The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people were accused. Thirty people were found guilty, nineteen of whom were executed by hanging. One other man, Giles Corey, died under torture after refusing to enter a plea, and at least five people died in jail.
Isobel Gowdie was a Scottish woman who confessed to witchcraft at Auldearn near Nairn during 1662. Scant information is available about her age or life and, although she was probably executed in line with the usual practice, it is uncertain whether this was the case or if she was allowed to return to the obscurity of her former life as a cottar’s wife. Her detailed testimony, apparently achieved without the use of violent torture, provides one of the most comprehensive insights into European witchcraft folklore at the end of the era of witch-hunts.
Matthew Hopkins was an English witch-hunter whose career flourished during the English Civil War. He was mainly active in East Anglia and claimed to hold the office of Witchfinder General, although that title was never bestowed by Parliament.
In European folklore of the medieval and early modern periods, familiars were believed to be supernatural entities, interdimensional beings, or spiritual guardians that would protect or assist witches and cunning folk in their practice of magic, divination and spiritual insight. According to records of the time, those alleging to have had contact with familiar spirits reported that they could manifest as numerous forms, usually as an animal, but sometimes as a human or humanoid figure, and were described as "clearly defined, three-dimensional... forms, vivid with colour and animated with movement and sound", as opposed to descriptions of ghosts with their "smoky, undefined form[s]".
A witch's mark, devil's mark or stigma diabolicum was a bodily mark that witch-hunters believed indicated that an individual was a witch, during the height of the witch trials. The beliefs about the mark differed, depending on the trial location and the accusation made against the witch. Use of the term is found earliest in the 16th century, and reaching its peak in 1645, but then essentially disappearing by 1700.
Elizabeth Proctor was convicted of witchcraft in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. She was the wife of John Proctor, who was convicted and executed.
Bridget Bishop was the first person executed for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials in 1692. Nineteen were hanged, and one, Giles Corey, was pressed to death. Altogether, about 200 people were tried.
The Witch of Edmonton is an English Jacobean play, written by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford in 1621.
The Bideford witch trial resulted in hangings for witchcraft in England. Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles and Susannah Edwards from the town of Bideford in Devon were tried in 1682 at the Exeter Assizes at Rougemont Castle. Much of the evidence against them was hearsay, although there was a confession by Lloyd, which she did not fully recant even with her execution imminent. These women have been labelled as the last witches to be hanged in England, but there are subsequent cases which are not as well documented.
Agnes Sampson was a Scottish healer and purported witch. Also known as the "Wise Wife of Keith", Sampson was involved in the North Berwick witch trials in the later part of the sixteenth century.
Rebecca Nurse was a woman who was accused of witchcraft and executed by hanging in New England during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. She was fully exonerated fewer than twenty years later.
The Witches of Warboys were Alice Samuel and her family, who were accused of, and executed for witchcraft between 1589 and 1593 in the village of Warboys, in the Fens of England. It was one of many witch trials in the early modern period, but scholar Barbara Rosen claims it "attracted probably more notice than any other in the sixteenth century".
The Vardø witch trials, which took place in Vardø in Finnmark in Northern Norway in 1621, was the first major witch trial of Northern Norway and one of the biggest witch trials in Scandinavia. It was the first of the three big mass trials of Northern Norway, followed by the Vardø witch trials (1651–1653) and the Vardø witch trials (1662-1663), and one of the biggest witch trials in Norway.
The witch trials of Vardø were held in Vardø in Finnmark in Northern Norway in the winter of 1662–1663 and were one of the biggest in Scandinavia. Thirty women were put on trial, accused of sorcery and making pacts with the Devil. One was sentenced to a work house, two tortured to death, and eighteen were burned alive at the stake.
Elizabeth Howe was one of the accused in the Salem witch trials. She was found guilty and executed on July 19, 1692.
The trials of the Pendle witches in 1612 are among the most famous witch trials in English history, and some of the best recorded of the 17th century. The twelve accused lived in the area surrounding Pendle Hill in Lancashire, and were charged with the murders of ten people by the use of witchcraft. All but two were tried at Lancaster Assizes on 18–19 August 1612, along with the Samlesbury witches and others, in a series of trials that have become known as the Lancashire witch trials. One was tried at York Assizes on 27 July 1612, and another died in prison. Of the eleven who went to trial – nine women and two men – ten were found guilty and executed by hanging; one was found not guilty.
Abigail Faulkner, sometimes called Abigail Faulkner Sr., was an American woman accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials in 1692. In the frenzy that followed, Faulkner's sister Elizabeth (Dane) Johnson (1641–1722), her sister-in-law Deliverance Dane, two of her daughters, two of her nieces, and a nephew, would all be accused of witchcraft and arrested. Faulkner was convicted and sentenced to death, but her execution was delayed due to pregnancy. Before she gave birth, Faulkner was pardoned by the governor and released from prison.
Elizabeth Booth was born in 1674 and was one of the accusers in the Salem Witch Trials. She grew up in Salem, Massachusetts, as the second eldest of ten children. When she was sixteen she was accused of being a witch. When she was eighteen, she began accusing people of practicing witchcraft, including John Proctor, Elizabeth Proctor, Sarah Proctor, William Proctor, Benjamin Proctor, Woody Proctor, Giles Corey, Martha Corey, Job Tookey, and Wilmont Redd. Five of these people were executed due to Booth's testimony. Elizabeth Proctor would have been executed as well if she was not pregnant. After the Witch Trials, Booth married Israel Shaw on December 26, 1695, and had two children named Israel and Susanna. Booth's death date is unknown.
The Channel Islands Witch Trials were a series of witch trials in the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey between 1562 and 1661.
The witch trials in Connecticut, also sometimes referred to as the Hartford witch trials, occurred from 1647 to 1663. They were the first large-scale witch trials in the American colonies, predating the Salem Witch Trials by nearly thirty years. John M. Taylor lists a total of 37 cases, 11 of which resulted in executions. The execution of Alse Young of Windsor in the spring of 1647 was the beginning of the witch panic in the area, which would not come to an end until 1670 with the release of Katherine Harrison.
