*ILP+Speech*

Have you ever played a really mean prank on someone? It isn’t just the kids of our generation who enjoy playing jokes on others. A group of young girls in 1692 decided to do the same thing. What they didn’t know was that their prank would cost the lives of nineteen innocent people. There are many theories as to why the Salem Witch trials ever began. Some believe there was a disease going around that caused mental disorders and crazy behavior. Others say there was an environmental bug, like a poisoned mushroom or dirty water, but the most common theory is that the group of girls who first started to act strangely were simply playing a joke on the whole town. It is said that one day a group of girls whose ages range from eleven to twenty years old “cast a spell” that predicted a death. Soon after, all the girls began acting weird. They would all have a noticeable twitch and would start crying out strange things in public. When doctors went to check on them, they would not find a medical problem. So it was soon concluded that all the girls had been cursed by witches. The girls were asked to identify several people who had cursed them. Their first victim was a slave of one of the younger girls named Tituba. When Tituba was put on trial, she openly admitted to practicing the dark arts because she was told to do so by the Devil. Tituba was imprisoned, later to be hanged to her death. Tituba was the first and last accused “witch” to ever admit to practicing witchcraft. After a few more people were put on trial, tortured, and imprisoned to be executed later, the girls accused Martha Corey. This accusation caused uproar through the town. Everyone else who had been accused had been regular villagers. However, Martha Corey was known to be a Goodwife, or a woman who helped with the Church and highly believed in God. Since witchcraft is identified as the Devil’s work, to have Goodwife Corey called a witch made everyone feel uneasy about her trial. It is said that the whole town appeared at the courthouse on the day of her trial. Goodwife Corey was said to have acted sarcastically and bluntly in court, but never admitted to being a witch. However, not everyone thought she was acting sarcastically, and Goodwife Martha Corey was hanged later on. Usually, when a person went on trial because they were believed to be a witch, they would have their trial and then be imprisoned to later be hanged. Every once in a while when a person kept denying their being a witch, they would be tortured until admitting their guilt. Some torture methods included tying heavy chains on a person and throwing them underwater. If the person survived after a certain amount of time under the water, then they were believed to be a witch. Another method included burning the accused person until they admitted their guilt. Only one person ever died during torture, never making it out alive to later be hanged. He was Giles Corey, husband of the accused Goodwife Martha Corey who was already hanged to her death before Giles was accused. Giles was brought into court soon after his wife’s execution. When he pleaded not guilty, they decided to torture the truth out of him. They lay Giles down on a flat wooden board. Then they placed another flat wooden board on top of him. They then put heavy boulders on the top board, crushing Giles underneath. Giles cried out and screamed, but he never admitted guilt. So they kept piling more boulders onto the board. After a while, Giles died when his body was crushed flat between the boards. Fifteen years after the Salem Witch Trials were over, one of the “cursed” girls admitted to it all being a joke. Her name was Ann Putnam. Ann apologized for her role in the witch trials in the year 1706. Ann was believed to be one of the ringleaders in the whole scheme since most of the accused people were enemies of her father. Ann had said that because of this, she could never out the other girls and stop the trials. She never wanted to have all those people hurt and killed because of her. Because of Ann’s apology, historians came up with the theory that the whole thing was a joke to get some excitement in the boring village of Salem. The girls had been fascinated by tales about witches and magic, and after they performed the prediction spell, they wanted to see how the town would react to witchcraft. Evidently, not so well. The only thing that went right in the year 1692 was in fact the prediction spell. When the girls predicted a death, they just didn’t know they were predicting the death of nineteen innocent people. Or the fact that those nineteen people would die because of their little trick.
 * __ It All Started as a Prank __**