What Caused the Salem Witch Trial Hysteria?

Answer 1

"christians" in the name of "god"

the church was threatened by women.

Answer 2

Living conditions.

Picture yourself a 17th Century fellow in a country no one you know has ever been to. Its a brand new world. A frontier.

You're in strange forests full of strange creatures and inhabited by strange people. Things go bump in the night. Life is hard at the moment. If you don't get killed by someone, chances are good you might starve or die of sickness.

Staunch puritan dogma coupled with such a strange and dangerous way of life makes for an environment of fear. Plus, you still remember the hysteria in Europe, in which thousands died in a single day.

Your wild 17th Century imagination is bound to run off with you at some point.

*Edit*
And for Captain M, men WERE killed. An old man in his seventies was even laid in his own shallow grave, still alive and alert, while heavy rocks were piled on his chest. His charges would be repeated. Every time he proffessed his innocence, another stone would be added. He was crushed to death. This is just in Salem. In europe, tens of thousands of men, women and children died. Not just women and children. Sorry.

Answer 3

Probably ergot poisoning. Ergot is a fungus that forms on rye, a staple bread of Salem times. It causes hallucinations similar to those induced by the ingestion of lysergic acid diethylamid (LSD). That coupled with hard core fundamentalism and literal Biblical interpretation (thou shall not suffer a witch to live) resulted in the infamous Salem Witch Trials.

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Answer 4

Human nature. When something goes wrong someone always has to be at blame. When something happens that you can't explain do you get nervous? Well the same thing happened in Salem. They didn't have modern tech. to prove otherwise. All they knew was religion and who caused bad things? The devil. So they blamed it on people who looked weird. And people they wanted to get rid of.

Answer 5

Actually from the information I have it was started (and this is very basic...not in depth) by Christians following in blind faith and some children who realized VERY quickly that the finger pointing they were doing was getting them heaps of attention in a time when children were seen and not heard.

Check out Arthur Millar's "The Crucible" either book , movie or stage show...but it pretty well encapsulates it.

Answer 6

What actually caused the hysteria was teenage girls messing around with fortune telling with their house keeper Tuwamba and they all felt they were going to go to hell for it....and there guilty conscience ended up killing everyone....

Answer 7

Google Salem With Hunts very good read.....

Answer 8

INSECURITY. People were extremely insecure about the conditions and positions of their private, society, national, and internation situations, so they needed to find a scapegoat.

It's similar to the discrimination of Jews--insecure people feel better when they have someone on whom they can blame their self-inflicted problems.

Answer 9

The real reason was about jealousy, politics and property rights. The charges were trumped up so people could get other people's property.

Answer 10

ergot poisoning is a modern theory. it causes hallucinations and painful spasms. Both mentioned in accounts of Salam.

ergot a disease of cereals the people used to make bread

fungi of the genus CLAVICEPS.

hope that gives you enough info to get started

Answer 11

Two things.

Ignorance & overbearing patriarchal society.