Salem_Witch_Trials

Salem Witch Trials The seventeenth century Salem witch trials brought panic and hysteria throughout the people of Salem. Whether or not the lives of apparently innocent men and women were taken illegally with insufficient evidence is still a subject of continuing debate. There are numerous factors and events that helped create and influence the trials. The main factors that started and fueled the trials were politics, religion, family feuds, economics, and the imaginations and fears of the people. Puritans believed in witches and their ability to harm others. They defined witchcraft as entering into a compact with the devil in exchange for certain powers to do evil. Thus, according to www.law.umkc.edu, “...witchcraft was considered a sin because it denied God’s superiority, and a crime because the witch could call up the Devil in his/her shape to perform cruel acts against others. In 1692, nineteen villagers were put to death in Salem, Massachusetts. Alice Dickenson, author of The Salem Witchcraft Delusion, states, “Reasons for conviction were the torment of teenage girls by supernatural means: witchcraft”(Dickenson 68). According to Shirley Jackson, author of The Witchcraft of Salem Village,“...these teens experienced pricking and pinching sensations, and some were contorted into strange bodily positions”(Jackson 44). The witchcraft outbreak originated salem, witchcraft, witch, trials, girls, people, accused, afflicted, according, because, author, states, sarah, person, first, evidence, being, town, tituba, spoke, spectral, pay, others, name, hysteria, however, heinzmann, good, devil, convicted, continued, against, accusations, 1692, years