An old hysteria

Memorial at the location where
the Salem Witches were executed

The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 were a case of hysteria, eventually seasoned with a dose of self-serving score settling, run amuck. In today's imagination the trials were fueled by hormone-addled teenage girls, since Eve is always a lurking problem in some people's minds, but that really wasn't the case at all. The two original girls who claimed to be bewitched were 9 and 11 years old. After a bout of childish fortune telling by them, they suffered contortions and other fits which were attributed to a coven of witches in the area.

When the doctor who treated the girls diagnosed them as being bewitched, his opinion was taken at face value. To put it in context, at the time witchcraft was widely believed to be real. The hunt for the witch led to their nanny, Tituba, who had attempted to help the girls. Tituba was a slave of Central American, not African, ethnicity. She had baked some anti-witchcraft bread for them, and so soon became the main suspect. 

Although she later recanted her confession, saying it was beaten out of her, at the trial she told a lurid tale of rats ordering her to serve the Devil and of there being a coven of witches in the area up to nefarious deeds. At the trials the hysteria bloomed and the Puritan community began to see witches everywhere. Conveniently those witches were either non-Puritans or people targeted because of grudges. 

In all about 20 people were convicted and hung, one died while having a confession tortured out of him, and several others landed in jail for periods of time. The History of Massachusetts blog has a list of all the victims with details about them in their post The Salem Witch Trials Victims: Who Were They?