Salem witch trials

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In 17th-century North America, the paranormal was considered part of daily life. This notion arose in Europe around the fifteenth century and spread with colonists to North America. Farmers used religious witchcraft to invoke certain charms for agriculture. Over time, the idea of beneficial magic transformed into dark magic and became associated with demons and evil essences. The Salem witch trials were a series of prosecutions of between February 1693 and May 1693. Over 100 men and women were accused of witchcraft. Nineteen were convicted and hung at Gallow Hill and one man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death under hundreds of stones. Unlike the other nineteen he did refused to plead not guilty nor agreed to be subjected to a trial. Corey was sentenced to peine forte etdure, hard and forced punishment, and condemned to death.
Although the extreme Salvationists were a part of the hysteria that was the Salem witch trials, the result was caused by a greed for more land ownership. In the winter of 1692 Betty Parris, daughter of the newly appointed minister started having Epileptic Fits, starting the hysteria that soon to follow with the other girls. Soon after the local town girls began to all show the same symptoms of flailing, screaming and screaming out strange sounds. Many of the locals associated this bizarre behavior with witch craft. To encourage this, the girls of the town and the Barbados slave Tituba began to play with voodoo. This included playing games to see their future husbands in the fire and dancing naked in the woods. But from these events would cause girls to passing out and seeing coffins in the fire. In the mix of all the witch talk, several illnesses started to spread including Encephalitis lethargic, also kno...

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...urer. If he noticed that the witch was going to faint, the chair would be raised. If the witch never confessed and reluctant to cooperate, they lowered the chair. This method was widely used in England causing it to carry over to the new world. The witch was constantly submerged for several hours until he or she confessed to being a witch or causing the death that had occurred.
Pressing was another form of torture made famous by the case of Giles Correy who the only one prosecuted in this way. He was pressed to death on September 19, 1692. He was placed between two large boards as an increasing amount of weight was placed on top in the form of stones, in an attempt to get him to confess to being a witch. Giles refused, and it’s said his last words were “more weight.”
Most believe that the cause of the Salem witch trials were the strong puritan beliefs at the time.

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