A community's mass hysteria led to 19 executions — and the first person pressed to death in American history refused to confess, knowing his accusers would inherit his land if he did.
In early 1692, a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts began exhibiting convulsions, hallucinations, and fits they claimed were caused by witchcraft. Within months, more than 200 people stood accused — from social outcasts to respected churchgoers to a four-year-old child.
The legal standard for conviction was frighteningly loose. 'Spectral evidence' — a claim that someone's spirit had appeared to you in a dream — was accepted as proof of guilt. You could be condemned on the testimony of a person saying they'd seen your ghost.
Giles Corey, an 80-year-old farmer, refused to enter a plea at trial. Under English law, a person who wouldn't plead couldn't be tried — and couldn't have their property seized. Authorities responded by placing heavy stones on his chest over two days to force a response. His last words were reportedly 'more weight.'
About 78% of the accused were women, reflecting Puritan theology's belief that women were more susceptible to demonic influence. But as the accusations spread, they began targeting prominent men, ministers, and eventually the governor's own wife — which is when officials began to lose faith in the proceedings.
The trials unraveled partly because the accusers overreached. When they named the governor's wife Lady Phips among the witches, Governor William Phips dissolved the court, banned spectral evidence, and halted further executions. The accused remaining in prison were pardoned in 1693.
Salem was not the only witch trial in colonial America, but it became the most infamous. Its causes are still debated: historians have proposed mass hysteria, ergot poisoning from contaminated grain, political instability after Massachusetts lost its colonial charter, and ongoing trauma from brutal frontier wars with Native tribes.
The last living participant in the trials wasn't formally exonerated until 1957 — and the final victim wasn't officially cleared until 2001, when the Massachusetts legislature passed a resolution naming Elizabeth Johnson Jr., who had been convicted but never hanged, among the falsely accused.