mysteries of the salem witch trials

Two Salem Familes
1641-1692

Wow I just found out something I didn't know. Salem comes from the Hebrew word Shalom, which means hello, goodbye, and peace.
Haha. Peace. Well, that doesn't exactly fit. That is very interesting.
Well I get the point that Salem was an extremely religious place. They followed like God's rules.
It seems like these people are the stereotypical olden day families.
It's strange because like all these families would like team up on one person accused of witchcraft. It's really sad.
It talks about anyone in the ministry had their work cut out for them. I don't doubt that. They were called left and right to assist victims of witchcraft.


These people just seem obssessed with witchcraft.

Lucky

So something that has REALLY been on my mind lately has been my dog, Lucky. I got him for my birthday like eleven years ago or something like that, and I love him so much. We just found out about a week ago that he is dying. The vet said maybe a few months, these kind of things we don't know exactly how long he has left.
The thought on my mind:
What am I going to do without him???

I just have no idea what I am going to do without him. He has been there for me when no one else has been. When I cry, he licks my face. When I'm sad, he sits with me. He plays with me when I am lonely, he is always there. Now, what's going to happen when he's not there??? For a long time he is all that I had. It really hurts to think that he's not going to be around anymore. Maybe the hardest thing is knowing what is going to happen and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. I wish everyday I could just get rid of the cancer and just have him live. I love him so much. I just can't imagine my life without him. When you get a dog, you don't really think about when the dog is going to die. I know I didn't. And now it's happening. I don't know what to do. I am trying to prepare myself but nothing is working. I feel so helpless.

With this and so many other things going on in my life, I have a ton of stress so.... tomorrow I am going to get a punching bag that you hang from the ceiling. I cannot wait. Seriously, I really want one and I have been having this urge for the longest time to just punch something. So maybe this will help?

My Mind

What's on my mind? Too many things. But then again doesn't everyone?
But I guess I'll pick out one of the many things.

So, sometimes I get a little pissed off over little things. Usually at my family. For instance, my sister. Sometimes we get along, but just like everyone, sometimes we don't. There are certain things about her that just drive me crazy. I mean, I love her more than anything in the world, but she still drives me nuts. We have a few things in common but not a great amount. For instance we both like The O.C. We can watch this together and I guess that's kind of bonding? Things used to be a whole lot different. A couple of years ago, we got along great. Every saturday morning we would wake up around seven or so, knowing our parents wouldn't be up until around 9, and we would go down into the basement and play barbies. We played barbies for hours and hours. I cannot even count how many hours we spent. But, I do remember we had so much fun. We had hundreds of barbie dolls. From Mary-Kate & Ashley Olsen barbies to Princess Jasmine. Also, of course Barbie and her friends like Teresa and Ken. Sometimes I still wish we had them. Sometimes I wish I was a kid again, with no worries, just playing barbies with my sister.

But things have changed. One thing that absolutely drives me NUTS is some of the shows she watches. I can see her turning into these people, and they are not the kind of people I want my sister to be. I mean for crying out loud there are shows like The Soup (love that show!!) and Best Week Ever (also love that show!!) that make fun of these people. You know why? Because some of them are assholes and bitches. I do not want my sister turning into a bitch like those girls are. For some reason just her watching The Hills, Laguna Beach, and America's Next Top Model, just pisses me off. For one, she watches it WAY too much. She clogs up our DVR with that crap. I know that she's can watch whatever she wants, I just don't want her to turn into that. I'm worried because she already acts like that a little bit. To me it seems like she's halfway there. People already ask me if she has an eating disorder and personally, I don't know if she does but I don't want her to be pressured into having one. Being a model is a tough job, you are wide open for people to insult you and stuff like that. She's my little sister, of course I'm protective of her. I know it's kind of bitchy of me, and I'm trying to be more tolerant of it, it's just that it's like my biggest fear for her. She wants to be a model. That just scares me. I don't want to see her turning into an attention whore bitch. Ugh. I know I'm being bitchy though. I know I would get so pissed off if someone yelled at me about the shows that I watch. But I don't know, something about it just REALLY pisses me off.

CNN

Okay, it's things like this that make society just strange and somewhat frustrating. Seriously, it's like when telomarketers call my house. It's just plain out annoying. Thankfully, it's not as up in your face as the calls are, but still, it's the same type of idea. Isn't CNN making enough money? It's just annoying. There are so many things out there trying to take our money and quite frankly I'm tired of it. Pop up adds, commericals on the tv, radio, etc. It's everywhere!! And I might just be stereotyping but really most of the people who I know that watch CNN are well... old. I don't really think many of the elderly people are going to buy stupid tee shirts.
It's just frustrating because they already have a ton of money! Money is already an issue in our world so it's like ughhh CNN stop being so greedy!

Boston, 1688: The Possession of the Goodwin Children

Mather vs. Glover

This chapter starts out with a story about Martha Goodwin and her washerwoman. She suspected that the washerwoman had stolen some linen from her family, and the washerwoman's mother was so mad that she said mean things to Martha. After this Martha, and her three younger siblings had "fits".
A physician had no idea what was going on, so he just said that he believed their suffering was due to witchcraft. They immediatly blamed Glover.
Glover was a poor woman, a stereotype of witches. After she was taken into custody, the younger children were "healed". Later, they relapsed. A minister came to try and take the "demons" out of the children.
They were Puritans and during this time period the Puritans were the minority. They feared being attacked by the devil, the enemy of god. Witchcraft and the devil were among their worst fears. Just like we fear terrorists.
A witch was defined on different levels. It could be a person who could do harm by magical means. Supposedly, a witch, man or woman, could curdle milk, hobble animals, and cause young children to become sick and die.
There was a kind of folklore that supposedly made you immune to witchcraft. There was a tree in Salem that had a gap just the right size for a baby to pass through the tree. They believed that this would make the child immune to witchcraft. The last record of this tree being used by these means was on July 8, 1793.
Some acts that are preformed today that would be considered "little sorceries", consist of checking your daily horoscope in the paper, looking for four leaf clovers, and using a Ouija board.
A witch could be defined as a person who had made a pact with the devil, which was the Puritan's greatest fears. A witch would have given up her soul so that she/he could comman the devil's powers. She/he could use invisible forces to harm people. She/he gave up her/his humanity and made herself/himself a "tool of evil".
While Glover's home was searched, they found "evidence" consisting of: "several small images, or puppets, or babies, made of rags, and stuffed with goat's hair." Such props were used by witches to inflict torture on their victems. The judges then tried a kind of "test" on Glover. They brought her the puppets to see what would happen. Glover was happy to see her puppets. Unfortunatly for her, when she put her hands on them the children "fell into sad fits". The verdict was if a witch had her puppets, her victems would suffer.
Glover was convicted and hanged.
I found this bit of information interesting: witches were never burned in America. Hmmmm. I remember watching Hocus Pocus and they were hanged. Now that I think about it, I never heard of a witch being burned here in America. Only in other countries. Such as in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which was in France.
Interestingly enough, before Glover was killed, she warned the judges that her death would not help the Goodwins. Sure enough, the children's condition grew worse.
I found the symptoms really quite odd. I've never heard of these kinds of symptoms before. It makes me curious. Why would anyone think that these would make a person suffer. To me, it just looks like these children had mental problems. I mean come on, a witch making children bark like dogs, or purr like cats. Yeah, that kind of sounds fake to me. I'm no witch so I wouldn't know, but it just sounds like a whole bunch of crap to me.
The minister who tried to "heal" the children, Cotton Mather, wrote a book about his experiences with the children. The man had supposedly brought the children back to sanity by fasting and prayer. Interesting. Not the kind of thing I would have imagined to get rid of witchcraft. I don't really think the devil or witches give a crap if you pray or fast. I would think that rituals would be a more appropriate thing.
The author says something very interesting: "The lesson of the Goodwin children was that children's games could have serious consequences." Hmmmm. I agree. Child games can turn in the wrong direction. When I was a kid I used to play Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen Detective Agency with my neighbors, and while we never caused harm, we did end up getting one of our neighbors in trouble from our snooping. We thought her house was being robbed. We reported this to our parents. Turns out, it was just the teenage daughter sneaking boys over. Oops. Yeah, I think that kind of pissed her off.


So far I think this book extremely interesting. I think it really shows how much children can have an effect. I never really thought that children played much of a role in history, but during this time period, I see that they were at the center of this mess. If you trace back the causes to the Salem Witch Trials, you'll trace it right back to children.

witch-hunt: mysteries of the salem witch trials

Okay, so I really didn't want to read Blink, so I picked a book that interested me more.

Witch-Hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials
By: Marc Aronson

Introduction: Of dark forests and Midnight Thoughts

The introduction starts with the title: "The QUEEN of hell". The date is May 31st, 1692. I think it's really interesting that the author chooses to put QUEEN in all capital letters. The chapter starts with a short paragraph briefly describing the scene.
"In a plain Salem meetinghouse a woman stands before her judges. The magistrate - we are not sure if it was John Hathrone of Jonathan Corwin - speaks with the stern, suspicious voice of the community. The accusers, girls and young women, are fervent, overexcited, just on the edge of breaking convulsions. They are so tormented, it is as if their very bones are being pulled out of their sockets."
-Introduction

Next, there is a kind of transcript of the trial. Judge addresses the accusers and the accused.
The girls accuse Martha "Goody" Carrier. They called her "Goody" (Goodwife) because only women of high status are called "Mrs." She was not a popular woman who had her first child before she was married. She was also suspected of spreading smallpox and had spoken sharply to her neighbors. I think therefore the girls saw her as an extremely easy target. No one really liked her, people already suspected her of spreading disease, not to mention people back in the 1600's believed different things than we do nowadays. They lived in a time of paranoia of the threat of witches and magic.
Martha Carrier insists over and over again that she is not a witch. After every statement that Martha makes, the girls conviently have another kind of "symptom". One girl, Susannah, screams that she can see an evil man or the devil, dressed in black. This evil figure appeared frequently and was called "the black man." Another girl, Ann Putnam Jr. claims she feels a pin being stuck in her. After Susannah claims she sees the black man, Ann also claims he is there. Mary Warren then claims she too can feel something piercing her skin.
All of the girls scream, holding out pins that had pierced them. Interestingly enough, the collapse to the ground almost as if Martha's stare had caused it.
Due to this performance, the judge believed they were under a demonic attack and tries to make Martha confess. Martha keeps insisting that she has done nothing to them. She says that she never looked at them, only at the judge, so how could she possibly make them collapse?
The girls then claim to see thirteen ghosts. They then tell the court that they are positive that Martha had killed these people. When Martha claims that she cannot see the ghosts and she has not killed anyone, Mercy Lewis begins a fit. It seemed that the girls were under so much pain, that the judge ordered Martha to be bound and sent away.

I think it's really interesting that the trial had taken a turn this way. First of all, the accusers are a bunch of teenage girls, living in a small town back in the 1600's. There wasn't really a whole lot of things girls could do back then. Many actions that are common nowadays, would have turned these girls into outcasts. It makes sense that they were bored and just wanted to create a little havoic. Although times change and we certainly act much differently, since the beginning of time there have been "mean" girls. There are also always girls (and boys) who want attention. I don't think that if I had lived back then I would have tried to have someone hung because I was bored, but knowing my personality I would have probably gotten into trouble.
The author asks a great question: "Why would young people join together to attack someone they had hardly, if ever, met, knowing their wails and visions and fits would lead to her death?" As I said before, I believe these were just a bunch of bored, mean girls, looking to stir things up and for attention.

The girls have many advantages over their victim.
1: They are young, therefore they get more sympathy from adults, that's always how the world has worked.
2: They lived in a time of paranoia from witches, magic, etc.
3: They often choose people who were outcasts or people who fit a certain kind of "witch" stereotype. For instance; old, not married, no children, and many times female.

Another reason that I strongly believe that these girls lied, is because the accusers at the trials consisted of many of the same girls! If anything like that happened nowadays, it would be pretty obvious to the court that they were lying, and would be charged with perjury.

So far, I find this book extremely interesting. But, it makes me a bit mad just the fact that these girls were the reason that these people died. I don't know how they could do that or live with that.