The History Anthology Magazine All About History The Salem Witch Trials 3rd edition Back Issue

For over 300 years it has been a macabre historical mystery: what caused the people of a God-fearing small rural village near the Massachusetts coast to turn on their own townsfolk, and why? Theories abound, ranging from diverse physical or psychological sicknesses to avarice and spite, but to really probe this question, we have to delve deep into the unique history of Salem Village and its people. Tendrils of the story stretch back centuries, taking in such diverse factors as factional dissatisfaction with the English Reformation, the delusions of a witchcraft-obsessed king, the dream of a new Jerusalem, the harsh realities of early colonisation, a heady brew of European and other superstitions, anti-authority rebellion, the dysfunctional relationships of several generations of a few close-knit families, war, famine, pestilence, and death. One cold, hungry winter, these disparate elements came together and took root in the jittery, traumatised soil of the Salem Village community. What grew from them would become an exceptional, twisted hybrid of Puritan ideology, Pilgrim experience, and unfettered panic. It would sow the seeds of American history’s deadliest witch hunt and one of its most notorious miscarriages of justice: the Salem witch trials.