Educating myself about random things is just so me. I am known to “squirrel” random comments to learn about them. We were always doing that at work. Someone would say something interesting and I would drop everything and Google the heck out of it. Like a dog that sees a squirrel I am off and running.

I decided to watch the National Geographic documentary about witch trials. It was a six part series that covered various areas (and time periods) in Europe and in America.

Some of the most interesting things I learned was that most of the accusations were from children. If a child fell ill they would blame female elders for inflicting them with illness. Or they would blame neighbors especially if there was petty fights or jealously. Back in those days, most people believed in fairies and believe that their children were snatched and replaced with an “odd” replacement called a Changeling. So if a child acted strange, grew ravished with hunger, or grew ill the parents would think a witch interceded for a fairy. Also when failure of crops or bad weather occurred they would blame witches versus just a bad season.

Women were more likely to be accused versus men. Many believed that women were easily influenced by the dark forces. The women accused during the Salem witch trials were mostly poor, disadvantaged women on the edges of society. If they confessed, they were jailed. If they refused they were killed. Basically a no win situation. The young girls who accused people of being witches were at the trial and when the accused entered the room they would display fits and claim that the specters of the accused were torturing them. Eventually some of the elders felt that the young girls were lying and finally deemed that spectral evidence was denounced. Slowly the trials waned down and the accused were found not guilty. More than 200 people were accused, and 19 were hanged, one was pressed to death, and others died in jail. 

It was a dark period in our history. This is what happens when accusations, hysteria and belief in supernatural events run amuck. There is so much more to this story that I could go on forever about the politics and beliefs in this time period. To this day, this part of history is explored when tourists go to Salem to learn about the trials.

Thank you for checking out my blog.

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