Ebook: Witchcraft at Salem

During the summer of 1692, the town of Salem seems to have been in a state of panic. Several young girls and young women began to have strange fits. They were eventually examined by doctors. Dr William Griggs examined Elizabeth Paris and Abigail Williams and came to the conclusion that "The evil hand is upon them" (2). With this statement he was informing the patients that they were the victims of witchcraft. Before this diagnosis, several members of the Salem community had already come to the conclusion that witchcraft was the root of the fits the girls were having. One member of the community even tried a form of white magic to find out who was guilty of afflicting the girls. Soon after this the girls began to name the persons responsible for afflicting them. Following this was a series of hearings and trials, which resulted in the death of twenty people. Chadwick Hansen gives his historical interpretation of what happened during the Salem Witch Trials in his book Witchcraft at Salem. For his book, Hansen consulted many primary sources from the time of the trials and has interpreted them differently from those historians who had previously examined these sources. He also brings into the book knowledge from the field of psychology to add a different angle to his interpretation of the trials.