Mass Hysteri The European And Salem Witch Trials

“Hysteria is only possible with an audience” (Palahniuk). Without an audience, hysteria is not possible. A fear or rumor is struck into people through a phenomenon, making people feel threatened. With mass hysteria, people pour out information due to the threatening feelings going around. Mass hysteria is like pouring gasoline on a fire, it makes it burn hotter and get out of control. Witch trials throughout Europe and Salem flourished due to false accusations. In modern times, people are not immune to mass hysteria, people are only creating and spreading it. The European and Salem Witch Trials both started in similar fashion. The Salem Witch Trials started with a young child’s accusation of someone using witchcraft. The young group

The European Witch Trials mostly took place in France, Germany, Northern Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. The trials took place from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth century. People mostly ignored the thought of witchcraft until it was necessary to take action. Europeans were in the process of a religious reformation. The Reformation heightened the awareness of evil within the culture. With the works of Jakob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer people could identify witches. Sprenger and Kramer wrote “Malleus Maleficarum”, which translates to The Hammer of Witches. The book contained legal arguments against witchcraft, and provided how to identify and eliminate witches. Similar to the trials in Salem, most of the people accused were women. Most of the women accused were widows, the widows had nobody to defend their accountability. In similar fashion, most of the deaths in the European trials were hangings. Another way of execution was tying the persons hands and feet together and putting them in water, if the person sank, deemed innocent. If the person floated, considered to be witches and executed on the spot. Other tortures included thumbscrews, leg vices, scalding lime baths, whipping stocks, and the strappado. The strappado hoisted up a person and pulled apart. Although the two accounts of Salem and Europe were apart in history, both started with mass