The Witches of Salem
1692-1693
In
1692 several girls in Salem, Massachusetts began acting strangely. They
were writhing and fainting and screaming, and when the authorities
pressured the girls into explaining themselves, they started blaming
witchcraft. Soon
neighbors began accusing one another of
being in league with the devil. Eventually,
more than 200
people were accused and put on trial.
Thirty were found guilty, and nineteen of them were executed, most by
hanging.
Modern historians have looked for the root causes of this outbreak in
the economic and ethnic divides within the community, but that's
because modern historians
go out of their way to make history less interesting.
