In February 1692, over two hundred people were accused and tried for using witchcraft in New England. The most infamous of these witch trials was held in Salem Town, Massachusetts. Although there was little or no evidence that the accused actually practiced witchcraft or that they had “signed a contract with the devil, there were some irregular outbursts and strange occurrences in the city that people said were the result of demonic activity and someone must do it. be blamed. So the trials began. Legalistic citizens needed an explanation for the irregular events because they feared admitting that they didn't know what was really happening. The trials took place between February 1692 and May 1693. In Salem alone, there were over 30 deaths as a result of these trials. . Nineteen of the defendants were hanged, at least 11 died in prison and one died crushed under heavy stones. During this time, America was very religious and ardently believed in God and Satan. The majority of the population were English Protestants or Puritans, who used their religion and the Bible as an excuse for trials. The Scriptures of Exodus, Leviticus, and Acts were lifted from the Bible to strengthen their argument, but were used incorrectly and out of context. During this time, it was believed that there was a great deal of occult experimentation, mostly due to curiosity. Cotton Mather, a Boston minister, says that "many New Englanders, and especially young men, had been carried away with little witchcrafts, by which they secretly did things which were not right against the Lord their God..." It was a common belief that people who practiced magic had a contract with the Devil. This basically meant that they signed... in the middle of the paper... No, he would investigate the illness, and examine the person carefully. He watched what they ate and where they went. Who knows, maybe there was a bad harvest that made them sick. Perhaps the trials were a grand conspiracy two of Salem's largest families were related to almost everyone in town except each other. For all we know, one of the families could have decided that they were tired of disagreeing about the future of the village and taken the minister's daughter and niece into their own hands, asking a relative or wife to act crazy with other people so that they would believe their wife or relative was bewitched, making them able to blame virtually anyone they wanted. One thing for sure is that the people of Salem were afraid, and they feared they didn't know why these things were happening.