Carter Roy (6:46)
You may have heard this story about how the Salem witch trials all began. In the winter of 1692, a group of girls gathers in secret. One of them taps an egg on the edge of a glass, cracks it open and drops the whites into water. She watches as the egg spiders out, taking on some ghostly form inside the liquid. It's a type of fortune telling. The idea is an image will appear, hinting at what her future holds. A child, a husband, a home. It's just a game, a bit of innocent fun. But the girls also know they have to keep this a secret. In the devoutly puritan Salem village where they live, this kind of tomfoolery is expressly forbidden. They may as well send Satan a personal invitation to come to Salem. And then one of the girls cracks an egg and sees an image of a coffin. Soon after, she and eventually her friends are. Are racked by painful fits. They scream and they growl as their bodies contort. Their parents have no idea what to make of it. They call upon doctor after doctor, but no one can find a medical cause. Which leaves only one answer. The girls are being tormented spiritually by witches. The devil has answered the girls call. Okay, so that's how the story of Salem usually begins. But there's reason to believe it's not even true. Historian Mary Beth Norton points out there are no contemporaneous reports about the fortune telling going down that way. Even if it did, the timeline isn't clear. We don't know for sure that it happened right before the girls came down with their affliction. It really seems like the whole image of a coffin thing is just a legend. An eerie catalyst to explain how a small farming village became overrun by witches. A moment we can point to where everything started to spiral out of control. But in reality, there is no singular starting point. There is, instead a long and complicated list of Tensions. Crops aren't growing like they used to. Common diseases are mysterious and deadly. Skirmishes with Native Americans, especially in Maine, have everyone on edge. One day, the cauldron just boils over and there's another driving force behind the witch hunt. And some experts think it was the most disastrous of them all. It's something the most powerful Salem villagers do have control over. Petty squabbles and family feuds. And they're willing to let innocent people die in order to win. Before we get into the politics of Salem, let's go over the basics of what happened there in 1692. It's around mid January when 9 year old Betty Paris and her 11 year old cousin Abigail Williams start having fits. Painful, tortuous screaming fits. Dr. William Griggs, the only doctor in Salem, delivers the diagnosis. The girls are, quote, under an evil hand. Part of being on the good foot. I guess one could have an evil hand. Well, what he means is the girls are being attacked by witches. And maybe the most shocking part of it, this is all happening in the home of Reverend Samuel Parris, Betty's father and the ordained minister of Salem Village. Reverend Paris and just about everybody else in Salem believe witches are real. They are in the Bible, after all. The village is overwhelmingly Puritan, and the Puritans are part of an intensely devout offshoot of the Anglican Church who feel God has chosen them to spread Christianity in the colonies. So the adults in charge accept this diagnosis. Perhaps they think if the devil has come to tempt them and destroy their work, what better place to start than inside the Reverend's home? But the affliction spreads. More Salem girls experience their own fits. Ann Putnam Jr. Betty Hubbard, Mercy Lewis and several others join the first two. The witches, they say, come to them in spirit form. They describe being pinched and pricked by unseen hands. Only the girls can see their invisible torturers. But the Reverend takes their word for it. Pretty soon, the afflicted girls start naming names. Three women are the first to be accused. Tituba, an enslaved woman in the Reverend's household. Sarah Good, who people generally don't like. After a series of unfortunate events took her from riches to rags. She isn't exactly a ray of sunshine, and neighbors have long suspected she's a witch. Lastly, there's Sarah Osborne. She's also been a hot topic in the Salem rumor mill ever since she married her indentured servant. Formal charges are filed against all three women by John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, the local magistrates. When it comes time to interrogate the accused, Witches. All of Salem gathers to watch. You might be wondering how officials can prove anybody is a witch. And no, in Salem, they aren't throwing people into the water to see if they drown, but they can subject the accused witches to a bad body search to scan for something known as the devil's mark. The idea is, if you make a pact with the devil, that kind of evil leaves a visible scar. If the magistrates can't find any physical proof, they have other options to build their case. In the 17th century, signs of being a witch include people think you are a witch. Maybe you get into a big argument with a neighbor, and the next week their livestock dies, you might be considered a witch. Likewise, if you're simply related or married to somebody rumored to be a witch, have a weird sister. Good luck. And should you dare to suggest that all of this witch stuff is just a bunch of hogwash, well, my friend, that