History's Greatest Mysteries (2020) s05e15 Episode Script
The Salem Witch Trials
Tonight, a dark chapter
in early American history.
We are still fascinated
by the Salem witch trials
because it's a
story of injustice.
Women, young women,
some of them as young
as nine years old,
denounced their
neighbors for witchcraft.
Accusations fly and many
people are put to death.
People are coming
to court saying,
"I see invisible specters,"
and that was being
accepted as fact.
Now, we explore the top theories
behind a notorious tragedy
that's never been explained.
Suddenly, they realized
that beneath the surface,
there's this giant conspiracy
that's been building,
and so they want to uproot this.
They want to find out how
deep the conspiracy goes.
Can modern science
finally shed new light?
Medical knowledge is power.
It's a luxury that we have now
that they did not have
back then in Salem.
What really happened
in the small town of
Salem, Massachusetts
and what sparked the
Salem witch trials?
1692, Salem Village,
Massachusetts.
This tight-knit
Puritan community
lives a deeply religious
and strict way of life.
The Puritan settled
in Salem about 70 years
before the outbreak of
the Salem witch trials.
They had fled England where
they had been persecuted
for their religious beliefs
by the Anglican Church.
Puritans are not
fans of this church,
not because it's too strict,
but because it's
not strict enough.
They have established
themselves in Massachusetts Bay
and they sought to build
a godly city on a hill.
Their first settlement,
Salem Town is a port city,
but as the years go by,
the settlers
gradually move inland
and eventually they
form Salem Village.
But at some point,
there's really a
kind of a division
that starts to take
place between Salem Town
and Salem Village.
Salem Town developed
into a bustling port city
with trading connections
all over the region.
In contrast,
Salem Village is a
poor rural community.
It's more than 500
inhabitants spread out
over a much larger area
and make a living
mostly as farmers.
It's surrounded on
all sides, basically,
by pretty dense woods,
and they really kind
of eke out a bit
of a subsistence existence.
The community that is created
by these Puritan beliefs
is that your life is constantly
a battle between good and evil.
And evil can overtake
you at any turn,
so you always have
to be on the lookout.
Puritans consider
women especially susceptible
to Satan's charms.
Puritans don't believe that
women are inherently evil,
but they preach that
women are weaker than men,
both physically and morally.
When the witch hunt begins,
that makes women likely
targets for accusations.
The Puritan's
fear of witchcraft traces back
to Europe where massive witch
hunts have been going on
for over 300 years.
Something like 50,000
people were executed
for witchcraft across Europe
and its colonies
between 1450 and 1750.
It's against this backdrop
that the stage is set
for the most infamous
witch hunt of all time.
The events leading to the
Salem witch trials are believed
to begin at the end of 1691
in the Salem Village home
of Reverend Samuel Parris.
Reverend Samuel Parris
and his wife leave
their daughter Betty,
who's nine years old,
and her 11-year-old
cousin Abigail alone
when they go off on
trips for various things.
They're not totally alone.
They're actually with their
enslaved house servant Tituba.
Some historical sources say
that she's of African ancestry,
but most likely she was
from what is present day
of Venezuela or Guyana.
Tituba decides
let's play a game,
which is already
kind of uncommon
because kids in Puritanical
societies are also not allowed
to engage in any sort of fun.
Young girls'
voices are not heard.
Children are
expected to be quiet
and to listen to whatever
their parents say
and to grow up
without a personality.
That's what was expected of
the young girls in Salem.
Tituba teaches them a
game called the Venus Glass.
They would take an egg white
and drop it into
a glass of water
and try to interpret the shape,
and they thought that they
would get some insight
into who their future
partner would be,
But when they're
looking in the glass,
they see something
that terrifies them,
the image of a coffin.
Soon after,
in the midst of an
especially bitter winter,
Betty and Abigail both
come down with what appears
to be an unexplained illness.
It starts with a fever.
But then from there,
it progresses into
very strange forms.
They become catatonic.
They start hiding
under furniture.
They start barking like dogs,
and they feel like
they're being pinched
or pricked all
over their bodies,
even though there's no visible
marks that could be seen
and nobody has a clue what's
going on with these girls.
February, 1692,
with no improvement
in their condition,
the Parris girls accused
Tituba of bewitching them.
A court is convened
in the town of Salem.
Tituba is brought
before a court,
before a council,
and they asked her,
"Are you a witch?
Did you bewitch
the Parris girls?"
One of the peculiarities
of the Salem witch trials is
that those who confess
are granted clemency.
If you maintained your innocence
but you were found guilty,
then you were put to death.
Tituba understands this.
She can read the
room pretty easily,
so she confesses,
"Yes, I'm a witch,
I bewitched these girls."
Tituba testifies
that she does something called
signing the devil's book,
and she says further
it's not just her,
there are other people
that she knows in the town
who did it too.
Who they were,
nobody exactly knew,
And it breeds an
atmosphere of paranoia
and anxiety within the village
that spurs further denunciations
Over the course
of the three-day trial,
Tituba will go on to
name several women.
So these women
are thrown in jail,
but the accusations don't stop.
The next wave of
people that are accused
and arrested are
both men and women.
It's not just one or the other.
In court,
the young women that
are afflicted begin
to make allegations that their
neighbors are harming them,
but harming them
in spectral form.
Spectral evidence broadly
is the idea that the devil,
if he forms some sort
of a pact with a person,
can then take that person's
form and be a specter
and travel among
the ordinary people
of the town looking
like that person.
There was no need to prove that.
As long as someone says
that they have essentially
the special power to see it
because the whole idea is that
this evidence is invisible.
Confronted with
spectral evidence,
it's impossible for defendants
to answer the charges.
Ultimately, more than 200 men
and women wind up accused,
over 50 confessed and
are committed to prison,
20 refused to confess
and are executed.
Contrary to popular belief,
no witch was ever burned at
the stake in the United States.
They were all hung
except for one person,
a man by the name
of Giles Corey.
They took Giles
Corey out to a field,
laid him on his back,
and they started slowly
placing these heavy stones
on his chest,
telling him, "Confess!
Do you confess to
being a witch?"
All he says is just, "Add
more weight, more weight,"
until finally he can't
breathe and he dies.
May, 1693,
Massachusetts Governor
William Phipps officially ends
the witch trials.
The witch hunts may be over,
but the horror they unleashed
still resonates to this day.
The key question of the
Salem witch trials is,
what caused these
afflicted girls
to start falling
into these fits?
There's certainly
room for the idea
that maybe what the girls
were suffering from was
something more psychological
than physiological.
Mass hysteria is a known
psychological event where one
or two people start experiencing
psychologically-based
symptoms that then
become contagious
just as if it were another
sort of physical illness.
After Betty and
Abigail's terrifying experience
with the Venus Glass,
both girls come
down with some sort
of mysterious affliction.
They start getting sick,
and it starts off with
them getting feverish,
but they don't really know what
the cause of this fever is.
On top of the fever,
they also start hallucinating.
Their arms and their legs just
start moving in weird fits.
Finally, Reverend Parris
summons the village doctor,
William Griggs.
Dr. Griggs examines the girls
and could not find any
medical explanation
for their symptoms.
Clearly, they have
to be bewitched.
There is a precedent that does
exist for this sort of thing.
So there's a renowned
Puritan minister
by the name of Cotton Mather.
He writes a book called
"Memorable Providences Relating
to Witchcraft and Possession."
And it's a story
about a Boston family
and the way in which they are
being afflicted by a witch.
Cotton Mather's book was
widely read at the time.
Probably the girls
heard the stories.
After their terrifying
experience with the Venus Glass,
Abigail and Betty feel a
tremendous sense of guilt.
