During the late 1700s a fierce paranoia swept through the countryside of Massachusetts. Courts were a frenzy of speculative cases caused by the cries of witchcraft brought on by a group of young girls. Over a hundred people, especially widowed middle-aged women, were accused of performing witchcraft and were jailed, nineteen people were executed . The accusations that led to the Salem Witch Trials were brought on by a combination of preconceived knowledge on the topic, religious beliefs, and precocious imaginations. These accusations shed light on the natural human need to find explanations for misfortunes occurring during the time period and to justify themselves in a Puritan dominated society.
In 1689, only three years before the events that occurred in Salem, a similar case of possession happened to the four children of John Goodwin of Boston. The children, the oldest aged thirteen and the youngest five, began displaying symptoms of a diabolical illness and caused the adults in the community to gather together to not only pray for the health of the children but to determine the cause of their illness. It was soon discovered that the eldest Goodwin child had an argument with the elderly women who did the family’s laundry and received harsh words and insults from the laundress . The accused was Mary Glover, a single woman who had emigrated from Ireland to New England. During her trial, Glover spoke in her native tongue, Gaelic and often whispered words. This was seen as characteristics of a witch in the eyes of the court.
Soon after her execution Puritan minister Cotton Mather, who questioned Glover before and during the trial, wrote a report that depicted the symptoms of the Goodwin children and his views on witchcraft, called Wonder of the Invisible World. A description in Mather’s report was when he prayed before the afflicted children, they shrieked with pain