Witches in Salem or Something Much Darker? The Salem Witch Trials
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Instead, steer clear of the ordinary and buy the car that's right for you. Because CarMax makes it easy to stop settling and find a car you'll love today. Start shopping now at CarMax.com. CarMax, the way car buying should be. Hi, my beautiful friends. How are you today? I hope you're having a wonderful day so far. My name is Bailey Sarian, and today is Monday, which means it's murder, mystery, and makeup today.

If you are new here, hi, my name is Bailey Sarian and on Mondays I sit down and I talk about a true crime story that's been heavy on my noggin and I do my makeup at the same time. If you're interested in true crime and you like makeup, I would highly suggest you hit that subscribe button 'cause I'm here for you on Monday.

But other than that, let's just get right into it. Wish me luck, I don't really fully know what I'm doing today. So that's great. Mass hysteria has been prevalent throughout world history in a variety of different contexts for a variety of different reasons, right? It often appears that mass hysteria had a sort of a

in the late 17th century when both Europeans and American colonists alike became just obsessed with the idea that there were evil beings walking amongst them. These evil beings were capable of supernatural abilities that instilled fear

into the hearts of those who lived near them. Fear that resulted in over 20 deaths in the span of one year, which is so sad, but doesn't even sound like that much. So today's story is not only about death, but about prejudice, politics, assumptions, and potentially even LSD.

That's right, baby. So in at least some regard, most people feel as though they are pretty familiar with the events that occurred throughout the year of 1692 in colonial Massachusetts. I'm sure you remember it like yesterday, right? However, there are much larger implications surrounding the sudden and aggressive surge of witchcraft accusations on the small community of Salem.

For starters, in the late 17th century, there were actually two distinct Salem's occupying the same area. There was the Salem Village and the town of Salem. They were both located along the north coast of Massachusetts above Boston.

The two Salem's often had their conflicts on a local level, both politically and religiously. There were often disputes regarding land rights and property lines, but more than that, the two Salem's were composed of religious refugees who had left Europe for the North American English colonies because they had a different interpretation of the Bible.

Some of the people of Salem were Calvinist and Puritans, who pretty much followed an extremely strict interpretation of the Bible to the T. Like, they took that Bible literally. The Puritan laws were hardcore, okay? And they weren't very forgiving, to say the least. A lot of the members of society were expected to follow a very strict moral code. You know what I didn't look up though? Like, why?

Why? So due to this, anything that was believed to be going against this code was considered a sin and deserved to be punished. So members of the Salem community had very specific ways in which they viewed the supernatural, the devil, and God.

In Salem, if you didn't believe in the devil or the supernatural, then you were rejecting the nature of God himself, and by doing so, you would be highlighting your position as an outcast. Pretty much their lives revolved around God and the Bible, and if you had hobbies or anything, any different opinion other than that, then you were the devil, like you were just an outcast.

So God and religion in general was a massive part of the everyday lives of the people of Salem. The local government was not concerned with the idea of separation of church and state and politics. And overall pre-revolutionary politics were just messy in general. And on top of all of that, there was this ever looming fear of the presence of something darker than man. What was that you ask? Witches.

After a variety of disagreements and disputes regarding who would become the proper first ordained minister of Salem village in 1689, a religious man by the name of Samuel Parris became the choice for the position. Now, Sam Parris, he was not liked.

by a lot of people in Salem. He seemed to be shady, he did shady things with money. It's like same shit, different era. The community just felt like this Sam Paris guy was the person for the job. So Sam Paris, his wife Elizabeth,

their daughter, Betty, their son, Thomas, their other daughter, Susanna, their niece, Abigail, and their slave, Tituba, they all moved from Boston to join Sam at his new job in Salem. So by contract, Sam and his family, they were granted to live in the ministry house and own the land around it as well. So around 1692, Sam's daughter, Betty,

and his niece Abigail, they seemed to like go missing for a short period of time. They would run off together. Nobody really knew where they were, what they were doing, but it was raising some questions like, where are they going? Sam Paris's nine-year-old daughter, Betty, and her 11-year-old cousin, Abigail, I guess what they were doing was they were sneaking away and they were,

attempting fortune telling methods during their missing periods in hopes of discovering their future, who they were gonna marry, would they be rich or live a very successful life, you know, future stuff that you ask, but they were dabbling in that.

"Ooh, not a good idea when you have a very strict situation going on." But not long after they started dabbling in all this stuff, the two of them began to demonstrate a series of strange actions that would become a cause of concern within the community.

