Original subtitles

[foreboding music]

- Tonight, a dark chapter in early American history.

- We are still fascinated by the Salem witch trials

because it's a story of injustice.

Women, young women,

some of them as young as nine years old,

denounced their neighbors for witchcraft.

- Accusations fly and many people are put to death.

- People are coming to court saying,

"I see invisible specters,"

and that was being accepted as fact.

- Now, we explore the top theories

behind a notorious tragedy

that's never been explained.

- Suddenly, they realized that beneath the surface,

there's this giant conspiracy that's been building,

and so they want to uproot this.

They want to find out how deep the conspiracy goes.

- Can modern science finally shed new light?

- Medical knowledge is power.

It's a luxury that we have now

that they did not have back then in Salem.

- What really happened

in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts

and what sparked the Salem witch trials?

[dramatic music]

[foreboding music]

- 1692, Salem Village, Massachusetts.

This tight-knit Puritan community

lives a deeply religious and strict way of life.

- The Puritan settled in Salem about 70 years

before the outbreak of the Salem witch trials.

They had fled England where they had been persecuted

for their religious beliefs by the Anglican Church.

- Puritans are not fans of this church,

not because it's too strict,

but because it's not strict enough.

They have established themselves in Massachusetts Bay

and they sought to build a godly city on a hill.

- Their first settlement,

Salem Town is a port city,

but as the years go by,

the settlers gradually move inland

and eventually they form Salem Village.

- But at some point,

there's really a kind of a division

that starts to take place between Salem Town

and Salem Village.

- Salem Town developed into a bustling port city

with trading connections all over the region.

- [Laurence] In contrast,

Salem Village is a poor rural community.

It's more than 500 inhabitants spread out

over a much larger area

and make a living mostly as farmers.

- It's surrounded on all sides, basically,

by pretty dense woods,

and they really kind of eke out a bit

of a subsistence existence.

- The community that is created by these Puritan beliefs

is that your life is constantly a battle between good and evil.

And evil can overtake you at any turn,

so you always have to be on the lookout.

- [Laurence] Puritans consider women especially susceptible

to Satan's charms.

- Puritans don't believe that women are inherently evil,

but they preach that women are weaker than men,

both physically and morally.

When the witch hunt begins,

that makes women likely targets for accusations.

- [Laurence] The Puritan's fear of witchcraft traces back

to Europe where massive witch hunts have been going on

for over 300 years.

- Something like 50,000 people were executed

for witchcraft across Europe

and its colonies between 1450 and 1750.

- [Laurence] It's against this backdrop

that the stage is set

for the most infamous witch hunt of all time.

The events leading to the Salem witch trials are believed

to begin at the end of 1691

in the Salem Village home of Reverend Samuel Parris.

- Reverend Samuel Parris

and his wife leave their daughter Betty,

who's nine years old,

and her 11-year-old cousin Abigail alone

when they go off on trips for various things.

They're not totally alone.

They're actually with their enslaved house servant Tituba.

- Some historical sources say

that she's of African ancestry,

but most likely she was from what is present day

of Venezuela or Guyana.

- Tituba decides let's play a game,

which is already kind of uncommon

because kids in Puritanical societies are also not allowed

to engage in any sort of fun.

- Young girls' voices are not heard.

Children are expected to be quiet

and to listen to whatever their parents say

and to grow up without a personality.

That's what was expected of the young girls in Salem.

- Tituba teaches them a game called the Venus Glass.

- They would take an egg white

and drop it into a glass of water

and try to interpret the shape,

and they thought that they would get some insight

into who their future partner would be,

- But when they're looking in the glass,

they see something that terrifies them,

the image of a coffin.

- [Laurence] Soon after,

in the midst of an especially bitter winter,

Betty and Abigail both come down with what appears

to be an unexplained illness.

- It starts with a fever.

But then from there,

it progresses into very strange forms.

They become catatonic.

They start hiding under furniture.

They start barking like dogs,

and they feel like they're being pinched

or pricked all over their bodies,

even though there's no visible marks that could be seen

and nobody has a clue what's going on with these girls.

- [Laurence] February, 1692,

with no improvement in their condition,

the Parris girls accused Tituba of bewitching them.

- A court is convened in the town of Salem.

Tituba is brought before a court,

before a council,

and they asked her, "Are you a witch?

Did you bewitch the Parris girls?"

