[Transcript]

Setting the Scene

Alrighty, we'll stick around the visitor center a few more minutes before we get moving, and I'll share what triggered the witch trials. It would take much longer than the length of this tour to share every detail about this historic tragedy, but I'll do my best to summarize the facts as we go along. I'll introduce you to some of the people involved and share the most important turning points of the story. 

You may find, once the tour ends, that you want to explore even more about this nightmare, because a nightmare it was. Let's start by visualizing Salem back in those days. Salem really had two parts. 

There was Salem Town, which was the small but prosperous port located right here in what we consider Central Salem. Think simple wooden homes and basic meeting houses for church services and public events. But there was also the parish known as Salem Village, about five miles north of here, where Danvers is today. 

Salem Village was a farming community and much poorer than Salem Town, and it's in Salem Village where our tale begins. Imagine a freezing cold snowy day. It's January of 1692, and we're inside the home of the Parris family. 

Strange Behavior Begins

The head of the Parris family was Salem Village's Reverend, and inside his home that day, while snow and sleet pummeled the neighborhood, was Reverend Parris's nine-year-old daughter, Betty, and her cousin, 11-year-old Abigail Williams, and they began acting mighty strangely.

The two girls began to twitch, twist, and contort their bodies into strange shapes, speaking in words that made no sense. Reverend Parris was alarmed and immediately called on a doctor. 

The doctor tried using his medicine and prayer to provide relief for the girls, but nothing worked. He could not come up with any other diagnosis other than that the girls seemed to have become bewitched. Now, you might be thinking, how could a doctor come up with such a diagnosis? Well, back in the late 1600s, Salem Village was populated mostly by Puritans.

The Puritan religion, a form of Christianity, required a strict lifestyle, and they were wary of the devil. So, even small differences in behavior aroused suspicion.

Egg and Glass Game

Now, let's take a step back and wonder what really happened to Betty and Abigail. 

The short answer is, we don't really know. Modern theories suggest they might have suffered from epilepsy, child abuse, mental illness, food poisoning, or some sort of disease. But let's explore one other possibility, that the girls' imaginations had gotten out of hand. 

At that time, girls their age had begun experimenting with fortune-telling. You know how quickly a trend can start these days, and it may not have been so different back then. This particular antic that many young girls were dabbling with was referred to as the egg and glass. 

They'd drip raw egg white into a glass of water and try to decipher the shape it made. Then they'd try to decide if it meant anything about their future. This game had begun to stray into sinister territory. 

Some young girls claimed to see things like the shape of a coffin. If you've ever tried to spook yourself and your friends with a fun night around a Ouija board, then you know what an overactive imagination can do. It could be all in or it could be taken to another level or become cult-like. 

It's plausible that the egg and glass trend could have caused Betty and Abigail to have unusual thoughts or feel as if they'd had a spell cast upon them. Heck, maybe they were just play-acting in a game that got out of control.

But the bottom line is this, they started claiming that witches had cast spells on them.