Salem Witch facts
While investigating facts about Salem Witch Trials and Salem Witch Museum, I found out little known, but curios details like:
During the Salem Witch Trials, when Sarah Good was asked to confess at her execution, she told minister Nicholas Noyes "You are a liar! I am no more a witch than you are a wizard, and if you take away my life God will give you blood to drink”. 25 years later, Noyes died of a haemorrhage.
how salem witch trials started?
Author Nathaniel Hawthorne added a W to his last name to hide his relation to his great-great grandfather John Hathorne, the only judge in the Salem Witch Trials to never repent of his actions.
Who died at salem witch trials?
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what salem witch trials. Here are 50 of the best facts about Salem Witch Trials Movie and Salem Witch Trials Facts I managed to collect.
what happened at salem witch trials?
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Writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ray Bradbury, actors Christopher Reeve and Linda Hamilton, and astronaut Alan Shepard are all descendants of Mary Bradbury, a woman tried and sentenced in the Salem Witch Trials who escaped death and lived to age 85.
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It is believed that one of the reasons for the paranoia and bizarre behavior that led to the Salem Witch Trials was caused because of a fungus, Ergot, which grows on rye plants and is a close cousin of LSD. Mistaking it for large rye grain, Salem villagers ground it into their bread and ate it.
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None of the ~35 people killed in the Salem Witch Trials died from burning at the stake. 19 were hanged, 1 was pressed to death, all others died in jail.
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Sarah Jessica Parker, who played a witch convicted in the Salem witch trials in the Disney movie "Hocus Pocus", later discovered that one of her ancestors was a real woman accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials.
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During the Salem witch trials, no one was burned at stake. They were hanged, left to die in prison, or pressed.
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Sarah Jessica Parker's ancestor Esther Elwell was accused of being a witch in 1692 Salem when a young girl claimed to have seen her ghost strangling her neighbor. Esther's case never went to court and she escaped a tragic death by a matter of days, as Salem stopped trying witches 1 month prior.
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Nobody was burned at the stake during the Salem Witch Trials. Most people convicted of witchcraft were hanged and one man was crushed with stones.
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John Hathorne was the only judge in the Salem Witch Trials never to apologize for his actions. His great-great grandson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, added a W to his last name to distance himself from him.
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The Salem Witch trials were in part caused by an outbreak of ergot, a fungus that causes hallucinations, on rye.
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Many of the "witches" in the infamous Salem witch trials are now believed to have had Huntington's disease and their symptoms were mistaken for possession by the devil.
Why salem witch trials happened?
You can easily fact check why salem witch trials important by examining the linked well-known sources.
Legendary author Ray Bradbury was a descendant of Mary Bradbury, who was tried in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.
Ergot poisoning, which has effects similar to LSD, is thought to be responsible for both causing the Salem Witch Trials and also influencing a number of Renaissance paintings. - source
Two dogs died in the Salem Witch Trials. In October 1692, a girl in Andover accused a neighbor’s dog of bewitching her. The villagers shot the dog immediately. After its death, the dog was declared innocent, since if the dog really was the devil in disguise, it would not be possible to kill it. - source
Salem Village that we know from the Witch Trials was renamed Danvers, MA and the current Salem was then known as Salem Town. - source
When salem witch trials?
One of the methods used for identifying witches in the Salem Witch Trials, was to bake affected girls urine in a cake, feed it to a dog, and the controlling witch would then supposedly cry out in pain.
How salem witch trials ended?
During the Salem witch trials people suspected of being the victims of black magic would have their urine baked into a cake. The cake would be fed to a dog who was then monitored for signs of witchcraft.
Dorothy Good, the youngest to be accused of witchcraft in the infamous Salem witch trials of 1692, was only four years old when interrogated by magistrates and five when sent to jail.
Zach Braff and Mitt Romney are distant cousins and descendants of Rebecca Nurse, a devout Puritan Protestant woman who was falsely accused of practicing witchcraft and hanged at the infamous Salem witch trials
During the Salem Witch Hunts, a woman convinced the minister of the town to make a witch cake (rye meal and the urine of the afflicted girls) and feed it to a dog. When the dog ate the cake, they believed it would harm the witch, causing her to howl in pain and reveal her identity.
Ergot, a grain fungus, which is responsible for causing hallucinations, paranoia, and convulsions, is suspected to be the reason for "bewitchment" during the Salem Witch Trials.