Halloween Experts

There were many factors which caused the hysteria and horror of the Salem Witch Trials. Politics, religion, family feuds, fear and superstition all contributed to the atmosphere that spawned the one of the darkest moments in American history. In a few short months, as many as 200 people would be jailed, 19 hanged, and 1 tortured to death in this small New England town.

Salem Village, Massachusetts, in 1692, was a thriving community of 600 God-fearing citizens of the Puritan faith. They were a stern and somber lot, adhering very strictly to the letter of God’s law. Pious though they were, the population was split between those town dwellers who believed that the city of Salem Town should rival Boston as a center of commerce, and the village should be part of that, and those who believed that such a course of action was too individualistic and in opposition to the communal tenets of the Puritan faith. These separatists wished for it to remain a simple farming community, and wanted to form a separate community to make it so. Tensions between the two factions had been intense in the years preceding that dreadful summer.

A village meetinghouse was built, and hired for its minister was one Samuel Parris, who was, by all accounts, a greedy and grasping man who used the word of God to justify his less-than-scrupulous behavior. His loyalties lay with the wealthy farmers, led by the Putnam family, who had been instrumental in hiring him and setting his controversial contract. The usual agreements of the day would provide a minister with a modest salary, use of a house, and firewood. Parris’s contract included these things, but at his insistence, also included the deed to the parsonage and the land surrounding it. Those citizens who wished to remain part of Salem Town, objected strongly to this, refused to attend the village meetinghouse, and withheld their local taxes, which were used in part to pay the minister’s salary and provide his firewood. In October, 1691, a new Village Committee was elected, mostly comprised of Parris’s opponents, and they voted to withhold his salary. Parris was forced to rely on private contributions to provide for his family, and the Putnam family was worried about losing their pet minister, and the support from his congregation for separating from Salem Town.

Young Puritan girls, aside from household chores, had little to do during the winter months. Play was discouraged, because it was a form of idleness, and especially in the Reverend Parris’s view, the idle mind was the devil’s playground. The girls, instead, formed reading circles, and would gather to read and discuss books of interest. During those winter months of 1691-1692, the popular topic of discussion was fortune telling and prophecy. In the Parris household, his nine year old daughter, Betty and her twelve year old cousin, Abigail Williams formed such a circle with their friend Ann Putnam, age twelve, and Ann’s friends Mercy Lewis, seventeen, and Mary Walcott, seventeen. The Parris family slave, Tituba, an Indian woman who had been purchased in Barbados, joined in the discussion group, and told the girls the stories of magic and witchcraft, spirit animals and demons, that were told by her people in South America. The circle of girls practiced fortune telling, to determine things like the trade of their future sweethearts. At one such gathering, Ann claimed to have seen an apparition of a specter in a coffin. It was after this incident that Betty, Abigail and Ann began to exhibit strange behavior, contorting and writhing, presumably in pain, speaking in gibberish and crawling under furniture. A doctor was called in, but could find no explanation for the girls’ symptoms, and no explanation, to a Puritan family in 1692, could only mean one thing…WITCHCRAFT!