Research paper on salem witch trials

Since there never was a spurned lover stirring things up in Salem Village, and there is no evidence from the time that Tituba practiced Caribbean black magic, yet these trials and executions actually still took place, how can you explain why they occurred? The Salem Witchcraft Trials began not as an act of revenge against an ex-lover, as they did in The Crucible, but as series of seemingly unlinked, complex events, which a paranoid and …

…Inquisitions), none have captured our morbid fear of the supernatural as did the Salem Witchcraft Trials. It is amazing today to think of a time where people actually believed in absurd folklore such as witches flying and possessing their victims. As George Lyman Kittredge said, "Our forefathers believed in witchcraft, not because they were Puritans, not because they were [Colonialists], not because they were New Englanders - but because they were men of their time."