ABSTRACT
The Salem witch hunt of 1692–1693, which claimed twenty lives directly and others indirectly, has been interpreted in markedly different ways. During the Salem outbreak, fifty-three residents of the neighboring town of Andover signed a petition in favor of five accused women, citing pressure from some in the community to confess to negligence of justice/miscarriage of the law. The Salem witch persecution had its origins in the fall of 1691, as the minister of Salem Village, Samuel Parris, began to emphasize the presence of Satan in the world and as girls in his household began to have fits. The members of one Salem jury which had found people guilty of witchcraft in 1692 reconsidered their judgments less than a year later. The kinds of evidence admitted in the Salem cases, especially on specters, were disallowed in other New England cases.
