Witch Trails: The Salem Witch Trials

Imagine being the cleaning lady for a prestige family, you worry about making money and staying alive, but the family has a greater fear -witches. It was the 17th century, residents in the Salem area and others believed that witches live all around them, doing the devil's work. The witchcraft conspiracy theory is the witchcraft is fake. Two major reason back up this theory.

Witch-Hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials. Marc Aronson. (New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, November 1, 2003. 272.)

Human beings always have been curious creatures. We are a species that is always searching for answers to unexplainable events. Take aliens for example. To us, aliens may or may not exist (depending on your individual belief of course). Yet we still take such an interest in them that we continuously search for answers and proof of alien. Now that we have modern day technology, we can attain “proof” of alien life-form somewhere deep in outer space. But given the date 1692 in New England, if we were to even come in contact with aliens it would have been considered some supernatural phenomena, and even cause quite a bit of hysteria. That is what happened to the puritans in Salem village during the Salem Witch Trials, in Massachusetts, in the year 1962. The puritans of Salem village were extremely paranoid, and they believed that if something can’t be explained then it had the devils influence. So when a group of Salem girls spoke up about the devil and witches, the villagers of Salem went into a panicked frenzy. Truth of the matter is that there were no witches in Salem nor was the devil at war against Salem; the Salem Witch Trials were only a result of endless lies, conspiracies, and side effects of an illness.

The United States of America is known to many as the Home of the Free. The United States has built itself on pride knowing that its citizens are protected against a government that abuses its power. Also, religious freedom and a separation of church and state are key fundamentals of America. However, the present day United States had to go through several conflicts in order to preserve the unalienable rights. One of these obstacles the United States had to overcome was the Salem Witch Trials.

The Salem Witch Trails, the fear of Imperial Japan, and Communism have one thing in common, paranoia. Imperial Japan and Communism were far away threats, but seemed to get closer and closer every day. In Salem when one accused Witch was condemned, it seemed anyone in this innocent town could be the next witch.

During the seventeenth century Salem, Massachusetts is a seaport town populated mostly by Puritan colonists who came over from England in the seventeenth century. Beliefs of witchcraft came over with the settlers who, if caught practicing, was punishable by death. The Salem Witch Trials were a series of court cases in 1692 revolving around witchcraft where over hundred people were accused, nineteen were hanged, and one was pressed to death.

Historians called this period the dark time when men and women hunted for witches known as the Salem Witch trials. European descents brought them the belief in witches and the devil. These beliefs that they believed in so much were from the teaching of the catholic church. During the seventeenth century, people were executed for being believed they were witches and followers of Satan. Most of these executions were performed in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. Mainly all of the accused victims were women, many historians believe that the charges of witchcraft were a way to control the women who threatened to take the power away from the men. During the Salem Witch trials how did the outbreak of the trials start and did religious beliefs of the European descents affect the relations of the Salem witch trials?

Known as the trial of the century, it sparked a sequence of events that are remembered in history today as the infamous Salem Witch Trials. In the spring of 1692, citizens of Salem, Massachusetts, were accused of practicing the sin witch craft. Nineteen people were hung over the course of the trials, each of them civilians who were fellow residents to the accusers during the trials. The witches that were executed though did not go silent into the night, few stood up for themselves and fought for their own innocence. Along with the help of some companions, the townsfolk who were put on trial were able to voice their opinion on their execution.

Over the course of a year, dozens of people, mostly teenage girls, claimed to be put in spells casted by men and women who had "enlisted the supernatural powers of the devil". This occurred in Salem village, a small village a few miles away from Salem town. The accusations started in the Parris household in 1962.

1. What kind of book is this? List three evidences of this. There are a lot of genres for this kind of book. Drama, because there is a lot of disagreement that causes all the fighting.

"You 're a liar! I 'm no more a witch than you are a wizard! If you take my life away, God will give you blood to drink!" (Sarah Good). To this day, there is still so much speculation on what was the actual cause of the hysteria that was the Salem Witch Trials. Were any of the women accused, like Sarah Good, actually practicing witchcraft? Or were the accusations placed on these women placed out of spite or jealousy? What caused these young women to have these strange symptoms in the first place? There are many theories to the cause of the chaos that occurred in Salem. The goal of this paper is to identify the different factors that played into the start of the trials and to discuss what went on in the trials themselves. This paper will explore these theories and come to a conclusion on what caused Salem to go into such a frenzy as it did in this time.

The Salem Witch Trials officially started in February of 1692 and ended in May of 1693. More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft, which was considered the Devil’s work. The total executed was 20 (Currie 4).The citizens of Salem suffered more than ever to rebuild the town and out of all the girls who were responsible for making false accusations only one of them apologized (Blumberg). The town of Salem was occupied by Puritans, unlike Pilgrims who wanted to be rid of religious laws, Puritans wanted to stay true to those doctrines (Macbain 4). With strong religious beliefs, the officials of the town were clouded in their judgement, which played a large role when the afflicted girls started to make accusations. The accusations started when the girls accused 3 women of bewitching them, even though the adults were in disbelief,

The year was 1692, when terror of witchcraft and the devil swept through the little Salem village. When the trials came about people turned on their enemies and even family turned on other family members with accusations of witchcraft. Throughout this process many people were hung or stoned to death because they were found guilty of having relations with the devil or for not admitting to witchcraft. Many books and articles have been published about the Salem witch trials but most of them were written in different ways by the approach the authors takes, how they interpret the information from that time period and the content they use. They also differ by the accounts they make towards certain individuals, along with the approach they take to tell what happened during the Salem witch trials. In the nonfiction book, The Devil In Massachusetts by Marion L. Starkey, she tells a dramatic story about what had happened before, during, and after the Salem witch trials, to make what she is saying more interesting. While compared to a nonfiction book, The Salem Wichcraft Trials: A Legal History written by a historian named Peter Charles Hoffer, where he is very straight forward because he uses factual evidence from primary and secondary source puritain writers and he gives those writers credit in his bibliographic essay.

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

In Salem, witchcraft was not common until one day when a bunch of girls did not want to get caught for dancing. These girls lied about what they were doing and made it a bigger seen than it really was. They would have only gotten whipped for dancing, but instead the got many people killed. They were hung for witchcraft. This is why those girls are the dark forces in Salem. I also think that another dark force is jealousy and vengeance. These are not the main dark forces because many people did these things, but the girls are the main dark forces.