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FILE 014 · VOL II · Something Answered
The Witch Trials Got It Backwards. The Real Witches Lit the Fires.
In every witch hunt in history, look at who is holding the torch.
Based on: The Witch Trials
Intake record
| Recovered from | Family papers donated to a county historical society, later withdrawn by the family |
|---|---|
| Contents | Diary of an accuser, Salem Village, 1692 (photocopy); genealogical notes; a newspaper clipping |
| Finder | H. Pryce, amateur genealogist |
| Status | Original diary withdrawn. The family has declined all contact. |
Recovered file
Between the 1400s and the 1700s, Europe and its colonies executed somewhere between forty and sixty thousand people for witchcraft. [1] Most were women. Most were poor, or old, or widowed, or simply inconvenient. In Salem Village, Massachusetts, in 1692, twenty people were executed and five more died in jail, on the testimony of a small group of accusers, most of them young, who fell into fits in court and pointed. [2]
Historians have spent three hundred years arguing about why. Ergot poisoning in the rye. [3] Land disputes between families. Mass hysteria. Political chaos. Fraud.
What is not in dispute is who profited. Accused witches could have their property seized, and in Salem the county sheriff took goods from the families of the condemned. [2] One of the most active accusers, a girl named Ann Putnam, stood before her church in 1706, fourteen years later, and apologized, saying she had been deluded by Satan. [4] The last person convicted at Salem was not officially cleared until 2022. [5]
Hollis Pryce had a different answer, and it was in her grandmother's attic.
The rest of this file is sealed. The ending, the sources and the archivist's note unseal with the file.
Unseal File 014 ($2.99) · its volume · everything ($49.99)
Built on real, cited records. The stories are dramatized. Disclaimer · If you are in crisis in the U.S., call or text 988.