In the end of her trial, Tituba would confess to practicing witchcraft. She confessed that she had signed the Devil’s book along with eight other witches including Goody Osborne and Sarah Good, as well as seeing the Devil various times in the form of a tall man, a hog, cats, a great black dog, and wolves and birds. Sarah Good and Goody Osbourne worked in command of Tituba taking the Devil’s orders to terrorize the young women of the household by pinching, harming, and performing acts of levitation. Tituba being the first to
The Salem witch trials were trials for people who were being accused of worshiping the devil. They believed the witches were out to harm others in supernatural ways. They were believed to be able to turn into animals, cause others to become possessed by looking at them, and were accused of being the cause of illness or miscarriages. However, there are many false theories about the Salem witch trials causing many controversies. One of the bigger controversies was if people were really being possessed by the three women. Often times, if doctors could not find a cause to an illness they will blame it on witchcraft. “Laurie Winn Carlson argues that in the spring of 1691 and winter of 1692, some of the accusers exhibited these symptoms, and that a doctor had been called in to treat the girls. He could not find an underlying physical cause, and therefore concluded that they suffered from possession by witchcraft, a common diagnosis of unseen conditions at the time”. They believed there had to be a cause to everything and if something
There have been many theories and conspiracies following up the Salem Witch Trials of 1962 in Salem, Massachusetts. Many claims try to explain the existence of witches during the time but very few try to disprove those claims as well. Although they hold strong arguments only one theory has been able to be proven scientifically through the accounts of actual victims. Ergot poisonings have been very evident through the beginning of the “bewitchments” and throughout the trials. In 1962, eight young girls began to experience sickly symptoms and strange happenings that no nurse or doctor could explain. As they were left clueless with no explanation they concluded that girls were “bewitched” and ended up accusing three elderly women of being the witches of Satan while conducting spiritual acts of terrorism on them for sacrificial reasons. These women admitted to the crime and were sentenced to jail although more accounts of the same symptoms and happenings were spreading to even more people in the area. The theory of ergotism may be proven by the location and time period of the trials, the side effects of the ergot poisoning, and even the authentic accounts of the “bewitched” victims.
After being interrogated for days, the most educated and trusted woman of the trio, Tibuta, confessed that the devil turned her into a witch. This put all three women in jail and planted the seed to the next reason of why the hysteria spread so far and fast through Salem.
The witch trials of Salem are often thought to be a hysteria that can be categorized as fake and sometimes “crazy”. The trials started by the belief of the supernatural and the practice of the devil’s ability to grant people the ability to hurt others. Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams are the two young ladies that began the stereotypical beliefs in witchery. Williams and Parris started having hysterical fits and “uncontrollable” tantrums filled with screaming and crazy-like seizures. The result of all the insane opinions and conclusions to society were nineteen hangings, and one pressing. The Salem witch trials were a result of hasty decisions and the fear of God’s anger on the people of society. Today, the trials would be seen as crazy or fictional.
That Little Betty Parris was sick, and that the Dr. Griggs (who was too proud to say that he could not diagnose Little Betty illness) claimed she was bewitched (Richardson 7), were enough reasons for court authorities to suspect witchcraft was the cause of the illness. In addition, several young girls in the village had participated in 弎lack magic?experiments ?harmless adolescent games ?in the company of Tituba, Reverend Parris slave. The restless young girls allegedly met in Parris shed, and created and listened to Tituba incredible tales of sorcery and black arts, which were doubtless an outlet for their repressed feelings. Soon, faulty cause-and-effect relationships sparked delirium.
The result was much unexpected as it was revealed that preparation of the witchcake had taken place. The other girls, already frightened by the previous symptoms displayed by Betty and their involvement in the occult games, would become even more frightened with the knowledge of the counter-magic. They too would start to experience such symptoms that would become even more violent than those presented before to include hallucinations; the witchcake did not relieve but instead intensified their hysteria as well as the town’s fears and fantasies of evil among them. The girls would soon confirm the town’s suspicions of evil implications by identifying two women, Sarah Goode (38), and Sarah Osborne (49), who they believed were witches tormenting them, those women also accused Tituba (between 25-30 years old). Warrants of arrest were prepared for the three women on February 29 and Tituba’s testimonies would proceed from March 1-5, resulting in the commencement of the greatest-known witch hunt of all time.
The Salem Witch Trials were a horrendous event in the history of America and was the first of its kind. A question that has risen up numerous times is what was the actual cause of the trials. We know that a few girls made the first accusations, but why. I will now explain how Salem became one of the most notorious towns in Massachusetts. Ergot poisoning was the cause for the witch trials as it caused the girls to become crazed and delirious.
After the doctor’s analysis, the townspeople then gathered up all of the girls with the symptoms. The collected girls accused three women: Sarah Good, an odd homeless woman who lived the streets of Salem Village, Sarah Osborne, who had married her servant and rarely attended the church meetings, and Tituba, an Indian slave from Barbados who was in service of Reverend Samuel Parris. Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne denied the accusations, while Tituba confessed, and claimed there were multiple other witches working by her side in Salem.