Who were the witches of Salem?
Modern-day Salem does a good business in lightheartedly promoting its Halloween capital image. The town may have more psychics and Tarot readers per capita than anywhere else in America. But for the twenty people who died there in 1692, there was little humor in the affair. The hysteria developed, as many New England disputes had, out of religious infighting. New England was a theocracy, a Puritan church state in which church and government were closely connected. And since Puritanism then controlled the politics and economy of most New England, such a controversy among churchmen was no small matter. Salem Village was created in 1672 by a group of rural families who wanted their own church instead of going to church in the larger town of nearby Salem, a prosperous trading town. Several years of haggling over ministers followed until Samuel Parris, a former merchant and Harvard dropout, was called and arrived in Salem Village in 1689. No peacemaker, Parris failed to calm his troubled pa
