Witches in Salem or Something Much Darker? The Salem Witch Trials - Mystery & Makeup| Bailey Sarian

- Is this a little much? (faint spooky music) (laughs) I mean it's kind of dramatic, isn't it? My bad, I just, I like decorating my little desk.

Let me get comfortable, I still  haven't gotten a new chair. One day. Hi my beautiful friends, how are you today?

I hope you're having a wonderful day so far. My name is Bailey Sarian and today is Monday, which means it's Murder, Mystery & Makeup Monday! Halloween edition.

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Mass hysteria has been prevalent  throughout world history in a variety of different contexts, for  a variety of different reasons, right? It often appears that mass hysteria had a  sort of a peak in the late 17th century, when both Europeans and American colonists alike became just obsessed with the idea that  there were evil beings walking amongst them. These evil beings were capable  of supernatural abilities that instilled fear into the hearts  of those who lived near them.

Fear that resulted in over 20  deaths in the span of one year, which is so sad but doesn't  even sound like that much. So today's story is not only about death, but about prejudice, politics,  assumptions, and potentially even LSD. That's right baby.

So, in at least some regard,  most people feel as though they're pretty familiar with  the events that occurred throughout the year of 1692,  in colonial Massachusetts. I'm sure you remember it like yesterday, right? However, there are much larger implications surrounding the sudden and aggressive  surge of witchcraft accusations on the small community of Salem.

For starters, in the late 17th century, there were actually two distinct  Salem’s occupying the same area. There was the Salem village,  and the town of Salem, they were both located along the north  coast of Massachusetts, above Boston. The two Salem’s often had their  conflicts on a local level, both politically and religiously.

There were often disputes regarding  land rights and property lines, but more than that, the two Salem’s  were composed of religious refugees, who had left Europe for the  North American English colonies because they had a different  interpretation of the bible. Some of the people of Salem  were Calvinists and Puritans, who pretty much followed an extremely  strict interpretation of the bible, to the T, like they took that bible literally. The Puritan laws were hardcore, okay?

And they weren't very forgiving, to say the least. A lot of the members of society were  expected to follow a very strict moral code. You know what I didn't look up though, like why?

Why? So, due to this, anything that was  believed to be going against this code was considered a sin and deserved to be punished. So members of the Salem community had very specific ways in which they viewed the  supernatural, the Devil, and God.

In Salem, if you didn't believe in  the in the Devil or the supernatural, then you were rejecting the nature of God himself, and by doing so, you would be  highlighting your position as an outcast. Pretty much their lives revolved  around God and the bible, and if you had hobbies or anything,  any different opinion other than that, then you were the Devil, like  you were just an outcast. So God and religion in general was a massive part  of the everyday lives of the people of Salem.

The local government was not  concerned with the idea of separation of church and state and politics. And overall pre-revolutionary  politics were just messy in general, and on top of all of that, there was this ever looming fear of the  presence of something darker than man. What was that, you ask?

Witches. After a variety of disagreements and disputes regarding who would become the proper first  ordained minister of Salem village, in 1689, a religious man by the name of Samuel  Parris became the choice for the position. Now Sam Parris, he was not liked  by a lot of people in Salem, he seemed to be shady, he  did shady things with money.

It's like same s--t, different era. The community just felt like this Sam  Parris guy was the person for the job. So, Sam Parris, his wife Elizabeth,  their daughter Betty, their son Thomas, their other daughter Susannah, their  niece Abigail, and their slave Tituba, they all moved from Boston to  join Sam at his new job in Salem.

So, by contract, Sam, and his family, they were granted to live in the ministry  house and own the land around it as well. So around 1692, Sam’s daughter  Betty and his niece Abigail, they seem to like go missing for a short  period of time, they would run off together. Nobody really knew where they  were, what they were doing, but was raising some questions,  like where are they going?

Sam Parris's nine-year-old daughter  Betty and her 11-year-old cousin Abigail, I guess what they were doing  was they were sneaking away and they were attempting fortune telling methods during their missing periods, in  hopes of discovering their future. Who they were gonna marry. Would they be rich or live a very successful life?

You know, future stuff that you ask. But they were dabbling in that. Oh, not a good idea when you have  a very strict situation going on.

But not long after they started  dabbling in all this stuff, the two of them began to demonstrate  a series of strange actions that would become a cause of  concern within the community. So in February 1692, both of the  girls appeared to be struggling or suffer from some strange illness. It was said that Betty was acting  odd by hiding under furniture, she complained of a fever,  she was barking like a dog, and she screamed and cried out in pain.

On top of that, the strangest thing of all-- (slight laugh) I’m not laughing, but like, it's whatever. Her body, it convulsed into  unhuman-like positions. Betty, Betty what are you doing?

This is 1692, you know like, what do you do? What do you. .

