Salem: Ultimate USA Witch Persecution

Posted by
Jill Stefko
Oct 10, 2008

I’ve written articles about witch hunts, trials and executions:

There were also kinder trials, as evidenced by the Stamford Witch Trials and Witchcraft Wars, Trials and Hunts in Pennsylvania.

I wrote about the Malleus Maleficarum, the handbook for hunting, identifying and interrogating alleged witches. When I was in school, including college, we were told about this book in a superficial manner. It existed and was used to combat witchcraft. The attitude was, "Oh, what silly people to believe witches existed!" We weren’t taught about the horror it enabled.

I vaguely remembered something about tainted rye bread causing mass hysteria, so I did some research, inspiring me to write Ergot Caused Some Witch Hunts: Theory. This aroused my curiosity as to why mass witch hysteria happened. I delved into this and wrote Witch Persecution: Causation Theories

I had been intrigued by the Salem witch hunts, trials and executions. I decided to write an article about this, but realized one or two articles would not be sufficient to convey all that took place there in 1692-1693. I learned that, when we were taught about Salem, in a perfunctory way, Cotton and Increase Mather were the “good guys,” although far too strict. The Puritans were stern and austere. We weren’t taught about the reality and brutality of Salem’s events which inspired these articles: