50 Fun Facts About Salem Witch Trials

The Salem witch trials began in February 1692 and ended in which month of 1693?

More than 200 people were accused, and it remains the deadliest witch hunt in the history of colonial North America.

How many people were executed by hanging during the Salem witch trials?

Fourteen were women and five were men; thirty in all were found guilty.

The accusations began in Salem Village, which is known today by what name?

Salem Village had a strained relationship with Salem Town, where the trials and hangings actually took place.

Which two colonial courts conducted the Salem trials, in 1692 and 1693 respectively?

Both sat in Salem Town, and the second court refused to accept the spectral evidence that had condemned so many before it.

The trials began after local women were accused by four young girls. Which of these was one of them?

The others were Betty Parris, aged 9, her cousin Abigail Williams, 11, and a 12-year-old who publicly repented years later.

Which of the first three women accused was marked out partly because she rarely attended church meetings?

The other two of the first three were a destitute woman with a bad reputation and an enslaved Indigenous woman in the minister's household.

Tituba was enslaved by which Salem Village minister, whose daughter and niece were first afflicted?

Her confession under examination gave credence to the accusations; what became of her after a grand jury dismissed her case in 1693 is unknown.

Why was Tituba pivotal to the trials?

The critic Robert Calef later noted that those who confessed were not brought to trial at all.

The 1692 Salem Village 'witch cake' was made from rye meal and what, then fed to a dog?

Mary Sibley directed John Indian, a man enslaved by the minister, to make it as "a means to discover witchcraft".

Who was the first person executed in the Salem witch trials, hanged on 10 June 1692?

Her case was the first heard by the new court on 2 June, and she was dead barely a week later.

How did Giles Corey die in September 1692?

He refused to enter a plea, so the court used peine forte et dure to try to force one out of him.

What two words did Giles Corey reply each time he was asked to plead under torture?

Sheriff George Corwin sometimes stood on the stones himself; Corey did not cry out over two days.

Which frail 71-year-old was hanged on 19 July 1692 despite a jury first finding her not guilty?

The judges sent the jury back after renewed fits from the afflicted, and the verdict was reversed.

Which former Salem minister was hanged in 1692 after reciting the Lord's Prayer flawlessly?

Witches were supposedly unable to recite it; a Boston minister on horseback reminded the crowd the devil could appear as an angel of light.

Who was the youngest person jailed during the trials, arrested at age four?

Her answers under questioning were construed as a confession implicating her mother, and she watched her mother led away to be hanged.

Why did Martha Corey draw the attention of the accusers in March 1692?

Her arrest troubled the village because she was a full covenanted member of the church.

What was "spectral evidence"?

The 1693 court refused to admit it, and the conviction rate collapsed.

Which Boston minister, author of Wonders of the Invisible World, published pamphlets asserting his belief in witchcraft?

He also cautioned a judge not to "lay more stress on pure spectral evidence than it will bear", advice that went unheeded.

What was the letter from Increase Mather and other clergy urging the court not to convict on spectral evidence called?

A copy was printed in his 1693 book Cases of Conscience.

Which governor, sworn in on 16 May 1692, created the Special Court of Oyer and Terminer days later?

He had spent the previous months in London helping Increase Mather secure the colony's new charter.

Who served as chief magistrate of the Court of Oyer and Terminer?

The new lieutenant governor also headed the Superior Court that took over in 1693.

How many people were executed on 22 September 1692, the largest group and last executions of the trials?

Reverend Noyes reportedly called them "eight firebrands of hell" hanging there.

On what grounds was Elizabeth Proctor spared execution after being convicted alongside her husband John?

John Proctor had been arrested for objecting at his wife's examination and was hanged on 19 August 1692.

Which examining magistrate, notably unrepentant, was an ancestor of the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, who may have altered his surname to distance himself?

The author of The Scarlet Letter was his great-great-grandson.

Which of the three people convicted in 1693 was not exonerated until 2022?

She was cleared 329 years after her conviction, the last convicted Salem witch to be officially exonerated.

The Salem witch trials came to an end largely because leading clergymen began to doubt what?

The sheer number of accused, including several prominent citizens, also helped bring the panic to a halt.

Which judge had his apology for the trials read to his Boston congregation on 14 January 1697?

He asked to "take the blame and shame" of the court, and later wrote one of America's first anti-slavery tracts, The Selling of Joseph.

Which afflicted Salem accuser publicly asked forgiveness on joining the church in 1706?

Some historians think her family's feuds may have been a major driver of the accusations.

In which year did Massachusetts legislators reverse the convictions of 22 named individuals?

Governor Dudley then authorised monetary compensation to be divided among survivors and relatives.

How much compensation did Governor Dudley authorise for survivors and relatives of the accused after the reversal?

Most claims were settled within a year, but Philip English's extensive claims dragged on until 1718.

A Massachusetts act of 1957 absolved six victims, and one passed in which year absolved five more?

The 300th anniversary in 1992 brought a park in Salem and a memorial in Danvers, with Arthur Miller and Elie Wiesel among the speakers.

In 2016 a University of Virginia team identified the actual execution site in Salem. What is it called?

The city dedicated a memorial to the victims there in 2017.

A 1976 theory blamed the afflicted girls' convulsions on poisoning by which fungus that grows on rye?

The idea appeared 284 years after the events and remains disputed among historians.

What "effluvia"-based test was used in preliminary examinations in Andover in September 1692?

The theory was that the witch's "malefick venome" flowed back into her body on contact.

Salem's precedent for spectral evidence was a 1662 English case under Sir Matthew Hale. Where was it heard?

The philosopher-physician Thomas Browne had supported the use of such evidence against two Lowestoft women.

Roughly what proportion of those accused and convicted of witchcraft at Salem were women?

Puritans held that men and women were equal before God but not before the Devil, whose favourite targets were "weak and vulnerable" female bodies.

New England's first recorded witchcraft execution, Alse Young in 1647, was in which colony?

It started the Connecticut witch trials, which ran until 1663, decades before Salem.

Which Boston cloth merchant compiled More Wonders of the Invisible World, a fierce critique of the trials that had to be published in London?

He set court records and petitions side by side with Mather's own account to expose it.

Arthur Miller's 1953 play The Crucible was written as an allegory for what?

It won the 1953 Tony Award for Best Play and puts John Proctor and Abigail Williams at the centre of the story.

Where was The Crucible first performed, on 22 January 1953?

The original production went on to win that year's Tony Award for Best Play.

The 1885 granite obelisk at one hanged victim's homestead carries an inscription by which poet?

The homestead still stands and can be visited today.

The Salem Witch Museum opened in 1972 and helped launch which annual Halloween festival in 1982?

USA Today rated the museum the second-biggest tourist trap in the world in 2024.

Which 1689 event removed governor Edmund Andros and left Massachusetts without a valid charter before the Salem trials?

William and Mary replaced the Catholic James II, and Increase Mather spent four years in London negotiating a new charter.

Refugees from frontier attacks in which war flooded into Essex County just before the trials?

Between 1689 and 1692 Wabanaki raids emptied settlements along the Maine coast.

How many of the accused are known to have died in the disease-ridden jails without ever coming to trial?

One of the first three women accused died in jail on 10 May 1692.

Roughly how many people were accused of witchcraft during the Salem episode?

Thirty were found guilty: fourteen women and five men were hanged, and at least five more died in jail awaiting trial.

Which 77-year-old convicted woman escaped execution with the help of family and friends?

Dorcas Hoar won a reprieve by confessing and Abigail Faulkner because she was pregnant.

Which Salem Village neighbour directed an enslaved man of Parris's household to bake the 'witch cake'?

Reverend Parris privately rebuked her 'grand error' on 25 March and accepted her sorrowful confession before the congregation.

Which two famous figures spoke at the 1992 tercentenary memorial ceremony in Salem?

The memorial park features a stone bench set into its wall for each person executed in 1692.

Tituba, one of the first three accused, is described in contemporary sources as what?

Modern research suggests she was a Kalina woman from South America taken to the West Indies, though later accounts called her Carib or African.