Origins of the Salem Witch Trials

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Witchcraft at Salem Village from Pioneers in the Settlement of America (1876)

Think you know how the Salem Witch Trials started? You may be surprised. Join Kristin on this week’s episode of Footnoting History to explore the origins of the 1692 trials and find out what historians know … and what we only wish we knew. 

​Host: Kristin

Further Reading

Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft, Harvard University Press, (1974). Note: an earlier interpretation but still often discussed and used
 
Richard Godbeer, “Witchcraft in British America,” in The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, ed. Brian P. Levack, Oxford University Press, (2013), 393-411.
 
Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692, Vintage Books, (2002).
 
Marilynne K. Roach, The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-to-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege, Taylor Trade Publishing, (2002). 

Image

Old Witch House, Salem, Massachusetts via NYPL.

Witchcraft at Salem Village from Pioneers in the Settlement of America (1876).

Music: "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin Macleod (www.incompetech.com)

Old Witch House, Salem Massachusetts via NYPL.