Salem Witch Trials Essay

Preceding the horrific events of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, the village of Salem was experiencing many difficulties, and in spite of its name, it was hardly a haven of tranquility.(Marvel, 2002, p.14) The town faced varying problems ranging from factional politics, religious problems, and famine. The winter of 1691 leading up to the summer of 1692 brought a time of suspicion, accusations, and mass hysteria. Many accusers, who were often little girls, went through alarming physical symptoms, such as inability to consume and sleep, erratic behavior, seizures, and panic attacks. (Kinchlow, 2011)

The girls often identified their inflictors mainly as women whose positions in the society made them particularly vulnerable to accusation of witchcraft.

Caporael in 1976 proposed that the girls convulsions and hallucinations may have resulted from ergot poisoning. This theory is supported by the several key factors, such as ergot being a popular fungus that grew on grains which is geographically near the location of the “inflicted young girls”. The poisoning may have caused the girl’s initial physical symptoms, but their behavior afterwards is left mysterious. The evil deeds done by specters, which were brought upon by witches, could only be seen by accusers, so spectral evidence was hard to prove accurate or inaccurate. The Magistrate, however, instead of investigating this case, corroborated the evidence with empirical evidence to support it.(Real History Behind The Salem Witch Trials, 2011, 2:30) The utmost contradicting piece of evidence became confession, which became the strongest and most acceptable form of evidence. Those who confessed were thought as mistaken people trying to return back to God, but the Historian Professor of Harvard, David D. Hall, states that confessing witches had a logical reasoning and psychological reasoning of confessing, and were not trying to redeem themselves in the eyes of God.Some witches had absorbed the message that they had sinned, so they confessed, others had reasoned if they “confessed” they could escape with their