would definitely make you sound like a witch to the people of Salem in 1692. Now, the courts at this time have a real guilty until proven innocent vibe, and the defendants don't have any kind of legal representation. So the bottom line is, if one of the afflicted girls names you, the chances of clearing your name are slim. Of course, the easiest way to prove someone is a witch is by getting them to confess. But that doesn't work with Sarah Good or Sarah Osborne. They both deny the charges, and they still wind up in prison awaiting trial. Tituba is a different story. Not only does she confess that the devil came to her, she says he threatened to torture and kill her if she did not hurt the children of Salem and and sign the Devil's book. So Tituba claims she signed it. Then she reveals that hers wasn't the only name in that book. Nine others had already signed Sarah Goode, Sarah Osborne, and seven more witches living in Salem and Boston. The officials can't believe what they're hearing. Tituba is saying there's a whole coven of witches, and most of them are still out there waiting to be uncovered. Side note, Tituba was almost certainly bullied into confessing. And she's not the only one who threw the two Sarahs under the bus. Both of their husbands did, too. In court, in front of everybody, William Good's exact words were, she is an enemy to all Good. Not sure that was in the vows you took there, William. Anyway, with this confession, Tituba ends up saving her own life. The Salem magistrates want to keep her alive, along with anybody else who will tell them what they want. To hear this moment will set a precedent for others to confess. Not because they are guilty, but because it's the only way to survive. For the next few months, Salem Village is overcome with hysteria. More and more people are accused, questioned, and eventually tried, including Sarah Good's daughter Dorothy, who's only 4 years old. Then there's Elizabeth and John Proctor and Bridget Bishop. People kind of suspect she was a witch even before this all began. A lot of these people are easy targets. They're mostly women who don't conform to social norms. But a few weeks in, the tide starts to change. The accusers start to name some unusual suspects, like Martha Corey, a God fearing member of Reverend Paris Church, and Rebecca Nurse. At 71 years old, Rebecca is the wife of a prominent Salem landholder. She attends church in the next town over. It's been there longer than Reverend Paris Church, though she pops by to hear his sermons too. She's as devout as anybody around. A few neighbors are so certain of Rebekah's innocence, they petition the court. Even so, the officials accept these accusations. They believe Salem really is under attack. In a way, it makes sense to them that the devil would try to recruit people like Rebekah. By mid May, the prisons are filling up. There are already 38 witches in prison. And when the trials began in June, they are a real spectacle. Nearly everyone in Salem comes to watch. One after the next, the accused are paraded before a panel of nine judges. If they've already confessed to witchcraft, the process is fast. If they haven't, they try to plead their innocence, which is tough to do. There's a special place reserved in the courtroom for for the afflicted girls like Ann Putnam Jr. Betty Paris and Abigail Williams. They sit right up front between the judges and the defendants. If an accused witch looks their way, the girls scream like they're being tortured. They claim the witches are sending their invisible spirits to harm the girls right there in the courtroom. Sometimes the spirits confess to other crimes they aren't even on trial for, like murders. They even reveal the names of other witches in their midst. Oh, well. According to the girls, the court considers these claims spectral evidence. And the judges take it into account when deciding someone's fate. A fate that's always bad news. The conviction rate is high. Almost everyone tried between June and September is found guilty, including Rebecca Nurse. The petitions written by her friends and neighbors help. At first, she gets acquitted. But then one of the judges urges his colleagues to reconsider. Rebecca is found guilty, along with Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, Bridget Bishop, the proctors, Martha Corey and several others. 19 are executed by hanging. At least four more die while in prison. And then, of course, there's Giles Corey, who is pressed to death by rocks. The Salem Witch Trials go down as a terrifying cautionary tale, a shocking example of injustice. It's fascinated historians for centuries. In 1969, nearly 300 years after the trials, two of those historians decide to collaborate. Professors Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum are teaching a course at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst when they come across a bunch of rare documents about Salem. They start piecing together the story of what was going on socially and politically in the village back then. And they realize something when they map out the homes of most of the accused witches and then the people who accused them. It almost looks like the town is divided right down the middle. And they start to believe it wasn't really the afflicted girls driving the witch hunt at all. It was the adults in charge of the girls who were pulling the strings the entire time.