They're living in a
repressive Puritan society
in the house of the minister.
They believe that dabbling
with magic makes you a prime
target for demonic assault.
Perhaps the fits they
experience are a reaction
to their own sense of guilt.
It's as if all of this fear,
all of this paranoia just
suddenly explodes out
and everyone feels it.
People who are being accused
of being witches when they call
on their family and friends
and say, "Please come forward
and say that I've not
done any of these things,"
then those individuals
get accused also.
So it's like no one can escape
the wrath of discord system.
When you're already in a
community prone to groupthink,
mass hysteria is going
to spread even faster.
Many people start
to also exhibit the
same sorts of behaviors,
and this is what we see at Salem
where it's not
just the two girls,
but many girls screaming,
feeling like they're being
physically tormented.
All these things seem to spread
from two girls originally
to suddenly a whole group of
people behaving the same way.
It's classic mass hysteria.
There are other instances
in more recent times
where we do see this
phenomenon actually happening.
In 1965,
Blackburn, England,
we have a group of girls
who are complaining of
dizziness and a fainting.
Within hours of
those complaints,
85 other students
are also complaining
of the same medical issues
of dizziness, of fainting,
and yet there's
no medical reason
as to why that actually happens.
Psychological triggers
in mass hysteria can involve
a lot of different things.
Certainly, pervasive
stress is one of them.
Oftentimes, it can also happen
when the person already
feels a loss of control
in their lives as probably
many of these villagers did.
Once you have an
initial trigger,
the effects can very
easily snowball.
And sadly, it
got way out of hand
where it ended up costing lives
It is 1692 and a group of girls
in Colonial Salem, Massachusetts
kickstart accusations
of witchcraft,
sending hundreds
of people to jail
and 19 to the gallows.
Now, looking back,
we know that these girls
were not bewitched,
but they still
experience these symptoms
for quite a long period of time.
So how do we explain
these symptoms?
So these girls are being raised
in an extremely
repressive environment,
a town where there's not
a whole lot of attention
for these girls,
and maybe they found a way
to get a lot of attention.
All of a sudden,
they find their voices.
Some experts
suggest the answer lies
in a power play by
the alleged victims.
The girls' symptoms
would change over time
and come up at the most
convenient of moments
like during the
trials themselves
when a specific symptom was
actually being discussed.
There is even some evidence
that fraud may have occurred
in the later parts
of the trials.
The girls started
to show up in court
with pins sticking
in their hands,
saying that they'd been
put there by a specter,
with bite marks saying that
a specter had bit them,
physical kind of manifestations
that are clearly impossible.
When these children are
being paid attention to finally
and getting that support and
love from their community
and being valued
for speaking up,
which is so different
from what they
experienced up until now, its
easy for children especially to
get hooked on that.
Some historians contend
that the Salem witch trials
all started when two girls,
Betty Parris and her
cousin Abigail cry wolf.
And as the trials continue,
the spotlight on them
only grows brighter.
Perhaps early on in the trials,
the afflicted girls
enjoy the attention
that they're getting.
The audience for
these girls is growing.
People are coming from
outside into Salem,
new blood, new people, new
audience to perform for
'cause There's really a kind
of a theatrical element.
So many people want to be here
to see this scandalous
affair that they have to move
to the meeting house,
the largest building
within Salem Village.
As soon as they start to talk
to the suspected witches,
the girls begin to
fall into terrible fits
and it causes complete
pandemonium in the courtroom.
It seems to me that
the girls could be,
in a sense, having
the last laugh here.
They're getting a lot of
entertainment about it.
Nothing this fun or exciting
has ever happened in Salem.
You have these girls who
are suddenly rock stars,
this group who tends to
be ignored, marginalized,
and they have their
moment in the limelight.
It isn't just attention
these girls are getting,
it's also power.
Men were the ones
that spoke out in court.
Men were the ones that
charged their neighbors
with moral infractions.
But in this case,
women and young women
are given the authority
and the power to appear in court
to denounce their
neighbors for witchcraft.
It's a complete reversal
of the entire gender
and power hierarchies
within Puritan society.
In June of 1692, Ann Putnam,
the daughter of one of
the prominent families,
accuses Rebecca Nurse of
being one of the people
who's bewitching the girls.
Now, she's a very respected
person in the community.
She isn't one of these loners
or an outsider or something.
And so 39 people
in the community sign
a petition that says,
"No, she's a good person.
She's an upstanding
moral citizen,
and she's not the kind of
person who'd be a witch.
We don't think she's a witch."
Rebecca Nurse
pleads her innocence
from the very beginning.
But by the time of
Rebecca Nurse's trial,
the afflicted girls are
running the courtroom.
The judges are
deferring to them.
Rebecca Nurse ultimately
is hanged for being a witch.
Imagine the power that this
is giving to 9-year-old,
11-year-old, 12-year-old
girls in this town.
Children do cruel and strange
things just to get attention
or just because they're bored,
but to blame for
that really should go
to the adults and not the kids.
It's impossible
to know whether the
Salem girls were
intentionally play acting,
but given the
culture of the day,
it's almost certain they
could never admit to lying.
Once the girls have
denounced their neighbors
and they've been
hanged as witches,
it is too late for them
to retract their statements.
Within the Puritan community,
lying under oath
is a serious sin
that could place your
eternal soul in jeopardy.
It's doubtful
whether these young women
would've risked that.
In 1692,
Salem Village, Massachusetts
is a dangerous place.
Accusations of witchcraft
suddenly threatened hundreds
of lives and people are
starting to be hanged
300 years later,
when you start to pull away
from the mystical, the magical,
you start to unearth a much
more interesting story,
one that potentially talks
about not black magic,
but jealousy, rivalry,
and also a clash of ideology.
The politics
of this small village are
very neighborhood-based.
In an environment like this,
you have to depend
on your neighbor
in order to make it past
all the immense challenges
of life at this time.
Everything was very close knit.
There wasn't a police force.
Everybody just knew
everybody else's business.
Gossip plays a huge role
in the Salem witch trials.
Once Tituba confesses,
it's the talk of the town.
People come from as
far away as Boston
to attend her examination.
Once the afflicted start falling
into fits in the courtroom,
mass pandemonium ensues.
But behind all of this hysteria,
behind all of this gossip,
behind all of this
everyone getting
into everyone's business,
in the background,
there's something that's been
brewing for about 20 years
and it's gonna come to a head
right around the time
of these witch trials.
One factor in the Salem
witch trials is the feud
between the Porters
and the Putnams.
The Putnams are an old,
extremely conservative
farming family,
while the Porters
run the local sawmill
and are newer and more
liberal in their outlook
with stronger links
to nearby Salem town
In 1672, a dam that's owned
by the Porters breaks open
and it floods land that
belongs to the Putnams.
And so the Putnam will
actually file a lawsuit
against the Porter
family for damages.
It causes immense tensions
between these two families
because the fields
and the fertility of the
fields is absolutely central
to their survival.
Tensions between
these two families came
to a head when it was time to
elect a new religious leader.
The Putnam felt that the people
in Salem Township were
becoming more and more liberal,
and they wanted to
preserve the traditions
that exist in Salem Village,
and so they bring in
this more conservative,
more authoritarian minister.
Samuel Parris is stern.
He's very fire and brimstone.
He's a fundamentalist
at a time when we
would've thought
they were all fundamentalists.
Samuel Parris
becomes a lightning rod
for controversy
within Salem Village.
He's bombastic,
he's pompous,
he's loud,
and many people don't like him.
Once established as Minister,
the village splits further
over his accommodation
and expenses.
26 members of the
Village Council,
11 of whom are Putnams,
vote to give the reverend's
family a house, a barn,
and two acres of land.
