The Salem witch trials explained: How fear, fungus and panic led to the deaths of 19 innocent people

In the winter of 1692, a nine-year-old girl and her eleven-year-old cousin began having violent fits inside a parsonage in Salem Village, Massachusetts. They screamed, threw objects, contorted their bodies, complained of being bitten and pinched by invisible hands, and reported seeing spectral figures that no one else could see.

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