- One of the peculiarities of the Salem witch trials is

that those who confess are granted clemency.

- If you maintained your innocence

but you were found guilty,

then you were put to death.

Tituba understands this.

She can read the room pretty easily,

so she confesses, "Yes, I'm a witch,

I bewitched these girls."

- Tituba testifies

that she does something called signing the devil's book,

and she says further it's not just her,

there are other people that she knows in the town

who did it too.

Who they were,

nobody exactly knew,

- And it breeds an atmosphere of paranoia

and anxiety within the village

that spurs further denunciations

- [Laurence] Over the course of the three-day trial,

Tituba will go on to name several women.

- So these women are thrown in jail,

but the accusations don't stop.

The next wave of people that are accused

and arrested are both men and women.

It's not just one or the other.

- In court,

the young women that are afflicted begin

to make allegations that their neighbors are harming them,

but harming them in spectral form.

- Spectral evidence broadly is the idea that the devil,

if he forms some sort of a pact with a person,

can then take that person's form and be a specter

and travel among the ordinary people

of the town looking like that person.

- There was no need to prove that.

As long as someone says

that they have essentially the special power to see it

because the whole idea is that this evidence is invisible.

- Confronted with spectral evidence,

it's impossible for defendants to answer the charges.

- [Laurence] Ultimately, more than 200 men

and women wind up accused,

over 50 confessed and are committed to prison,

20 refused to confess and are executed.

- Contrary to popular belief,

no witch was ever burned at the stake in the United States.

- They were all hung

except for one person,

a man by the name of Giles Corey.

They took Giles Corey out to a field,

laid him on his back,

and they started slowly placing these heavy stones

on his chest,

telling him, "Confess!

Do you confess to being a witch?"

- All he says is just, "Add more weight, more weight,"

until finally he can't breathe and he dies.

- [Laurence] May, 1693,

Massachusetts Governor William Phipps officially ends

the witch trials.

The witch hunts may be over,

but the horror they unleashed still resonates to this day.

- The key question of the Salem witch trials is,

what caused these afflicted girls

to start falling into these fits?

- There's certainly room for the idea

that maybe what the girls were suffering from was

something more psychological than physiological.

Mass hysteria is a known psychological event where one

or two people start experiencing psychologically-based

symptoms that then become contagious

just as if it were another sort of physical illness.

- [Laurence] After Betty and Abigail's terrifying experience

with the Venus Glass,

both girls come down with some sort

of mysterious affliction.

- They start getting sick,

and it starts off with them getting feverish,

but they don't really know what the cause of this fever is.

On top of the fever,

they also start hallucinating.

Their arms and their legs just start moving in weird fits.

- Finally, Reverend Parris summons the village doctor,

William Griggs.

- Dr. Griggs examines the girls

and could not find any medical explanation

for their symptoms.

- Clearly, they have to be bewitched.

There is a precedent that does exist for this sort of thing.

So there's a renowned Puritan minister

by the name of Cotton Mather.

He writes a book called "Memorable Providences Relating

to Witchcraft and Possession."

- And it's a story about a Boston family

and the way in which they are being afflicted by a witch.

Cotton Mather's book was widely read at the time.

Probably the girls heard the stories.

- After their terrifying experience with the Venus Glass,

Abigail and Betty feel a tremendous sense of guilt.

They're living in a repressive Puritan society

in the house of the minister.

They believe that dabbling

with magic makes you a prime target for demonic assault.

Perhaps the fits they experience are a reaction

to their own sense of guilt.

- It's as if all of this fear,

all of this paranoia just suddenly explodes out

and everyone feels it.

- People who are being accused

of being witches when they call on their family and friends

and say, "Please come forward

and say that I've not done any of these things,"

then those individuals get accused also.

So it's like no one can escape the wrath of discord system.

When you're already in a community prone to groupthink,

mass hysteria is going to spread even faster.

- Many people start

to also exhibit the same sorts of behaviors,

and this is what we see at Salem

where it's not just the two girls,

but many girls screaming,

feeling like they're being physically tormented.

All these things seem to spread from two girls originally

to suddenly a whole group of people behaving the same way.

It's classic mass hysteria.

- There are other instances in more recent times

where we do see this phenomenon actually happening.

In 1965,

Blackburn, England,

we have a group of girls

who are complaining of dizziness and a fainting.