So in February, 1692, both of the girls appeared to be struggling or suffer from some strange illness. It was said that Betty was acting odd by hiding under furniture. She complained of a fever. She was barking like a dog and she screamed and cried out in pain. On top of that, the strangest thing of all, I'm not laughing, but like it's,

Whatever. Her body, it convulsed into unhuman-like positions. Betty, what are you doing? This is 1692, you know, like, what do you do? What do you, yeah, okay. So Abigail was doing the same shit. She complained of similar symptoms shortly after Betty was doing what she was doing. Both of the girls complained that they were bitten and pinched on their arms, necks, and backs.

Mr. Sam Paris, he tried everything he could to like help the girls. He prayed and he tried natural home remedies, but nothing seemed to be helping them. They were screaming in pain, contorting their bodies in strange ways.

It must have been wild. The home remedies and the praying isn't working. So instead they decide, okay, we need to call in a doctor and a minister. So they call in the town physician and they call in a minister by the name of John Hale. And both of them are going to help give some kind of diagnosis as to what's going on with these girls. Both the minister and the physician came to the conclusion that Abigail and Betty were suffering from bewitchment.

Oh yes, so this diagnosis not only just shocks the community, but it also led to one of the largest witch hunts in history. After Betty and Abigail had their diagnosis, which was bewitchment, people start talking. I feel like this is a very common theme in every story, people start talking. Everyone was like, what's going on? What's the news? Tell me.

And they're like, "Have you heard about what's going on?" Bewitchment. So people are talking, rumors are spreading, but most of all, the people of Salem, they began to see other young girls in the area acting the exact same way. Nobody had answers as to what was going on or why these other girls are acting the same way. Now it was happening so much that even when church was in service,

Girls in the pews would just be randomly like screaming, yelling. I mean, no one could go through their church services without being interrupted by outbursts. Just screaming in pain or contorting themselves.

Now, Betty and Abigail, they had come from well-known families in Salem. The blame for their bewitchment diagnosis did not rest solely on them. Rather, the Salem community was quick to point the fingers at anyone else to save their own. The first person accused and arrested for allegedly afflicting

Sam Paris's daughter and niece was none other than the Paris family's slave, Tituba. She most likely became a target because of her ethnic differences from all the white villagers. Let's be real here. So the members of the church, they just jumped on that shit. They were like, yeah, it's Tituba for sure. I saw her doing some magic one time. I saw her and people were like, what?

So people in the community were just looking for someone to blame. Rumors and just straight lies were coming out of people's mouths. Poor Tatuba. Tatuba, no! So according to her accusers, Tatuba would attract girls like Betty and Abigail with stories of enchantment from her book of witchcraft.

Tatuba pleaded with the people who were making these wild accusations, but because she was a slave, nobody believed her or cared to even listen. The injustice Tatuba faced in what would serve as the beginning of the Salem witch trials was just the tip of the iceberg.

Shortly after Betty and Abigail had been diagnosed with bewitchment, a 12 year old girl named Ann and a 17 year old girl named Elizabeth, they were also experiencing the same symptoms as Abigail and Betty. Both of them were also diagnosed with bewitchment that very same day.

When asked who had caused their state of bewitchment, Anne cast the blame towards two women named Sarah Good and Sarah Osborn. She had something against Sarah's, I don't know. Now Sarah Good, she was of lower economic status and she was in poverty due to the debt from her first husband.

The people who accused Sarah often cited jealousy and envy as explanations of why she was a witch. Sarah depended on her neighbors, which led others to believe that the other women who were dependent on their neighbors were probably also practicing witchcraft. So Sarah's second husband, his name was William, he also went along with it, was like "yeah, my wife is definitely a witch".

What a douche. She was mainly being accused by her neighbors because she often challenged Puritan values and was accused of possessing two women. I mean, people were just making wild claims here and there was no proof. It was just like, it was like, what? Even her damn husband, what a loser. I'd be like, really babe? Really, you think I'm a witch? Is that how you really feel, babe?

Okay, so Sarah Osborne, who was the other girl being accused by this younger child, Sarah Osborne had been in a scandal previously within the community because she had sex before marriage. But also she rarely attended church, which led the Salem community believing that there was a lack of God in her life.

Everyone knew that she was having sex outside of marriage. They called her a whore. They were like, "You are not allowed to be a whore unless it's a whore for Jesus." But most of all, this Sarah was in a legal dispute with the higher social status family in the community. Oh yes, there's always a real reason. It's believed that the accusations against Sarah were likely a product of powerful suggestions from this family that was going after her.

