This is a story of witches – and LSD.
So you might know what happened during the Salem Witch Trials.
From February 1692 to May 1693, the Puritan community in Salem, Massachusetts
was overtaken by a witch hunt that resulted in the execution of 19 people.
We have an idea how it started:
two girls, the daughter and niece of the town’s reverend, reportedly had attacks “beyond
the power of epileptic fits or natural disease.”
After that, other girls said they had attacks, a lot of accusations flew, and the town was
engulfed in witch mania.
The Salem witch trials are traditionally explained as a form of mass hysteria, political sniping,
or Puritanism gone amok. But what if there were another reason?
And what if that reason was bread?
Rye, to be specific.
In the 1970s, psychologist Linnda Caporael theorized that a fungus called Claviceps purpurea
might have had something to do with the witches in Salem.
The fungus is commonly found on rye grains and when ingested, it can cause a condition
called ergotism.
It’s either gangrenous ergotism, causing limbs to fall off, or convulsive.
And convulsive ergotism matches some reports at Salem, where people accused witches of
giving them symptoms —
like grievous torment in the bowels, pain in the belly, pinching and pricking, and choking.
Compulsive ergotism could have been the real witchcraft in Salem.
Because ergotism isn’t just pain.
Ergot also is used to synthesize LSD — yes that LSD —
“I looked down at the hot dog and there was a face on it.”
and, in a lower concentration, has some of its hallucinogenic effects.
That might explain some of the apparitions people in Salem saw, like the light one man
saw quivering in his chimney.
Villagers also fed a dog “witch cake” to see how it would react. The ingredients?
A so-called witch’s urine and yep. Rye.
We don’t have records of what the dog did, but its reaction apparently pushed the witch
trials forward.
Conditions were right for ergot to flourish, too.
A stormy summer in 1692 was perfect for fungal growth,
and most of the accusers were in the Western area of Salem, where contamination may have
been more prominent.
Caporeal proposes that the minister was paid in grain from that area,
which led to his daughter’s poisoning by the rye bread they made.
And the next year, a drought kept ergot from happening again.
It sounds like fungus has solved the witch trials. But it’s not that simple.
“It’s the witch from next door.”
“We have no bread.”
“I don’t want your bread.”
Others have published rebuttals saying the symptoms aren’t right:
the people of Salem were too healthy to have a vitamin deficiency that would help ergotism
flourish, and key symptoms were missing:
The most concrete theories say that a slave introduced the girls to witchcraft, while
high concept ones claim the witch trial girls were socially infected —
they say it was less CSI, more the Mean Girls of Salem, Massachusetts.
In that first paper, Caporeal happily admits that we can’t know what happened for sure.
She and supporting academics say that, at most, ergotism kicked off the craziness, but
ultimately society sent the trials spiraling out of control.
Whatever explanation you prefer, we should all embrace the one thing the people in Salem
weren’t willing to: And that’s a little uncertainty.