The Salem Witch Trials Overview by Difan Li

The Salem Witch Trial Hysteria of 1692 is a widely known event in history. In the 1600s, many immigrants from England settled in New England in the Thirteen Colonies, Puritans making up a large portion. They strictly followed the Bible and believed in the Devil and the ability for the Devil to turn people into witches. It was perhaps because of this strict interpretation and the fear and paranoia that ensued that led to the death of many innocent people. In Salem, a few girls were found to be acting strangely, doing things such as dancing in the forest, acting up, or hissing and screaming. They were examined by ministers who deemed them to be “bewitched.” To free themselves, they had to accuse other people in the community and identify the witches. This led to a chain of false accusations as the accused were forced to confess to something they did not do in order to save themselves. Those who denied being witches were imprisoned or executed. Twenty five people died and nineteen were killed in mass executions where eighteen of the nineteen were hanged and one man was crushed to death. Of the initially accused, there was an enslaved woman from the West Indies, Tituba, a beggar with a reputation for scaring children, Sarah Good, and a woman who rarely attended church and married an indentured servant, Sarah Osbourne. There is a clear relation between the three of them as all were outcasts on the fringes of society and women of lower socioeconomic status. Thus, the origins of these trials may not have been as haunted and mysterious as it seems. Possible causes or contributing factors may have been a fungus in the grain that caused people to behave abnormally, the strictness of Puritan culture leading to younger girls acting out or creating excessive paranoia, bias against women or those who did not fit the proper standards of society, or power struggles in Salem. This event is incredibly memorable as it shows the dangers of such paranoia and the death and destruction that can occur. What perhaps started as petty jealousy or the mischievousness of a few girls ended up causing the deaths of many, many innocent people. 

Works Cited

The DBQ Project. What Caused the Salem Witch Trial Hysteria of 1692? muhss.weebly.com/uploads/8/5/8/9/85898394/salem_witch_trials_miniq.pdf.