American History Hotline – “Hunting Witches: What Started the Salem Witch Trials?”

Host: Bob Crawford
Guest: Emerson Baker (author, A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience)
Date: October 22, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode answers a listener’s fundamental questions about the infamous Salem witch trials: Why were women accused of being witches? Did accused witches really face trials, and how could they defend themselves? Host Bob Crawford talks with historian Emerson Baker to dissect the origins, events, and aftermath of Salem 1692, placing it within a global and historical context of witch hunts and societal scapegoating.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Setting the Historical Stage

• Time and Place:
  • Salem, Massachusetts, 1692: a coastal town (~2,500 people) and its rural neighbor, Salem Village (~500 people).
  • Colonists are devout Puritans, religious refugees from England.
  • Witch hunts were not unique to America:

    "Witch hunts, unfortunately, is kind of like a universal thing...in Europe, the great age of witch hunts between about 1400 and the American Revolution...about 100,000 people were tried as witches and about half of them executed."
    — Emerson Baker [04:10]

• Salem as part of a global phenomenon:
  • Many societies resort to witch hunts during crises; it’s a form of scapegoating.

What Triggers a Witch Hunt?

• Scapegoating in Crisis:

  • When bad things happen—crop failures, disease, war—the community looks for someone to blame.
  • Salem’s “perfect storm”: declining religious fervor, ongoing war (with French and Native Wabanaki), severe weather (Little Ice Age), and governmental uncertainty.

  • "If you want to add to that, in the spring of 1692, a new governor is arriving in Massachusetts with a new charter...All of these uncertainties...make people start to say, this is clear, that Satan has been set loose in our colony.”
    — Emerson Baker [11:37]

• The Role of the Reformation:

  • Upheaval due to religious division (Catholic v. Protestant), economic shifts, and “breakup of traditional medieval village life” intensified witch hunts.

  • "Change brings out the crazy in folks." — Bob Crawford [11:18]

Who Was Accused, and Why Women?

• Usual Suspects:

  • “Round up the usual suspects, Bob.” — Emerson Baker [13:23]
  • The accused were often marginalized: poor, mentally ill, widowed, or foreign.
  • Gendered suspicion:
    • Women thought “the weaker vessel”, more susceptible to Satan’s temptations.
    • "About three quarters of the people in Salem and pretty much every witch hunt are women." — Emerson Baker [14:09]
    • Belief that witchcraft was transmitted within families, including sons and husbands.

• First Salem Accused:

  • Sarah Good (mentally ill, homeless), Tituba (Native American, enslaved), Sarah Osborne (widow, married her servant—a scandal).

  • “Usual suspects who might be really susceptible to Satan’s temptations…But in Salem, where it gets insidious, before long, even good church members are accused.” — Emerson Baker [16:06]

How Accusations Spread

• Teenage Girls at the Center:

  • Most accusers were girls aged 13–20, including the daughter and niece of the parish minister.

  • “What’s really unusual in Salem is the accusers tend to be largely teenage girls...The daughter and niece of the minister, the most respected, most devout, most Christian.” — Emerson Baker [25:34]

  • Emotional and psychological pressure: family crisis, parental religious fervor, and “conversion disorder” (what used to be called mass hysteria).

  • “Their body is causing these symptoms…your mind is converting your anxiety into physical symptoms, but again, not telling you, and that makes your anxiety worse.” — Emerson Baker [28:22]

• Social Contagion:

  • Symptoms and accusations spread by power of suggestion, especially from high-status girls.
  • Modern parallel: Outbreak in Leroy, NY (2010s), where symptoms spread among high school cheerleaders [29:00+].

The “Justice” System: Trials and Evidence

• Difficult Defense for the Accused:
  • Very hard to prove innocence, easy to be accused.
  • Accusation methods:
    • Confession (often under duress or “mild” torture).
    • Eyewitness testimony (rare, as proof of witchcraft was inherently dubious).
    • Spectral evidence: Only the accuser could see the “specter” of the witch harming them—a legal innovation in Salem.

  • “In Salem, they use this other weird evidence called spectral evidence...all of these are based on hallucinations, spectral affliction.” — Emerson Baker [31:14]

    • This speculative evidence enabled a snowballing panic.

Breaking the Cycle and Aftermath

• Confession as Survival Strategy:

  “Fifty-five people confessed to witchcraft in 1692...Guess how many of them died? None.” (Because confessions postponed sentence in hopes that other conspirators would be discovered.) — Emerson Baker [39:48]

  • Those who held to innocence were more likely to be executed (19 hanged, 1 pressed to death, 5 died in prison).

• Ending the Witch Hunt:

  • Governor Phips intervened and dissolved the special court after his own wife was accused.

