Foreward:
I wrote this paper for a class in college; I had to leave all personal feeling out of the paper. But allow me to say, the events of 1692 were a terrible travesty. Innocent Men, Women, and Children were violently murdered. Some of them may have been witches, many of them were not. Regardless of their status in the magic community, these people did not act in an evil way. They certainly didn't deserve the condemnation they received.

The witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts have become part of America's history and folklore heritage. But what really happened in Salem Village in the winter of 1692? There are any number of plausible theories that could explain the events that occurred between the months of February and September. One thing is for sure, that seven month period in colonial New England has caused tremendous controversy among historians.
Many historians have studied the Salem Witch Trials, some of them agree on the cause of the witchcraft crisis; some, however, do not. Some of the most prevalent theories are poisoned rye, politics and religion, and mass hysteria.

Witchcraft itself is based largely on superstition. Zolar's Encyclopedia of Omen's, Signs, and Superstitions states, "Superstition is more than just a word used to describe primitive beliefs that have survived scientific understanding. Ironically, it may be said that superstitions are the survivors in the battle waged by reason" (Zolar 1). During the time of the Salem Witch Trials, many people held strong to old beliefs and legends that had been told for centuries. The lore of witchcraft came to the America's from England. The belief in witchcraft and its practice have been around since the 1400's.

Cotton Mather, a minister from Boston in 1692, believed that the Devil was fighting to get converts in Salem and other Massachusetts towns. He believed that the Devil was desperate to save his empire from Christians. Cotton Mather's book On Witchcraft was written to justify the Salem Witch Trials. Many people during Colonial times, including Mather, believed wholeheartedly in witchcraft. In his book, Mather tells of ways to discover if someone is a witch:
If after cursing there follow Death, or at least some mischief: for Witches
are wont to practice their mischievous Facts, by Cursing and Banning. If
the Party suspected be the Son or Daughter of a known and convicted Witch; this may be a likewise Presumption. If the Party be found to have
the Devil's mark. Lastly, If the Party examined be Unconstant, or
contrary to himself, in his deliberate Answers, it argueth a Guilty Conscience. As also, the fleeting of the suspect Party, thrown upon the
Water; these Proofs are so far from being sufficient, that some of them are,
After a sort, practises of Witchcraft (28).
People believed that witches made vows to do the Devil's bidding in exchange for magical talents or to improve their place in society. One source states, "Demonologists and witch hunters distinguished between two kinds of pacts: the private pact and the solemn public pact. The private pact was a vow made by a witch, sometimes with the help of another witch" (Guiley 101). It was also believed that this was when the Devil's mark would be left upon a witch. Guiley states that the Devil's mark was, "In witch lore, an extra treat or nipple on witches for suckling familiars and imps who were said to crave human blood" (381). Virtually anything could be considered the Devil's mark. According to Guiley's book, "virtually any wart, mole tumor, protuberance or discoloration of the skin was thought to be a witch's mark, particularly if it secreted any liquid or blood" (381).

Without the intellectual beliefs in witchcraft, it is safe to assume that the Salem Witch Trials would never have taken place. If there hadn't been a prior belief in witchcraft, there would have never been any accusations of its practice in Salem.