The Porters believe
that installing Parris
is a bridge too far.
They're unwilling to pay
for what they see as large
scale expenses for Samuel Parris
and his work as
religious leader.
The Porters also
decide to remove members
of the Putnam family off
of the governing board
for Salem Village.
In October of 1691,
just a few months before the
girls are supposedly stricken,
the new committee
members installed
by the Porters vote
down a tax levy
that would pay Reverend
Parris' salary.
With powerful
figures opposing him,
it seems that Parris could
soon be out of a job.
So this feud between the Putnam
and the Porters has been
brewing for about 20 years.
So by the time we get
to the first accusation
that's been made,
the line in the
sand has been drawn
and this feud is going
to find a whole new
battlefield to play out on.
In all, eight members
of the Putnam family
are either accusers
or part of the team prosecuting
the suspected witches.
Thomas Putnam files
12 legal complaints
and testifies against
24 individuals
who are accused of witchcraft,
but his daughter Anne takes
it all one step further.
Anne Putnam in the end
actually levies accusations
against 48 people.
So nearly one quarter
of all the people
who get accused of
witchcraft in Salem Village.
Now, in response to all
of these testimonies made
by Thomas Putnam
and his daughter,
the Porters come out
and try to start mobilizing
the villagers of Salem
to try to put up stop
to these witch trials.
As they're trying to
mobilize these villagers,
subsequently, 19 of their
friends end up being accused
of witchcraft.
The legal system in Puritan
New England gave essentially
those accused a
witchcraft no way
to make an effective defense.
If you were pointed
at and called a witch,
that was an accusation
and you were immediately
put on trial.
There are people who think
that it's entirely possible
that the Putnams and Reverend
Parris were responsible
for more or less
manipulating their kids
into making these
kinds of accusations.
From the Putnam's perspective
and from Parris' perspective,
this is a great thing
'cause not only do they get
to eliminate their enemies
by accusing them of witches
and potentially killing them,
but they also create
a kind of hysteria
that brings people closer to
their fundamentalist viewpoint.
But this also puts Reverend
Parris in a sort of spotlight
because what better time
to start coming to church
and to listening to his sermons?
So even though these
accusations could be seen
as an extension of the feud
between the Putnam
and the Porters,
the accusations then start to
get a little out of control
and start to snowball.
The problem extended
well beyond Salem Village.
There are actually 20
different communities
that had people within them
who were accused of witchcraft.
So the Putnam and Porter
families were really
only a very small
part of what grew
to be a much larger affair.
Puritans in Salem, Massachusetts
in the late 1600s live in
a world of faith and fear,
which many believe
is at the root
of the most infamous witch
hunt in American history.
But what if there was
a more tangible cause,
one that the Puritans would
have no way of detecting?
Now, more than three
centuries later,
perhaps we have the scientific
means to uncover it.
Salem Villages,
they're built on
agriculture and farming,
and so there's a lot
of growing of grasses,
barley wheat.
In Salem Village,
rye grain is actually one
of the most prevalent crops.
It's hearty, it's durable.
It can make it through a
winter pretty decently,
and so it becomes the
staple of the Puritan diet.
You can make everything
with it from bread to beer.
But you're never guaranteed
a successful harvest.
You have to plant
this crop correctly.
And if you end up having
a miserable harvest,
you could face starvation.
Going into the
planting season of 1692,
the Puritans of the
Massachusetts Bay
colony have endured a brutal
winter.
Their stores of
grain are running low
and they're kind of
hoping for the spring,
but the spring turns out
being pretty miserable,
very damp weather.
Damp weather is disastrous when
you're trying to keep grain
because things
start to get moldy.
When this crop comes up
from the ground in 1692,
Puritans may have
taken a look at it
and noticed a black stain
on the back of the grain,
but they may have just
thought that this was due
to overexposure to the sun,
so they could have
well harvested it
and ground it into their bread.
But these
Puritans are seemingly unaware
that the black
spot they've ground
into their bread is
actually a fungus.
And this fungus, though,
it can cause severe
hallucination.
Ergot is a kind of
fungus that is very toxic
and which is very durable.
It's extremely
difficult to get rid of.
Even now, modern fungicides
have a difficult time killing
the ergot fungus,
and it particularly likes
to grow in rye grain.
So the only way
that you can get rid
of ergot is if you rotate
your crops pretty regularly.
If there's a particular fungus
or pest that likes a
particular kind of crop,
then by rotating the crops
that you grow one kind one year
and another kind
of different year,
you don't allow
the pests to stay
and they'll die
off in one winter
and they won't
come back the next.
But because the soil so
wet and is not as arable
and it's kind of a rocky
or terrain up there,
it's hard to rotate your crops
as regularly in the north
and it is in the south.
It's possible some
of this ergot made its way
into the villager's bread.
They ingest it,
and they are experiencing
what's called ergotism
AKA St. Anthony's fire.
It's called St. Anthony's fire
because in previous instances
where ergotism had been seen,
it is said that those that
ingested this fungus that prayed
to Saint Anthony
were spared death.
Ergotism causes
LSD-like effects.
It's sufferers have
hallucinations,
they suffer convulsions.
Behavioral
scientist, Linnda Caporael,
first published this
theory back in 1976.
It's a really interesting
fact that the symptoms
of ergot poisoning are
really similar to what it is
that affects and afflicts
Betty and Abigail back
at the Parris homestead.
So those sorts of
hallucinations that they have,
the catatonia that they have,
the kind of acting out,
the convulsions or the fits,
all those are also symptoms
of ergot poisoning.
Her explanation
of why young women would've
been particularly susceptible
to ergotism is that they were
smaller and weighed less,
and so the toxicity would've
had more of an effect on them.
It's easy to see why she thought
that these LSD-like effects
of ergotism could have
caused the girls' fits
because they're vivid
descriptions of specter
that they had seen
and strange creatures
they encountered.
If ergot poisoning is to blame,
there isn't a soul in Salem
who would've known about it.
When William Griggs goes
and sees the Parris
girls for the first time
and tries to diagnose them,
he wouldn't have been
able to diagnose ergotism
'cause at the time,
it wasn't a thing,
people didn't even
know it existed.
Ergotism is not contagious.
It all depends on who's exposed,
how much they're exposed
to the dose makes the poison.
People throughout the families,
if they're all eating
from the same bread,
but they're eating it
at different amounts,
they're getting different doses.
That could have
been one of the things
that made it a lot
harder for doctors
to try to figure out what
exactly was going on in Salem.
There are some
scholars who think
that the ergot poisoning
theory is not likely
because one of the things
that would've kind of
counteracted that is a diet
that was rich in vitamin A.
Vitamin A can counteract
the effects of the ergot.
Where do you find vitamin A?
From fish.
And the Puritans would have
had a regular diet of fish
because a Massachusetts
Bay colony right
by the Atlantic Ocean,
and so the Puritans would've
had a daily diet of fish.
Therefore, their vitamin A
levels would've been quite high
and ergot maybe wasn't that
much of a problem for them.
The
forest surrounding Salem Village
is rife with danger.
Not only is there the ongoing
war with Native Americans,
bears and wolves
prowl the frontier
just beyond the edge of town,
but many believe it's some
of New England's
smallest inhabitants
that may pose the
biggest threat.
New England has
an overpopulation problem
with deer. There's deer all over
the place.
They would come in and
actually eat some of the green
that they were growing.
On a positive side,
they also provided venison,
which was a major part
of the diet of the villagers.
One thing hunters
didn't understand in the 17th
century is that with deer comes
a bigger problem,
deer ticks.
