Alexis Peck Blog

 

For my last blog I wanted to research the different ways to test whether or not someone was a witch. Throughout the semester, these had been brought up rather sporadically, and each time I thought to myself how impossible, crazy, and downright insane these methods were for testing if someone was a witch. Many of them were difficult to pass and their linkages to witchcraft seem fairly weak. Three tests I want to cover include the swimming test, the urine cake test, and the touch test. The following blog will explain each test in detail by highlighting why they predicted if someone was a witch, how the test occurred, and how the type of test came about.  The first test, the swimming test, is one of the most well known ways that individuals were historically tested for being a witch. The swimming test, explained in “A History of Magic, Witchcraft, and the Occult,” tied the accused witch up and threw them into water to see if they would sink or float. If the person floated, they were a...

Over the last few weeks in class we discussed the aftermath of the Salem Witch Trials including the exoneration of many of the accused victims. It amazes me that it took so many years for many of the individuals who were falsely accused to have their names cleared. I wanted to first discuss the exonerations described in the chapter Redemption of “A Salem Witch.” This chapter covers all of the apologies and efforts to exonerate victims of the witch trials except for one exoneration which occurred in 2022. The exoneration occurring in 2022 was the final one to occur which means it marked the official clearing of every accused Salem Witch, or so we think.  The first exonerations followed a series of apologies coming from Ann Putnum Jr., Judge Samuel Sewall, and twelve jurors from the Salem Witch Trials. What is interesting about their apologies is that they all blamed their actions on the devil and claimed that they were not their fault. Several years after these apologies came ...