Salem Witch Trials Daily: Under an Evil Hand

We introduce the early events that sparked the Salem witch trials, focusing on January and February 1692 in Reverend Samuel Parris’s Salem Village household. Parris’s 9-year-old daughter Betty and 11-year-old niece Abigail began exhibiting alarming, inexplicable behaviors and violent physical afflictions. The family tried prayer, fasting, and medical treatment without relief, and around February 24 a local physician (widely believed to be Dr. William Griggs) examined the girls and found no natural cause, concluding they were under an “evil hand.” The hosts draw on later accounts by ministers John Hale and Deodat Lawson describing preternatural fits, invisible biting and pinching, contorted movements, choking, and apparent conversations with unseen “appearances.” With the community quickly concluding the girls were bewitched, the episode turns toward how this diagnosis shifted attention from medicine to the question of who was responsible.

00:00 Mysterious Afflictions Begin

00:18 Bizarre Symptoms in Parris Home

01:01 Prayer and Medicine Fail

01:07 Doctor Declares Evil Hand

01:34 Hale Describes Torments

02:15 Lawson Witnesses the Fits

03:10 Meaning of Bewitchment

03:39 Who Is Responsible

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