Salem Witch Trials
5 Big Myths About the 1692 Salem Witch Trials - and What Really Happened
By Lori, History writer & tour co-founder • Updated September 2026 • 8 min read
Whether you grew up in Massachusetts or you’re visiting for the first time, you probably arrive with a picture of 1692 already in your head. The trouble is, a lot of that picture is wrong. Here are the top five misconceptions we correct most often on our Salem witch trials walking tour – and the facts that replace them.
THE SHORT VERSION
- No one was burned in Salem – 19 were hanged, 1 was pressed to death.
- It wasn’t only women – 5 of the 20 executed were men.
- Tituba wasn’t Black – She was Native American, likely Arawak from Barbados.
- The trouble didn’t start in 1692 – tensions had been building for decades.
- Ergot poisoning wasn’t the cause – it was stress, manipulation from the elders of the community, and revenge that fueled the trials.
MYTH O1
The accused witches were burned at the stake.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
Not a single person was burned in Salem. During the 1692 trials, nineteen people were hanged at Proctor’s Ledge, and one man was pressed to death beneath heavy stones. Hanging – not fire – was the method here.
The burning myth comes from Europe, where the witch panic began around 1450. Between the 15th and 17th centuries, an estimated 80,000 accused witches were executed, many burned, and roughly 80% were women living on the margins of society. Burning was written into law in the German Carolina criminal code, which instructed that those found guilty of witchcraft be put to death by fire. That European image crossed the ocean in our imaginations, but it never happened in Salem, Massachusetts.
MYTH O2
Only women were accused of witchcraft.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
Witchcraft accusations fell on men too. Of the twenty innocent people executed, five were men:
- George Burroughs – a former village minister
- George Jacobs Sr. – an elderly farmer
- John Proctor – a tavern owner who openly doubted the accusers
- John Willard – a constable who refused to keep making arrests
- Giles Corey – Pressed to death for refusing to enter a plea
Their stories are a reminder that once fear takes over, no one is truly safe from an accusation – not even the men enforcing the law.
MYTH O3
Tituba was Black
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
Popular retellings almost always get Tituba wrong. She is believed to have been Native American – a member of the Arawak people of Guiana in South America. The story goes that she was taken from her tribe, enslaved in Barbados, and sold to the Thompson plantation, where she worked as the family cook.
When the head of that plantation died, Samuel Parris inherited her and brought her north to Salem Village, into the very household where the first accusations would erupt. Her confession – almost certainly coerced – helped light the fuse.
MYTH O4
The witch hysteria began in 1692, out of nowhere.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
Yes, the trials began in 1692 – the first arrest warrant was issued on February 28, 1692. But the fear that fueled them had been building for decades. New England had seen witchcraft trials long before Salem:
- Margaret Jones, a midwife and healer, was hanged in Charlestown in 1648 – the colony’s first.
- Bridget Bishop was accused of witchcraft twice, in 1679 and 1687, before her 1692 trial.
- Ann Glover, an Irish Catholic woman, was executed in Boston in 1688.
- War at the doorstep – The frontier conflict with the French and their Indian allies was creeping closer, and refugees carried stories of towns burned to the ground.
- A government in crisis – The king had revoked the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s charter, leaving an unauthorized government and an empty treasury.
- Land disputes – Neighboring colonies claimed Massachusetts land under an old 1622 patent, and families feared losing everything they owned. Village residents were also disputing land boundary lines with their neighbors.
- Trouble in the church – Salem Village was bitterly split over Reverend Samuel Parris’s Pay – even his firewood – while he preached that a satanic conspiracy was moving against the church.
Put all of that together – war, a failing goverment, feuding neighbors, and a minister warning of the devil – and you have the real kindling behind 1692.
The girls didn’t need poisoned bread to ecplain their fear. They were living inside it.
MYTH O5
Ergot poisoning in the rye crop caused the "fits."
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
The ergot theory – that a fungus on the village’s rye caused hallucinations – is a popular one, and on the surface, the symptoms seem to line up. But it doesn’t hold up against the record. Given everything happening in the village, the afflictions were far more likely rooted in Stress, the manipulation of children by their elders, and plain revenge.
The Stress
The first afflicted girls were 11-year-old Abigail Williams and 9-year-old Betty Parris. Both lived under Reverend Parris’s roof – surrounded by arguments over money and firewood, and sermons about a satanic plot against the town. That’s an enormous weight to place on two children during a brutal New England winter.
The Manipulation
The court records themselves hint at coaching. In the examination of John Alden Jr., the accusers were asked to point out who was hurting them. One girl had a man standing behind her, who leaned down and whispered in her ear – and only then did she cry out Alden’s name. When a magistrate asked how she knew it was him, she answered that “the man told her so.” Alden sat in jail for fifteen weeks. If a fungus were to blame, moments like that would be hard to explain.
The Revenge
Then there were the old grudges – and Salem Village had plenty. Neighbors had been feuding for years over property lines and fence rows, and those resentments didn’t disappear when the accusations began. If anything, the trials handed people a weapon. An accusation could settle a score that a boundary dispute never could.
Nowhere is that clearer than in the fight over the pulpit. reverend Samuel Parris and the powerful Putnam family, who had backed his appointment as the village’s minister, were locked in a bitter feud with the families who opposed him – the Porters, Nurses, Cloyses, and Estys. Parris’s opponents refused to pay his salary, withheld his firewood, and even tried to force him out of the pulpit altogether. It was as personal as a small town gets. So it’s hard to call it coincidence that so many of the accused came from exactly those families. Rebecca Nurse and her sister Mary Esty – both tied to households that had stood against Parris – were among the victims. When you map the accusations against the village’s quarrels, a fungus stops looking like the explanation. Fear, Spite, and score-settling explain far more.
SEE IT FOR YOURSELF
Discover what really happened in 1692 Salem
Our historian-led 1692 Salem Historical Tour walks you through the memorials and landmarks that define the trials – the true stories of the twenty who died, told on the streets where the accusations were made. Two hours, all ages. $35 adults / $10 kids.
Frequently asked questions
No. In the 1692 Salem Witch Trials, nineteen people were hanged at Proctor’s Ledge and one man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death with stones. No one was burned — burning was a European practice, not a colonial Massachusetts one.
No. Five of the twenty people executed were men: George Burroughs, George Jacobs Sr., John Proctor, John Willard, and Giles Corey. Both men and women were accused, jailed, and executed.
Tituba was an enslaved woman in Samuel Parris’s household and one of the first three people accused. She is believed to have been Native American — likely from the Arawak people of South America — not Black, as many modern retellings suggest.
Most likely not. The ergot-fungus theory is popular but doesn’t fit the evidence. The afflictions are better explained by intense stress, manipulation of children by adults, and local rivalries — not poisoned rye.
The first arrest warrant was issued on February 28, 1692. But the conditions behind the panic — frontier war, a revoked colonial charter, land disputes, and conflict in the village church — had been building for years beforehand.
Sources & further reading
The facts in this article are drawn from the original 1692 court records, examinations, and legal documents – no folklore. If you’d like to read the primary sources yourself, the best archive is:
- The Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project– University of Virginia. A searchable collection of the original court records, transcriptions, and documents from the 1692 trials.
