What were the causes of the Salem witch hunts of 1692?

Answer 1

There was only one immediate cause of the trials: the affliction of the supposed bewitched. So called witchcraft threatened the church, the government, and the social laws of communities. People viewed witchcraft as a real and legitimate issue, and it was tried like any other crime.

Answer 2

Sometime toward the end of January, 1692, Betty Parris, nine year-old daughter of the Reverend Samuel Parris, became ill. She suffered from convulsions that contorted her body. At times she would cry out and cower under chairs as if frightened of something. Soon her thirteen-year-old orphaned cousin, Abigail, who also lived in the Parris household, showed the same symptoms. Reverend Parris and his wife did not recognize the malady and had the girls examined by several doctors. The physicians could find nothing wrong with the girls and by mid-February Dr. William Griggs declared that he thought "the evil hand is upon them." After that the word spread quickly through the tiny community of Salem Village: "There are witches among us."

Answer:The cause of the panic that lead ot the trials in Salem was the affliction of girls in Essex County. The cause of the affliction is unknown. Theories include Ergotism, Encephalitis and mental illness.

Answer 3

In February of 1692 a group of teen girls in Salem were having fits when questioned by adults they named a circle of local people was witches or wizards. The main people they named were middle age women and men, and people who were seen as "outsiders" or strange. By the end of the summer hundreds had been accused, 27 put on trial and 19 executed. A number of historians have linked the trials to the painful changes that Puritan society at the time. Torn between their original goals and the commercial individualism fast overtaking them the historians argue that they responded with fear and guilt seeking scapegoats that they could blame their sense of moral loss. Salem Village also had a bitter feud with the prosperous Salem Town that may have also help make the witch hunts the worse in New England history.