[crowd shouting]
NARRATOR: We're witnessing the execution of a woman named
Bridget Bishop 330 years ago.
18 other men and women die with her.
The alleged crime-- witchcraft.
[screaming]
Few stories from early America transfix us like this one.
So much of what we've read, watched, and heard just
isn't true.
[screaming]
Despite what people think, Bridget
isn't burned at the stake.
Instead, she and many of the condemned citizens are hanged.
And not on a hill comfortably outside of town,
but right here, close enough for villagers to watch.
So what's the real story behind the Salem witch trials?
What do you want?
[inaudible]
I don't know.
NARRATOR: This is the preacher's daughter, Betty
Parris, and her cousin Abigail.
They're playing a fortune-telling game
called Venus Glass.
It's just a few months before the Salem witch trials.
This may look like a harmless game,
but what these girls are doing is considered heresy.
[music playing]
They're watching the egg whites closely because whatever shape
it takes could tell them their future husband's profession
and maybe even their fate.
It's just a 17th century Ouija board, but to the Puritans,
it's not a game.
Fortune-telling, any kind of magic is the devil's work.
Betty knows that her father and his conservative Putnam
family allies support very stiff punishments for this behavior.
[screaming and growling]
King of ages, our Lord our God,
we beseech you to banish the diabolic powers in this body.
NARRATOR: Betty Parris and Abigail Williams have
been having fits for a week.
Despite the reverend's desire to explain
what's going on, he can't.
And that sets the stage for what comes next.
There will be 10 afflicted girls by the time the trials begin
and over 30 accusers in all by the end.
Medical science is just barely past folklore.
Herbs and the four humors--
blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm.
The point is, we don't know what was wrong with the girls.
Maybe it was the stress from all the dangers in Salem.
Maybe they were faking to keep from being punished.
But Salem saw it another way.
[screams] No!
No!
[screams]
She's under an evil hand.
RACHEL CHRIST: So the adults start to suggest to the girls
are you harmed by witches?
Is there someone around you who's harming you?
And they come up with three names--
Tituba, Sarah Good, who is a beggar, and Sarah Osborne.
[music playing]
You stand before us and before God
that we may determine the depth and manner
of your bewilderment.
NARRATOR: The first examinations of the Salem witch trials
are about to get underway.
And it was Tituba who was the first accused witch.
The most important part of the trials
comes now, when she confesses and says that she signed
the devil's book in red-like blood
and that there were other names there.
The hairy beast stood next to them on two legs.
I signed its book.
Blood red my name next to theirs.
Sarah Good, Goody Osborne, others.
RACHEL CHRIST: There are many reasons why Tituba may
have admitted to being a witch.
There is some contemporary evidence to suggest she
was beaten by Samuel Parris.
But even if she wasn't beaten, we have to think
of it from her perspective.
She's a slave, she's a woman, she
knows nobody is going to stand up for her in this situation.
And the kind of smart thing to do is just tell them
what they want to hear.
And that's what she does.
It's the choice that a rational person would make,
right?
If your payoff from confessing is
that you get a slap on the wrist and your payoff
from proclaiming your innocence is that you're going to be
hanged, well, you're just going to say,
yeah, I'm a witch and name other people
who then name other people, and then it expands.
At least 172 people were formally accused.
19 people altogether were hanged as convicted witches.
One individual, Charles Corey, was pressed to death.
NARRATOR: We've come a long way from here.
Due process, presumption of innocence, burden of proof,
criminal law became more civilized in the time following
the Salem witch trials, but we've
still got a ways to go before Justice in America
is a perfect system.
Increase Mather famously said following the Salem witch
trials, "it were better than ten suspected
witches should escape, than one innocent person be condemned."
The Salem witch trials serve as a warning from our past
about mob mentality and human nature,
as we work to perfect a system to protect
us from the worst in ourselves.