. Yeah, okay, so Abigail was doing the same s--t. She complained of similar symptoms shortly  after Betty was doing what she was doing.

Both of the girls complained that they were  bitten and pinched on their arms, necks, and back. Mr Sam Parris, he tried everything  he could to like help the girls, he prayed and he tried natural home remedies, but nothing seemed to be helping them. They were screaming in pain, (faint yelling) contorting their bodies in strange  ways, it must have been wild.

The home remedies and the praying isn't working, so instead they decide "Okay, we need  to call in a doctor and a minister", so they call in the town physician, and they  call in a minister by the name of John Hale, and both of them are going to  help give some kind of diagnosis as to what's going on with these girls. Both the minister and the  physician came to the conclusion that Abigail and Betty were  suffering from bewitchment, oh yes. So this diagnosis not only  just shocks the community, but it also led to one of the  largest witch hunts in history.

After Betty and Abigail had their diagnosis,  which was bewitchment, people start talking-- I feel like this is a very common theme  in every story, people start talking. Everyone was like "What's going  on? What's the news?

Tell me", and they're like "Have you heard  about what's going on? Bewitchment". Okay, I’m trying to add some jewels to my eyes and I really can't talk and do  this, so I’ll be right back.

Okay, cute. So people are talking, rumors are spreading, but most of all the people of Salem, they begin to see other young girls  in the area acting the exact same way. Nobody had answers as to what was going on or why these other girls are acting the same way.

Now it was happening so much that  even when church was in service, girls in the pews would just be  randomly like screaming, yelling. I mean, no one could go  through their church services without being interrupted by outbursts, just  screaming in pain, or contorting themselves. (slight laugh) Now Betty and Abigail, they had come  from well-known families in Salem, the blame for their bewitchment  diagnosis did not rest solely on them, rather, the Salem community was quick to point  the fingers at anyone else to save their own.

The first person accused and  arrested for allegedly afflicting the Sam Parris's daughter and niece, was none other than the  Parris family's slave, Tituba. She most likely became a target  because of her ethnic differences from all the white villagers, let's be real here. So the members of the church,  they just jumped on that s--t, they were like "Yeah, it's Tituba for sure, I  saw her doing some magic one time.

I saw her", and people were like "What? ". So people in the community were  just looking for someone to blame, rumors and just straight lies were  coming out of people's mouths.

Poor Tituba. Tituba, no! Now.

. . So according to her accusers, Tituba  would attract girls like Betty and Abigail with stories of enchantment  from her book of witchcraft.

Tituba pleaded with the people who  were making these wild accusations, but because she was a slave nobody  believed her or cared to even listen. The injustice Tituba faced, in what would serve as the beginning of the Salem witch  trials, was just the tip of the iceberg. Shortly after Betty and Abigail had  been diagnosed with bewitchment, a 12-year-old girl named Ann, and  a 17-year-old girl named Elizabeth, they were also experiencing the  same symptoms as Abigail and Betty, both of them were also diagnosed  with bewitchment that very same year.

When asked who had caused  their state of bewitchment, Ann cast the blame towards two women  named Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. she had something against Sarah’s, I don't know. Now Sarah Good, she was of lower economic status and she was in poverty due to  the debt from her first husband.

The people who accused Sarah  often cited jealousy and envy as explanations of why she was a witch. Sarah depended on her neighbors,  which led others to believe that the other women who were  dependent on their neighbors, were probably also practicing witchcraft. So Sarah’s second husband, his name  was William, he also went along with it and was like "Yeah, my wife  is definitely a witch".

What a douche. She was mainly being accused by her neighbors because she often challenged Puritan values and was accused of possessing two women. I mean, people were just making wild  claims here, and there was no proof.

It was just like they-- It was like, what? How? Breathe.

Even her damn husband, what a loser. Like, I’d be like "Really babe?  Really?

You think I’m a witch? " "Is that how you really feel babe? Babe!

". Okay so, Sarah Osborne, who was the other girl being accused by this younger child. Sarah Osborne had been in a scandal  previously within the community because she had sex before marriage,  but also, she rarely attended church, which led the Salem community believing  that there was a lack of God in her life.

Everyone knew that she was  having sex outside of marriage, they called her a whore, they're like "You are not allowed to be a whore,  unless it's a whore for Jesus". But most of all this Sarah was in a legal dispute with the higher social status  family in the community. Oh yes, there's always a real reason.

It's believed that the accusations against Sarah were likely a product of powerful suggestions  from this family that was going after her. It just wasn't looking good for these two Sarah’s. So the first women to be accused as witches were those who strayed from the Puritan lifestyle and were considered to be social  outcasts, or of lower social status and most of the people that  were accused were women, women who were challenging the system.

