The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

The Salem Witch Trials

By Carla Davenport



As a cold wind blows through the small village of Salem, Massachusetts, the stories of witches and spells circulate with it. Tales of ghostly specters menacing town- folk and making innocent, “afflicted” girls writhe in unexplainable pain were running rampant. Anything unexplained was blamed on witchcraft or trickery. An elderly woman, accused of being a witch, sits in a cold cell awaiting trial. Her accusers—three young “afflicted” girls from the village. This was a typical happening in Salem during the year 1692.

Most people, including myself, see the trails as cruel and unusual, but were they really? In the days of the puritans things were vastly different than in the world of today. In 1692 the Puritans were in the midst of a religious awakening, where preachers spoke of hellfire and damnation. Cotton Mather played a large role in the execution of several of the wrongly accused, claiming that people were “molested by evil spirits” in his book Memorable Provinces. This book, along with his strong belief in witchcraft, helped to develop the hysteria that took over the small town.

Another prominent preacher of influence was Rev. Samuel Parris. He was the father of one of the girls, Betty Parris, and the uncle of another, Abigail Williams, which claimed to both be tormented by the evilness of the “witches”. Rev. Parris was said to have become the minister of the Salem Village Church after a man by the name of George Burroughs. His strict beliefs helped to fan the flames of the hellfire he preached about. He was not liked by the majority of the parishioners, mainly because of his “demands” for a house, along with his regular salary. He remained in the village for several years after the passing of the hysteria.

I have mentioned Burroughs, so now I must tell you the story, first of his accusation and then of his execution. Rev. Burroughs was born in Suffolk, England and moved to the colonies, with his mother, at a young age. He graduated from Harvard in 1670 and moved between jobs for several years before moving to Salem to become the preacher of a small church in 1680. He wasn’t met warmly by the people of the village, having many conflicts with them. Cotton Mather thought he might be “Baptist”, which was unacceptable in the puritan beliefs.

Ann Putman Jr. was his first and primary accuser, proclaiming him a “Black Preacher” and the leader of the witches. There were several confessed witches that backed her statement by claiming they had seen him involved in devilish rituals. Miss Putman later stated that two ghosts appeared to her saying they were the murdered wives of Rev. Burroughs and that he had caused their deaths. At his examination, several men showed up to accuse him of performing feats of “super-human strength”.

On April 30th, 1692, the former reverend was formally charged with “high suspicion of sundry acts of witchcraft…” After awaiting trail for over three months, it finally took place on August 3rd. Even though there were thirty-two signatures of highly respected members of the village on a petition stating that Burroughs was a good man and one of his former accusers reveled that she had been lying, he was hanged on August 17th. As he waited with the noose around his neck he recited the Lord’s Prayer perfectly. This caused a few of the citizens to call for his release. They were consequently over-ruled and he was executed as planned.

Another of the accused was Bridget Bishop. Although some of the records are unclear, she was a woman of fifty-five to sixty-five years of age when she was accused of working the craft. In 1666 she had married Oliver Thomas and was somewhat less than happy. Some say that she was the victim of abuse at the hands of her husband. Over a series of years she was charged with five separate criminal acts before her charge of witchcraft in 1692.

During her examination the girls who had accused her were present. While the proceedings were underway, the girls made claims that Bishop was sending a spectral entity to torment and threaten them in attempts to scare them into recanting their claims.

As the questioning continued, her calm attitude changed and Bishop became aggravated and contemptuous. There are some who believe that this may have lead to her becoming the first to hang for the crime of witchcraft.

Her formal charge was the “…torturing, afflicting, pinning, consuming, wasting, and tormenting...” of her victims. The only evidence to support these claims was of the spectral sort and none could be proved. She was hanged on June 10th, 1692.

These infamous trials took place in a time that we cannot fully understand. The religion was much stricter, times were hard, and at the time there were no laws in effect in Salem.

In the colonial days of Salem, there were what the people believed to be signs of evil in everyday life. They were suffering from diseases such as small pox and ergot poisoning. The latter of which can cause hallucinations and may explain some of the strange actions of the people of Salem.

There were extremely hard times that made some believe evil was working against them and causing them to become “afflicted”. Some of these so-called “afflicted” were: Ann Putman Jr., Betty Parris, Abigail Williams (the niece of Rev. Parris), Mercy Lewis, and a slave named Tituba (a self-proclaimed witch). Altogether there were forty-three people that claimed to have been touched by the evil of the witches of Salem.

The level-headedness of minister Increase Mather, father of Cotton Mather, ultimately brought the trials to an end. He published a literary work entitled “Cases of Conscience” that circulated through the village and cast a shadow of doubt on the existence of actual witches. Mather stated, “It were better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person should be condemned.” There were also some very prominent members of society being accused of these evil acts and this helped to end the trails as well.

At the close of the last trail, held in January 1693, there were 140 people that had been accused. Nineteen of them had been hanged for the crime of witchcraft. (Although some movie portrayals of the trials show the victims of this horrible act being burned at the stake, the burning of “witches” only took place in England and other portions of Europe.) At least four, and possibly as many as seventeen people, died in prison while awaiting trial. It is said that a child as young as five had been accused and died while in prison with his mother. There was also the case of Giles Corey, who was “pressed” to death for his refusal to stand trial.

When you take into account the collected causes of the trials, it actually is not hard to believe. I still believe that it was a horrible event in our history but it was an understandable event.

I am not sure why we still seem to have our own versions of the witch hunts of those days, but I know first hand that it does happen. There are several examples of the same kinds of actions through-out the more recent years of our history. In a society that has slipped from Christianity as we have, people’s choice of religion shouldn’t be as closely scrutinized as it seems to be. My daughter has chosen to be Wiccan, and she faces the same kinds of remarks and slurs that I am sure some of the accused of Salem faced as well. I don’t necessarily believe the way she does, but I will not belittle her for her choice. The Wiccans really believe in the same way as the Indians that were so hated and feared among the colonial people. It seems to me that in history, if you pay attention, you can experience some sort of de’j’vu. But, you might watch who you tell, because you never can tell who might accuse you.