Salem Witch Trials Research Paper

Once upon a time, in a far off place, a trial began. The long, devastating, stupid and insane set of witch trials that lasted over a year. This series of accusations is often known as the Salem Witch Trials. A book that describes this is Witches! The Absolutely True Tale Of Disaster In Salem by Rosalyn Schanzer.The trials took place in Salem, Massachusetts where people were accused for the use of witchcraft. However, all most of the people Puritans. They believed that there were witches, servants of the devil living among them. In response to this they made sure that those accused of witchcraft were put in jail, tried, and even killed. Innocent people were killed or had to suffer due to the idea. The entire event was handled poorly, starting
“Something was terribly wrong with the reverend’s nine-year-old daughter, Betty, and his orphaned eleven-year-old niece, Abigail Williams” (Schanzer 18). In fact Betty was “the first afflicted girl and one of the chief accusers during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692” (Brooks). The pious puritans believed that God did everything for an absolute reason, therefore when natural disasters began to occur; they believed it was because they had done something wrong (they called this “God’s wrath”). “And God’s wrath was exactly what was troubling Reverend Samuel Parris, the Puritan minister of little Slam Village” (Schanzer 17). Here’s the problem, the witch trials began when Samuel Parris took the girls to the doctor and he “declared the girls were most certainly under an Evil Hand” (Schanzer 22). Keep in mind that the girls got bewitched right when Samuel Parris stopped receiving income due to the lowering of taxes. This concerns me. A couple days after the girls went to the doctor, Parris asked the girls who was possessing them. The girls responded with the names of three women. And Parris certainly believed them, unheeding the fact that they were