Post #5

Salem Witch Trials 

In 1692, a man named Samuel Parris' daughter Betty became strangely ill. She began uttering strange noises, diving under furniture, and contorting into strange shapes. 

Though nowadays there are known diseases that could have caused these symptoms, in their time it was thought to be witchcraft. The paranoia increased when Betty's friends began behaving similarly.

When asked why they were behaving this way, the girls accused three women of afflicting them with witchcraft. 

The three women accused were Tibuta, the Parris family's slave, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborn. 

The county magistrates held a trial of the three women at the meeting house. All the women at first denied having any affiliation with witchcraft, and they might have been let free if not for Tibuta. She then confessed that she had been approached by a tall man from Boston who sometimes appeared as a dog or a hog, and asked her to sign his book and do his work. She admitted that yes, she was a witch, along with four other women (including Good and Osborn). They were all hanged. 

Sarah Good's daughter, four-year-old Dorcas Good was questioned and found guilty as well. She was kept in jail for 8 months and had to watch her mother being dragged off to Gallows Hill to be hanged. 

One man accused of witchcraft refused to go to trial, and he was punished. Rather than being hanged, he was pressed to death under heavy stones. Three days after his death, September of 1692, eight more people were accused of witchcraft and hanged. These eight people were the last victims of the Salem Witch Hunt.

At the end of the hunt, nineteen men and women had been hanged, four had died in prison, and one been pressed to death with stones. 

At least 200 people had been arrested on accounts of suspected witchcraft,  and two dog executed as suspected accomplices of witches.