It just wasn't looking good for these two Sarahs. So the first women to be accused as witches were those who strayed from the Puritan lifestyle and were considered to be social outcasts or of lower social status. And most of the people that were accused were women. Women who were...

for challenging the system. Starting on March 1st, 1692, the three women were interrogated relentlessly. Okay, they wouldn't accept any answer other than, yes, I am a witch. So Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, they refused, refused, refused. They were like, we are not witches. We're standing our ground and we're not going to confess because there's nothing to confess.

So the two Sarahs, they deny, deny, deny. I mean, they're innocent, so they're denying, right? Tituba admitted to being the devil's servant. Yes. She stated that a tall man dressed in all black came to them demanding that they sign their names in a great book. Tituba was like, "Shit, if you can't beat him, join him." You know, she's like, "But yeah."

I'm a witch, you know, like, hey, maybe this will get me out of it. When Sarah Good was allowed the chance to defend herself in front of the 12 jurors in the Salem Village Meeting House, she argued her innocence, proclaiming to Tuba and Sarah Osborne as the real witches. In the end, however, Sarah Good was convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death. And on July 29th, 1692, Sarah Good was hanged along with four other women convicted of witchcraft.

More and more women and also children were being questioned. And later that same month, four other individuals were accused of witchcraft. Martha Corey, Dorothy Good, who was the four-year-old daughter of Sarah Good, who they just hanged, Rebecca Nurse and Rachel Clinton. What concerned the Salem community most was that Rebecca

Rebecca Nurse and Martha Corey were actually avid members of the church. Now this detail struck even more fear into the hearts of the people of Salem because it was becoming more clear that even the upstanding citizens of Salem could be labeled a witch and possibly murdered. I know.

This whole story is just infuriating, honestly. I just want to go back in time and be like, look, hi everyone, I'm an angel, okay? When Martha Corey had been accused, her husband, Giles, was shocked.

he insisted that his 80 year old wife could not have been a witch in any regard. She was older, frail, and a woman of God in every sense of the word. So Martha's husband was like, no, there's no way she's a witch. She's a godly woman. Now, because he is standing up for Martha, the people of Salem were like, why is he standing up for her so hard? That's a little weird. Why is he so ride or die for his wife? Well,

Get this, because Giles was standing up for his wife, he was then sent to trial as well. Now while in court, Giles was asked to make a plea, innocent or guilty. He refused to say either, saying they had it all wrong. It's assumed that Giles didn't wanna make a plea in effort to prevent the state from absorbing his property because it was all meant to go to his children. But in order for the trial to proceed,

The judges, they needed Giles to make a plea. So the judges applied an old fashioned form of punishment. And this was a method of torture formerly used in the common law legal system in which a defendant who refused to plead would be subjected to heavier and heavier stones placed upon his or her chest until a plea was entered or they died. So they're laying stone after stone onto Giles' chest.

but he was determined to save his family's inheritance for his children and said nothing. Plus he's thinking, well so it's believed, he's thinking like if I don't say anything, I'm going to prove to these people that I am not a witch because a witch would crack or something. So he remained under the pressure of the rocks for two whole days before he stopped breathing and died.

So you're probably wondering, well how in the world did they determine if someone's a witch or not? To properly test whether or not a person was a witch, the trial would include a demonstration surrounding something called a witch cake. Mmm.

Now I know this sounds super delicious, but let's stop being hungry hippos for a minute because this was no treat. Nay nay. This witch cake consisted of only two ingredients. Follow me for more easy recipes. So this witch cake included rye flour and the urine of the bewitched person in question. Once the cake was baked, it would be fed to a dog.

If the dog ate the cake and started to mimic the convulsive actions of the assumed witch, then the person in question was in fact a witch. Now a lot of the times nothing would happen once the dog ate the cake, but that didn't matter because they were set on these people being witches. So why they did it, I don't know, to make themselves feel better. Other evidence that would prove someone was a witch included the confessions of the accused,

because sometimes they would just confess in hopes to get out of things, in hopes that they won't be murdered, hanged, put in jail, you know? So some of them just straight up confessed. After one of the people would confess, a lot of the times they would point out others in the community who also were witches in order to get off the hook. Oh, it was real messy. It was real bad. Now, if they would go into someone's house and they found books of palmistry, horoscopes, pots of

ointments in the possession or home of the accused, then they were a witch. No ointments, you witches. Also there were physical signs which were referred to as witch treats. Now a witch treat also sounds delicious. A witch treat was said to be a mole or blemish somewhere on the body that was insensitive to the touch.