One explanation of the hysteria in Salem is poison rye, or ergot of rye. Ergot of rye is caused by a plant disease. Accusations of witch craft in Europe were also explained by ergotism. One source states, "In looking at the geography of where witch trials occurred in Europe. A large portion of the trials were concentrated in the alpine regions of France and central Europe where rye was usually grown as the staple" (Wong). The symptoms of this type of poisoning are similar to those of the victims of 'bewitching'. According to an article by Linda Caporael, the effects of this poison can be compared to the effects of a drug known as LSD. Some of the symptoms of ergotism are muscle spasms, tremors, writhing, and hallucinations; some of the symptoms are similar to epilepsy or drug overdose. Caporael states, "Ergotism, or long-term ergot poisoning, was once a common condition resulting from eating contaminated rye bread. In some epidemics it appears that females were more liable to the disease than males" (19). Since rye was a significant source of food for colonial New England, it is very likely that they were suffering from this condition during the winter of 1692. The common grass along the Atlantic Coast was rye, and this was what the cattle ate during the period of the witch trials. Caporael's article states, "Early colonist were dissatisfied with it as forage for their cattle and reported that it often made the cattle ill with unknown disease." Most crops are sown in the spring and generally harvested in the early fall. Since these crops were placed in storage barns during that time, they had the opportunity for ergotism to occur before being consumed by the colonist. The first symptoms were noticed in children during late December, making this theory fit perfectly into the time frame. Since there were no more cases of witchcraft mentioned after the fall of the next year, it can be assumed that the poison rye had been consumed and the illness had subsided.

Another popular theory on the cause of the witchcraft crisis is politics and religion. Even though the two subjects are very different in many ways, researchers believe that the two had an equal role in the witch trials. Salem divided into two main parts around the time of the witch trials. The two divided areas were known as Salem Town and Salem Village. Salem Town was located on the east side of Salem; Salem Village was located on the west.

The people who lived in Salem Town were tied to Salem economically by the town's harbors. The residents of Salem Village were primarily farmers. According to Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, this polarization of interests between the two communities caused a great divide in Salem. Many of the Salem Village families believed that Salem Town's thriving economy made it too individualistic. This individualism was in opposition to the communal nature that Puritanism mandated.

There was, according to Boyer and Nissenbaum, two main families that became involved in the battle over factionalism in Salem; the Putnam family and the Porter family. The Putnam family identified themselves with the traditional agricultural activities of the village. The Putnam family supported Reverend Samuel Parris; they also thought that Salem should have a greater sense of autonomy. The Porter family was more associated with the mercantile portion of town; this group opposed the minister. They also wanted a greater association with Salem Town, the area in which they lived. Boyer and Nissenbaum believed the bitter and continuous disputes between the two factions within Salem demonstrated a pattern of communal conflict which resulted in the events of the 1692.

Being of Puritan faith, the colonist in Salem believed they were God's chosen people. The Puritan inhabitants of the village followed a code of hard work and religious devotion. One source states, "New England's Puritans, even in the third generation, believed themselves to be surrounded by an invisible world of spirits as well as by a natural world of palpable objects" (Norton 295). Since the people in the Village held tighter religious values from the people in Town, it is by no coincidence the first to be afflicted were the daughter of Reverend Parris, Betty Parris, and her cousin Abigail Williams.

According to Boyer and Nissenbaum, the same villagers who stood beside the Putnam's support of Parris show up as complainants on the witchcraft indictments. Similarly, many of the accused witches belonged to the Porter faction. In their book, Boyer and Nissenbaum state, "Given the social assumptions which prevailed in seventeenth-century New England, it was perfectly normal procedure for a town to rid itself of deviant or threatening individuals-by changing them if possible, by exile or execution if necessary" (109).

Because of the conflict between the two communities, the Salem Town supporters showed their opposition of Reverend Parris by refusing to pay their local taxes. Boyer and Nissenbaum state:
.these tensions were magnified by the existence of a split, increasingly apparent over the years, within the Village itself: while some residents strove to define the political and religious power of the Village ever more broadly, others continued to identify themselves primarily with Salem Town. The town leadership, in turn, playing upon these differences, proved extremely hesitant to cut the apron strings entirely (43).

It wasn't long until the accusations of witch craft began. Some researchers argue that even though the first accusations of witch craft were caused by the children's behavior, it was the adults in the community who fueled the fire. According to Mary Beth Norton, ".it would not have persisted without the participation of the older teenagers and (especially) the afflicted and confessing adults, whose age and maturity lent weight to the children's accusations" (308).