Within hours of those complaints,

85 other students are also complaining

of the same medical issues of dizziness, of fainting,

and yet there's no medical reason

as to why that actually happens.

- Psychological triggers

in mass hysteria can involve a lot of different things.

Certainly, pervasive stress is one of them.

Oftentimes, it can also happen

when the person already feels a loss of control

in their lives as probably many of these villagers did.

- Once you have an initial trigger,

the effects can very easily snowball.

- And sadly, it got way out of hand

where it ended up costing lives

- [Laurence] It is 1692 and a group of girls

in Colonial Salem, Massachusetts kickstart accusations

of witchcraft,

sending hundreds of people to jail

and 19 to the gallows.

- Now, looking back,

we know that these girls were not bewitched,

but they still experience these symptoms

for quite a long period of time.

So how do we explain these symptoms?

- So these girls are being raised

in an extremely repressive environment,

a town where there's not a whole lot of attention

for these girls,

and maybe they found a way to get a lot of attention.

All of a sudden,

they find their voices.

- [Laurence] Some experts suggest the answer lies

in a power play by the alleged victims.

- The girls' symptoms would change over time

and come up at the most convenient of moments

like during the trials themselves

when a specific symptom was actually being discussed.

- There is even some evidence that fraud may have occurred

in the later parts of the trials.

The girls started to show up in court

with pins sticking in their hands,

saying that they'd been put there by a specter,

with bite marks saying that a specter had bit them,

physical kind of manifestations that are clearly impossible.

- When these children are being paid attention to finally

and getting that support and love from their community

and being valued for speaking up,

which is so different

from what they experienced up until now, its

easy for children especially to get hooked on that.

- [Laurence] Some historians contend

that the Salem witch trials all started when two girls,

Betty Parris and her cousin Abigail cry wolf.

And as the trials continue,

the spotlight on them only grows brighter.

- Perhaps early on in the trials,

the afflicted girls enjoy the attention

that they're getting.

- The audience for these girls is growing.

People are coming from outside into Salem,

new blood, new people, new audience to perform for

'cause There's really a kind of a theatrical element.

- So many people want to be here

to see this scandalous affair that they have to move

to the meeting house,

the largest building within Salem Village.

As soon as they start to talk to the suspected witches,

the girls begin to fall into terrible fits

and it causes complete pandemonium in the courtroom.

- It seems to me that the girls could be,

in a sense, having the last laugh here.

They're getting a lot of entertainment about it.

Nothing this fun or exciting has ever happened in Salem.

You have these girls who are suddenly rock stars,

this group who tends to be ignored, marginalized,

and they have their moment in the limelight.

- [Laurence] It isn't just attention

these girls are getting,

it's also power.

- Men were the ones that spoke out in court.

Men were the ones that charged their neighbors

with moral infractions.

But in this case,

women and young women are given the authority

and the power to appear in court

to denounce their neighbors for witchcraft.

It's a complete reversal of the entire gender

and power hierarchies within Puritan society.

- In June of 1692, Ann Putnam,

the daughter of one of the prominent families,

accuses Rebecca Nurse of being one of the people

who's bewitching the girls.

Now, she's a very respected person in the community.

She isn't one of these loners

or an outsider or something.

And so 39 people

in the community sign a petition that says,

"No, she's a good person.

She's an upstanding moral citizen,

and she's not the kind of person who'd be a witch.

We don't think she's a witch."

- Rebecca Nurse pleads her innocence

from the very beginning.

But by the time of Rebecca Nurse's trial,

the afflicted girls are running the courtroom.

The judges are deferring to them.

- Rebecca Nurse ultimately is hanged for being a witch.

Imagine the power that this is giving to 9-year-old,

11-year-old, 12-year-old girls in this town.

- Children do cruel and strange things just to get attention

or just because they're bored,

but to blame for that really should go

to the adults and not the kids.

- [Laurence] It's impossible

to know whether the Salem girls were

intentionally play acting,

but given the culture of the day,

it's almost certain they could never admit to lying.

- Once the girls have denounced their neighbors

and they've been hanged as witches,

it is too late for them

to retract their statements.

Within the Puritan community,

lying under oath is a serious sin

that could place your eternal soul in jeopardy.

It's doubtful

whether these young women would've risked that.

- [Laurence] In 1692,

Salem Village, Massachusetts is a dangerous place.

