In the winter of 1692, something strange was happening in the home of Reverend Samuel Parris.

His 9-year-old daughter, Betty, and 11-year-old niece, Abigail Williams, began suffering unusual episodes. Other young people soon appeared afflicted as well.

There were strange cries. Contortions. Fits.

And in seventeenth-century New England, there was an explanation that people were prepared to believe.

Witchcraft.

At first, suspicion settled on three women: Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba, an enslaved woman in the Parris household.

Good and Osborne denied the accusations.

Tituba did something very different.

She confessed.

And Salem changed.

A Confession Makes Everything Worse

During her examination, Tituba described a world of supernatural conspiracy and implicated Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne.

That distinction mattered.

If Tituba was telling the truth, then Salem wasn’t dealing with one supposed witch.

There could be others.

Soon the accusations expanded beyond three socially vulnerable women. Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse—women with standing in the community—were accused as well.

The frightening implication was becoming clear:

If women like Rebecca Nurse could be witches, perhaps anyone could be.

Accusations multiplied.

And the machinery of Salem began to accelerate.

When an Invisible Attack Became Evidence

One of the strangest features of the Salem trials was something called spectral evidence.

An accuser might claim that the spirit—or specter—of an accused person appeared and attacked them even though the accused person’s physical body was somewhere else.

There was an obvious problem.

No one else had to see it.

The accusation itself could become evidence of an invisible crime.

Imagine trying to defend yourself against that.

You could deny being a witch.

But how could you prove that your invisible spirit hadn’t attacked someone?

THE ODD PART

Confessing could actually help save your life.

You might assume that admitting to witchcraft would guarantee execution.

In Salem, the situation could work almost in reverse.

Authorities encouraged accused people to confess, repent, and identify other witches.

That created a dangerous feedback loop.

Every confession could generate new suspects.

And every new accusation seemed to confirm that a larger conspiracy existed.

Denying witchcraft could put you on a path toward execution.

Confessing could keep you alive.

The system had created an incentive for the story to grow.

The Executions Begin

In June 1692, the newly created Court of Oyer and Terminer began trying the accused.

Bridget Bishop became the first person executed during the Salem trials when she was hanged on June 10.

Others followed.

Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, Susannah Martin, Elizabeth Howe, and Sarah Wildes were executed together on July 19.

More executions followed in August and September.

By the end of the crisis, 19 people had been hanged for witchcraft.

But Salem produced one death even stranger than the hangings.

Giles Corey Wouldn’t Plead

Giles Corey was an elderly Salem farmer accused of witchcraft.

When his case reached court in September, Corey refused to submit himself to trial.

Under the legal procedure being applied, the court could not simply proceed normally while he remained mute.

So authorities attempted to force him to plead.

Corey was subjected to peine forte et dure.

Heavy weights were placed upon him.

He was pressed for roughly two days.

He still refused to cooperate.

And he died.

The familiar legend says that Corey’s final response was “More weight.”

The basic fact of his crushing death is well documented, although the famous quotation should be treated more cautiously than popular retellings often suggest.

What is certain is that Corey refused to submit to the court and was pressed to death in September 1692.

He was the twentieth person executed during the Salem crisis—and the only one killed this way.

Then Salem Went Too Far

By autumn, doubts were becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

Accusations had spread far beyond the people originally suspected.

The court’s reliance on spectral evidence was increasingly controversial.

Governor William Phips eventually intervened and ended the Court of Oyer and Terminer in October 1692.

When a new court began hearing the remaining cases in January 1693, the rules had changed.

Spectral evidence would no longer be enough.

The result was dramatic.

Most of the remaining defendants were acquitted, and Phips eventually pardoned those who remained condemned.

The machinery that had seemed unstoppable only months earlier collapsed.

So What Actually Happened?

That’s the question Salem has never completely surrendered.

Religion mattered.

Political instability mattered.

Community divisions mattered.

Fear mattered.

A legal system willing to accept deeply unreliable evidence mattered.

But historians have continued debating what triggered the strange behavior at the beginning of the crisis.

Were the afflicted young people suffering from an illness?

Were psychological and social forces involved?

Were some accusations deliberate?

Was it some combination of factors?

There probably isn’t a single explanation capable of accounting for everything that happened.

And that’s important.

Because the Salem Witch Trials weren’t simply a story about people being foolish enough to believe in witches.

They were about something more recognizable.

A community became convinced that it faced an invisible threat.

People began interpreting strange events through that belief.

Accusations produced evidence.

Evidence produced more accusations.

And eventually, the system became powerful enough to kill people.

By the time it stopped, 19 people had been hanged, Giles Corey had been pressed to death, others had died in jail, and many more had been accused or imprisoned.

All within a matter of months.

And yet one mystery remained.

What caused those strange symptoms in the first place?

Nearly three centuries later, a researcher would propose an extraordinary suspect.

Not witchcraft.

A fungus growing on rye.

That story is next.