Is anyone into the Study of the Salem Witch trials that were held in Massachusetts ? for a couple years i was researching the subject trying to get peices of information to learn more of the story and the accused and sadly i have put it off for so long i have forgotten a bit and would love to get back on it so if theres anyone who is really intrested in this subject please do tell me i would love to swap information i have timelines and tons of stuff id like to go through ...anyways the bits and peice i do know is that through out New England around around 1691-92 fortune telling spread out and had caught alot of attention mainly with young women and had many religious groups believing the super natural and possession of the devil . A strong religious family
Rev. Samuel Parris and his wife had a nine year old daughter betty and a 12 year old neice Abigail under a watchful eye of a slave Tituba whom Rev. Paris bought while on a trip to Barbados.
well it is said that young woman would form small - informal circles to practice the divinations and fortune telling they learned from their reading to help pass the long cold months. Betty Parris and her cousin Abigail Williams had formed such a circle along with two other friends often the slave tituba would join and would entertain the girls with stories of witchcraft, demons, and mystical animals many oher girls would join in to listen to the fascinating women tell these tales. They would tell their fortunes by dropping an egg white into a glass of water and then interpret the picture it formed...Betty and Abigail began to become upset and frightened with the results of their fortunes. Family financial and social difficulties caused the two girls to express their stress in unusual physical expressions. Rev parris believed for there unnatural behavior to be an illness and asked the Salem physician, William Griggs to examine the girls...He did not find any physical cause for their strange behavior and concluded the girls were bewitched. The village believed witches had the ability to harm others and exchange compact with the devil for certain powers to do evil and witchcraft was considered a sin because it denied Gods superiority and a crime because the witch could call up the Devil in his/her shape to perform cruel harmful acts against others therefore in any case when witchcraft was suspected it was important that it was investigated throughly and the tormentor be identified and judged. Unknown to Samuel Parris, Mary Sibley ordered Tituba and her husband John Indian to bake a witch cake in order to help the girls name their tormentors. A witch cake is made of rye meal mixed with urine from the afflicted. It is then feed to a dog the person are considered bewitched if the dog displays similar symptoms as the afflicted. The girls were at first hesitant to speak but Betty eventually spoke and named Tituba. The other girls soon spoke and named Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good.
All three women were candidates for the accusations of witchcraft. Sarah Osborne was an elderly lady who had not gone to church in over a year and poor church attendance was a sin. Sarah Good was a homeless woman who begged door to door. If people failed to give her charity she would mumble unknown words and leave...those who would often attribute her visits had death of livestock and believed the mumbled words she spoke under her breath were curses against them for not showing her charity. During the questioning of the three accused, Betty, Abigail, and six other girls would often scream and tumble on the floor of the meetinghouse. Even with the harsh questioning by the two magistrates and the unusual actions of the afflicted girls, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne maintained their innocence. Tituba however confessed for three days later she talked of red rats talking cats and a tall man dressed in black she stated that the man clothed in black made her sign in a book and that Sarah Good Sarah Osborne and others whose names she could not read had also signed this book. It is not exactly clear why she confessed to witchcraft she might have thought that she was guilty since she practiced fortune telling which was considered a form of white magic or thought that the judges would be lenient if she confessed. Whatever reason a confession was not likely obtained from her by torture. Although physical torture was employed in Europe to elicit confessions from accused witches there are no confirmed cases of it being used in Colonial America for the same purposes as New England law did not sanction it.
when Tituba finished her lengthy confession, she Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne were taken to a Boston jail. Sarah Osborne would later become the first victim of the Salem witch trials when she died two months later of natural causes while still in jail.
The accusations of witchcraft continued despite the jailing of three accused witches at the time small pox had broke out through the village and people believed it to be a punishment ,
many other girls came up and confessed that they to have been inflicted hundreds of men and women were being accused for this so called act of witchcraft hung tortured and pressed to death under large bricks and rocks many died of natural causes and starvation while in jail some still carrying a child. Salem witch trials had ended around 1693 no one died as a convicted witch in America again after the Salem witch trials It was also the last of the religious witch hunts Salem Village separated from Salem Town in 1752 and became the town of Danvers. this separation did not wipe away the history of the witch trials from its past For over 300 years historians, sociologists, psychologists and others continue to research and write about them to this day, and they continue to serve as a reminder of how politics, family squabbles, religion, economics and the imaginations and fears of people can yield tragic consequences.
Anyone who has different facts about this subject please do share there has been many written tales based on this story which is why i soon hope to get back to researching the subject.
Lists of links 
the crucible had a play? i read a chapter book on it called the crucible but never heard of a play thats coo i hope i can maybe find it 
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