Salem Witch Trials

In the summer of 1692 all of eastern Massachusetts trembled in fear as neighbors and kinfolk accused one another of practicing witchcraft. Hundreds were jailed, and in the first round of the ensuing trials from June 2 to September 21, 1692—the most extensive mass trials of suspected criminals in the…

Also known as: Salem witchcraft trials of 1692. Few events in colonial American history have riveted the imagination as much as the Salem witchcraft trials. From a play by one of America's foremost playwrights— The Crucible by Arthur Miller—to several episodes of the 1960s situation comedy Bewitched…

Although the Salem witch trials took place more than three hundred years ago, the most irrational aspects of the American psyche can still be provoked by elements of the story: the hysterical rantings of a group of girls alleging that they are being tormented by unseen demons; the…

Since the early fifteenth century, waves of so-called witch panics had periodically swept across Europe, causing witch hunts, accusations, trials, and executions. Men and occasionally even children were targeted, but the majority of accused individuals were women. The number of people charged and executed...

One year in the early 1690s, a group of girls gathered around a bowl in a house in Salem, Massachusetts. Among them was the daughter of the house, nine-year-old Elizabeth (Betty) Parris, whose father was a Puritan minister, and her cousin, eleven-year-old Abigail...

In 1692 the community of Salem, Massachusetts, was engulfed in a series of witchcraft afflictions, accusations, trials, and executions. During the course of the year, more than a dozen persons claimed to be afflicted by spells of black magic and sorcery that had been allegedly cast by men and women who had enlisted the supernatural powers of the devil...

In January 1692, in the village of Salem, Massachusetts, both the daughter and the niece of Reverend Samuel Parris became ill. Nine-year-old Betty Parris began to have fits and make strange noises, and when she and her cousin, 11-year-old Abigail Williams, were examined by the local doctor, William…

Witch hunts are almost as old as recorded history. While the Salem witchcraft trials of colonial America are best known, witch trials have taken place in most cultures around the world and persist in some regions even in the twenty-first century. This entry chronicles the history of witch hunts from…