What started the frenzy in Salem, MA?

Question

Salem witch trials

Answer 1

Two little girls with mischief on their minds. It was a new way to get back at some of their enemies, or just people they didn't like. They may have been inspired by one of their slaves Tituba, but this is probably a myth. It seems the children wanted to get back at their nanny for some slight, a bed-ridden woman, and a beggar who muttered too much. Two theories state that a plant based LSD or a bird carried virus could have been to blame, but if that was the problem then it would have happened from house to house.

"In the village of Salem in 1692, Betty Parris, age 9, and her cousin Abigail Williams, age 11, the daughter and niece (respectively) of Reverend Samuel Parris, fell victim to what was recorded as fits "beyond the power of Epileptic Fits or natural disease to effect," according to John Hale, minister in Beverly, in his book A Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft (Boston, 1702) The girls screamed, threw things about the room, uttered strange sounds, crawled under furniture, and contorted themselves into peculiar positions. They complained of being pricked with pins or cut with knives, and when Reverend Parris would preach, the girls would cover their ears, as if dreading to hear the sermons. When a doctor, historically assumed to be William Griggs, could not explain what was happening to them, he said that the girls were bewitched. Others in the village began to exhibit the same symptoms."

These could have been elliptic seizures by the two girls, but it is more likely that they were just trying to get back at the women and public hysteria took care of the rest.

"The main evidence used against the accused was "spectral evidence," or the testimony of the afflicted who claimed to see the apparition or the shape of the person who was allegedly afflicting them. The theological dispute that ensued about the use of this evidence centered on whether a person had to give their permission to the Devil for their "shape" to be used to afflict...It is not widely believed any longer that the girls were actually possessed by the devil nor that their neighbors had anything to do with their symptoms. Some experts believe the accusers were motivated by jealousy or spite and their behavior was an act. Others believe they were afflicted by hysteria, a form of mental illness...In 1976, graduate student Linnda Caporael published an article in Science magazine, making the claim that the hallucinations of the afflicted girls could possibly have been the result of ingesting rye bread that had been made with moldy grain. "Ergot of Rye is a plant disease that is caused by the fungus Claviceps purpurea. It is the ergot stage of the fungus that contains a similar chemical compounds to a popular but illegal drug of the counter-culture of the 1970s, LSD. Convulsive ergotism causes nervous dysfunction, which Caporael claims are similar to many of the physical symptoms of those alleged to be afflicted by witchcraft. Within 7 months, a refutation of this theory was published in the same magazine by Spanos and Gottlieb, arguing, among other things, that if the poison was in the food supply, the symptoms would have occurred on a house-by-house basis, and that biological symptoms do not stop and start on cue and simultaneously in a group of those so afflicted, as described by the witnesses to the afflictions.

In her book A Fever in Salem, Laurie Winn Carlson offers an alternative theory. She believes that those afflicted in Salem, who claimed to have been bewitched, suffered from encephalitis lethargica, a disease whose symptoms match some of what was reported in Salem and could have been spread by birds and other animals (Aronson).

It has also been suggested that the girls could have had Huntingtons Chorea, carriers of which have been traced to be among the colonists that settled in that area [1], but no serious historian of this episode today (Mary Beth Norton, Bernard Rosenthal, Marilynne K. Roach and others) gives any of these medical explanations any serious consideration."

Answer 2

A loose witch named Sara

Answer 3

I've heard fear - unfamiliar environment (new country) with few people, new allergies (the British were not used to the weeds in the area and suffered mysterious, violent allergic reactions) and a disease of wheat that produced a toxin (made people who ate it act like they were on crack) all led to mass hysteria. One group of people got scared, rumours started and fear spread. Pretty soon the whole community was freaking out.

Answer 4

Several young girls, led by Anne Putnam, pretended to see spirits and ghosts and be haunted by witches in their own community.