Accusations of witchcraft suddenly threatened hundreds

of lives and people are starting to be hanged

- 300 years later,

when you start to pull away

from the mystical, the magical,

you start to unearth a much more interesting story,

one that potentially talks about not black magic,

but jealousy, rivalry,

and also a clash of ideology.

- The politics

of this small village are very neighborhood-based.

In an environment like this,

you have to depend on your neighbor

in order to make it past all the immense challenges

of life at this time.

- Everything was very close knit.

There wasn't a police force.

Everybody just knew everybody else's business.

- Gossip plays a huge role in the Salem witch trials.

Once Tituba confesses,

it's the talk of the town.

People come from as far away as Boston

to attend her examination.

Once the afflicted start falling into fits in the courtroom,

mass pandemonium ensues.

- But behind all of this hysteria,

behind all of this gossip,

behind all of this everyone getting

into everyone's business,

in the background,

there's something that's been brewing for about 20 years

and it's gonna come to a head

right around the time of these witch trials.

- One factor in the Salem witch trials is the feud

between the Porters and the Putnams.

- The Putnams are an old,

extremely conservative farming family,

while the Porters run the local sawmill

and are newer and more liberal in their outlook

with stronger links to nearby Salem town

- In 1672, a dam that's owned by the Porters breaks open

and it floods land that belongs to the Putnams.

And so the Putnam will actually file a lawsuit

against the Porter family for damages.

- It causes immense tensions between these two families

because the fields

and the fertility of the fields is absolutely central

to their survival.

- Tensions between these two families came

to a head when it was time to elect a new religious leader.

- The Putnam felt that the people

in Salem Township were becoming more and more liberal,

and they wanted to preserve the traditions

that exist in Salem Village,

and so they bring in this more conservative,

more authoritarian minister.

Samuel Parris is stern.

He's very fire and brimstone.

He's a fundamentalist

at a time when we would've thought

they were all fundamentalists.

- Samuel Parris becomes a lightning rod

for controversy within Salem Village.

- He's bombastic,

he's pompous,

he's loud,

and many people don't like him.

- Once established as Minister,

the village splits further over his accommodation

and expenses.

26 members of the Village Council,

11 of whom are Putnams,

vote to give the reverend's family a house, a barn,

and two acres of land.

- The Porters believe

that installing Parris is a bridge too far.

- They're unwilling to pay

for what they see as large scale expenses for Samuel Parris

and his work as religious leader.

- The Porters also decide to remove members

of the Putnam family off of the governing board

for Salem Village.

- [Laurence] In October of 1691,

just a few months before the girls are supposedly stricken,

the new committee members installed

by the Porters vote down a tax levy

that would pay Reverend Parris' salary.

With powerful figures opposing him,

it seems that Parris could soon be out of a job.

- So this feud between the Putnam

and the Porters has been brewing for about 20 years.

So by the time we get to the first accusation

that's been made,

the line in the sand has been drawn

and this feud is going

to find a whole new battlefield to play out on.

- [Laurence] In all, eight members

of the Putnam family are either accusers

or part of the team prosecuting the suspected witches.

- Thomas Putnam files 12 legal complaints

and testifies against 24 individuals

who are accused of witchcraft,

but his daughter Anne takes it all one step further.

- Anne Putnam in the end actually levies accusations

against 48 people.

So nearly one quarter of all the people

who get accused of witchcraft in Salem Village.

- Now, in response to all of these testimonies made

by Thomas Putnam and his daughter,

the Porters come out

and try to start mobilizing the villagers of Salem

to try to put up stop to these witch trials.

As they're trying to mobilize these villagers,

subsequently, 19 of their friends end up being accused

of witchcraft.

- The legal system in Puritan New England gave essentially

those accused a witchcraft no way

to make an effective defense.

- If you were pointed at and called a witch,

that was an accusation

and you were immediately put on trial.

- There are people who think that it's entirely possible

that the Putnams and Reverend Parris were responsible

for more or less manipulating their kids

into making these kinds of accusations.

- From the Putnam's perspective

and from Parris' perspective,

this is a great thing

'cause not only do they get to eliminate their enemies

by accusing them of witches

and potentially killing them,

but they also create a kind of hysteria

that brings people closer to their fundamentalist viewpoint.

- But this also puts Reverend Parris in a sort of spotlight

because what better time to start coming to church

and to listening to his sermons?

