When some people hear the word “Salem,” they might first think of the black cat in the popular (but now defunct) TV show Sabrina the Teenage Witch, itself a spinoff from Archie Comics. However, this lighthearted reference is itself based on something much darker. How apt for a warlock-turned-witches’-familiar to be named after the location of one of the most notorious witch hunts.
Why, exactly, have the Salem witch trials made such a big mark—or perhaps scar—on the American psyche? Statistically speaking, not that many people were really executed. After all, at that time, Salem was a community of only about 500 people. Even if everybody in that town had been killed (which, obviously, they were not), the number of people executed pales in comparison to various other atrocities in American history. According to some statistics, only about twenty people were executed.
Rather, we can surmise that what really captures people’s imagination is the fact that an entire community fell prey to hysteria. As we have already mentioned, Salem was quite small (though the present locality now contains tens of thousands of inhabitants). Yet, these people who all knew each other were capable of seeing (or pretending to see) the devil at work in their closest neighbors. Furthermore, many of the accusers were children or adolescents (particularly at the beginning of the trials).
Various explanations—both biological and psychological—have been put forward concerning this strange and terrible event. Ergot poisoning—a result of eating grain products infected by a specific fungus—may have caused delusions. Or maybe it was the Salem way of life itself that was to blame: perhaps the trials were an outpouring of frustration and energy repressed by Salem’s Puritan morals. (Rather ironic, then, that a religious group that had sought to “purify” Christianity was still prey to the darkest excesses of older versions of the religion.)
Interest in the trials has echoed down through the centuries. They inspired Arthur Miller’s famous play The Crucible, which was ostensibly about the trials, but also used them as a metaphor for McCarthyist hysteria.
The Salem witch trials have also cast a shadow over the city’s official institutions. For example, one of the public schools was given the name Witchcraft Heights Elementary School. The town also uses its history to make money from tourism. The actual sites related to the trials are, of course, popular attractions. However, various “newfangled” locations have also sprung up, such as a Dracula’s castle. We may ask if it is really right that Salem expresses its association with the witch hunts through such attractions. No matter how well-made these attractions may be, they still have a rather generic “Halloween” theme which in turn taps into a prefab, popcorn-flavored notion of “scariness.” There is hardly any connection to the actual witch trials at all.
No matter how frightening and macabre the story of the Salem trials may be, we must keep their memory alive—not for the sake of mere titillation, but so we may learn from them. We may think that we have moved on from those bad old days, but as Miller’s play showed, many of the dark forces that drove the Salem trials are still alive and well in contemporary America.