The Real Salem - Road to the Trials
“A false tongue will never make a guilty person.”
-Susanna Martin, Executed for Witchcraft - Salem Massachusetts, July 19th, 1692
A small shop is filled to the brim with sage, tarot cards and spell books.
Thick incense obscures eager shoppers and visiting tourists.
In the bustle, a small book captures your attention
“The Witches - Salem, 1692”
The story contained within its pages begins NOT in the bustling modern town of Salem with its shops and attractions, but miles inland in the small house of a pastor.
The first accusations of witchcraft are made inside its walls, stoking the fire of communal hysteria, religious zealotry and and ultimately the conviction and execution of 20 individuals.
We visit the dark stone foundation far from the attractions of Salem.
To find the now called “ Village Parsonage” - you must actively look for it.
The remains of the one-room building, lie tucked between quant residential houses in Danvers, Massachusetts - formerly known as, Salem Village.
The road leading to the first accusation - made within the parsonage walls - is long and requires context.
“For witchcraft, which is a thing grown very common among us. I know it to be a most abominable sin, and I have been occupied these three quarters of this year for the sifting out of them that are guilty herein.”
-King James VI of Scotland, 1591
Going back as far as the 14th century, the concept of Witchcraft was commonplace across Europe.
The belief was, that a person (commonly but not exlusivley female) would make a diabolical pact with the devil. The witch would then be able to unleash whoas - channeling their newfound evil powers - upon people of their choosing.
Persecutions of these witches surfaced in waves at different times in different places … The Valais trials in France/Switzerland in 1428, The Trier Trials in 1580’s Germany and eventually reaching London with the Pendle Hill Trials of 1612 and beyond.
But interestingly, what was accepted for centuries back in Europe was already fading from the public consciousness by the 1690’s.
The events of Salem then, seem to be the last labored breaths of a tradition of persecution going back centuries…
The hysteria at Salem and the violence it brings, can only be understood by gaining a better understanding of the community that brought it about.
To me there is nothing more fraught with mystery & terror than a remote Massachusetts farmhouse against a lonely hill. Where else could an outbreak like the Salem witchcraft have occurred?
H. P. Lovecraft
Salem Town was a part of the original Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was established in 1620.
As population increased, settlers moved west to farm the less occupied but rough and rocky New England soil.
In 1638, a group of farmers settled in the Danvers highlands in what was first known as Salem Farms and later as Salem village.
This village, which is located about five miles inland from Salem Town at the coast, grew to become a relatively reclusive community of some 500 by 1690.
As is common in small communities, everyone in Salem Village knows each other in some capacity.
What is also common - specifically in this time period in THIS particular place - people stick to their own. They’re prone towards suspicion of others and and ultimately will do what it takes to survive.
With the onset of King Williams war in 1689, a conflict in the regions of Upstate New York, Quebec and Nova Scotia - the movement of refuges southward - including Salem Village - disrupted the already delicate balance of the community.
The growing population strained an already tense economic situation and provoked an already and deeply paranoid people.
Paranoid people, limited resources, growing population - strong Puritanical traditions (including the believe that both God and the devil tangibly effect the world), and what amounted to a theocratical judicial system …
What could go wrong?
I am not some preaching farmer with a book under my arm; I am a graduate of Harvard College.
Samuel Parris
Audio Recording*
Let me describe what I see … the foundation is a collection of large dark rocks in the shape of a small rectangle. I’m six feet tall, so lying down I’d take-up a large amount of the space on either side of the rectangle - there was what …. 6 people living here? Man...
There’s on stone staircase leading into what amounts to a hole filled with peoples … so not much physically …
This site is surrounded by suburban houses - literally could be someones backyard…
But when I stop to think of the legacy of this place, the pain it caused people, the eventual impact it has on our collective imagination … that makes it one of the most significant sites in Salem really …
Salem village filter through parishioners faster than most, some blame tensions within the community others credit the location itself as being undesirable …
Regardless, Reverend Samuel Paris enters Salem Village in 1689 after a slew of short-lasting parishioners.
Paris was - by all accounts - a greedy and stubborn man.
