Little material evidence was available in regards to casting demons, spells, and spirits to throw teen girls into fits or seizures so the next best option was evidence based on the unseen. One witness and accuser claimed to see the Devil whispering in the ear of one of the alleged witches, Martha Carrier. No other witness saw this, but the accuser’s testimony was used as evidence to convict Carrier of witchcraft and therefore sentence her to death by hanging. Few members of Salem village sought to use logic to deny spectral evidence because of the fear that it could be true. Puritans were fearful of God’s wrath and the power of the Devil, which led to fear of any less-than-holy supernatural activity. Fear overcame rationale, which was why the court officials were so easily swayed to believe the testimony and spectral evidence provided by the accuser. The cycle of fear, spectral evidence, and sentencing led to twenty deaths total. However, in October of 1692, the governor of Massachusetts broke the…
"Escaping Salem will engage every reader who has fallen under the spell of witchcraft's history in New England. But beware: still deeper enchantment awaits as Richard Godbeer unfolds his riveting tale of how ordinary men and women struggled to make sense of the wonders and terrors at work in their Connecticut village." Christine Leigh Heyrman. The author Richard Godbeer is Professor of History at the University of Miami. His books include the award-winning The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England and Sexual Revolution in Early America.…
The history of the Salem witchcraft epidemic is well known. In the winter of 1692, two girls suffered convulsions and hallucinations, alarming fast their families and subsequently the entire community. When a medical diagnosis was not forthcoming, a religious explanation was accepted: the girls were acting strangely because "the hand of Satan was in them." The drama was intensified because the two girls were the daughter and niece of the town's minister.…
The purpose of this book was to examine the history and social life of Salem Village to try to figure out what was the cause of the events that occurred there. I believe that the authors achieved their objective at least they did to me. Boyer and Nissenbaum's explanation for the outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Salem hinges on an understanding of the economic,…
“Extraordinary body postures, inexplicable pains, deafness, numbness, and blindness, meaning I was babbling, refusal to eat, destructive and self-destructive behavior…” Witchcraft was common in the 16th and 17th centuries. In 1692, in Salem, Massachusetts a slave named Tituba was the first “witch” accused. This accusation came about when two younger girls and Tituba, their fathers slave, attempted to see into the future through an egg white. When they looked in the egg white they supposedly saw a coffin and began displaying the symptoms of being possessed, or being overcome by the ‘devil’. When she was accused she confessed she was guilty and also confessed to there being other witches. There are many alleged causes to the Salem Witch Trials such as undiagnosed encephalitis, paranoia, and an unjust class structure because of heightened religious beliefs. Little did she know this would start a mass hysteria of witchcraft and cause excessive paranoia in Salem Massachusetts.…
One was anger followed by mischief – a sidelong glance by the suspected witch followed quickly by an accident to the victim. The last and most fragile evidence, testimony by the afflicted that were “visited” by some demonic form (Salem DBQ 9). In my opinion this is not real and valid evidence. Two reasons why I say this, for one, I don 't fully understand because in my mind it 's saying, that if you look suspicious or do suspicious things someone is allowed to follow you and if they believe you are practicing witchcraft they have the right to accuse you and send you to jail and give you a trial. Now if I’m right I think that is very and I mean very stupid because if your neighbor is the one accusing you then the your land will become a free for all and that neighbor will have most of your land and become a little more powerful in the social status. Secondly those “ afflicted “ girls could have been faking and lying about what they seen or did therefor their evidence is also…
In the 1600’s rumors of witchcraft spread throughout England and even more so in New England. Though punishing someone by death for practicing witchcraft was not unheard of, it was all but common; that is, until the year 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. From the tenth of June to the twenty-second of September, twenty men and women were killed, all by hanging except one, because they were accused and convicted of practicing witchcraft; the convictions escalated in number and frequency. The question at hand is whether or not these convictions came unwarranted and if not, why? What caused such hysteria of witchcraft in this small city?…
The Salem Witch Trials are known as a series of people being accused and prosecuted of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts beginning in February 1692 until May 1693. The trials began after a group of girls claimed that they were possessed by the devil. Several local women were accused of witchcraft and this began the wave of hysteria that would forever haunt Salem and leave a painful legacy for a long time to come. Nearly every major school of historians has attempted to explain the answer to the mystery of the trials, trying to understand why they occurred. From Marxists who blame class conflict, to Freudians who believe in mass hysteria, the more ecologically based historians who put the blame on hallucinogenic ergot fungus, and now more…
The year 1692 marked a major event in history in the town of Salem, Massachusetts. During the year 1692, Salem, a colony filled with Puritans who believe in religion very strongly, but as their beliefs grow, the more the people were starting to die. The problem or question is what caused the Salem witch crisis hysteria of 1692? There were many causes for the Salem witch trial hysteria but the possible three main reasons were the conflicts between young and older women, the “afflicted” girls were acting throughout the trial, and the town’s differences in wealth and power.…
Boyer and Nissenbaum's explanation for the outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Salem hinges on an understanding of the economic, political and personal…
An additional cause of the accusations in Salem may have started from the existence of hysteria. In the article Hysteria in Four Acts, it is suggested that, “When psychiatrists use the term, they mean to identify something more specific: namely, a perverse human behavior in which individuals act in ways that imitate actual physical or psychological disorder” (McHugh 2). Hysteria potentially existed in Salem based on the ideas in this text. The behavior exemplified by the victims of false accusations complies with the symptoms of hysteria.…
Salem was one of the most popular places where witches were executed, because people where afraid of devil which shows the Miller's story The Crucible. This horrible fear shaped the society of Salem and as it happened a lot of women were killed. As Dorothy Thompson said: "The most destructive element in the human mind is fear. Fear creates aggressiveness". The book which I read is the story about how the society was manipulated by the fear of the unknown or different. Therefore, in my opinion people in Salem were afraid of a devil and this fear shaped their society to judge and perceive normal women as witches and in consequences killed them.…
In 1692, an event called the Salem Witch Trials occurred, because of this, the people from a village called Salem, Massachusetts were fearful because they could be accused a witch. This all started when a group of young girls began to act very strange. The behaviors of the girls’ ranged from, screaming, copying body movements, pain, falling on the floor, twitching, and many other symptoms.…
The most popular historical perspective of what occurred is that in early 1692, the Rev. Samuel Parris’s 9-year-old daughter Betty and his 12-year-old niece Abigail, “began to fall into horrid fits”. There has been debate as to whether these fits were real, or if the girls were just acting. The village doctor could not explain these bizarre “fits”, and blamed it on the supernatural. One must understand that these were Puritans, their belief system at that time gave a great deal of power to the spiritual world. If something good happen to somebody they were said to be in God 's good graces. If something bad happened to somebody, it was said to be the devil 's work.…
During the March of last year, the small town of Salem had claimed to have been seized by a sickness that couldn’t be cured simply by antibiotics. Witchcraft had supposedly been expelled among the town and there was very little that could be done to stop it. Twenty people were executed and 200 accused because of the claimed affiliation between them and witchcraft.…