My Triad Experience

My group chose to go to the Salem Witch Museum for our triad project. The three of us all thought the witch trials were interesting and were eager to learn more. There was no one we could really meet with because they were very overwhelmed at this time with the tourists and Halloween, so we just decided our own time to go. Since we are Salem State students we also got in for free! Since they were so busy, none of the workers really had time to answer questions so we kept to ourselves, but some questions I had prepared were, "How many people were accused during this time period? What caused people to think these people practiced witchcraft? What years did this occur?" All of these did end up getting answered during our tour. On the picture to the left is a list of every person who was hung and the afflicted. The picture to the right is a general picture of what boys and girls wore during this time period.

Although this wasn't your typical museum, I still learned a lot from the tour and all of their exhibits. One thing I really wanted to learn about was why people began thinking this way. Twenty innocent people died, why?  Nineteen people were hung, one was crushed, and seven others died in jail. Some of these hangings actually occurred the day of my birthday. At this time there was a huge belief in the devil, and with all of the sicknesses going around people had so much fear. People wanted a reason as to why bad things were happening, so they started to blame people of practicing witchcraft. Something sad that I learned was the exact location of where the bodies were buried is unknown, but the victims were just cut down and dropped unceremoniously on the side of Gallows Hill. Families traditionally came back late at night to take their loved ones bodies and bury them on their own. These causes, and the fact that twenty completely innocent people had to experience such an awful death is what I found more interesting. Fear is a huge cause in many things in our history, including communism and the Vietnam War. People feared that communism was taking over, so they decided to fight over it. People act irrationally when they are in fear so I'm not surprised they took their fear of witchcraft this far, along with the fact that this occurred during the 17th century. I also learned the definition of two important terms. The afflicted were supposedly possessed or tormented, while the accused is who called the name of the person possessing them. All of this information was so important to me, if I had to choose one thing that didn't really stick out to me it would be the aftermath of these trials. You would think the workers would talk about the short turn and long term effects of the trials, but all that was said was people apologized, and the victims families got restitution. 

This experience related to my sense of place because this is something many people first think about when hearing about Salem, like me at first. This is such a huge part of our history, and learning about the history of your city really makes you appreciate it more. Even though we went on the trip to Derby St downtown and looked at the maritime history down there, I still want to learn more about the history of not only Salem but also the North Shore. For my research paper, I am going to write about one specific victim in the Witch Trials, one who was hung on my birthday. I think learning about one persons life and seeing the transformation would be interesting, as well as just learning about how people used to live in this time period.