So even though these accusations could be seen

as an extension of the feud

between the Putnam and the Porters,

the accusations then start to get a little out of control

and start to snowball.

- The problem extended well beyond Salem Village.

There are actually 20 different communities

that had people within them who were accused of witchcraft.

So the Putnam and Porter families were really

only a very small part of what grew

to be a much larger affair.

- Puritans in Salem, Massachusetts

in the late 1600s live in a world of faith and fear,

which many believe is at the root

of the most infamous witch hunt in American history.

But what if there was a more tangible cause,

one that the Puritans would have no way of detecting?

Now, more than three centuries later,

perhaps we have the scientific means to uncover it.

- Salem Villages,

they're built on agriculture and farming,

and so there's a lot of growing of grasses,

barley wheat.

In Salem Village,

rye grain is actually one of the most prevalent crops.

It's hearty, it's durable.

It can make it through a winter pretty decently,

and so it becomes the staple of the Puritan diet.

- You can make everything with it from bread to beer.

But you're never guaranteed a successful harvest.

You have to plant this crop correctly.

And if you end up having a miserable harvest,

you could face starvation.

- Going into the planting season of 1692,

the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay

colony have endured a brutal winter.

- Their stores of grain are running low

and they're kind of hoping for the spring,

but the spring turns out being pretty miserable,

very damp weather.

Damp weather is disastrous when you're trying to keep grain

because things start to get moldy.

- When this crop comes up from the ground in 1692,

Puritans may have taken a look at it

and noticed a black stain on the back of the grain,

but they may have just thought that this was due

to overexposure to the sun,

so they could have well harvested it

and ground it into their bread.

- [Laurence] But these Puritans are seemingly unaware

that the black spot they've ground

into their bread is actually a fungus.

- And this fungus, though,

it can cause severe hallucination.

- Ergot is a kind of fungus that is very toxic

and which is very durable.

It's extremely difficult to get rid of.

Even now, modern fungicides have a difficult time killing

the ergot fungus,

and it particularly likes to grow in rye grain.

- So the only way that you can get rid

of ergot is if you rotate your crops pretty regularly.

- If there's a particular fungus

or pest that likes a particular kind of crop,

then by rotating the crops that you grow one kind one year

and another kind of different year,

you don't allow the pests to stay

and they'll die off in one winter

and they won't come back the next.

- But because the soil so wet and is not as arable

and it's kind of a rocky or terrain up there,

it's hard to rotate your crops as regularly in the north

and it is in the south.

- [Laurence] It's possible some

of this ergot made its way into the villager's bread.

- They ingest it,

and they are experiencing what's called ergotism

AKA St. Anthony's fire.

It's called St. Anthony's fire

because in previous instances

where ergotism had been seen,

it is said that those that ingested this fungus that prayed

to Saint Anthony were spared death.

- Ergotism causes LSD-like effects.

It's sufferers have hallucinations,

they suffer convulsions.

- [Laurence] Behavioral scientist, Linnda Caporael,

first published this theory back in 1976.

- It's a really interesting fact that the symptoms

of ergot poisoning are really similar to what it is

that affects and afflicts Betty and Abigail back

at the Parris homestead.

So those sorts of hallucinations that they have,

the catatonia that they have,

the kind of acting out,

the convulsions or the fits,

all those are also symptoms of ergot poisoning.

- Her explanation

of why young women would've been particularly susceptible

to ergotism is that they were smaller and weighed less,

and so the toxicity would've had more of an effect on them.

It's easy to see why she thought

that these LSD-like effects

of ergotism could have caused the girls' fits

because they're vivid descriptions of specter

that they had seen

and strange creatures they encountered.

- [Laurence] If ergot poisoning is to blame,

there isn't a soul in Salem who would've known about it.

- When William Griggs goes

and sees the Parris girls for the first time

and tries to diagnose them,

he wouldn't have been able to diagnose ergotism

'cause at the time,

it wasn't a thing,

people didn't even know it existed.

- Ergotism is not contagious.

It all depends on who's exposed,

how much they're exposed

to the dose makes the poison.

People throughout the families,

if they're all eating from the same bread,

but they're eating it at different amounts,

they're getting different doses.

- That could have been one of the things

that made it a lot harder for doctors

to try to figure out what exactly was going on in Salem.

