The witchcraft hysteria at Salem, Massachusetts began in 1692. Several girls of Salem Village began to sicken and display alarming symptoms. The most disturbing and most frequent of these symptoms were convulsive fits, so grotesque and violent that eyewitnesses agreed that the girls could not possibly be acting. Two of these girls names were Betty Parris and Abigail Williams. Betty was the nine-year-old daughter of minister, Samuel Parris. Abigail, eleven, probably an orphan, was his niece. Tituba, a slave Parris had brought home from Barbados, talked with them on these winter nights. She entertained them with imaginative tales of fairies and supernatural spirits.

Sometimes, other girls joined them. There was Ann Putman,

On February 29, Williams and Parris accused Tituba, along with two old women whom no one in the village seemed to like: Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn. Warrants were sworn out, and Tituba, Good, and Osburn were arrested and thrown in jail. They were chained to the wall to make sure they couldn’t escape before their hearings were held.

These afflicted children kept giving the courts more and more names. About 150 people were imprisoned on witchcraft charges. Nineteen men and women were convicted and hanged as witches. A man who refused to plead either innocent or guilty to the witchcraft charge was pressed to death with large stones. The witchcraft scare lasted about a year. In 1693, the people still in jail on witchcraft charges were freed. In 1711, the Massachusetts colonial legislature made payments to the families of the witch-hunt victims.

Even though Good, Osburn, and Tituba were in jail, the girls’ fits didn’t go away. Rather, they worsened. Shapes appeared regularly, pinching and choking them. As a result, more arrests were made in March and April 1692, whenever

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