Online Class: Salem Witch Trials

Courses Frequently Bought Together:

History's Greatest Conspiracies

Twenty Women Who Changed American History

American Heroes and Villains

Course Motivation

In prehistoric times, the concept of a natural death, that is, death by old age or poor health, was a completely foreign concept. Our prehistoric ancestors believed that death was murder at the hands of a superhuman power. The same can be said for disease and illness. Such human conditions were the result, many people believed, of evil spirits and witchcraft.

To better understand the environment of Salem in 1692, one must examine why some people were accused of witchcraft in the first place. It was a period when heresy was a particularly offensive crime. Heresy can be defined as a belief in something that is in contradiction to a widely held belief or convention. People accused of heresy were typically people who would question the generally accepted beliefs of society. In every age, there are such people and while we might regard such independent thinkers today with respect, this was certainly not the case in Salem in 1692.

Heresy was an accusation that was hurled at people with regularity in the seventeenth century. It provided a convenient excuse to expose people to ridicule and distrust. A label of heresy often provided a convenient method to harm one's enemies when such enemies could not be properly prosecuted for any real crimes. It would be an understatement to say that it has not always been easy being an independent thinker throughout our nation's early history, not every revolutionary was considered a patriot by all of their contemporaries.

Belief in witchcraft reached a high level of prominence in the 1500s. There was an enormous increase in the belief that the powers of the Devil were present in everyday life. Historians have written that many early religious people rejected the claim that God could be persuaded to act on people's behalf to bring about good but, at the same time, they believed that the Devil was responsible for all the evil in the world. In other words, they rejected the powers of magic to bring about good, but they were quick to accept the notion of black magic to cause harm.

If any rich person, especially those who now refused to give to charity, has suffered a misfortune, many of them immediately suspected that the women had bewitched them, or cast an evil spell on them, for revenge. This tension was the foundation for the environment in which the Salem Witch Trials began. Poverty was a major problem and many people took out their frustration on the poor rather than attempting to deal with the problem in a constructive manner.

This was also the time when many people began to believe in conspiracy theories,  mostly among priests and various intellectuals. Many people believed in a widespread secret society of witches who made pacts with the Devil and travelled through the air on broomsticks. The modern day cartoon depiction of a witch on a broomstick has its origins in seventeenth century colonial America.

The rampant conspiracy theories about witches were exacerbated by the confessions of many witches during this time period. The confessions were often extracted from people using torture or through suggestive, predatory questioning. Confessions, both in colonial times and in the present time, can often be coaxed from a person who is under duress or who is being abused.

Thus, fear of witchcraft and evil spirits grew rapidly in the seventeenth century, and the fear grew well below the borders of Salem. People believed that the powers of the Devil were increasing and the power of the church was becoming weak. It became a society that believed anything unusual or particularly distressing was caused by a witch, who had the power to conjure evil spirits.