- There are some scholars who think

that the ergot poisoning theory is not likely

because one of the things

that would've kind of counteracted that is a diet

that was rich in vitamin A.

Vitamin A can counteract the effects of the ergot.

- Where do you find vitamin A?

From fish.

And the Puritans would have had a regular diet of fish

because a Massachusetts Bay colony right

by the Atlantic Ocean,

and so the Puritans would've had a daily diet of fish.

- Therefore, their vitamin A levels would've been quite high

and ergot maybe wasn't that much of a problem for them.

- [Laurence] The forest surrounding Salem Village

is rife with danger.

Not only is there the ongoing war with Native Americans,

bears and wolves prowl the frontier

just beyond the edge of town,

but many believe it's some

of New England's smallest inhabitants

that may pose the biggest threat.

- New England has an overpopulation problem

with deer. There's deer all over the place.

- They would come in and actually eat some of the green

that they were growing.

On a positive side,

they also provided venison,

which was a major part

of the diet of the villagers.

- One thing hunters didn't understand in the 17th

century is that with deer comes a bigger problem,

deer ticks.

Lyme disease isn't studied seriously

until the 1970s when a group of children

and adults in Lyme Connecticut contract the disease,

- There were children that were suffering

from joint paralysis, fatigue, rashes.

- [Laurence] Two mothers from the group cracked the case

by conducting their own research

and keeping meticulous notes,

a pattern finally emerges.

Each suffered a tick bite in the Lyme Connecticut area.

- There is evidence to suggest

that this disease existed centuries ago

and also outside of Connecticut,

including in places like Salem in New England.

- In 2008,

historian M.M. Drymon publishes a book

in which she contends that Lyme disease was the root cause

of the Salem witch trials.

- In the book,

she writes that the Parris girl symptoms included

intense headaches and the feeling of being pinched

and poked by an invisible force.

Sufferers of Lyme disease also experience intense headaches

and also joint pains that feel like they're being stung.

- One of the telltale signs of infection

with Lyme disease is a bite, the tick bite,

which is surrounded by what's called a bullseye rash.

So a little kind of ring around that bite.

- And what's clear from the early testimonies given

in court is that a number of children ended up

with red marks on their bodies in very distinctive ways.

- You have several children from one family

that have red streaks all over their body.

You have another child that says

that they have marks on their body

that looks like stab wounds.

Darkest good.

A 4-year-old that was accused of witchcraft

and spent months in jail has a little red wound

on her finger.

That's about the size of a flea bite.

- Now, these were discovered

because at the time,

as part of the interrogation of a witch,

they wanted to see whether women had any strange marks

on their bodies anywhere.

So because of this,

we do have testimonies of various things that were found.

In their minds,

this was proof of the devil.

For us from a scientific perspective,

maybe this was part of the tick bite and the bullseye rash

that they were actually seeing.

- As for why it was largely girls

and women who suffered from these symptoms,

M.M. Drymon has a theory.

- Kids tend to play or interact

with each other on the ground more,

and women wear very long skirts

that actually touch the ground physically.

Cloth is fibrous

and it's a perfect little attachment point

for a tick to grab onto.

- It's certainly plausible

that a couple of children could have been playing out

in the woods

and have gotten bitten by a tick

and come down with Lyme disease.

- You don't have to interact with a deer

or wildlife to get a deer tick.

These ticks will travel around in the grass looking

for their latest prey.

- Nowadays, of course,

we don't have that much to worry about.

With Lyme disease.

It's easily treated with antibiotics, with penicillin.

- However, penicillin wasn't a thing until the 1930s,

so about 250 years after the Salem witch trials.

- Not only can Lyme disease cause rashes,

some experts believe it could also explain some

of the girls' more extreme symptoms.

- With Lyme disease, it's rare,

but it can become a neurotoxicant

that can cause various type of neurological issues,

changes in behavior,

seeing things that aren't there.

There appear to have been long-term health effects.

Abigail stays sick

and in fact doesn't live very long

after the close of these trials.

- It is possible that both Abigail

and Anne Putnam were victims of not witchcraft,

just Lyme disease

- [Laurence] Life in 1692 Salem isn't

for the faint of heart.

Not only do devoted Puritans worry about hellfire

and brimstone in the afterlife,

they also worry about bewitchment in the here and now.

Centuries later,

we know sorcery didn't cause the Salem girls' symptoms,

but the real culprit has yet to be identified.

