The Salem Witch Trials is the most well-known witch hunt that occurred in New England, and probably in all of America. This has been an incredibly fascinating topic for both students and scholars alike as everyone asks the one question no one can ever definitively answer: why. Why did this happen? Why was this scale so great compared to Europe or other colonies, when the same ideals were in place? Was this the cause of a mass hallucination, overzealous religious citizens, or a real presence of supernatural beings throughout the town? Without any way of time travel, there are only educated guesses and text based analysis that can be given – and that is also with the text that has survived over the years, which still provides only a handful of accounts as not every individual would have journaled or written their experiences down even if they had the ability to. In this witch mania, there were men and women accused, tried, and executed for being witches. These are known facts and although there were males thought to be witches, whenever this period is thought of or the term ‘witch’ is used, women are the individuals …show more content…
Women were mostly being accused, and men would be the only ones in the position to be a judge, so they would be sentenced and executed by the men of Salem. What challenges this mania from strictly being strictly men versus women, a lot of the accusations and victims of witchcraft came from fellow women themselves. This is important because not only were their accusations not thrown out as simply crazy ramblings of silly teenagers or foolish wives, they carried immense weight that led the town to mass paranoia and dread so strong they banded together to kill their own neighbors, friends, and