The sleepy village of Salem, Massachusetts was as quaint as it was friendly; the sort of idyllic place where the bonds of God, family, and community were strong. It was, in all respects, the least likely place to see the horrors that it did.

The rainy summer of 1691 gave way to a frigid winter, and in February, the daughter and niece of the local cleric, Reverend Samuel Parris, began to act very strangely. 9-year-old Betty Parris and 11-year-old Abigail Williams screamed at the top of their lungs, threw things across the room, and convulsed on the floor.

They said some unseen force was pinching them and pricking them with needles; that something, or someone, was controlling them.

It was witchcraft. It had to be. The girls’ possessed behavior spread to others; 12-year-old Ann Putnam and 17-year-old Elizabeth Hubbard. They accused the Parris family’s slave Tituba, a native of the Caribbean of bewitching them after baking them a “witch cake.” Next, they accused Sarah Good, a poor woman whose jealousy of the high status of the Parris family must have driven her to witchcraft.

Over the course of several terrifying months, more girls began exhibiting the terrifying behavior, and more women were accused of bewitching them. In all, the Salem Witch Trials resulted in the executions of fourteen women and six men. Another five people died in jail.

Then, almost as soon as the hysteria consumed the village, it subsided. The girls stopped convulsing and throwing things. They stopped accusing women of witchcraft. Salem was once again the sleepy village it had always been.

But what had caused the mass hysteria that sparked the Salem Witch Trials? For 300 years, historians and scientists alike couldn’t agree on a cause. Was it socioeconomic or political? Maybe it was psychological?

Or maybe it was poisoned rye bread.

In 1976, a researcher named Linnda Caporael published a paper that provided compelling evidence that the girls had suffered from a condition known as “convulsive ergotism.” Ergot, a fungus that forms on rye, can cause wild spasms and convulsions, painful sensations of being pinched or pricked with needles, and even hallucinations.

The rainy summer of 1691 was perfect for ergot to grow on rye in Salem, and the original accusers all lived on the west part of town, where Salem grew its rye. Moreover, Reverend Samuel Parris was routinely paid in rye grain, which may well have been tainted by ergot.

Interestingly enough, in 1938, ergot was synthesized into a powerful hallucinogenic drug called LSD, whose effects almost perfectly mirror the symptoms of the bewitched girls in Salem.

Could the girls have been suffering not from witchcraft, but a low-grade drug trip? Caporeal’s research is today largely considered a fringe theory, but no one has yet produced a better explanation for the sudden onset of mass hysteria and its equally sudden end.

Ultimately, the cause of the Salem Witch Trials—one of the darkest chapters in American history—may never be known, and that just might be the most terrifying thing of all.

Vicki McKenna

About Vicki McKenna