  • “It took something like that for him to say, wow, something’s gone off the rails here…” — Emerson Baker [18:26]

  • Ministers (notably Increase Mather) denounced spectral evidence and set a higher bar for conviction.

  • “Better that 10 witches live than one innocent life be shed.” — Emerson Baker, quoting Increase Mather [35:14]

• Compensation and Legacy:

  • After legal reforms, accused persons were gradually pardoned—from a handful in 1704, to a broader pardon in 1710, and the last not fully exonerated until 2022.

  • “It took until 1704...to get the first handful of people pardoned...And the last in 2022, where the legislature finally agreed...that the last convicted witch could receive a pardon.” — Emerson Baker [43:19]

Why Did Salem Leave Such a Mark?

• Aftermath:

  • Salem is seen as America’s first mass government failure to protect lives—“transgenerational trauma” persisted.
  • The case’s notoriety led to compensation for the families and continuous push for justice.
  • Witch trials ceased, but belief (and accusations) persisted as slander, superstition, and folk practice.

  • “Salem is the last real witch trial in America...by this time, they’re slander cases. The woman who’s been accused of a witch, she and her husband are going to court and getting damages.” — Emerson Baker [46:35]

  • Folk remedies (like horseshoes over doors) to guard against witches continued for centuries.

• Repeated Lesson:

  “Every generation has its Salem moment...the lesson here is, yeah, this is how we have to work together to understand people and to try and not to demonize our enemies...The real hard work for us is to work hard to understand folks and have civil discourse and civil disagreements, because otherwise, we’re going to go back to that example of Salem and keep, at least metaphorically, you know, hanging witches.” — Emerson Baker [48:14]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the cyclical nature of witch hunts:

  “Witch hunts, unfortunately, is kind of like a universal thing...as long as we have serious disagreements and...are willing to scapegoat other people because they’re different in some way, we’re going to have it, unfortunately.”
  — Emerson Baker [06:33]

• On “conversion disorder” and mass hysteria:

  “Your mind is converting your anxiety into physical symptoms...and that makes your anxiety worse.”
  — Emerson Baker [28:22]

• On the impossibility of defense:

  “It’s a lot easier to prove than to disprove, isn’t it? And that’s the problem. And that’s why witch hunts tend to spread.” — Emerson Baker [31:14]

• On confession and survival:

  “Those people who are standing up and being good Christians and saying, no, not guilty, not a witch…tried, convicted, sentenced, executed. Meanwhile, those people who…confess…they’re at least alive for the time being.”
  — Emerson Baker [41:15]

• On the end of the trials:

  “It took something like that [the governor’s wife being accused] for him to say, wow, something’s gone off the rails here.”
  — Emerson Baker [18:26]

• On the lasting lesson:

  “Every generation has its Salem moment. The lesson here is…work hard to understand folks and have civil disagreements, because otherwise, we’re going to go back to that example of Salem and keep, at least metaphorically, you know, hanging witches.”
  — Emerson Baker [48:14]

Timestamps of Key Segments

• Setting the scene in Salem & global witch hunts: [04:10–06:22]
• Scapegoating and modern witch hunts: [06:23–08:54]
• Reformation’s role in witch hunts: [08:57–11:18]
• Causes and 'perfect storm' in Salem: [11:37–13:20]
• Why women and who was accused: [13:20–15:54]
• Spreading accusations and mob mentality: [15:54–18:24]
• How accusations spread among teenage girls: [25:34–31:00]
• Conversion disorder and contagious symptoms: [28:22–31:00]
• Spectral evidence and legal process: [31:14–33:47]
• Confession vs. denial and survival: [39:41–41:15]
• Means of execution and survival: [41:38–43:19]
• Aftermath, legal reforms, and exonerations: [43:19–48:05]
• Why Salem matters—legacy and warning: [48:05–50:04]

Final Message

Emerson Baker sums up:

“Frankly, we don’t pass the test too well. But it also becomes an important lesson...Every generation has its Salem moment...The real hard work for us is to work hard to understand folks and all have civil discourse...because otherwise, we’re going to go back to that example of Salem and keep, at least metaphorically, you know, hanging witches.” [48:14]

Bob Crawford:

“With the social media spreading conspiracy theories like wildfire, we’re going to get to the point where we believe in witches once again. And who knows where that will lead us? We’re not getting smarter, people.” [50:04]

Conclusion

This episode reveals how the Salem witch trials were both a product of their era’s anxieties and a perennial warning about the dangers of scapegoating and social hysteria. Emerson Baker’s examination shows that while Salem was unique, the underlying dynamics remain disturbingly familiar—and the lessons are still urgently relevant.