S1 – 1: The Arrival

In early January 1692, the Reverend Samuel Parris found his 11-year-old niece Abigail crouched beneath a chair, hands pressed against her head, twisting and writhing. When the fits got bad, she collapsed into a limp heap “as if all of her bones had been magically removed from her body.” Soon his nine-year-old daughter Betty began suffering the same symptoms. The family tried everything: parsnip seeds ground in red wine, spirits of castor mixed with oil of amber, an elixir made from deer antler shavings and soot, even evaporated dew dust turned into a tonic. Nothing worked. The physician William Griggs examined the girls and found no bodily illness. His verdict was chilling: the children were under an evil hand. Something evil had arrived in Salem, and it was just getting started.

The Village That Couldn't Find Peace

Salem, Massachusetts was incorporated in 1629—nearly 400 years ago—but there was nothing inherently special about it. It began as a fishing settlement named for the Hebrew word shalom, meaning peace. Yet peace was precisely what eluded its residents. As English Puritans arrived seeking freedom from the rule of a king and an Anglican church they believed attacked them, they built what John Winthrop called “a city upon a hill.” Over decades, that vision wavered.