The Salem Witch Trials: 20 Dead, 200 Accused, and the Last "Witch" Wasn't Cleared Until 2022

In 1692, a group of girls in a Massachusetts village started screaming, twisting and claiming invisible witches were biting them. Within a year, twenty people had been put to death and more than two hundred had been accused. And the last woman convicted wasn't officially cleared until 2022. This is the true story of the Salem witch trials: a divided Puritan village, the girls' fits and the witch cake, Tituba's confession, Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne and four-year-old Dorothy Good, spectral evidence, the special court, Bridget Bishop, Rebecca Nurse's not-guilty verdict that was overturned, George Burroughs and the Lord's Prayer, Giles Corey pressed with stones, why confessing saved lives, the end of the trials, the theories (ergot, a land feud, the frontier war, or lies), the apologies, and the eighth-graders who finally cleared Elizabeth Johnson Jr. So what really happened in Salem? Tell me in the comments. Chapters 0:00 1692: "invisible witches" 0:26 Salem Village 0:53 The frontier war 1:02 The girls' fits 1:25 The witch cake 1:45 Three women named 2:08 Tituba's confession 2:28 The accusations spread 2:54 Spectral evidence 3:17 The special court 3:26 Bridget Bishop 3:49 Rebecca Nurse 4:17 George Burroughs 4:39 Giles Corey 5:13 Confess to survive 5:34 Too high 5:53 The court is stopped 6:12 The toll 6:34 Why did it happen? 7:13 The apologies 7:44 Cleared on Halloween 8:02 The eighth-graders 8:21 Salem today 8:42 What really happened? Sound effects: CC0 recordings from the Kenney, CC0-Public-Domain-Sounds and rse/soundfx collections, the ESC-50 dataset (CC0-sourced clips only), and AltSFX by ALEX11BR (CC-BY 3.0). Maps: Natural Earth (public domain). Anything drawn by hand is labelled on screen. Sources Salem witch trials (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_w... Rebecca Nurse (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca... Famous Trials, the end of the Salem trials: https://www.famous-trials.com/salem/2... WGBH, Elizabeth Johnson Jr. exonerated after 329 years: https://www.wgbh.org/news/national/20... Destination Salem, October 2025 visitors: https://www.salem.org/wp-content/uplo... #history #historyfacts #StickmanTimeMachine #americanhistory #salem