Starting on March 1st, 1692, the three  women were interrogated relentlessly, okay? They wouldn't accept any answer  other than "Yes, I am a witch". So Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne,  they refused, refused, refused, like "We are not witches. 

We're standing our ground" "And we're not going to confess 'cause  there's nothing to confess", you know? This is a side note, I’m  having the hardest time today doing my makeup and talking. (laughs) Like really bad today.

I hate every single lipstick  I put on, I’m so over it, I don't even want lipstick anymore. I'm an angel with no  lipstick, that's totally fine. Me in my natural habitat, angel check.

So the two Sarah’s they deny, deny, deny. I mean, they're innocent  so they're denying, right? Tituba admitted to being the devil's servant, yes.

She stated that a tall man  dressed in all black came to them demanding that they sign  their names in a great book. Tituba was like "S--t, if you can't  beat 'em, join 'em", you know? She's like "Yeah, I’m a witch", you know?

Like "Hey, maybe this will get me out of it". When Sarah Good was allowed  the chance to defend herself in front of the 12 jurors in  the Salem village meeting house, she argued her innocence, proclaiming Tituba  and Sarah Osborne as the real witches, in the end however, Sarah Good  was convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death and on July 29th, 1692 Sarah Good was hanged along with four  other women convicted of witchcraft. More and more women and also  children were being questioned, and later that same month four other  individuals were accused of witchcraft, Martha Corey, Dorthy Good  who was the four-year-old daughter of Sarah Good who they just hanged, Rebecca Nurse, and Rachel Clinton.

What concerned the Salem community most was that Rebecca Nurse and Martha Corey  were actually avid members of the church. Now this detail struck even more fear  into the hearts of the people of Salem because it was becoming more clear that  even the upstanding citizens of Salem could be labeled a witch and possibly murdered. I know, this whole story is just infuriating.

Honestly, I just want to  go back in time and be like "Look, hi everyone, I’m an angel, okay? ". When Martha Corey had been accused,  her husband Giles was shocked, he insisted that his 80-year-old wife  could not have been a witch in any regard, she was older, frail, and a woman  of God in every sense of the word.

So Martha’s husband was like "No, there's  no way she's a witch. She's a godly woman". Now because he is standing up for  Martha, the people of Salem were like "Why is he standing up for her  so hard?

That's a little weird. " "Why is he so ride or die for his wife? ", well get this, because Giles was standing up  for his wife, he was then sent to trial as well.

Now while in court, Giles was asked  to make a plea, innocent or guilty, he refused to say either,  saying they had it all wrong. It's assumed that Giles didn't want to make a plea in effort to prevent the state  from absorbing his property, because it was all meant to go to his children, but in order for the trial to proceed, the  judges, they needed Giles to make a plea, so the judges applied an old-fashioned  form of punishment called-- Here we go. Peine forte-- You know what, I’m just gonna  put it on screen peine forte.

So this is an old form of punishment  and this was a method of torture formerly used in the common law legal system, in which a defendant who refused to plead would be subjected to heavier and heavier  stones placed upon his or her chest until a plea was entered or they died. So they are laying stone after  stone onto Giles's chest, but he was determined to save his family's  inheritance for his children and said nothing, plus he's thinking, well so it's  believed he's thinking, like "If I don't say anything, I’m going to  prove to these people that I am not a witch" "because a witch would crack", or something. So he remained under the pressure  of the rocks for two whole days before he stopped breathing and died.

So you're probably wondering, well how in the world they determine  if someone's a witch or not? To properly test whether or  not a person was a witch, the trial would include a demonstration  surrounding something called a "witch cake". Hm.

Now I know this sounds super delicious, but let's stop being hungry hippos for a minute, because this was no treat, nay nay. This witch "cake" consisted  of only two ingredients. Follow me for more easy recipes.

So this witch cake included rye flour and the  urine of the bewitched person in question, once the cake was baked it would be fed to a dog, if the dog ate the cake and started to mimic  the convulsive actions of the assumed witch, then the person in question was in fact a witch. Now a lot of the times nothing would  happen once the dog ate the cake, but that didn't matter because they  were set on these people being witches. So why they did it, I don't know,  to make themselves feel better?

Other evidence that would  prove someone was a witch included the confessions of the accused 'cause sometimes they would just  confess in hopes to get out of things, in hopes that they won't be murdered,  hanged, put in jail, you know, so some of them just straight up confessed. After one of the people would confess, a lot of the times they would  point out others in the community who also were witches in  order to get off the hook. Oh it was real messy, it was real bad.

Now if they would go into someone's house and they found books of palmistry, horoscopes, pots of ointments in the possession or home  of the accused, then they were a witch. No ointments, you witches. Also there were physical signs which  were referred to as "witch treats".

