In February 1692, warrants were issued for the arrest of three women in Massachusetts: Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba. By the end of September, nineteen people had been hanged, another had been pressed to death, and others had died in prison. An accusation of invisible harm had become a crisis with very visible consequences.
The events are remembered as the Salem witch trials, but their geography extends beyond the city’s present boundaries. Their history reaches backward into European beliefs about witchcraft and forward through centuries of attempts to acknowledge the wrongs committed.
Salem Witch Museum helps visitors navigate this history. As one of the museums and historic destinations that carries Oliver Pluff’s historic teas, it maintains educational resources connecting the trials to particular people and places. We asked its team to share recommendations for readers planning a visit or learning from home.
Before the Trials
English settlers led by Roger Conant arrived in 1626 at Naumkeag, the site of an existing Indigenous community. The settlement became Salem, and fishing and maritime commerce helped shape its development.
By the late seventeenth century, Salem encompassed communities with different interests. Salem Town was a commercial center, while the agricultural settlement of Salem Village lay inland, in what is now Danvers. Disputes over church leadership and local authority contributed to tensions within the village. War on New England’s northern frontier and uncertainty over colonial government added to the strain.
Samuel Parris became the village’s minister in 1689. His congregation was divided, and disagreements ranged from his salary to the firewood supplied to his household. The parsonage would become the starting point of the accusations.
During the winter of 1692, Parris’s nine-year-old daughter, Betty, and eleven-year-old niece, Abigail Williams, began behaving in ways that alarmed the household. Their symptoms included unusual movements and sounds. When ordinary remedies failed, adults around them came to believe that witchcraft was responsible.
The First Accusations
For the colonists, witchcraft was a punishable offense associated with an agreement to serve the devil. Illness or unexplained misfortune could therefore become grounds for suspicion of a neighbor. There is no evidence that the people accused in Salem possessed the supernatural powers attributed to them.
The first arrests fell on people with limited protection, such as Tituba, who was enslaved in the Parris household. Sarah Good lived in poverty, and Sarah Osborne was ill and had attracted disapproval through her personal circumstances. Complaints filed on February 29 led to their questioning in early March. Osborne would die in prison on May 10, before the summer executions began.
Under pressure, Tituba confessed and described other supposed witches. Her testimony appeared to confirm the existence of a wider conspiracy, helping expand the accusations. Her confession did not grant her freedom: she remained imprisoned until 1693.
The question soon became how an accused person could defend against something no one else could see. “Spectral evidence” allowed accusers to claim that a person’s spirit had appeared and harmed them, even when the person’s physical body was elsewhere. Denying the accusation could do little to disprove such testimony.
Rebecca Nurse: An Acquittal Reversed
Eventually, the accusations reached people whose standing might once have seemed to offer protection.
Rebecca Nurse was seventy-one, a church member and mother of eight grown children. She and her husband, Francis, lived on a farm in Salem Village. When she learned that she had been accused, she was ill in bed.
Thirty-nine people signed a petition supporting her. At trial, the jury initially found her not guilty. Following objections and further questioning, however, the verdict was reconsidered and changed to guilty. Nurse was hard of hearing, and her failure to answer a question was interpreted against her.
She was hanged on July 19, 1692.
Her case shows the existence of resistance as well as its limits. Neighbors spoke in her defense, a jury initially acquitted her, and yet neither prevented her execution. Today, the Rebecca Nurse Homestead in Danvers connects these accounts to the place where she and her family lived.
The End of the Trials and the Long Aftermath
The executions continued after Rebecca Nurse’s death in July. On September 19, Giles Corey was pressed beneath heavy stones in an attempt to force him to enter a plea. He died without submitting to the court, and his death added to growing public discontent with the proceedings. Three days later, eight more people were hanged, including his wife, Martha, bringing the total executed by hanging to nineteen.
Opposition increasingly centered on the court’s methods, particularly its reliance on spectral evidence and the danger of condemning innocent people. On October 29, Governor William Phips dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer, the special court he had commissioned that May to hear the witchcraft cases.
Proceedings resumed under a new court in 1693, without the acceptance of spectral evidence that had helped sustain the earlier prosecutions. No further executions followed. For prisoners and their families, however, the end of the hangings didn't mean an immediate release or restoration of their lives.
