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A witch hunt, or a witch purge, is a search for people who have been labeled witches or a search for evidence of witchcraft. Practicing evil spells or incantations was proscribed and punishable in early human civilizations in the Middle East. In medieval Europe, witch-hunts often arose in connection to charges of heresy from Christianity.
In 1645, Springfield, Massachusetts, experienced America's first accusations of witchcraft when husband and wife Hugh and Mary Parsons accused each other of witchcraft. At America's first witch trial, Hugh was found innocent, while Mary was acquitted of witchcraft but sentenced to be hanged for the death of her child. She died in prison.
Artistic depiction of the execution by burning of three alleged witches in Baden, Switzerland in 1585. This is a list of people executed for witchcraft, many of whom were executed during organized witch-hunts, particularly during the 15th–18th centuries. Large numbers of people were prosecuted for witchcraft in Europe between 1560 and 1630. [1]
While many people use "witch" and "Wiccan" interchangeably, they aren't necessarily the same thing. "Wicca is a branch of witchcraft," says Blake. "All witches are not Wiccans, although all ...
The use of torture has been identified as a key factor in converting the trial of one accused witch into a wider social panic, as those being tortured were more likely to accuse a wide array of other local individuals of also being witches. [76] Burning of three witches in Baden, Switzerland (1585), by Johann Jakob Wick The burning of a French ...
The Salem witchcraft trial of 1878, [1] [2] [3] also known as the Ipswich witchcraft trial [4] and the second Salem witch trial, [5] was an American civil case held in May 1878 in Salem, Massachusetts, in which Lucretia L. S. Brown, an adherent of the Christian Science religion, accused fellow Christian Scientist Daniel H. Spofford of attempting to harm her through his "mesmeric" mental powers.
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people were accused. Thirty people were found guilty, nineteen of whom were executed by hanging (fourteen women and five men).
The witch trials in Connecticut, also sometimes referred to as the Hartford witch trials, occurred from 1647 to 1663. [1] They were the first large-scale witch trials in the American colonies, predating the Salem Witch Trials by nearly thirty years. [2] John M. Taylor lists a total of 37 cases, 11 of which resulted in executions. [3]