On first impression, the witchcraft trials of the Colonial era may seem to have been nothing but a free-for-all, fraught with hysterics. Margo Burns explores an array of prosecutions in seventeenth century New England, using facsimiles of primary source manuscripts, demonstrating how methodically and logically the Salem Court worked. This program focuses on the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 and 1693, when nineteen people were hanged and one crushed to death, with discussion of other colonial witchcraft cases in New Hampshire and Connecticut, and some of the connections of the Maine frontier to Salem.

Margo Burns is the Project Manager and Associate Editor of Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, published in 2009 by Cambridge University Press, the definitive collection of transcriptions of the legal records of the episode.