Salem Witch Trials Daily: Under an Evil Hand
from The Thing About the Salem Witch Trials Hosted by Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack
We introduce the early events that sparked the Salem witch trials, focusing on January and February 1692 in Reverend Samuel Parris’s Salem Village household. Parris’s 9-year-old daughter Betty and 11-year-old niece Abigail began exhibiting alarming, inexplicable behaviors and violent physical afflictions. The family tried prayer, fasting, and medical treatment without relief, and around February 24 a local physician (widely believed to be Dr. William Griggs) examined the girls and found no natural cause, concluding they were under an “evil hand.” The hosts draw on later accounts by ministers John Hale and Deodat Lawson describing preternatural fits, invisible biting and pinching, contorted movements, choking, and apparent conversations with unseen “appearances.” With the community quickly concluding the girls were bewitched, the episode turns toward how this diagnosis shifted attention from medicine to the question of who was responsible. 00:00 Mysterious Afflictions Begin 00:18 Bizarre Symptoms in Parris Home 01:01 Prayer and Medicine Fail 01:07 Doctor Declares Evil Hand 01:34 Hale Describes Torments 02:15 Lawson Witnesses the Fits 03:10 Meaning of Bewitchment 03:39 Who Is Responsible Sign the petition to exonerate Find My Massachusetts Legislators The Thing About Witch Hunts / About Salem YouTube channel Salem Witch Trials Daily Hub Salem Witch Trials Daily Course Week 7: Families, Geography, and the Machinery of Accusation, February 9-15, 2026 The Thing About Salem The Thing About Witch Hunts
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