Now a witch treat also sounds delicious. A witch treat was said to be a mole  or blemish somewhere on the body that was insensitive to the touch. Discovery of such insensitive areas  was considered evidence of witchcraft.

Yeah, this is wild. It sounds like they needed more hobbies, honestly. Like they were just like "Oh  you have a mole, witch.

". 13 women and five men would all be found guilty  of being a witch or dabbling in witchcraft and were then sentenced to death and  hanged in front of the angry crowd. Soon prisons were filled with  more than 150 men and women from towns surrounding Salem  for practicing witchcraft, those who were killed, they  were refused proper burials on account of their aversion from the ways of God.

So messed up. So looking back, I mean there  were quite obvious prejudices present in analyzing who  was accused and who wasn't. 78% of assumed witches during the  Salem witch trials were women, who were often regarded as lesser  by their male counterparts.

This is when Aqua Tofana would come into play. I wish they got some of that. More than that, various servants,  slaves, and any native Americans were seen as suspish purely  based on the color of their skin.

The mass hysteria that flooded the  Massachusetts area in the late 17th century was less of the result of real evident witchcraft, and more of a way to further push a narrative that deemed marginalized  communities as the "bad guys", who they essentially just  wanted out of their town. So besides all this, a lot of people want to know. well what really happened?

Like what actually was causing the young  girls from Salem to convulse so violently? Were they seeking some kind of attention? Was this part of some elaborate plan for  feuding families to blame each other?

Were they really even bewitched, possessed? I mean, what was it? You know?

Historians have studied the  Salem witch trials for years, recently something quite  interesting was discovered, as the people of Salem frequently farmed  rye and wheat as their main crops , foods from the fields were consumed every day, it's believed that around the late 17th century, there may have been a fungus  present in the fields. So this fungus is a fungus known to grow on rye, and when consumed causes ergotism  in humans and other animals. Ergotism symptoms include muscle  spasms, fever, hallucinations, and the victims may appear dazed,  unable to speak, become manic, or have other forms of paralysis or tremors, some of them may suffer from hallucinations  and other distorted perceptions, but this ergot contains lysergic  acid, which is used in LSD, so some believe that maybe  they were just tripping balls.

I mean, maybe the crops had  this fungus growing in there, they were eating the food, I mean  that kind of makes sense, right? And then some believe that maybe  it didn't even occur at all, the convulsions and stuff like that, maybe they were making it up as an excuse to kind of get rid of some people. (tongue click) You know, like "Witches".

Despite the fact that the last  trial was held in May of 1693, public response to the events  continued over the years. In the decades following the  trials, survivors, family members and their supporters sought to establish the innocence of the  individuals who were convicted, and to gain compensation  for the heinous executions. In the following centuries,  the descendants of those unjustly accused and condemned have  sought to honor their memories.

Events in Salem in 1992 were  used to commemorate the trials, and in November of 2001, yeah. 300th anniversary of the Salem witch trials, the Massachusetts legislator passed an act exonerating all who had been convicted  and named each of them innocent. The Salem witch trials have gone  down in history as this horror story concerning witchcraft in the late 17th century, but more than that the Salem witch trials served as a large-scale execution of marginalized  communities without any real evidence.

So moving forward, it's imperative  that we look back on events like the Salem witch trials of 1692,  and see them for what they really were. Moments in history are so often remembered, but not necessarily in the  way that they truly occurred, and they tend to sugarcoat things. When you think back, or at  least when I think back to like American history and whatnot,  they always sugarcoat things.

Like I really believed that the  Salem witch trials was about witches, and just women being accused of being witches, but once I started doing the research  for today's video, it was like "Oh! ". Everything stems back to like  racism and just weeding out people who don't have the same beliefs as you.

So that my friends is the light version, is the  simplified version of the Salem witch trials. I struggled big time today and I apologize if there wasn't much makeup  going on in this video. I won't know until I start editing,  but boy that was really difficult.

Let me know your guys thoughts down below. I would love to hear your input. I so wish I could time travel,  I would love to go back and see what really went down, you know?

I feel like with history, this  is completely a side note, I love history, which is  weird because I was a D-minus student. (laughs) But the older I get, the more  fascinated I am by history, and it's just you realize that like everything was pretty much a lie that we've been told. I don't know how it is now, but  we were told a lot of lies, okay?

Yeah, I would just love to time travel and  just be a fly on the wall and just like. . .

Just see like, what really happened. Maybe it was innocent, maybe they  really did think they were witches, I’m not holding my breath,  but it could be a possibility. Anyways, thank you guys so much  for hanging out with me today.

I love and appreciate you so much. A big thank you to CASETiFY for  partnering with me on today's video. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.

You make good choices, and  I’ll be seeing you guys later. Bye. I'm gonna go count some blessings.

Wish you were beer.