Lyme disease isn't
studied seriously
until the 1970s when
a group of children
and adults in Lyme Connecticut
contract the disease,
There were children
that were suffering
from joint paralysis,
fatigue, rashes.
Two mothers from
the group cracked the case
by conducting their own research
and keeping meticulous notes,
a pattern finally emerges.
Each suffered a tick bite in
the Lyme Connecticut area.
There is evidence to suggest
that this disease
existed centuries ago
and also outside of Connecticut,
including in places like
Salem in New England.
In 2008,
historian M.M. Drymon
publishes a book
in which she contends that
Lyme disease was the root cause
of the Salem witch trials.
In the book,
she writes that the Parris
girl symptoms included
intense headaches and the
feeling of being pinched
and poked by an invisible force.
Sufferers of Lyme disease also
experience intense headaches
and also joint pains that feel
like they're being stung.
One of the telltale
signs of infection
with Lyme disease is
a bite, the tick bite,
which is surrounded by what's
called a bullseye rash.
So a little kind of
ring around that bite.
And what's clear from
the early testimonies given
in court is that a number
of children ended up
with red marks on their bodies
in very distinctive ways.
You have several
children from one family
that have red streaks
all over their body.
You have another child that says
that they have
marks on their body
that looks like stab wounds.
Darkest good.
A 4-year-old that was
accused of witchcraft
and spent months in jail
has a little red wound
on her finger.
That's about the
size of a flea bite.
Now, these were discovered
because at the time,
as part of the
interrogation of a witch,
they wanted to see whether
women had any strange marks
on their bodies anywhere.
So because of this,
we do have testimonies of
various things that were found.
In their minds,
this was proof of the devil.
For us from a
scientific perspective,
maybe this was part of the
tick bite and the bullseye rash
that they were actually seeing.
As for why it was largely girls
and women who suffered
from these symptoms,
M.M. Drymon has a theory.
Kids tend to play or interact
with each other on
the ground more,
and women wear very long skirts
that actually touch
the ground physically.
Cloth is fibrous
and it's a perfect
little attachment point
for a tick to grab onto.
It's certainly plausible
that a couple of children
could have been playing out
in the woods
and have gotten bitten by a tick
and come down with Lyme disease.
You don't have to
interact with a deer
or wildlife to get a deer tick.
These ticks will travel
around in the grass looking
for their latest prey.
Nowadays, of course,
we don't have that
much to worry about
with Lyme disease.
It's easily treated with
antibiotics, with penicillin.
However, penicillin wasn't
a thing until the 1930s,
so about 250 years after
the Salem witch trials.
Not only can Lyme
disease cause rashes,
some experts believe it
could also explain some
of the girls' more
extreme symptoms.
With Lyme disease, it's rare,
but it can become
a neurotoxicant
that can cause various type
of neurological issues,
changes in behavior,
seeing things that aren't there.
There appear to have been
long-term health effects.
Abigail stays sick
and in fact doesn't
live very long
after the close of these trials.
It is possible that both Abigail
and Anne Putnam were
victims of not witchcraft,
just Lyme disease
Life in 1692 Salem isn't
for the faint of heart.
Not only do devoted Puritans
worry about hellfire
and brimstone in the afterlife,
they also worry about
bewitchment in the here and now.
Centuries later,
we know sorcery didn't cause
the Salem girls' symptoms,
but the real culprit has
yet to be identified.
There are a lot of
potential root causes
that could have led to
the Salem witch trials.
You have a lot of fear and
paranoia in these communities.
Why?
You're living in the woods,
animals could get you.
You might not plant
your crop the right way,
which could lead to
a shortage of food,
which means you have to worry
about how you're gonna
survive for a winter.
There are historical
accounts that suggest
that the consumption of
certain types of plants,
one in particular,
just might play a major role.
Jimsonweed is a very
common roadside weed.
It is part of the
nightshade family.
It does have
hallucinogenic properties
and it is native
to North America
Jimsonweed produces a
small egg-shaped fruit
about two inches in diameter,
and usually it's most
harmful to cattle
and other wild animals
who die after they eat it.
The plant has large white
or purple
trumpet-shaped flowers,
just the kind of wild flower
that might attract
a young girl's eye.
It's very plausible that women
and children are
picking the jimsonweed
because they are
a flowering fruit.
We look at the historical
background of this plant.
We find that it is in
fact linked to occultism
and to elements of dark magic
With its hallucinogenic
properties,
jimsonweed has been associated
with various cultural
and spiritual practices
throughout history,
including witchcraft.
Jimsonweed has been
linked to paganism
and it has been used to
alter one's consciousness
and it can and do
hallucinations.
It's possible that the
girls came in contact
with jimsonweed either outside
or in the house on the day
of the Venus Glass incident.
There are even suggestions
that there is a member
of the Salem community
who would already be familiar
with these practices.
According to some historians,
Tituba may well be
from a Caribbean tribe called
the Arawak who are known to use
jimsonweed for medicinal
and ceremonial purposes.
Native American
groups at the time,
and maybe even Tituba herself,
often are using jimsonweed
as part of religious rituals.
These could be made into cakes
and these gems and
cakes would be ingested
The alter state of
consciousness that it invites
might, for example, allow
someone to commune
with their ancestors or with
some higher power.
The use of jimsonweed
as a hallucinogenic has been
confirmed more recently.
There were four
teenagers in Los Angeles
that actually brewed
their jimsonweed tea
and experienced
psychedelic effects.
They were really successful
and they got really high.
And by high,
I mean that the symptoms
that they experienced
were very similar
to the hallucinations
and things that were
described as a part
of the original Parris girls
experiences in the 1690s.
If these girls had been
ingesting jimson cakes,
could they have believed
that the hallucinations
that they were having were real?
That seems entirely possible.
They were doing this very
secretive thing possibly
that they knew they
weren't supposed to do.
And that, of course, led
to feeding into this idea
of we should be
punished for our crime.
However, as the accusations grow
and more and more accusers
also appear in the village,
it seems unlikely
that they're all kind
of binging on jimson cakes.
Whatever the cause of the
witch trials in the first place,
it takes an outsider
to end them.
Reverend Increase
Mather of Boston,
father of Cotton Mather,
encourages cooler
heads to prevail,
Though he still believes
that the devil is
at work in Salem,
he thinks it's at work
and actually the people who
are making the accusations
rather than the people
who are accused.
Mather proclaims that is
better for 10 suspected witches
to be set free than for
one person who's innocent
to be executed.
And although the stain
never disappears,
things do quiet down
in this little town.
When it's all said and done,
the people who were caught up
in that fervor may look
back on it and and say,
"It's all in the past
and the devil made me do it."
In 1697, the legislature
of Massachusetts,
which was called
the General Court,
they declare a day of
fasting to atone for the sins
that they'd committed at Salem
during the events at
the Salem witch trials.
1702, the Superior Court
of Judicature declared
that the events that had
happened were unlawful
and the results
of that were void.
I think if there's a lesson
to be learned is that the
dangers of instilling fear
in a population are real
and that very easily neighbors
can turn against one another.
It reveals something
about how people behave
when they're together.
It reveals something about
tribalism and human nature.
It's hard in many
ways to believe
that all this happened
on American soil.
We tend to associate
the whole witch hunts,
the burning of witches
with medieval Europe,
not with what happens in
Massachusetts for God's sakes.
The Salem witch trials
are an infamous stain
on American history,
a cautionary tale about
the dangers of groupthink
and unfounded accusations.
We may never know for certain
what caused a group of girls
to suffer those disturbing
symptoms more than 300 years ago
in Salem, Massachusetts.
But whether they were brought
on by disease, toxins,
or mass hysteria,
one thing is true,
executing 20 innocent
people was never a cure.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching
History's Greatest Mysteries.
in early American history.
