The Salem witch trials

Aftermath and closure pt 2

Memorials

Rebecca Nurse's descendants erected an obelisk-shaped granite memorial in her memory in 1885 on the grounds of the in Danvers, with an inscription from . In 1892, an additional monument was erected in honor of forty neighbors who signed a petition in support of Nurse.

Memorial to the Victims of the Witch Trials, Principal Inscription, Danvers, Massachusetts

Not all the condemned had been exonerated in the early 18th century. In 1957, descendants of the six people who had been wrongly convicted and executed but who had not been included in the bill for a reversal of in 1711, or added to it in 1712, demanded that the General Court formally clear the names of their ancestral family members. An act was passed pronouncing the innocence of those accused, although it listed only by name. The others were listed only as "certain other persons", phrasing which failed specifically to name , , , and Margaret Scott.

The Salem Witch Trials Memorial Park in SalemFanciful representation of the Salem witch trials, from 1892

The 300th anniversary of the trials was marked in 1992 in and by a variety of events. A memorial park was dedicated in Salem which included stone slab benches inserted in the stone wall of the park for each of those executed in 1692. Speakers at the ceremony in August included playwright and Nobel Laureate . Danvers erected its own new memorial, and reinterred bones unearthed in the 1950s, assumed to be those of , in a new resting place at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead.

In 1992, The Danvers Tercentennial Committee also persuaded the Massachusetts House of Representatives to issue a resolution honoring those who had died. After extensive efforts by Paula Keene, a Salem schoolteacher, state representatives and , along with others, issued a bill whereby the names of all those not previously listed were to be added to this resolution. When it was finally signed on October 31, 2001, by , more than 300 years later, all were finally proclaimed innocent.

Part of the memorial for the victims of the 1692 withcraft trials, Danvers, Massachusetts

In January 2016, the announced its project team had determined the execution site on Gallows Hill in Salem, where nineteen "witches" had been hanged in public. Members of the Gallows Hill Project had worked with the city of Salem using old maps and documentation, as well as sophisticated and technology, to survey the area of what became known as Proctor's Ledge. The city owns the property and dedicated the Proctor's Ledge Memorial to the victims there in 2017.

A documentary, Gallows Hill – Nineteen, is in production about these events.

In literature, media and popular cultureMain article:

The story of the witchcraft accusations, trials and executions has captured the imagination of writers and artists in the centuries since the event took place. Their earliest impactful use as the basis for an item of popular fiction is the 1828 novel by .

Many interpretations have taken liberties with the facts of the historical episode in the name of literary and/or artistic license. As the trials took place at the intersection between a gradually disappearing medieval past and an emerging enlightenment, and dealt with torture and confession, some interpretations draw attention to the boundaries between the medieval and the post-medieval as cultural constructions.

Medical theories about the reported afflictionsMain article:

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 in response to Indian attacks, convulsive caused by eating made from grain infected by the fungus (a natural substance from which is derived), an epidemic of bird-borne , and to explain the nocturnal attacks alleged by some of the accusers. Some modern historians are less inclined to focus on biological explanations, preferring instead to explore motivations such as jealousy, spite, and a to explain the behavior.

See also