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Warning!
At least some content in this article is derived from information featured in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (film). As such, spoilers will be present within the article. |
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Warning!
At least some content in this article is derived from information featured in the latest update of Pottermore. As such, spoilers will be present within the article. Please take care when reading this article if you have not yet been through the latest update. |
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft that occurred in No-Maj (Muggle) colonial Massachusetts in the years 1692 and 1693.[1][2]
Trials
The Salem witch trials occurred in the settlement of Salem in colonial Massachusetts in 1692 and 1693,[1][2] and resulted in the executions of twenty people accused of witchcraft, most of them women.[1] Some of these women were actually witches, though they were entirely innocent of the crimes of which they were convicted.[2] Others were simply No-Majs unlucky enough to be swept up in a moment of mass hysteria.[2]
The trials were the culmination of Puritan witch hunts in North America.[2] Most of the judges who presided over the trials were Puritans, but, according to wizarding historians, at least two were actually Scourers seeking to settle personal vendettas against other wizards.[2]
Aftermath
The Salem witch trials were a major traumatic event in the history of the wizarding world.[2][3] They provoked many witches and wizards who had settled in the New World to return to their homelands, and helped to dissuade further immigration for centuries to come, especially by pure-blood families.[2]
The lobby of the MACUSA headquarters in the Woolworth Building in New York featured four golden statues of phoenixes erected in memory of the victims of the Salem witch trials.[3]
In the 1920s, the New Salem Philanthropic Society, a fanatical No-Maj group looking to expose and destroy wizards and witches, called itself the "Second Salemers."[4]
Gallery
Behind the scenes
- Though the image from Pottermore depicts two witches being burned at the stake, this is a common misconception; in the real Salem trials, nineteen of the twenty people convicted of witchcraft were hanged.[1]
Appearances
- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (film) (Mentioned only)
- Pottermore
Notes and references
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "Salem witch trials" on Wikipedia
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 Pottermore - "History of Magic in North America: Seventeenth Century and Beyond"
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Fantastic Beasts: 5 secrets in our photo you might have missed" from Entertainment Weekly
- ↑ We have the full @EW #FantasticBeasts spread! (pages 4-8)