- There are a lot of potential root causes

that could have led to the Salem witch trials.

You have a lot of fear and paranoia in these communities.

Why?

You're living in the woods,

animals could get you.

You might not plant your crop the right way,

which could lead to a shortage of food,

which means you have to worry

about how you're gonna survive for a winter.

There are historical accounts that suggest

that the consumption of certain types of plants,

one in particular,

just might play a major role.

- Jimsonweed is a very common roadside weed.

It is part of the nightshade family.

It does have hallucinogenic properties

and it is native to North America

- Jimsonweed produces a small egg-shaped fruit

about two inches in diameter,

and usually it's most harmful to cattle

and other wild animals who die after they eat it.

- [Laurence] The plant has large white

or purple trumpet-shaped flowers,

just the kind of wild flower

that might attract a young girl's eye.

- It's very plausible that women

and children are picking the jimsonweed

because they are a flowering fruit.

- We look at the historical background of this plant.

We find that it is in fact linked to occultism

and to elements of dark magic

- With its hallucinogenic properties,

jimsonweed has been associated with various cultural

and spiritual practices throughout history,

including witchcraft.

- Jimsonweed has been linked to paganism

and it has been used to alter one's consciousness

and it can and do hallucinations.

- It's possible that the girls came in contact

with jimsonweed either outside

or in the house on the day of the Venus Glass incident.

- [Laurence] There are even suggestions

that there is a member of the Salem community

who would already be familiar with these practices.

According to some historians,

Tituba may well be from a Caribbean tribe called

the Arawak who are known to use jimsonweed for medicinal

and ceremonial purposes.

- Native American groups at the time,

and maybe even Tituba herself,

often are using jimsonweed as part of religious rituals.

These could be made into cakes

and these gems and cakes would be ingested

- The alter state of consciousness that it invites

might, for example, allow someone to commune

with their ancestors or with some higher power.

- [Laurence] The use of jimsonweed

as a hallucinogenic has been confirmed more recently.

- There were four teenagers in Los Angeles

that actually brewed their jimsonweed tea

and experienced psychedelic effects.

- They were really successful

and they got really high.

And by high,

I mean that the symptoms

that they experienced were very similar

to the hallucinations

and things that were described as a part

of the original Parris girls experiences in the 1690s.

- If these girls had been ingesting jimson cakes,

could they have believed that the hallucinations

that they were having were real?

That seems entirely possible.

- They were doing this very secretive thing possibly

that they knew they weren't supposed to do.

And that, of course, led to feeding into this idea

of we should be punished for our crime.

- However, as the accusations grow

and more and more accusers also appear in the village,

it seems unlikely that they're all kind

of binging on jimson cakes.

- Whatever the cause of the witch trials in the first place,

it takes an outsider to end them.

Reverend Increase Mather of Boston,

father of Cotton Mather,

encourages cooler heads to prevail,

- Though he still believes

that the devil is at work in Salem,

he thinks it's at work

and actually the people who are making the accusations

rather than the people who are accused.

Mather proclaims that is better for 10 suspected witches

to be set free than for one person who's innocent

to be executed.

And although the stain never disappears,

things do quiet down in this little town.

- When it's all said and done,

the people who were caught up

in that fervor may look back on it and and say,

"It's all in the past

and the devil made me do it."

- In 1697, the legislature of Massachusetts,

which was called the General Court,

they declare a day of fasting to atone for the sins

that they'd committed at Salem

during the events at the Salem witch trials.

1702, the Superior Court of Judicature declared

that the events that had happened were unlawful

and the results of that were void.

- I think if there's a lesson

to be learned is that the dangers of instilling fear

in a population are real

and that very easily neighbors can turn against one another.

- It reveals something about how people behave

when they're together.

It reveals something about tribalism and human nature.

- It's hard in many ways to believe

that all this happened on American soil.

We tend to associate the whole witch hunts,

the burning of witches with medieval Europe,

not with what happens in Massachusetts for God's sakes.

- The Salem witch trials are an infamous stain

on American history,

a cautionary tale about the dangers of groupthink

and unfounded accusations.

We may never know for certain what caused a group of girls

to suffer those disturbing symptoms more than 300 years ago

in Salem, Massachusetts.

But whether they were brought on by disease, toxins,

or mass hysteria,

one thing is true,

executing 20 innocent people was never a cure.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.