The infamous Salem witch trials began during the spring of 1692, after a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft. As a wave of hysteria spread throughout the town, a court convened in Salem to hear the cases; the first convicted witch, Bridget Bishop, was hanged that June and eighteen others followed Bishop to Salem’s Gallows Hill. Some one hundred and fifty more men, women and children were accused over the next several months. By the September of 1692, the hysteria had begun to abate and public opinion turned against the trials. Though the Massachusetts General Court later annulled guilty verdicts against accused witches and granted indemnities to their families, bitterness lingered in the community, and the painful legacy of the Salem witch trials would endure for centuries.

Belief in the supernatural–and specifically in the devil’s practice of giving certain people (witches) the power to harm others in return for their loyalty–had emerged in Europe as early as the 14th century, and was widespread in colonial New England. The harsh realities of life in the rural Puritan community of Salem Village included the after-effects of a war, a smallpox epidemic, fears of attacks from neighbouring Native American tribes and a longstanding rivalry with the community of Salem Town. Amidst these tensions, the Salem witch trials would be fueled by the residents’ suspicions and resentment of their neighbours, as well as fear of strangers. In January 1692, 9-year- old Elizabeth (Betty) Parris and 11-year- old Abigail Williams began having fits, including violent contortions and uncontrollable outbursts of screaming. A local doctor diagnosed bewitchment and other young girls in the community began to exhibit similar symptoms. In late February, arrest warrants were issued for the slave, Tituba, along with two other women– Sarah Good and the elderly Sarah Osborn–whom the girls accused of bewitching them. The three accused witches were brought before the magistrates and questioned, even as their accusers appeared in the courtroom in a grand display of spasms, contortions, screaming and writhing. Though Good and Osborn denied their guilt, Tituba confessed.

Likely seeking to save herself from certain conviction by acting as an informer, she claimed there were other witches acting alongside her in service of the devil against the Puritans. As the hysteria spread throughout the district other women were name as cohorts of the devil and, like Tituba, several accused “witches” confessed and others, and the trials began to overwhelm the local judicial system. In May 1692, the newly appointed governor of Massachusetts, William Phips, ordered the establishment of a special Court to hear the witchcraft cases for the area. The court handed down its first conviction, against Bridget Bishop, on June 2; she was hanged eight days later on what would become known as Gallows Hill in Salem Town. Five more people were hanged that July; five in August and eight more in September. In addition, seven other accused witches died in jail, while the elderly Giles Corey was pressed to death by stones after he refused to enter a plea at his arraignment.

In January 1697, the Massachusetts General Court declared a day of fasting for the tragedy of the Salem witch trials; the court later deemed the trials unlawful, and the leading justice Samuel Sewall publicly apologized for his role in the process. The damage to the community lingered and the vivid and painful legacy of the Salem witch trials endured well into the 20th century, when Arthur Miller dramatised the events of 1692 in his play “The Crucible” (1953), using them as a metaphor for the anti-Communist “witch hunts” led by Senator McCarthy in the 1950s.