We are still fascinated
by the Salem witch trials
because it's a
story of injustice.
Women, young women,
some of them as young
as nine years old,
denounced their
neighbors for witchcraft.
Accusations fly and many
people are put to death.
People are coming
to court saying,
"I see invisible specters,"
and that was being
accepted as fact.
Now, we explore the top theories
behind a notorious tragedy
that's never been explained.
Suddenly, they realized
that beneath the surface,
there's this giant conspiracy
that's been building,
and so they want to uproot this.
They want to find out how
deep the conspiracy goes.
Can modern science
finally shed new light?
Medical knowledge is power.
It's a luxury that we have now
that they did not have
back then in Salem.
What really happened
in the small town of
Salem, Massachusetts
and what sparked the
Salem witch trials?
1692, Salem Village,
Massachusetts.
This tight-knit
Puritan community
lives a deeply religious
and strict way of life.
The Puritan settled
in Salem about 70 years
before the outbreak of
the Salem witch trials.
They had fled England where
they had been persecuted
for their religious beliefs
by the Anglican Church.
Puritans are not
fans of this church,
not because it's too strict,
but because it's
not strict enough.
They have established
themselves in Massachusetts Bay
and they sought to build
a godly city on a hill.
Their first settlement,
Salem Town is a port city,
but as the years go by,
the settlers
gradually move inland
and eventually they
form Salem Village.
But at some point,
there's really a
kind of a division
that starts to take
place between Salem Town
and Salem Village.
Salem Town developed
into a bustling port city
with trading connections
all over the region.
In contrast,
Salem Village is a
poor rural community.
It's more than 500
inhabitants spread out
over a much larger area
and make a living
mostly as farmers.
It's surrounded on
all sides, basically,
by pretty dense woods,
and they really kind
of eke out a bit
of a subsistence existence.
The community that is created
by these Puritan beliefs
is that your life is constantly
a battle between good and evil.
And evil can overtake
you at any turn,
so you always have
to be on the lookout.
Puritans consider
women especially susceptible
to Satan's charms.
Puritans don't believe that
women are inherently evil,
but they preach that
women are weaker than men,
both physically and morally.
When the witch hunt begins,
that makes women likely
targets for accusations.
The Puritan's
fear of witchcraft traces back
to Europe where massive witch
hunts have been going on
for over 300 years.
Something like 50,000
people were executed
for witchcraft across Europe
and its colonies
between 1450 and 1750.
It's against this backdrop
that the stage is set
for the most infamous
witch hunt of all time.
The events leading to the
Salem witch trials are believed
to begin at the end of 1691
in the Salem Village home
of Reverend Samuel Parris.
Reverend Samuel Parris
and his wife leave
their daughter Betty,
who's nine years old,
and her 11-year-old
cousin Abigail alone
when they go off on
trips for various things.
They're not totally alone.
They're actually with their
enslaved house servant Tituba.
Some historical sources say
that she's of African ancestry,
but most likely she was
from what is present day
of Venezuela or Guyana.
Tituba decides
let's play a game,
which is already
kind of uncommon
because kids in Puritanical
societies are also not allowed
to engage in any sort of fun.
Young girls'
voices are not heard.
Children are
expected to be quiet
and to listen to whatever
their parents say
and to grow up
without a personality.
That's what was expected of
the young girls in Salem.
Tituba teaches them a
game called the Venus Glass.
They would take an egg white
and drop it into
a glass of water
and try to interpret the shape,
and they thought that they
would get some insight
into who their future
partner would be,
But when they're
looking in the glass,
they see something
that terrifies them,
the image of a coffin.
Soon after,
in the midst of an
especially bitter winter,
Betty and Abigail both
come down with what appears
to be an unexplained illness.
It starts with a fever.
But then from there,
it progresses into
very strange forms.
They become catatonic.
They start hiding
under furniture.
They start barking like dogs,
and they feel like
they're being pinched
or pricked all
over their bodies,
even though there's no visible
marks that could be seen
and nobody has a clue what's
going on with these girls.
February, 1692,
with no improvement
in their condition,
the Parris girls accused
Tituba of bewitching them.
A court is convened
in the town of Salem.
Tituba is brought
before a court,
before a council,
and they asked her,
"Are you a witch?
Did you bewitch
the Parris girls?"
One of the peculiarities
of the Salem witch trials is
that those who confess
are granted clemency.
If you maintained your innocence
but you were found guilty,
then you were put to death.
Tituba understands this.
She can read the
room pretty easily,
so she confesses,
"Yes, I'm a witch,
I bewitched these girls."
Tituba testifies
that she does something called
signing the devil's book,
and she says further
it's not just her,
there are other people
that she knows in the town
who did it too.
Who they were,
nobody exactly knew,
And it breeds an
atmosphere of paranoia
and anxiety within the village
that spurs further denunciations
Over the course
of the three-day trial,
Tituba will go on to
name several women.
So these women
are thrown in jail,
but the accusations don't stop.
The next wave of
people that are accused
and arrested are
both men and women.
It's not just one or the other.
In court,
the young women that
are afflicted begin
to make allegations that their
neighbors are harming them,
but harming them
in spectral form.
Spectral evidence broadly
is the idea that the devil,
if he forms some sort
of a pact with a person,
can then take that person's
form and be a specter
and travel among
the ordinary people
of the town looking
like that person.
There was no need to prove that.
As long as someone says
that they have essentially
the special power to see it
because the whole idea is that
this evidence is invisible.
Confronted with
spectral evidence,
it's impossible for defendants
to answer the charges.
Ultimately, more than 200 men
and women wind up accused,
over 50 confessed and
are committed to prison,
20 refused to confess
and are executed.
Contrary to popular belief,
no witch was ever burned at
the stake in the United States.
They were all hung
except for one person,
a man by the name
of Giles Corey.
They took Giles
Corey out to a field,
laid him on his back,
and they started slowly
placing these heavy stones
on his chest,
telling him, "Confess!
Do you confess to
being a witch?"
All he says is just, "Add
more weight, more weight,"
until finally he can't
breathe and he dies.
May, 1693,
Massachusetts Governor
William Phipps officially ends
the witch trials.
The witch hunts may be over,
but the horror they unleashed
still resonates to this day.
The key question of the
Salem witch trials is,
what caused these
afflicted girls
to start falling
into these fits?
There's certainly
room for the idea
that maybe what the girls
were suffering from was
something more psychological
than physiological.
Mass hysteria is a known
psychological event where one
or two people start experiencing
psychologically-based
symptoms that then
become contagious
just as if it were another
sort of physical illness.
After Betty and
Abigail's terrifying experience
with the Venus Glass,
both girls come
down with some sort
of mysterious affliction.
They start getting sick,
and it starts off with
them getting feverish,
but they don't really know what
the cause of this fever is.
On top of the fever,
they also start hallucinating.
Their arms and their legs just
start moving in weird fits.
Finally, Reverend Parris
summons the village doctor,
William Griggs.
Dr. Griggs examines the girls
and could not find any
medical explanation
for their symptoms.
Clearly, they have
to be bewitched.
There is a precedent that does
exist for this sort of thing.
So there's a renowned
Puritan minister
by the name of Cotton Mather.
He writes a book called
"Memorable Providences Relating
to Witchcraft and Possession."
And it's a story
about a Boston family
and the way in which they are
being afflicted by a witch.
Cotton Mather's book was
widely read at the time.
Probably the girls
heard the stories.
After their terrifying
experience with the Venus Glass,
Abigail and Betty feel a
tremendous sense of guilt.
They're living in a
repressive Puritan society
in the house of the minister.