Public acknowledgment came gradually. In 1697, judge Samuel Sewall apologized for his participation. Massachusetts began providing compensation in 1711, recognizing losses suffered by survivors and victims’ families.
The legal reckoning extended far beyond that generation. Elizabeth Johnson Jr., who had been convicted but survived, was formally exonerated in 2022. Preserving names and revisiting court records made it possible to address an injustice that had remained unresolved for more than three centuries.
Why Salem Became an October Destination
The executions occurred between June and September, but Salem’s modern association with Halloween developed much later. In 1982, Salem Witch Museum and the Salem Chamber of Commerce launched Haunted Happenings as a Halloween weekend festival. It grew into a month-long celebration, helping establish the October destination visitors recognize today.
The festival brought together several different meanings of the witch: the person accused in a colonial courtroom, the figure of folklore, and the character of entertainment. Understanding how those meanings differ adds context to a visit, particularly in October, and is a subject addressed inside the Salem Witch Museum.
Inside the Museum: The Hammer of Witches
The museum presents the events of 1692 through life-size stage sets, lighting, figures, and narration. Its second exhibit, Witches: Evolving Perceptions, examines European witch hunts and the changing image of the witch.
When we asked the team which artifact visitors should know about, they selected a 1600 edition of the Malleus Maleficarum, Latin for Hammer of Witches.
First published in the fifteenth century, this influential text described supposed characteristics and powers of witches, procedures for trials, and methods of interrogation, including torture. It argued that women were especially susceptible to the devil, reinforcing prejudices that made them particularly vulnerable to accusation.
European writers had been recording and circulating these ideas well before 1692, and its presence in the museum places Salem within a longer history of persecution. The book shows how claims about supernatural threats could be organized into instructions for investigating and punishing real people.
Another text provides a documented connection between English proceedings and Salem. An account of the 1662 witch trial of Amy Denny and Rose Cullender in Bury St Edmunds, published in 1682, was consulted during the Massachusetts trials. This connection underlies the museum’s collaboration with Moyse’s Hall Museum in England.
Visit the Sites Virtually
The museum’s strongest recommendation for first-time visitors is its free 1692 Online Sites Tour. Its education team has assembled an expanding resource that connects locations across Salem, neighboring communities, and the greater Boston area.
Knowing the difference between Salem Town and Salem Village is especially useful here. A visit confined to downtown Salem covers only part of the geography.
Consider beginning with these connections:
-
The Salem Village parsonage site in Danvers: Surviving foundations mark the household where Betty Parris and Abigail Williams experienced the symptoms that helped set the accusations in motion.
-
The Rebecca Nurse Homestead: The home of Rebecca Nurse and her family offers a glimpse of her life before the accusations.
-
The former Salem jail site: The museum’s account explains its role in holding prisoners and the condemned.
The tour also includes meetinghouse and courthouse locations, homes of accusers, and taverns connected with examinations. While some are surviving buildings, other entries identify foundations, markers, or approximate sites. Check individual listings for access information and respect properties identified as private residences.
For readers at home, the entries provide a way to follow the events geographically, moving between households and communities rather than treating “Salem” as a single location.
Recorded Talks & Upcoming Programs
The team also recommended its recorded program, Our Founding Mothers and Fathers: More Revolutionary War Connections to the Salem Witch Trials. Part of its Revolution 250 series, the talk examines connections between people involved in the trials and the Revolutionary generation. The recording is available through the museum’s educational offerings.
On November 18, 2026, at 3 p.m. Eastern, the museum will join Moyse’s Hall Museum for the free virtual program Witch Trials: Bury to Salem—Live from the Museums. Speakers will use exhibits at both institutions to discuss witch trials, beliefs, and folklore, followed by questions. Registration details are available here.
For an in-person visit, consult the museum’s visitor information and October guidance before making plans.
You’ll also find Oliver Pluff’s historic teas in the museum shop. Our work with historic sites connects our customers with places, objects, and stories that offer a fuller picture of early American life.
Our thanks to the Salem Witch Museum team for generously sharing their time, knowledge, and recommendations with us and our readers. If you happen to visit, we'd love to hear your experience, too.