Discovery of such insensitive areas was considered evidence of witchcraft. Yeah, this is wild. It sounds like they needed more hobbies, honestly. Like they were just like, "Oh, you have a mole?" Witch.

13 women and 5 men would all be found guilty of being a witch or dabbling in witchcraft and were then sentenced to death and hanged in front of the angry crowd. Soon, prisons were filled with more than 150 men and women from towns surrounding Salem for practicing witchcraft.

Those who were killed, they were refused proper burials on account of their aversion from the ways of God. So messed up. So looking back, I mean, there were quite obvious prejudices present in analyzing who was accused and who wasn't. 78% of assumed witches during the Salem witch trials were women who were often regarded as lesser by their male counterparts. This is when aqua to fauna would come into play. I wish they got some of that.

More than that, various servants, slaves, and any Native Americans were seen as suspicious purely based on the color of their skin. The mass hysteria that flooded the Massachusetts area in the late 17th century was less of the result of real evident witchcraft and more of a way to further push a narrative that deemed marginalized communities as the bad guys who they essentially just wanted out of their town. So besides all this,

A lot of people wanna know, well, what really happened? Like what actually was causing the young girls from Salem to convulse so violently? Were they seeking some kind of attention? Was this part of some elaborate plan for feuding families to blame each other? Were they really even bewitched, possessed? I mean, what was it, you know? Historians have studied the Salem witch trials for years. Recently, something quite interesting was discovered

As the people of Salem frequently farmed rye and wheat as their main crops, foods from the fields were consumed every day, it's believed that around the late 17th century, there may have been a fungus present in the fields.

So this fungus is a fungus known to grow on rye, and when consumed causes ergotism in humans and other animals. Ergotism symptoms include muscle spasms, fever, hallucinations, and the victims may appear dazed, unable to speak, become manic, or have other forms of paralysis or tremor.

Some of them may suffer from hallucinations and other distorted perceptions, but this ergot contains lysergic acid, which is used in LSD. So some believe that maybe they were just tripping balls.

I mean, maybe the crops had this fungus growing in there, they were eating the food. I mean, that kind of makes sense, right? And then some believe that maybe it didn't even occur at all, the convulsions and stuff like that. Maybe they were making it up as an excuse to kind of get rid of some people. You know, like, eh.

which is despite the fact that the last trial was held in May of 1693, public response to the events continued over the years. In the decades following the trials, survivors, family members and their supporters sought to establish the innocence of the individuals who were convicted and to gain compensation for the heinous executions. In the following centuries, the descendants of those unjustly accused and condemned

have sought to honor their memories. Events in Salem in 1992 were used to commemorate the trials and in November of 2001, yeah, 300th anniversary of the Salem Witch Trials, the Massachusetts legislator passed an act exonerating

all who had been convicted and named each of them innocent. The Salem witch trials have gone down in history as this horror story concerning witchcraft in the late 17th century. But more than that, the Salem witch trials served as a large scale execution of marginalized communities without any real evidence.

So moving forward, it's imperative that we look back on events like the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and see them for what they really were. Moments in history are so often remembered, but not necessarily in the way that they truly occurred. And they tend to sugarcoat things. When you think back, or at least when I think back to like American history and whatnot, they always sugarcoat things. Like I really believe that the Salem Witch Trials was about witches and just women being accused of being witches, but

once I started doing the research for today's video, it was like, oh, everything stems back to like racism and just weeding out people who don't have the same beliefs as you. So that my friends is the light version, is the simplified version of the Salem witch trials. I so wish I could time travel. I would love to go back and see what really went down, you know? I feel like with history, I, this is completely side note, I love history, which is weird because I was a D minus student

But the older I get, the more fascinated I am by history and it's just, you realize that like everything was pretty much a lie that we've been told. I don't know how it is now, but we were told a lot of lies, okay? Yeah, I would just love to time travel and just be a fly on the wall and just like, just see like what really happened. Maybe it was innocent. Maybe they really did think they were witches.

I'm not holding my breath, but it could be a possibility. Anyways, thank you guys so much for hanging out with me today. I love and appreciate you so much. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. You make good choices and I'll be seeing you guys later. I'm gonna go count some blessings. Wish you were beer.