They believe that dabbling
with magic makes you a prime
target for demonic assault.
Perhaps the fits they
experience are a reaction
to their own sense of guilt.
It's as if all of this fear,
all of this paranoia just
suddenly explodes out
and everyone feels it.
People who are being accused
of being witches when they call
on their family and friends
and say, "Please come forward
and say that I've not
done any of these things,"
then those individuals
get accused also.
So it's like no one can escape
the wrath of discord system.
When you're already in a
community prone to groupthink,
mass hysteria is going
to spread even faster.
Many people start
to also exhibit the
same sorts of behaviors,
and this is what we see at Salem
where it's not
just the two girls,
but many girls screaming,
feeling like they're being
physically tormented.
All these things seem to spread
from two girls originally
to suddenly a whole group of
people behaving the same way.
It's classic mass hysteria.
There are other instances
in more recent times
where we do see this
phenomenon actually happening.
In 1965,
Blackburn, England,
we have a group of girls
who are complaining of
dizziness and a fainting.
Within hours of
those complaints,
85 other students
are also complaining
of the same medical issues
of dizziness, of fainting,
and yet there's
no medical reason
as to why that actually happens.
Psychological triggers
in mass hysteria can involve
a lot of different things.
Certainly, pervasive
stress is one of them.
Oftentimes, it can also happen
when the person already
feels a loss of control
in their lives as probably
many of these villagers did.
Once you have an
initial trigger,
the effects can very
easily snowball.
And sadly, it
got way out of hand
where it ended up costing lives
It is 1692 and a group of girls
in Colonial Salem, Massachusetts
kickstart accusations
of witchcraft,
sending hundreds
of people to jail
and 19 to the gallows.
Now, looking back,
we know that these girls
were not bewitched,
but they still
experience these symptoms
for quite a long period of time.
So how do we explain
these symptoms?
So these girls are being raised
in an extremely
repressive environment,
a town where there's not
a whole lot of attention
for these girls,
and maybe they found a way
to get a lot of attention.
All of a sudden,
they find their voices.
Some experts
suggest the answer lies
in a power play by
the alleged victims.
The girls' symptoms
would change over time
and come up at the most
convenient of moments
like during the
trials themselves
when a specific symptom was
actually being discussed.
There is even some evidence
that fraud may have occurred
in the later parts
of the trials.
The girls started
to show up in court
with pins sticking
in their hands,
saying that they'd been
put there by a specter,
with bite marks saying that
a specter had bit them,
physical kind of manifestations
that are clearly impossible.
When these children are
being paid attention to finally
and getting that support and
love from their community
and being valued
for speaking up,
which is so different
from what they
experienced up until now, its
easy for children especially to
get hooked on that.
Some historians contend
that the Salem witch trials
all started when two girls,
Betty Parris and her
cousin Abigail cry wolf.
And as the trials continue,
the spotlight on them
only grows brighter.
Perhaps early on in the trials,
the afflicted girls
enjoy the attention
that they're getting.
The audience for
these girls is growing.
People are coming from
outside into Salem,
new blood, new people, new
audience to perform for
'cause There's really a kind
of a theatrical element.
So many people want to be here
to see this scandalous
affair that they have to move
to the meeting house,
the largest building
within Salem Village.
As soon as they start to talk
to the suspected witches,
the girls begin to
fall into terrible fits
and it causes complete
pandemonium in the courtroom.
It seems to me that
the girls could be,
in a sense, having
the last laugh here.
They're getting a lot of
entertainment about it.
Nothing this fun or exciting
has ever happened in Salem.
You have these girls who
are suddenly rock stars,
this group who tends to
be ignored, marginalized,
and they have their
moment in the limelight.
It isn't just attention
these girls are getting,
it's also power.
Men were the ones
that spoke out in court.
Men were the ones that
charged their neighbors
with moral infractions.
But in this case,
women and young women
are given the authority
and the power to appear in court
to denounce their
neighbors for witchcraft.
It's a complete reversal
of the entire gender
and power hierarchies
within Puritan society.
In June of 1692, Ann Putnam,
the daughter of one of
the prominent families,
accuses Rebecca Nurse of
being one of the people
who's bewitching the girls.
Now, she's a very respected
person in the community.
She isn't one of these loners
or an outsider or something.
And so 39 people
in the community sign
a petition that says,
"No, she's a good person.
She's an upstanding
moral citizen,
and she's not the kind of
person who'd be a witch.
We don't think she's a witch."
Rebecca Nurse
pleads her innocence
from the very beginning.
But by the time of
Rebecca Nurse's trial,
the afflicted girls are
running the courtroom.
The judges are
deferring to them.
Rebecca Nurse ultimately
is hanged for being a witch.
Imagine the power that this
is giving to 9-year-old,
11-year-old, 12-year-old
girls in this town.
Children do cruel and strange
things just to get attention
or just because they're bored,
but to blame for
that really should go
to the adults and not the kids.
It's impossible
to know whether the
Salem girls were
intentionally play acting,
but given the
culture of the day,
it's almost certain they
could never admit to lying.
Once the girls have
denounced their neighbors
and they've been
hanged as witches,
it is too late for them
to retract their statements.
Within the Puritan community,
lying under oath
is a serious sin
that could place your
eternal soul in jeopardy.
It's doubtful
whether these young women
would've risked that.
In 1692,
Salem Village, Massachusetts
is a dangerous place.
Accusations of witchcraft
suddenly threatened hundreds
of lives and people are
starting to be hanged
300 years later,
when you start to pull away
from the mystical, the magical,
you start to unearth a much
more interesting story,
one that potentially talks
about not black magic,
but jealousy, rivalry,
and also a clash of ideology.
The politics
of this small village are
very neighborhood-based.
In an environment like this,
you have to depend
on your neighbor
in order to make it past
all the immense challenges
of life at this time.
Everything was very close knit.
There wasn't a police force.
Everybody just knew
everybody else's business.
Gossip plays a huge role
in the Salem witch trials.
Once Tituba confesses,
it's the talk of the town.
People come from as
far away as Boston
to attend her examination.
Once the afflicted start falling
into fits in the courtroom,
mass pandemonium ensues.
But behind all of this hysteria,
behind all of this gossip,
behind all of this
everyone getting
into everyone's business,
in the background,
there's something that's been
brewing for about 20 years
and it's gonna come to a head
right around the time
of these witch trials.
One factor in the Salem
witch trials is the feud
between the Porters
and the Putnams.
The Putnams are an old,
extremely conservative
farming family,
while the Porters
run the local sawmill
and are newer and more
liberal in their outlook
with stronger links
to nearby Salem town
In 1672, a dam that's owned
by the Porters breaks open
and it floods land that
belongs to the Putnams.
And so the Putnam will
actually file a lawsuit
against the Porter
family for damages.
It causes immense tensions
between these two families
because the fields
and the fertility of the
fields is absolutely central
to their survival.
Tensions between
these two families came
to a head when it was time to
elect a new religious leader.
The Putnam felt that the people
in Salem Township were
becoming more and more liberal,
and they wanted to
preserve the traditions
that exist in Salem Village,
and so they bring in
this more conservative,
more authoritarian minister.
Samuel Parris is stern.
He's very fire and brimstone.
He's a fundamentalist
at a time when we
would've thought
they were all fundamentalists.
Samuel Parris
becomes a lightning rod
for controversy
within Salem Village.
He's bombastic,
he's pompous,
he's loud,
and many people don't like him.
Once established as Minister,
the village splits further
over his accommodation
and expenses.
26 members of the
Village Council,
11 of whom are Putnams,
vote to give the reverend's
family a house, a barn,
and two acres of land.