Not entirely respectable qualities when entering into the social powder keg of Salem Village.
Paris’s combined evangelical enthusiasm and structural rigidity which widened the already substantial divides in Salem Village.
Upon arriving, Rev Paris essentially made it harder to become a full member of the church - which did two things:
1 ) It elevated the status or full members of the church - who by extension supported Paris and his policies. Remember this is a community deeply intrenched in rigid Christian theology - unlike Boston or more mercantile communities. To be respected within the church was to be respected within the village.
2 ) Forced previous full - members to decent who then found allies among non members, who constituted a large and influential portion of the Salem Village community.
Within two years of Rev Paris’s arrival - the conditions were perfect for conflict and as fate would have it - the source of evil would arise not from the houses of partial members or deserters but from the house of the reverend himself.
Many within Salem village came to believe that the increased conflict was the work of the devil…
This would be proven true - in their minds - when in January 1692,
Rev Paris’s daughter Elizabeth, age 9, and his niece Abigail Williams, age 11 - start to have “episodes” within the patronage.
Without warning they would scream, produce strange sounds, and contort their bodies in strange, seemingly impossible positions…
Soon after, another girl Ann Putnam Jr, age 12 exhibited similar behavior.
After some time, when no improvements are shown - the girls are taken to a doctor, who, seeing no physical reason for these “episodes” cite the super natural as the main cause of their conditions.
Witchcraft is here in Salem Village…
This leads to, the most consequential baking of a cake in history…
Concerned by the diagnoses of the super natural, likely witchcraft - Mary Sibley - a neighbor of Rev Paris - recommends the baking of a Witch Cake; a process used to identify wither witchcraft is involved or not…
This begs the question - what is a witch cake?
Basically, in what is a well-known folk practice in English culture at the time, a cake or buicuit that is made with rye flour and the urine of the afflicted person - one of the girls - the cake was then, naturally, fed to a dog….
If the dog exhibits the same symptoms as the ill person, the presence of witchcraft is proven…
The dog is then expected to point out the witches influencing practicing their evil craft upon the afflicted.
The baking of the witch cake predictably reveales nothing
But I ronically, it is in the baking of this “witch cake” - meant to help the problem - where the seeds of paranoia are deeply planted…
Reverend Paris denounces the baking of the cake loudly to his congregation … perhaps in a bid to steer suspicious away from himself and his household where the cake was baked in the first place…
REV PARRIS “You’re going to the devil for help against the devil
This only fueled the communal suspicion within Salem Village…
It was Tituba, an enslaved Barbados woman to the Paris family, that actually baked the witch's cake and feed it to the dog that lived in the Parris household.
To diar consequences - for in the growing witchcraft hysteria, brought about by the baking of the witch cake inside the Paris household - The three afflicted girls make the first - of many - accessions …
Two locals, Sarah Good and Sarah Osbourne, and the unfortunate Tituba.
Audio at the house, talking about tituba and:
As is so often the case - those at the fringes of society fall first.
The first three to be accused, are not the first to face the gallows.
The cracks in Salem society begin to show themselves.
Bridget Bishop, on her third husband - unliked by the community, and more outspoken than desirable for woman of the time - was an easy first target.
Rumors spreed that she is the one responsible for the deaths of her first two husbands…
Others claim that small items go missing when Bishop is around –
All in all, she did not fit in with the rigorous societal structure enforced in Salem village
She was brought to trial on June 2, convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death by hanging…
Bridget Bishop is the first to be executed in the summer of 1692, but she would not be the last.
The paranoia - is just starting.….
A small stone foundation rests in silence.
Cars pass nearby in the gloomy gray light…
I walk to to rocky center of the structure.
A somber feeling washes over me in the quiet.
“This is the real Salem” I think to myself.
Thank you for listening to background odyssey - stay tuned for part two of the trials next week, we’ll go over the trials themselves, the progression of paranoia, theories for the hysteria and finally the conclusion and legacy of the trials…
Until then - feel free to ask questions via my instagram (backroad odyssey) about the trials, van life or any other episodes - I’ll be answering questions this Thursday for Van life diaries
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