- 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.
(thunder crack and rainfall) (theme song) If you are new here, hi my name is Bailey Sarian and on Mondays I sit down and
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I’m doing today, so that's great. 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. (intense spooky music)
As always, all comments about the video are welcomed and appreciated. Please just be mindful of our subreddit rules. A big hello to our new members. Also, thank you to all our members for making this subreddit the community it is.
Bailey covers the basics of what was up with the Salem witch trials, but I'd encourage anyone that's really interested in them to go listen to a podcast called "Unobscured". thier season 1 goes really into depth about the political, famillial, religious, and psychological goings on that led them to this point. It does into depth about the victims and who they were and I learned a fuckton from listening to it. Like for example there was a war going on with the natives up in...I think Maine? That some of the families were refugees from. Some of the girls had seen thier families displaced or outright killed. It could be these girls were suffering from PTSD or acting out in a way that would get them attention in 17th century super religious America.
But I think the Rye/wheat thing has been debunked by some, since the only ones suffering from hallucinations were girls within a limited age range. It would make more sense if other people were being affected but it was only girls.