Word: hansen
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...Hansen, naturally, does not believe that the witches had actual power derived from an alliance with the devil. His assertion instead is based on a reading of the religious, psychological and historic conditions existing at the time. Like other historians, he points out that the Salem trials were anything but unique. In the 17th century people not only still believed in witchcraft but passionately persecuted witches. There were witch burnings in Scotland and hangings in England, and on the Continent incomplete records tell of the burning of 5,000 witches in the province of Alsace alone. The learned believed...
Charms and Nail-Parings. Hansen spells out the point: "If you believe in witchcraft and you discover that someone has been melting your wax image over a slow fire or muttering charms over your nail-parings, the probability is that you will get extremely sick. To be sure, your symptoms will be psychosomatic rather than organic. But the fact that they are obviously not organic will make them only more terrible, since they will seem the result of malefic and demonic power...
...concedes that most of those executed were clearly innocent, convicted on nothing more than "spectral evidence"-testimony that apparitions resembling the accused had tormented people-and the hysterical behavior of the teen-age girls who were the chief witnesses. Hansen notes that hysteria, as defined medically, can produce fits of supernormal violence, a vivid appearance that the sufferer is being choked, and psychosomatically induced "bite" and "pinch" marks on the skin. These were the main symptoms of the afflicted girls...
Other cases are less clear. The Rev. George Burroughs, says Hansen, enjoyed pretending to be a witch, puffed his reputation by such tricks as overhearing conversations and then repeating them, letting his listeners assume that black magic gave him the knowledge. When the witchcraft frenzy struck Salem, this vain foolishness was remembered, and Burroughs was executed...
...other hand, Hansen says, old Bridget Bishop, whose revelations of witchcraft panicked Salem, "in all probability" was a practicing witch. That was her reputation, and apparently she had not denied it before the trials. Dolls with pins stuck in them had been found in the cellar wall of a house she had lived in. A local dyer testified that she had asked him to dye pieces of lace too small for human use-bits intended for use in image magic, Hansen thinks...