Luke T.

                   Salem Witch Trials

INTRODUCTION

When you hear the words Salem Witch Trials, you think of witches right? But it's

more than that. It's about an illness that people think is fake but was not known

to actually be real or fake. It caused a lot of innocent people to die. People were

just accused of witchcraft. It was way bigger than you think.

BACKSTORY

In 1692, Betty Paris and Abigail Williams started acting strange and

they twitched and screamed and did other strange things. So people

thought it was the work of witches. They claimed to see the spirits of

witches that nobody else could see. They said the witches were

hurting them. They said spectors were hurting them. Spectors are a

spirit that is sent by a witch that no one could see, they look exactly

like the witch that sent it.

 RELIGION

In that time, people were puritans, which means they believed in

stuff like God, demons, fairies, witches, Devil,  etc. When someone

got sick, they thought it was the work of witches. They were called

puritans because they wanted to cleanse the world of evil and spirits.

They kept shouting names of people they don't even know to get

hung and killed for being accused of witchcraft.  Innocent people

kept getting hung. Then Ann Putnam said she was being pinched

and pricked by witches. I think it's sad innocent kept getting killed,

don't you?

   HOW TO SEE IF YOUR A WITCH

The only people who seemed to be in pain was girls. They just kept

accusing people they didn’t like. A way to test to see if someone

was a witch or not was to recite the lord's prayer, if they can say the

whole prayer without stumbling over the words, they are not a witch.

Sometimes even if they didn’t stumble over words, people thought

the devil was telling them what to say.

ENDING THE TRIALS

Later the girls were sent to Andover to try and find witches. There,

they identified 50 more witches. Later, people started doubting the

girls because they started accusing the wealthy, powerful people.

Like the governor's wife. Not to long after that, governor William

Phipps said,” no accused witches will go to jail until they are found

guilty by a court.” The following spring, he ended the witch trials

for good.

Fourteen years later, Ann Putnam apologized to the people of Salem. But

people never got to suspicious. So I don't really think they were ever

caught, do you?

CONCLUSION

Were they ever caught? I don't know. Does someone know? I don't know.
But that is up to you. This was most of what was known about the Salem
witch trials. This writing piece is over, just like the trials.

THE END

RESOURCES

     What Were the Salem Witch Trials? Graphic History of the Salem
Witch Trials.