San Antonio College Library

In 1693, the village of Salem, Massachusetts was overcome with superstitious hysteria. At the peak of the madness someone hundred fifty people, male and female, were accused of being witches. Twenty of them were executed.

"Beginning in January 1692, Salem Village in colonial Massachusetts witnessed the largest and most lethal outbreak of witchcraft in early America. Villagers--mainly young women--suffered from unseen torments that caused them to writhe, shriek, and contort their bodies, complaining of pins stuck into their flesh and of being haunted by specters. Believing that they suffered from assaults by an invisible spirit, the community began a hunt to track down...

"An account of the witch hunts from their humble beginnings in 1691 to their dramatic conclusion, this new work contains a wealth of information gleaned from various contemporary records, and the personal archives of descendants on both sides of the conflict. Includes extensive transcriptions in modern English from the court files and other sources which help the reader feel the true impact of the events, along with excerpts from the first-hand observations...

"From the wicked witch of children's stories to Halloween and present-day Wiccan groups, witches and witchcraft still fascinate observers of Western culture. Witches were believed to affect climatological catastrophes, put spells on their neighbors, and cavort with the devil. In early modern Europe and the Americas, witches and witch-hunting were an integral part of everyday life, touching major events such as the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution,...

The essays in this handbook, written by leading scholars working in the rapidly developing field of witchcraft studies, explore the historical literature regarding witch beliefs and witch trials in Europe and colonial America between the early fifteenth and early eighteenth centuries. During these years witches were thought to be evil people who used magical power to inflict physical harm or misfortune on their neighbours. Witches were also believed...

Scotland, as with the rest of Europe, was troubled from time to time by outbreaks of witchcraft which the authorities sought to contain and then to suppress, and the outbreak of 1658-1662 is generally agreed to represent the high water mark of Scottish persecution. These were peculiar years for Scotland. For 9 years Scotland was effectively an English province with largely English officials in charge, but in 1660 this suddenly changed. The tension...

A study of England's biggest and best-known witch trial, which took place in 1612 when ten witches from the forest of Pendle were hanged at Lancaster. A little-known second trial occured in 1633-4, when up to nineteen witches were sentenced to death.

During the bleak winter of 1691 in the rigid Puritan community of Salem Village, Massachusetts, a group of young girls began experiencing violent fits, allegedly tormented by Satan and the witches who worshipped him. From the girls' initial denouncing of a black slave, their accusations soon multiplied; in less than two years nineteen men and women were hanged, one was pressed to death, and over a hundred others were imprisoned and impoverished.This...

A documentary history of the Salem Village witchcraft outbreak together with a collection of newly located and gathered witchcraft documents.

"In this new book, Wolfgang Behringer surveys the phenomenon of witchcraft past and present. Drawing on the latest historical and anthropological findings, Behringer sheds new light on the history of European witchcraft, while demonstrating that witch-hunts are not simply part of the European past. Although witch-hunts have long since been outlawed in Europe, other societies have struggled with the idea that witchcraft does not exist. As Behringer...