The Salem Witch Trials

The Bewitching of Salem

In February 1692, a strange event struck the Puritan town of Salem, Massachusetts that has bewitched America ever since (pun intended). A group of girls belonging to prominent families of town leaders were mysteriously struck by strange epileptic fits, hysterical crying, and visions of having seen the devil himself.

Fear in the New World

To the Puritans, the New World was both a land of opportunity and a place of dark woods inhabited by strange savages whose religion was akin to devil worship. The Puritans believed that the devil was very real and was constantly working to undermine their efforts to create a colony that was a beacon of light for God in a world filled with darkness (and Indians, and wolves, and bears, and...)

Salem Village (renamed Danvers, MA) around 1690

The First Victims

It all began in December 1692 when Betty Parris, 9, and her cousin Abigail Williams, 11, began to have "fits". The girls would scream, throw stuff across the room, crawl under furniture, and contort their bodies in strange positions. The girls also complained about being pinched by an unseen force. The fits went on for days. Several times, church services were interrupted by these outbursts. Then two other girls, Elizabeth Hubbard and Ann Putnam, 12, became the next victims of these strange attacks.

The Search for a Cause

A doctor was called in to examine them. Having found no earthly explanation, the doctor declared that witchcraft must be at work. The girls were questioned and quickly the truth was revealed. A slave named Tituba (either an African or Native American depending on whose story you listen to) had been performing fortune tellings and casting spells — a big no-no in Puritan towns. Tituba was arrested and brought before the court.

Knowing that the punishment for witchcraft was death (by hanging — they didn't burn witches), Tituba was quick to turn snitch by giving up other names of local women as undercover agents of the Dark Lord. (Satan, not Voldemort.) For the next two years, America's biggest witch hunt got underway that, by the time it was over, three hundred people would be accused, arrested, and brought to trial for the crime of witchcraft.

The Accused

The fact that Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne were co-conspirators of the Devil came as no surprise to the good people of Salem, seeing that they were both social outcasts. Good was a homeless beggar who often got into disputes with the locals. Osborne was a poor widow who rarely attended church.

In March 1692 the women were arrested, interrogated, and sent to jail. During interrogation, the names of more local women were given up. Martha Corey had made her opinion well known that she thought the girls were liars who were afflicted with nothing more than a bad acting job. Others that found themselves on the witch "hit list" were Rachel Nurse, Rachel Clinton, and Dorothy Good—the four-year-old daughter of Sarah Good was used as evidence against her mother. She was never hanged though, even the Puritans had some standards of decency.

Arrest of Sarah Good

Trials and Spectral Evidence

Each trial was more elaborate than the next as the accused began giving up more names in order to save their own skins. In the days before Jersey Shore, a good witch trial was prime-time entertainment. The courthouse was packed to overflowing as people elbowed their way in to get a glimpse of the freak show.

At center stage were the four girls. Whenever evidence was lacking the girls would fall under the spell of the accused, right there in court for everyone to see. Of course, no one could see anything except for four girls pointing and screaming that they were being harmed by the spirit of the accused. This bit of legal dance work was called spectral evidence, meaning that it was good enough to show that a person's specter (their disembodied form) was responsible for the attacks, even if the actual person had a rock-solid alibi to prove their innocence.

The first 3 women accused of being a witch and arrested were all young girls who did not attend church…and one was a very young slave girl [Sarah Good, Sarah Osburne and Tituba

The Roots of the Panic

The model for judges willing to accept spectral evidence — and there weren't many who would — was a 1662 legal pamphlet called A Tryal of Witches, which laid the groundwork for how to prove that someone's specter had committed an attack.

Only a witch or warlock was capable of committing such dark magic. In the night they would send their spirit out to attack their victims, leaving physical marks on the body. The victim would know who committed the crime because the specter often either took the shape of their attacker or in the shape of their animal familiar — a black cat, raven, or a wolf, which because you are dreaming, you just know who it is under that disguise.

This illustration by Howard Pyle depicts the arrest of a witch. Image Source: New York Public Library Digitial Collections.

The Final Victims

Most of the accused tended to be poor women with little social standing. Two of the most unlikely victims were 80-year-old Rebecca Nurse, who was seen as a pillar of the community, and Giles Corey, a leader in the church. But their good reputations didn't save them from a witch trial and execution. The Massachusetts Colony was firmly swept up in the witch hysteria and nothing was going to stop it...except a cease-and-desist letter from the governor.

Vengeful Neighbors and Paranoia Gone Awry

Underneath the talk of witchcraft and the devil, Salem’s troubles were driven by something far more familiar—old grudges and jealous neighbors. The town was split in two.

Salem Village (today’s Danvers) was full of struggling farmers who worked long hours and felt ignored. Salem Town, a few miles away, had merchants, ministers, and money. The resentment between them had been brewing for years.

Two families stood at the heart of it: the Putnams and the Porters. The Putnams were farmers who believed their wealthier rivals were prideful and corrupt. The Porters thought the Putnams were bitter and self-righteous. Their fights over church leadership, inheritance, and property lines divided nearly everyone in town. So, when the witchcraft accusations began, the Putnams were quick to support them—especially when the accused happened to be people they didn’t like.

One of the lead accusers, Ann Putnam Jr., was the daughter of Thomas Putnam, who had long been in disputes with several of the accused. Among them was Rebecca Nurse, an elderly woman respected by nearly everyone. She and her family had clashed with the Putnams over land boundaries. When her name appeared on the list of witches, it wasn’t just bad luck—it reflected years of quiet hostility finally breaking into the open.

The web of accusations spread through a town already full of grudges. Neighbors who had argued over fences or borrowed livestock suddenly found themselves in court. Families who had lost influence or land saw a chance to bring others down with them. Witchcraft accusations became the ultimate weapon—easy to make, impossible to disprove, and devastating to anyone who crossed the wrong person.

Fear and jealousy didn’t need dark magic to destroy Salem. The townspeople managed that all on their own.

Why It Matters

The Salem Witch Trials weren’t the last witch hunt in American history. The accusations just changed costumes. In the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy accused Americans of being communist spies with about as much evidence as the Puritans had spectral cats. Careers were destroyed, neighbors turned on each other, and fear became its own kind of power.

Both Salem and the Red Scare followed the same pattern—panic spreads, evidence disappears, and people rush to prove their loyalty by pointing fingers. It’s human nature at its worst: the need to belong, even if that means turning against someone else.

The Salem trials remind us how easy it is for hysteria to disguise itself as righteousness. Whether it’s witches, communists, or whoever the “enemy” of the moment happens to be, history keeps showing us what happens when fear does the talking and reason stays silent.