The Salem Witch Trials In The 1600's

The 1600’s were a time of devastation, depression, and tragedy in Salem, Massachusetts due to the Salem Witch Trials. All of the facts can be found in Rosalyn Schanzer’s book Witches! The Absolutley True Tale Of Disaster in Salem. The Salem Witch Trials went on from 1692 to 1693. The trials resulted in the death of twenty people. Many sources believe that there could have been more than one cause of the Salem Witch Trials. The main three causes of the Salem Witch Trials are superstition, teenage hysteria, and Puritan politics. The first cause of the Salem Witch Trials was fear of superstition among the Puritan community. The Puritans were pious and believed in the Devil, and believed that God would punish them horridly if they went against their strict moral code. “This is why the witch scare was taken so seriously and the accused were punished harshly” (“The Salem Witch Trials”). Because the Puritans were superstitious, when problems in Salem began, the community was quick to maliciously “blame the Devil and the witches that were carrying out his work for him” (“The Salem Witch Trials”). When the Puritans had no explanation for the girls’ strange behavior, “Salem
“Some historians and scientists argue that the girls continued with their accusations because they suffered from hysteria” (Sutter). Betty Paris and Abiail Williams were young teenage girls who allowed their imagination to fervently take over. “The girls spent a great deal of time divining information about their future husbands by dropping egg whites into a glass of water and interpreting the images” (“The Salem Witch Trials”). The girls became frightened when people found out about their secret activities, so they began to act strange and go into convulsions. The girls were afraid of being condemned, so they “howled, thrashed about, and rolled around on the floor” to get other women charged with guilty verdicts of witchcraft