The Rise of Witch Hysteria: Inside Salem’s Darkest Days

How It All Started: The Strange Case of Betty and Abigail
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” reads the Bible and there was one infamous village in particular that was dead-set on living by that doctrine.
It was in Salem, 1692, that nine-year-old Betty Parris and her eleven-year-old cousin Abigail Williams began suffering from a terrible and mysterious illness. The girls would be struck down, seemingly at any place at any time, and begin writhing and screaming in agony. They would tremble and shake, convulse and cry, and then things became even worse. The girls began growling and making strange noises. They would shout and throw things across the room. They would crawl under furniture and curl up in strange positions.
The doctor was called, a man named William Griggs, and he had a troubling diagnosis. The girls were indeed suffering and they had been afflicted by a malevolent disease: witchcraft.
With that, the village sprang into action. Two of their youngest and most vulnerable members had been targeted by evil magic and now there was just one thing left to do: find the witches responsible.

The First Accused: The Women Who Didn’t Fit In
Within days, three women were arrested and accused of using dark magic against the girls.
Sarah Good was a woman fallen on hard times. Her father had been a successful innkeeper, but most of his property had been tied up in legal loopholes and had left his daughter Sarah with virtually nothing. She had then married an indentured servant, which had dropped her station even further and after his death had left her ridden with debt. Still, Sarah managed to marry again, but her misfortune with money had dragged her new husband, William Good, down with her. Burdened with her first husband’s debt, Sarah and William were left homeless and with William working farming and labor jobs in exchange for a roof over their heads.
Around town, Sarah had a terrible reputation, not just for the financial circumstances she found herself in, but for being difficult. Sarah did things her own way and in Puritanical America, her way of doing things lacked a sense of discipline and self-control.
She was brought before the courts, accused of rejecting Puritan ways and of being a witch. Beside her was another woman named Sarah: Sarah Osborne.
In the eyes of the Puritans, Sarah’s crimes were far more severe. She’d initially done well for herself and had married into the respectable and relatively wealthy Putnam family, but that all changed after the death of her first husband. Sarah then became involved with an indentured servant and once he’d bought his freedom, the two were married. That was one blemish on her reputation, but the blemish quickly grew into a scorch mark that could never be removed when Sarah did the unthinkable.
Her first husband had left land for their children, but instead of handing it over, Sarah took the land for herself and used it to set up a life for herself and her new husband.
That was that.
Sarah kept her own mind and her own council. She didn’t attend church meetings, was deemed selfish and unruly for managing her own estates and meddling with her son’s inheritance and she had tarnished the Putnams’ reputation by marrying her former indentured servant.
And then there was Tituba, a slave woman working in the same household as the afflicted girls, Betty and Abigail.
Perhaps Tituba’s biggest crime against the Puritans was her ethnicity, but exactly where she’d come from has been shrouded by history. Some believe she came from South America or from the West Indies. Some believe she was Native American, but the only thing that mattered to the people of Salem was that Tituba wasn’t one of them.
She was known to tell stories of witches and demons to the girls to entertain them. In these stories were often tales of seductive, powerful women and for that Tituba found herself accused of being a witch alongside Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne.
It’s no surprise that it was these women who were suspected of being witches out of everyone in the community. Each were outcasts in their own right. They were either destitute and difficult, opinionated and acting above the station her gender would grant her or she’d been doomed from the start for simply being different.
They faced several days of interrogation and accusations before being sent to jail, but it was Tituba who broke rank first.
Both Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne denied their charges, but when asked to plead, Tituba confessed that she was, indeed, a witch. Many have questioned her motives for doing so, but perhaps the easiest way to explain her actions was self-preservation.
By confessing, Tituba managed to pivot her role from accused witch to willing informant. But a move that would buy her a moment of relative safety would spell disaster not only for the other women who’d been accused, but for Salem itself.
In her confession, Tituba had not only said that she was a witch but that there were also other witches living amongst them and now the people of Salem looked at each other with suspicion. Who else in their community was a witch and who else would they be afflicting with their devilish powers?

