Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Salem, Ma and the witches’ story


Salem witch trials
Taken from Wikipedia:



“The central figure in this 1876 illustration of the courtroom is usually identified as Mary Walcott, the daughter of Jonathan Walcott and a key accuser in the Salem Witch Trials.
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people (mostly women)  accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693.”


Most of these were women that did not conform to the puritanical beliefs of the time; and were blamed for causing medical and psychological bewitchment.

The cause of the symptoms of those who claimed affliction continues to be a subject of interest. Various medical and psychological explanations for the observed symptoms have been explored by researchers, including psychological hysteria in response to Indian attacks, convulsive ergotism caused by eating rye bread made from grain infected by the fungus Claviceps purpurea (a natural substance from which LSD is derived)

This is a trippy town, what can I say??











 and, of course, they all need a way to get around: