Where did this mania, this riot of superstition and fanaticism that resulted in so much sorrow and so many deaths have its beginning and origin?  Coffin in his Old Times in the Colonies has summed up the matters briefly and vividly:  “The saddest story in the history of our country is that of the witch craze at Salem, Mass. brought about by a negro woman and a company of girls.  The negress, Tituba, was a slave, whom Rev. Samuel Parris, one of the ministers of Salem, had purchased in Barbadoes.  We may think of Tituba as seated in the old kitchen of Mr. Parris’s house during the long winter evenings, telling witchcraft stories to the minister’s niece, Elizabeth, nine years old.  She draws a circle in the ashes on the hearth, burns a lock of hair, and mutters gibberish.  They are incantations to call up the devil and his imps.  The girls of the village gather in the old kitchen to hear Tituba’s stories, and to mutter words that have no meaning.  The girls are Abigail Williams, who is eleven; Anne Putnam, twelve; Mary Walcot; and Mary Lewis, seventeen; Elizabeth Hubbard, Elizabeth Booth, and Susannah Sheldon, eighteen; and two servant girls, Mary Warren, and Sarah Churchill.  Tituba taught them to bark like dogs, mew like cats, grunt like hogs, to creep through chairs and under tables on their hands and feet, and pretend to have spasms....  Mr. Parris had read the books and pamphlets published in England ... and he came to the conclusion that they were bewitched.  He sent for Doctor Griggs who said that the girls were not sick, and without doubt were bewitched....  The town was on fire.  Who bewitches you? they were asked.  Sarah Good, Sarah Osbum, and Tituba, said the girls.  Sarah Good was a poor, old woman, who begged her bread from door to door.  Sarah Osburn was old, wrinkled, and sickly."[25]

The news of the peculiar actions of the girls spread throughout the settlement; people flocked to see their antics.  By this time the children had carried the “fun” so far that they dared not confess, lest the punishment be terrific, and, therefore, to escape the consequences, they accused various old women of bewitching them.  Undoubtedly the little ones had no idea that the delusion would seize so firmly upon the superstitious nature of the people; but the settlers, especially the clergymen and the doctors, took the matter seriously and brought the accused to trial.  The craze spread; neighbor accused neighbor; enemies apparently tried to pay old scores by the same method; and those who did not confess were put to death.  It is a fact worth noting that the large majority of the witnesses and the greater number of the victims were women.  The men who conducted the trials and passed the verdict of “guilty” cannot, of course, stand blameless; but it was the long pent-up but now abnormally awakened imagination of the women that wrought havoc through their testimony to incredible things and their descriptions of unbelievable actions.  No doubt many a personal grievance, petty jealousy, ancient spite, and neighborhood quarrel entered into the conflict; but the results were out of all proportion to such causes, and remain to-day among the blackest and most sorrowful records on the pages of American history.