In 1692 one of history’s most known witch hunts took place in the farming district of Salem, Massachusetts. Friends and neighbors alike were accused of being agents of Satan and put through tests. In the end results, nineteen people were hanged, one person was crushed to death, and seventeen more died later in prison. The Salem Witch Trials were caused by the rift between two sides of Salem, the actions of Reverend Samuel Parris and his family, the fear of going to Hell instilled in Christians by their religion, the susceptibility women had to clinical hysteria, and ergotism from moldy grain.

Salem had been divided into two conflicting sections, which created political problems for both districts. Salem Town had a wealthy economy and “was the second largest city” (Loiselle) in the colony. Salem Village, Salem’s farming district, consisted mostly of traditional Puritans. Salem Town residents wanted the farming district to contribute tax revenues; the farmers, however, were usually outvoted by the town dwellers and sought to avoid civic obligations with the town (Norton 16). In an attempt to separate itself from the town, the farming district created its own parish in 1672, and a church house in 1689 (Loiselle). Samuel Parris was hired to be their district reverend. In that time ministers were usually given shelter, free firewood, and a modest income. Parris, however, was given not only this but also the parsonage and the land it was built on. The residents of Salem Town were angered by these actions and refused to meet at Parris’s meetinghouse. The town also elected a committee consisting mostly of Parris’s opponents. They suspended local taxes that helped pay for Parris’s salary and firewood and challenged his ownership of the meetinghouse and its land. Parris, now concerned about his family and his own reputation, had to rely solely on donations from the residents of the farming district.

Reverend Samuel Parris pointed the accusation of witchcraft on his slave to let others believe that they really needed him as a minister to defeat evil, which would save his reputation. When Samuel Parris was younger, he had to drop out of Harvard when “his father…left him less than he might have expected of his estate in England and business in Barbados” (Hill 12). His low self-esteem and insecurities made him a harsh man, reflected through his sermons and actions. Parris was usually away on church business, and his wife was often sick. Their children had been placed in the care of a two slaves, a Caribbean Indian couple, Tituba and John Indian. With more freedom than most other children, Parris’s nine-year-old daughter Elizabeth, known as “Betty”, and his eleven-year-old niece Abigail Williams began to play fortune-telling games involving eggs and a glass. Whatever shape the egg yolk turned into would be the occupation of their future husbands. Though they later claimed Tituba taught them, the methods were purely English in origin. One day the egg yolk took what was disputed to be the shape of a coffin. Afterwards they began to act strangely, as a minister John Hale of nearby Beverly reports:

These children were bitten and pinched by invisible agents. Their arms, necks, and backs turned this way and that way, and returned back again, so as it was impossible for them to do of themselves, and beyond the power of any epileptic fits, or natural disease to effect. Sometimes they were taken dumb, their mouths stopped, their throats choked, their limbs wracked and tormented so…. (Gragg 45)

When word of the pastor’s children became public, one of his neighbors, Mary Sibley, convinced Tituba to bake a “witch cake”, with the urine of both children in it. The plan was to feed it to the family dog and see if it acted funny. Parris was outraged when he found out and claimed that by using the dark arts to discover Satan’s presence, the act brought the devil into Salem instead. In Parris’s words, “the Devil hath been raised among us” (Norton 20). The residents would feel as if the Reverend was a necessity to aid them in cleansing Salem Village of witches and Satan’s servants from their community.

Books written by clergyman of supernatural accounts were meant to scare people into living God’s will and to be cautious of Satan. In the era that the Salem Witch Trials occurred, families had very few books, each of a religious theme. Aside from the Bible, it was common for people to own a few poems and stories of phenomena that told of people victimized by Satan. People became more fearful than ever when they read about stories reported as true, of people who became bewitched or possessed, their bodies and speech twisted in such ways that defied not only nature, but God’s will. The religion of Christianity only further increased self-panic, in that its teachings were illogical and contradicted itself. People were taught that it was preordained before birth who would go to Heaven, and who would go to Hell, and that people would know by how well and wealthy or poor a person is. Yet it was also taught that a person’s actions determined his or her outcome. Because of the contradiction of both philosophies, individuals tended to look out only for themselves and their family, while letting others fend for themselves. People were seen as either pious or wicked (Hill 9). When the rumors of witchcraft spread about Salem, people began to accuse once-friends and neighbors of being agents of Satan. People felt it was better to accuse others, whether those accused were guilty or not, to do the town a favor and be rid of possible devil worshippers. To protect or vouch for any afflicted or accused meant risking his or her soul to eternal damnation.

Women of the era pressured by religion and society to live such a restricted lifestyle were prone to clinical hysteria. The symptoms of clinical hysteria are identical to what victims in documented stories of the era suffered from. Sigmund Freud later studied similar cases in his own time and found that most of his subjects were female like the victims documented earlier in history (Hill 21). He induced that his subjects suffered from clinical hysteria, though his theories of what caused it—from sexual trauma to the Oedipus complex—did not quite hit the mark. The victims of clinical hysteria were expected to live constricting lifestyles where self-expression, the will to emote, and the use of imagination were repressed. The controlled lifestyle for a Puritan woman would have started early on in her life, since children were treated like miniature adults. The children were expected to do their daily chores, but girls were not allowed to have an outlet like boys did, such as hunting, and anything done for recreation was seen as a waste of time, thus bordering on being sinful. It was very likely that Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Parris were overwhelmed when their game of fortune-telling revealed to them the cold prospect of death and fell victim to clinical hysteria.

Due to the unusually cold weather, Salem Village’s grain was susceptible to a type of hallucinogen food poisoning, which may have accounted for the claims of seeing magical acts. The symptoms of convulsions and odd behavior villagers reported match the effects of LSD (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide) when consumed. Historian Mary Kilbourne Matossian of the University of Maryland argues that “food poisoning brought on by a fungus that grows on rye and grain…produced a natural form of the hallucinogen LSD” (Gladwell). The toxic fungus known as ergot grows on cereals and grasses (Perkins). Rye was one of the grains harvested by the farmers of Salem and used for many products such as bread. “Thomas Putnam, a well-regarded Salem farmer whose swampy land supplied much of the colony's rye flour, donated grain regularly to the Reverend Samuel Parris's household” (Woolf.). When ingested, even in small amounts of flour made from the infected rye, ergot can affect a person’s motor skills, and cause hallucinations, delusions, gangrene, fertility suppression, and even fatality (Gladwell). The symptoms explain many of the cases formerly documented as supernatural bewitchment and possession.

Salem Town’s challenge of Reverend Samuel Parris’s ownership of the village’s parsonage questioned his reputation. When a game of fortune-telling revealed the prospect of death, Reverend Parris’s daughter and niece began to behave strangely. Both were most likely suffering from a case of clinical hysteria, or the effects of ergotism from rye infected during the cold climate. Neither of the two theories was known at the time, so the cause was viewed as supernatural. In order to protect his family Reverend Parris blamed his slave Tituba of witchery so that the girls would be viewed as bewitched and not as worshippers of Satan. It would then appear as if Tituba had brought Satan into Salem, instead of his daughter and niece. Reverend Parris’s disputed presence would now be seen as necessary by both the Salem Village and Salem Town to rid them of evil.

Works Cited