Encore! Halloween Bonus: The Salem Witch Trials

Apologies Accepted

Happy Halloween! It's a bonus encore episode in honor of Halloween (aka gay Christmas). We'll be back live in the studio next week because as our manager has reminded us, vacations are not supposed to last forever.

One summer in 1692 some village girls began behaving strangely. Witches were the only explanation and so began one of the darkest periods in early American history – The Salem Witch Trials. 200 people were sent to jail and 20 were killed by public execution. The Witch Trials lasted about a year, and seemingly stopped just as suddenly as they had started. The big question has always been: why? Why did a group of young girls accuse grown adult women of attacking them with witchcraft? Why did Harvard educated adult men convict innocent women and men (and two dogs) of being in league with the devil? Historians, social scientists, writers, and scholars have examined this event and offered clues which reflected the social issues happening in their own eras – but maybe after 329 years enough time has gone by for us to clearly see the truth behind the issues that sparked the most famous witch-craze in American history?