Quite a few psychologists who have investigated the witch trials believe that the events of 1692 were caused by mass psychogenic disorder, commonly known as mass hysteria. Hysteria is a diagnosis applied to a state of mind, one of unmanageable fear or emotional excess. Group hysteria is an ancient tradition; it is built upon the foundation of suggestibility. People have always flocked together, or "gone along with the crowd" during times of distress. Combine this knowledge with the strict beliefs of the Puritan society, and it is obvious that mass hysteria may have played a role in the witch trials. Puritan residents of Salem viewed many things as sinful; things that in present day are considered normal. One source states, "From infancy, a Puritan was raised to distrust his private will, to perceive it as the "old Adam" which, above all, constituted original sin. It was this innate self interest-more than sexual lust, more than any of the "sins" we commonly (and mistakenly) think of as particularly repugnant to the Puritans-that had to be tamed if it could not be eradicated" (Boyer and Nissenbaum 104). A large number of these researchers believe that anyone who sought personal gratification in Colonial times were condemned of witchcraft.

However, some researchers simply compare the mass hysteria of sex abuse allegations to the Salem witch trials. In his book, Richard Gardener states:
In Salem we had a situation in which girls, under the influence of a somewhat primitive woman, engendered what are best referred to as hysterical outbursts. Having no reasonable explanation for this strange phenomenon, the physician attributed the cause to the devil. If one substitutes "sex abuse" for "demonic influences," one brings up to date this twentieth-century rendition of the same phenomenon" (131).

Gardener also believes that the attention the children were given by the adults caused them to continue making false allegations of witchcraft. In his book he quotes Charles W. Upham as saying:
The girls ought to have been rebuked for their dangerous and forbidden sorceries and divinations, their meetings broken up, and all such tamperings with alleged supernaturalism and spiritualism frowned upon. Instead of this, the neighboring ministers were summoned to meet at Mr. Parris's house to witness the extraordinary doing of the girls, and all they did was to endorse, and pray over them..the "afflicted children" who became objects of wonder, so far as their feats were regarded, and of pity in view of their agonies and convulsions (134-35).

Another source states, "Children and adolescence are frequently affected, and the phenomenon commonly involves groups under stress. Females are often disproportionately affected" (Jones). Since the girls in Salem were under the stress of being punished for practicing witchcraft, they felt the need to shift the blame to women in the community. This resulted in the attention they received from their parents and ministers, which in turn, caused an outbreak of mass hysteria.

No one can ever be positive about the motive behind the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692. Any one of the aforementioned theories could be correct; however, it is much more likely to be a combination of two or more of them. The Salem witch trials occurred over 300 years ago and they are still being studied today. The legacy of the Salem witch trials is more than folklore or legend, it is American history. However, because the facts are intermingled with many myths concerning the witch trials they have become a part of folklore. Speculations and assumptions concerning these events are constantly being scrutinized. Due to the mysteries of how and why, the legend surrounding the events of 1692 will last forever.

Works Cited
Boyer, Paul, and Stephen Nissenbaum. Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1974.
Caporael, Linda. "Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem?" Science 192.3 (2 April 1976). Rpt. in Science 6 Aug 2004.
Gardener, Richard A. Sex Abuse Hysteria: Salem Witch Trials Revisited. Cresskill, NJ: Creative Therapeutics, 1991.
Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft. 2nd ed. New York: Checkmark Books, 1999.
Jones, Timothy. "Mass Psychogenic Illness: A Case Report and Overview." Psychiatric Times 17.4 (2000): 16 pars. 20 Nov. 2006 .
Mather, Cotton. On Witchcraft. New York: Bell, n.d.
Norton, Mary Beth. In The Devil's Snare. New York: Vintage Books, 2003.
Wong, George. "Ergot of Rye: History." Botany 135/University of Hawaii. 31 Oct. 2006. .
Zolar. Zolar's Encyclopedia of Omens, Signs and Superstitions. New York: Prentice Hall, 1989.

---