What Are The Long Term Effects Of The Salem Witch Trials

Sadly, in even today's society people pay the price for something they didn’t do without proper evidence. Thirty-three men and women paid the ultimate price for being accused of witchcraft. The Salem Witch Trials are a famous mark on the history of the United States, which led to the conviction and execution of those accused of witchcraft in 1692 in Massachusetts. This time is history shows the human brutality and what extremes people will go to when face-to-face with fear. The terrifying Witch Trials that took place in Salem, Massachusetts during the Puritan Era were never fully resolved, since then many theories have evolved over time for the cause of them.

Salem, Massachusetts at the time was not the typical small New England town. After

The people in Salem, Massachusetts constantly feared that the Devil was trying to ruin their “perfect” christian communities. Since then, the Puritans were technically isolated due to living in the mysterious New World, the scare of witchcraft rose at this time (Brooks). With the devil, involved witches, and other supernatural creatures. The Puritans had a very strong belief of witches/witchcraft. They believed that witches worked with the devil and gave them the power to do harm. Witches were blamed for almost everything that went wrong. Whether that was failing crops, illness, death or even bad weather. But due to their strong belief in them, crazy/ irrational explanations seemed true(“List of 5 Possible”). With the fear of predestination occurring, if something went wrong they wanted to not blame it on themselves, but on someone else, the witches being a perfect target. Salem, Massachusetts not only had fear to begin with but it had the setting for witchcraft as well, “ In isolated settlements, in dim, smoky, firelit homes, New Englanders lived very much in the dark, where one listens more acutely, feels most passionately, imagines most vividly, where the sacred and the occult thrive”(Schiff 7). The dark and eerie setting of Salem set the scene for a witch affiliated

Also, the notorious witch hunt took place within the period of the so- called Great Witch Craze which in turn coincides with what is known as the Little Ice Age, a period of abnormally cold climate between the mid-14th and mid-19th century” (List of 5 Possible). This made it very possible for Rye to grow on the crops at the time. Diaries that were later found noted that the winters were very cold. The Diaries also noted that typically the houses that were “bewitched” were the ones closest to the marshy land in Salem (Sullivan). From the information we have gathered, the weather in Salem was the perfect breeding ground for the disease to form. One of the main sources of food for the people was bread, “In the American colonies at the time, according to Dr. matossian, rye bread was still a dietary staple and the crop was vulnerable to ergot. From widths of tree rings formed during that period, she found, the growing season in eastern New England was abnormally cool in 1690, 1691, and 1692”(Sullivan).The first two victims, 9-year-old Elizabeth Parris and 11-year-old Abigail Williams who lived together and were cousins were known to eat lots of grain due to Abigail's father getting paid partially in grains