The Porters believe
that installing Parris
is a bridge too far.
They're unwilling to pay
for what they see as large
scale expenses for Samuel Parris
and his work as
religious leader.
The Porters also
decide to remove members
of the Putnam family off
of the governing board
for Salem Village.
In October of 1691,
just a few months before the
girls are supposedly stricken,
the new committee
members installed
by the Porters vote
down a tax levy
that would pay Reverend
Parris' salary.
With powerful
figures opposing him,
it seems that Parris could
soon be out of a job.
So this feud between the Putnam
and the Porters has been
brewing for about 20 years.
So by the time we get
to the first accusation
that's been made,
the line in the
sand has been drawn
and this feud is going
to find a whole new
battlefield to play out on.
In all, eight members
of the Putnam family
are either accusers
or part of the team prosecuting
the suspected witches.
Thomas Putnam files
12 legal complaints
and testifies against
24 individuals
who are accused of witchcraft,
but his daughter Anne takes
it all one step further.
Anne Putnam in the end
actually levies accusations
against 48 people.
So nearly one quarter
of all the people
who get accused of
witchcraft in Salem Village.
Now, in response to all
of these testimonies made
by Thomas Putnam
and his daughter,
the Porters come out
and try to start mobilizing
the villagers of Salem
to try to put up stop
to these witch trials.
As they're trying to
mobilize these villagers,
subsequently, 19 of their
friends end up being accused
of witchcraft.
The legal system in Puritan
New England gave essentially
those accused a
witchcraft no way
to make an effective defense.
If you were pointed
at and called a witch,
that was an accusation
and you were immediately
put on trial.
There are people who think
that it's entirely possible
that the Putnams and Reverend
Parris were responsible
for more or less
manipulating their kids
into making these
kinds of accusations.
From the Putnam's perspective
and from Parris' perspective,
this is a great thing
'cause not only do they get
to eliminate their enemies
by accusing them of witches
and potentially killing them,
but they also create
a kind of hysteria
that brings people closer to
their fundamentalist viewpoint.
But this also puts Reverend
Parris in a sort of spotlight
because what better time
to start coming to church
and to listening to his sermons?
So even though these
accusations could be seen
as an extension of the feud
between the Putnam
and the Porters,
the accusations then start to
get a little out of control
and start to snowball.
The problem extended
well beyond Salem Village.
There are actually 20
different communities
that had people within them
who were accused of witchcraft.
So the Putnam and Porter
families were really
only a very small
part of what grew
to be a much larger affair.
Puritans in Salem, Massachusetts
in the late 1600s live in
a world of faith and fear,
which many believe
is at the root
of the most infamous witch
hunt in American history.
But what if there was
a more tangible cause,
one that the Puritans would
have no way of detecting?
Now, more than three
centuries later,
perhaps we have the scientific
means to uncover it.
Salem Villages,
they're built on
agriculture and farming,
and so there's a lot
of growing of grasses,
barley wheat.
In Salem Village,
rye grain is actually one
of the most prevalent crops.
It's hearty, it's durable.
It can make it through a
winter pretty decently,
and so it becomes the
staple of the Puritan diet.
You can make everything
with it from bread to beer.
But you're never guaranteed
a successful harvest.
You have to plant
this crop correctly.
And if you end up having
a miserable harvest,
you could face starvation.
Going into the
planting season of 1692,
the Puritans of the
Massachusetts Bay
colony have endured a brutal
winter.
Their stores of
grain are running low
and they're kind of
hoping for the spring,
but the spring turns out
being pretty miserable,
very damp weather.
Damp weather is disastrous when
you're trying to keep grain
because things
start to get moldy.
When this crop comes up
from the ground in 1692,
Puritans may have
taken a look at it
and noticed a black stain
on the back of the grain,
but they may have just
thought that this was due
to overexposure to the sun,
so they could have
well harvested it
and ground it into their bread.
But these
Puritans are seemingly unaware
that the black
spot they've ground
into their bread is
actually a fungus.
And this fungus, though,
it can cause severe
hallucination.
Ergot is a kind of
fungus that is very toxic
and which is very durable.
It's extremely
difficult to get rid of.
Even now, modern fungicides
have a difficult time killing
the ergot fungus,
and it particularly likes
to grow in rye grain.
So the only way
that you can get rid
of ergot is if you rotate
your crops pretty regularly.
If there's a particular fungus
or pest that likes a
particular kind of crop,
then by rotating the crops
that you grow one kind one year
and another kind
of different year,
you don't allow
the pests to stay
and they'll die
off in one winter
and they won't
come back the next.
But because the soil so
wet and is not as arable
and it's kind of a rocky
or terrain up there,
it's hard to rotate your crops
as regularly in the north
and it is in the south.
It's possible some
of this ergot made its way
into the villager's bread.
They ingest it,
and they are experiencing
what's called ergotism
AKA St. Anthony's fire.
It's called St. Anthony's fire
because in previous instances
where ergotism had been seen,
it is said that those that
ingested this fungus that prayed
to Saint Anthony
were spared death.
Ergotism causes
LSD-like effects.
It's sufferers have
hallucinations,
they suffer convulsions.
Behavioral
scientist, Linnda Caporael,
first published this
theory back in 1976.
It's a really interesting
fact that the symptoms
of ergot poisoning are
really similar to what it is
that affects and afflicts
Betty and Abigail back
at the Parris homestead.
So those sorts of
hallucinations that they have,
the catatonia that they have,
the kind of acting out,
the convulsions or the fits,
all those are also symptoms
of ergot poisoning.
Her explanation
of why young women would've
been particularly susceptible
to ergotism is that they were
smaller and weighed less,
and so the toxicity would've
had more of an effect on them.
It's easy to see why she thought
that these LSD-like effects
of ergotism could have
caused the girls' fits
because they're vivid
descriptions of specter
that they had seen
and strange creatures
they encountered.
If ergot poisoning is to blame,
there isn't a soul in Salem
who would've known about it.
When William Griggs goes
and sees the Parris
girls for the first time
and tries to diagnose them,
he wouldn't have been
able to diagnose ergotism
'cause at the time,
it wasn't a thing,
people didn't even
know it existed.
Ergotism is not contagious.
It all depends on who's exposed,
how much they're exposed
to the dose makes the poison.
People throughout the families,
if they're all eating
from the same bread,
but they're eating it
at different amounts,
they're getting different doses.
That could have
been one of the things
that made it a lot
harder for doctors
to try to figure out what
exactly was going on in Salem.
There are some
scholars who think
that the ergot poisoning
theory is not likely
because one of the things
that would've kind of
counteracted that is a diet
that was rich in vitamin A.
Vitamin A can counteract
the effects of the ergot.
Where do you find vitamin A?
From fish.
And the Puritans would have
had a regular diet of fish
because a Massachusetts
Bay colony right
by the Atlantic Ocean,
and so the Puritans would've
had a daily diet of fish.
Therefore, their vitamin A
levels would've been quite high
and ergot maybe wasn't that
much of a problem for them.
The
forest surrounding Salem Village
is rife with danger.
Not only is there the ongoing
war with Native Americans,
bears and wolves
prowl the frontier
just beyond the edge of town,
but many believe it's some
of New England's
smallest inhabitants
that may pose the
biggest threat.
New England has
an overpopulation problem
with deer. There's deer all over
the place.
They would come in and
actually eat some of the green
that they were growing.
On a positive side,
they also provided venison,
which was a major part
of the diet of the villagers.
One thing hunters
didn't understand in the 17th
century is that with deer comes
a bigger problem,
deer ticks.
Lyme disease isn't
studied seriously
until the 1970s when
a group of children
and adults in Lyme Connecticut
contract the disease,
There were children
that were suffering
from joint paralysis,
fatigue, rashes.
