Menacing, isn't it? Ergot isn't the only medical explanation for the Salem witch trials though, like ergotism, these explanations are on the fringe for historians. Some say that a slave, Tituba, dosed girls with jimsonweed that caused them to experience symptoms of witchcraft, while other theories propose that encephalitis lethargica the sleeping sickness featured in the film Awakenings may have been present in Salem.
Without a doubt, the theory is controversial more on that later. But Caporael and later supporting scholars, like Mary Matossian , present a compelling case that a fungus was among the people of Salem. On an agricultural level, the growing conditions were right for ergot to flourish — a wet season in would have been perfect for ergot to spread on the rye. In addition, Salemites were unlikely to have known what ergot was, and Caporael found later letters that showed ergot was a significant problem in the area.
Social conditions back up the theory too. Caporael notes that it's likely the minister was paid in grain from the western part of town, and his daughter and niece were some of the first to be "afflicted" by a witch's symptoms. Moreover, the afflicted those who might have suffered ergotism were concentrated in the western part of town, where ergot was likely to have flourished.
Finally, and perhaps most important, the effects of a "witch's curse" matched well with convulsive ergotism's symptoms, now documented in the online archives of Salem records. The most intriguing symptom involves a thoroughly modern drug. LSD — the familiar hallucinogenic — was first synthesized from ergot in It would be wrong to imagine Salemites as paper-dot-popping day trippers due to bad bread, but some symptoms of ergotism do resemble LSD albeit in lower intensity.
Villagers' reports of quivering lights in the distance sound similar to LSD's effects. It's a compelling idea: All those witch accusations were due to a few bad trips. But there are also some people who think it's about as realistic as a flying broomstick. Historians can spend their entire careers combing through archives and developing a unique theory about Salem, so there are many stories about the crisis.
Picking a common one, however, leads you to something like a less sexy version of the classic play The Crucible. It is, roughly speaking, the picture painted in books like Salem Possessed : Salem was a community riven by political disputes between Salem Town and Salem Village, as well as by the polarizing minister Samuel Parris. As disputes over Parris's payment and function intensified, the "witchcraft" afflictions appeared in his house. This contagion too was a unique aspect of the episode.
Baker suggests though that fraud may have been a bigger problem in the witch trials than we realize:. Not surprisingly, there is no agreement on the answer. Most historians acknowledge that some fakery took place at Salem. A close reading of the surviving court records and related documents suggests that more fraud took place than many cared to admit after the trials ended. In Charles W. Many of the accused also stated that they believed that the afflicted girls were lying or only pretending to be ill.
One of the accused, John Alden, later gave an account of his trial during which he described a moment that he believed to reveal fraud:. The magistrates demanded of them several times, who it was of all the people in the room that hurt them? One of these accusers pointed several times at one Captain Hill, there present, but spake nothing; the same accuser had a man standing at her back to hold her up; he stooped down to her ear, then she cried out. Aldin, Aldin afflicted her; one of the magistrates asked her if she had ever seen Aldin, she answered no, he asked her how she knew it was Aldin?
She said, the man told her so. After the girl made this claim though, a young man stood up in the court and explained that the knife was actually his and that he broke it himself the day before, according Winfield S. Nevins in his book Witchcraft in Salem Village in He produced the remaining part of the knife. It was then apparent that the girl had picked up the point which he threw and put it in the bosom of her dress, whence she drew it to corroborate her statement that some one had stabbed her.
She had deliberately falsified, and used the knife-point to reinforce the falsehood. If she was false in this statement, why not all of it? If one girl falsified, how do we know whom to believe? Bernard Rosenthal also points out in his book, Salem Story, several incidents where the afflicted girls appeared to be lying or faking their symptoms, such as when both Ann Putnam and Abigail Williams claimed George Jacobs was sticking them with pins and then presented pins as evidence or when both girls testified that they were together when they saw the apparition of Mary Easty, which makes it unlikely that the vision was a result of a hallucination or psychological disorder since they both claimed to have seen it at the same time.
Witch Pins, Court House, Salem. Photo published in New England Magazine, vol. Another example is various instances when the afflicted girls hands were found to be tied with rope while in court or when they were sometimes found bound and tied to hooks, according to Rosenthal:.
Not only did some of the villagers believe the afflicted girls were lying, but they also felt that the Salem village minister, Reverend Samuel Parris , lied during the trials in order to punish his dissenters and critics.
Some historians have also blamed Reverend Samuel Parris for the witch trials, claiming he was the one who suggested to the Salem villagers that there were witches in Salem during a series of foreboding sermons in the winter of , according to Samuel P. Fowler in his book An Account of the Life of Rev. Samuel Parris:. Parris at Salem Village, it being one of the causes, which led to the most bitter parochial quarrel, that ever existed in New-England, and in the opinion of some persons, was the chief or primary cause of that world-wide famous delusion, the Salem Witchcraft.
In the town of Salem, two girls named Elizabeth, aged 9, and Abigail, aged 11, started showing extremely strange behavior. As a result, this included making odd sounds, screaming and having epilepsy.
They claimed that an invisible being was biting and pinching them. It is elementary in the story to know that these girls were the daughter and niece, respectively, of Reverend Samuel Parris. He was the first ordained minister of Salem. Shortly after, 11 year old Ann Putnam also started displaying similar behaviour. After her, quite a good number of girls followed her.
There was only one doctor in Salem at the time. He attributed these causes to something Supernatural. In February , three women were accused of witchcraft in relation to these incidents. Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good pleaded innocent. But were anyway executed due to the trials. On the other hand, Tituba was the only one to ever make a confession in this long incident.
Tituba confessed to using witchcraft against the girls. In her confession, she confessed to seeing specters such as eerie animals like red cats, black dogs and yellow birds. However, it is also widely speculated that Tituba had been forced to confess by the Reverend. This fact is strengthened by how accommodating she had been to the judges. It was a time when people were selfish and only cared for themselves.
This time in Salem was a troubling time, making it seem likely that satan was active Linder. The townsfolk are believed to have. The Salem witch trials have many theories about what is and is not true.
Many people believed that witchcraft was real in the s and that three girls were behind it. However, there are many false beliefs about the trials. For example, many people think the witches were burned at the stake. However, they were hung instead. The Salem witch trials are supposed to be an event from the past that we have learned from, but has the U. The Salem witch trials were trials for people. The trials that took place in caused neighbors in the community of Salem Village in the colony of Massachusetts to turn on one another out of paranoia, accusing one another of witchcraft.
According to Carol Karlsen, a longtime author of the subject, nineteen people were hanged. History took place.
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