Salem’s Fear Frenzy: When Suspicion Turned Deadly
The next people to be accused would take the course of history down an even darker path.
First was Martha Corey, a respectable, church-going woman, whose only crime had been that she’d questioned whether Betty and Abigail had really been bewitched or if they’d, possibly, been faking it.
She stood accused with Rebecca Nurse, a frail, seventy-one-year-old, respectable, church-going woman, who’d found herself targeted by the powerful Putnams. Both Martha and Rebecca’s accusations deeply disturbed the community of Salem as their reputations were far from the disreputable ones of the women who’d been accused before them. For a brief moment, the allegations against Martha and Rebecca sowed a seed of doubt about the legitimacy of the trials, but that second of clarity was quickly followed by a frenzied flurry of fear and panic.
Yes, if seemingly good, church-going, respectable women could really be witches, then that truly meant that anybody could be.
Next on the stand was four-year-old Dorothy Good.
Almost unbelievably, a child was accused of being a witch and if she was found guilty, her sentence would be to hang at the gallows. Dorothy, not understanding what was happening around her or the weight that her words would carry, answered the questions put to her. Through the criss-cross of her testimony, the courts determined that her mother, Sarah Good, was indeed the witch and not the child herself.
That summer, a group of British judges descended upon the town of Salem, determined to get to the bottom of their witch infestation and by then even more people had been accused.
The first to have her case seen before the judges was Bridget Bishop, wife, mother, and owner of two taverns in another village. Bridget was accused of seducing some of the other accused women into becoming witches, the proof of which could be found in the fact that Betty and Abigail would often see spectres of Bridget whenever they would be afflicted by fits and convulsions.
This testimony was admitted into court and further proof of Bridget’s evil disposition was found in the way that she dressed. Bridget was known to wear colorful clothes that didn’t follow the ideal Puritan lifestyle, but there was more to it than that. On the stand before the judges, Bridget was asked about her coat, which had been cut or torn in two directions. This unusual feature of her coat had allegedly come from when one of her victims had stabbed at her spectre. This, the fact that she was literally a stranger to the people around her, accusations from several local young girls, and what was deemed to be her “immoral” lifestyle were enough to lead Bridget to the gallows. She was hanged only a few short days later.
Within nine more days, five more women would follow Bridget, each of which found guilty of witchcraft under similar, equally shaky circumstances.

The Unexpected Accusations: No One Was Safe
And now, amongst the accused stood multiple men, but, almost unbelievably, amidst them was a Puritan minister.
George Burroughs was a man of God, well-liked, young and athletic. He was decisive and a man of action and all of these characteristics put him on a collision course with the spiritual leaders of the community of Salem and the witch trials themselves.
George found himself accused of witchcraft under the basis that he could perform extraordinary feats of strength, like lifting a musket by inserting his finger into the barrel. He was found guilty based on the fact that no one should be able to be as strong as George was unless they had made a deal with the Devil.
George found himself on the way to the gallows with another group of the accused, none of which would make the trip back alive. In his final moments, George managed to spread doubt about the legitimacy of the trials by reciting the Lord’s prayer, something by the court’s own admission, would be impossible for a witch to do.
Giving an account of what happened next, Robert Calef wrote in his book More Wonders of the Invisible World:
“The accuser said the black man (Devil) stood and dictated to him. As soon as he was (hanged), Mr. Cotton Maher… addressed himself to the people, partly to declare that (Mr. Burroughs) was no ordained Minister, partly to possess the people of his guilt, saying that the devil often had been transformed into the Angel of Light… the executions went on; when (Mr. Burroughs) was cut down, he was dragged by a Halter to a hole… between the rocks… his shirt and breeches being pulled off, and an old pair of trousers of one executed put on his lower parts; he was so put in, together with Willard and Carrier (two others who were hanged that day), that one of his hands, and his chin… was left uncovered.”
George’s execution almost tipped the scales once more, but, yet again, the people of Salem found themselves swept up in a frenzy of paranoia and fear.
But what happened when an eighty-one-year-old, respectable farmer was dragged out into the streets to be tortured into confessing? Did the people of Salem finally decide that enough was enough or were they truly convinced that witches really lived amongst them? Find out in part two.