Two mothers from
the group cracked the case
by conducting their own research
and keeping meticulous notes,
a pattern finally emerges.
Each suffered a tick bite in
the Lyme Connecticut area.
There is evidence to suggest
that this disease
existed centuries ago
and also outside of Connecticut,
including in places like
Salem in New England.
In 2008,
historian M.M. Drymon
publishes a book
in which she contends that
Lyme disease was the root cause
of the Salem witch trials.
In the book,
she writes that the Parris
girl symptoms included
intense headaches and the
feeling of being pinched
and poked by an invisible force.
Sufferers of Lyme disease also
experience intense headaches
and also joint pains that feel
like they're being stung.
One of the telltale
signs of infection
with Lyme disease is
a bite, the tick bite,
which is surrounded by what's
called a bullseye rash.
So a little kind of
ring around that bite.
And what's clear from
the early testimonies given
in court is that a number
of children ended up
with red marks on their bodies
in very distinctive ways.
You have several
children from one family
that have red streaks
all over their body.
You have another child that says
that they have
marks on their body
that looks like stab wounds.
Darkest good.
A 4-year-old that was
accused of witchcraft
and spent months in jail
has a little red wound
on her finger.
That's about the
size of a flea bite.
Now, these were discovered
because at the time,
as part of the
interrogation of a witch,
they wanted to see whether
women had any strange marks
on their bodies anywhere.
So because of this,
we do have testimonies of
various things that were found.
In their minds,
this was proof of the devil.
For us from a
scientific perspective,
maybe this was part of the
tick bite and the bullseye rash
that they were actually seeing.
As for why it was largely girls
and women who suffered
from these symptoms,
M.M. Drymon has a theory.
Kids tend to play or interact
with each other on
the ground more,
and women wear very long skirts
that actually touch
the ground physically.
Cloth is fibrous
and it's a perfect
little attachment point
for a tick to grab onto.
It's certainly plausible
that a couple of children
could have been playing out
in the woods
and have gotten bitten by a tick
and come down with Lyme disease.
You don't have to
interact with a deer
or wildlife to get a deer tick.
These ticks will travel
around in the grass looking
for their latest prey.
Nowadays, of course,
we don't have that
much to worry about
with Lyme disease.
It's easily treated with
antibiotics, with penicillin.
However, penicillin wasn't
a thing until the 1930s,
so about 250 years after
the Salem witch trials.
Not only can Lyme
disease cause rashes,
some experts believe it
could also explain some
of the girls' more
extreme symptoms.
With Lyme disease, it's rare,
but it can become
a neurotoxicant
that can cause various type
of neurological issues,
changes in behavior,
seeing things that aren't there.
There appear to have been
long-term health effects.
Abigail stays sick
and in fact doesn't
live very long
after the close of these trials.
It is possible that both Abigail
and Anne Putnam were
victims of not witchcraft,
just Lyme disease
Life in 1692 Salem isn't
for the faint of heart.
Not only do devoted Puritans
worry about hellfire
and brimstone in the afterlife,
they also worry about
bewitchment in the here and now.
Centuries later,
we know sorcery didn't cause
the Salem girls' symptoms,
but the real culprit has
yet to be identified.
There are a lot of
potential root causes
that could have led to
the Salem witch trials.
You have a lot of fear and
paranoia in these communities.
Why?
You're living in the woods,
animals could get you.
You might not plant
your crop the right way,
which could lead to
a shortage of food,
which means you have to worry
about how you're gonna
survive for a winter.
There are historical
accounts that suggest
that the consumption of
certain types of plants,
one in particular,
just might play a major role.
Jimsonweed is a very
common roadside weed.
It is part of the
nightshade family.
It does have
hallucinogenic properties
and it is native
to North America
Jimsonweed produces a
small egg-shaped fruit
about two inches in diameter,
and usually it's most
harmful to cattle
and other wild animals
who die after they eat it.
The plant has large white
or purple
trumpet-shaped flowers,
just the kind of wild flower
that might attract
a young girl's eye.
It's very plausible that women
and children are
picking the jimsonweed
because they are
a flowering fruit.
We look at the historical
background of this plant.
We find that it is in
fact linked to occultism
and to elements of dark magic
With its hallucinogenic
properties,
jimsonweed has been associated
with various cultural
and spiritual practices
throughout history,
including witchcraft.
Jimsonweed has been
linked to paganism
and it has been used to
alter one's consciousness
and it can and do
hallucinations.
It's possible that the
girls came in contact
with jimsonweed either outside
or in the house on the day
of the Venus Glass incident.
There are even suggestions
that there is a member
of the Salem community
who would already be familiar
with these practices.
According to some historians,
Tituba may well be
from a Caribbean tribe called
the Arawak who are known to use
jimsonweed for medicinal
and ceremonial purposes.
Native American
groups at the time,
and maybe even Tituba herself,
often are using jimsonweed
as part of religious rituals.
These could be made into cakes
and these gems and
cakes would be ingested
The alter state of
consciousness that it invites
might, for example, allow
someone to commune
with their ancestors or with
some higher power.
The use of jimsonweed
as a hallucinogenic has been
confirmed more recently.
There were four
teenagers in Los Angeles
that actually brewed
their jimsonweed tea
and experienced
psychedelic effects.
They were really successful
and they got really high.
And by high,
I mean that the symptoms
that they experienced
were very similar
to the hallucinations
and things that were
described as a part
of the original Parris girls
experiences in the 1690s.
If these girls had been
ingesting jimson cakes,
could they have believed
that the hallucinations
that they were having were real?
That seems entirely possible.
They were doing this very
secretive thing possibly
that they knew they
weren't supposed to do.
And that, of course, led
to feeding into this idea
of we should be
punished for our crime.
However, as the accusations grow
and more and more accusers
also appear in the village,
it seems unlikely
that they're all kind
of binging on jimson cakes.
Whatever the cause of the
witch trials in the first place,
it takes an outsider
to end them.
Reverend Increase
Mather of Boston,
father of Cotton Mather,
encourages cooler
heads to prevail,
Though he still believes
that the devil is
at work in Salem,
he thinks it's at work
and actually the people who
are making the accusations
rather than the people
who are accused.
Mather proclaims that is
better for 10 suspected witches
to be set free than for
one person who's innocent
to be executed.
And although the stain
never disappears,
things do quiet down
in this little town.
When it's all said and done,
the people who were caught up
in that fervor may look
back on it and and say,
"It's all in the past
and the devil made me do it."
In 1697, the legislature
of Massachusetts,
which was called
the General Court,
they declare a day of
fasting to atone for the sins
that they'd committed at Salem
during the events at
the Salem witch trials.
1702, the Superior Court
of Judicature declared
that the events that had
happened were unlawful
and the results
of that were void.
I think if there's a lesson
to be learned is that the
dangers of instilling fear
in a population are real
and that very easily neighbors
can turn against one another.
It reveals something
about how people behave
when they're together.
It reveals something about
tribalism and human nature.
It's hard in many
ways to believe
that all this happened
on American soil.
We tend to associate
the whole witch hunts,
the burning of witches
with medieval Europe,
not with what happens in
Massachusetts for God's sakes.
The Salem witch trials
are an infamous stain
on American history,
a cautionary tale about
the dangers of groupthink
and unfounded accusations.
We may never know for certain
what caused a group of girls
to suffer those disturbing
symptoms more than 300 years ago
in Salem, Massachusetts.
But whether they were brought
on by disease, toxins,
or mass hysteria,
one thing is true,
executing 20 innocent
people was never a cure.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching
History's Greatest Mysteries.