When a new village committee was selected in 1961, Parris feared for his job, but mostly for the sake of his family. Life in the Parris home was stressful for the young girls, so they wondered out, mostly to visit Parris' slave Tituba. By February of 1692, Betty Parris became strangely ill. She dashed about, dove under furniture, contorted in pain, and complained of fever. Doctors suggested that the cause of her symptoms may have been some combination of stress, asthma, guilt, child abuse, and epilepsy. However, in a traditionally run New England colony, other "theories- leaked out as to what caused Betty's behavior. .
At the same time, Boston minister Cotton Mather published a book, Memorable Provinces, which mentioned a woman with similar symptoms like Betty. The friends of Betty; Ann Putnam, Mercy Lewis, and Mary Walcott, also began to show symptoms of bewitchment. Dr. William Griggs, the same physician who examined Betty, brought to the conclusion that the four girls may have a supernatural origin. .
A neighbor of Parris suggested that a form of counter magic should be used to find the culprit of the crime. She asked Tituba to bake a rye cake made with the urine of the afflicted victims and then instructed her to feed it to a dog. (The idea of "counter magic- was that dogs were used by witches as a medium to carry out their devilish commands.) Although the idea of using counter magic would bring out the true culprit, word spread amongst the colony that it was Tituba, who had been telling the girls stories of magic, fortune, and voodoo. Even worse, her participation in the urine cake made her an obvious scapegoat for the inevitable. .
The girls finally confessed that the women who attacked them were Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne. With their suspect list already intact, John Hawthorn and John Corwin investigated the three women under the Salem Meetinghouse.
