The Salem Witch Trials were part of the Witch Hysteria that swept through Salem, Massachusetts and many other Puritan towns surrounding it in 1692 and 1693.  The worst of the trials were in Salem, so that is why they are mainly associated with the small Massachusetts village.

            The whole ordeal can probably be traced back to a Reverend Samuel Parris.  Before coming back to his native Massachusetts, he had worked as a merchant in Barbados.  In Barbados, he had acquired an Indian slave named Tituba, who he brought back to Massachusetts with his nine year old daughter, Elizabeth, and his eleven year old niece, known as Abigal.

The girls were fascinated with the stories that Tituba told them about Voodoo.  They were probably very bored, and started playing with the magic.  Many of the girls in the small village also joined them, and would do things such as float an egg white in a glass of water, and somehow predict who their husbands would be.

In February of 1692, Samuel Parris daughter Betty started acting strangely.  She became very sick with what is now thought to have been a combination of the flu, and possibly epilepsy.  The doctor that she went to could not find a cause and diagnosed her with bewitchment.  Many other of the girls started doing the same things as Betty, like convulsing suddenly, and the town became alarmed.

The Puritans believed that the Devil gave witches their power, and the village decided to hunt down the witches responsible and execute them.  This is partly because of the Indian Wars that were being fought no more than seventy miles from Salem, and it was easy to believe that the Devil was close.

The girls refused to admit that it was all only a game, and the first people accused were Tituba, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne.  The girls testified in a trial that the two women were casting spells on them that very moment.  The slave, Tituba, had been beaten and admitted that he was a witch and named six other witches in the town.  Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba were taken to a prison in Boston.  After that, the town erupted into hysteria.

Between June and September of 1692, nineteen people, including men and women, were forced to walk up Gallows Hill right outside of Salem and were hanged.  One man, about eighty years old, refused to go to trial, and he was crushed to death underneath heavy stones by the townspeople.

By 1693, the hangings had stopped, and the hysteria was calming down.  The town finally realized that they had made a huge mistake.  The girls of Salem had started out playing what they had thought was a game, and it ended in the deaths of over twenty people in Salem alone.