Witch Hunts and the Salem Trials – answers and explanations
Here are the answers to all 15 questions in the Witch Hunts and the Salem Trials quiz, each with a short explanation. How much do you know about the real history behind the witch panic? Haven't played yet? Take the quiz first and compare your score.
Play the quiz · 15 questions1. Which Salem defendant was crushed under stones, reportedly asking for 'More weight'?
Answer: Giles Corey
Giles Corey, an 81-year-old Salem farmer, refused to enter a plea and was pressed to death under stones (peine forte et dure) on 19 September 1692; legend says he answered only 'More weight'. Keeping silent meant no conviction, so his estate passed to his heirs.
2. At Salem in 1692, 'spectral evidence' meant testimony about what?
Answer: Visions of the accused's ghostly shape
Spectral evidence was testimony that the accused person's spirit or ghostly shape appeared in a dream or vision to torment the witness, even while their body was elsewhere. The Court of Oyer and Terminer accepted it in 1692; it was later disallowed, helping end the trials.
3. In the European 'swimming test', what did it mean if the accused floated?
Answer: She was taken to be guilty
In the swimming test, the bound suspect who floated was judged guilty, because pure baptismal water was thought to reject a servant of the Devil; sinking meant innocence, though many drowned. James I endorsed the ordeal in his 1597 Daemonologie.
4. What was the Malleus Maleficarum, the notorious book printed in 1487?
Answer: A witch-hunting manual, 'The Hammer of Witches'
The Malleus Maleficarum, or 'Hammer of Witches', first printed at Speyer in 1487, was a handbook by Dominican inquisitor Heinrich Kramer (with Jacob Sprenger named) telling magistrates how to identify, torture and execute witches.
5. The green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West appears in which 1939 film?
Answer: The Wizard of Oz
MGM's 1939 film The Wizard of Oz gave the Wicked Witch of the West her famous green skin, played by Margaret Hamilton; the green colouring was an invention of the Technicolor film, not of L. Frank Baum's 1900 book.
6. Which enslaved woman in Samuel Parris's home confessed to witchcraft at Salem?
Answer: Tituba
Tituba, an enslaved woman in Reverend Samuel Parris's Salem Village household, confessed in March 1692 to serving the Devil and named Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, which helped ignite the panic. She was jailed over a year and never tried.
7. How were the 19 people executed in the Salem witch trials put to death?
Answer: They were hanged
The 19 people executed in the 1692 Salem witch trials were hanged, not burned, between June and September 1692 at Proctor's Ledge near Gallows Hill. Giles Corey died separately, crushed under stones for refusing to enter a plea.
8. Who styled himself 'Witchfinder General' during England's witch hunts of the 1640s?
Answer: Matthew Hopkins
Matthew Hopkins (c.1620-1647) of Manningtree, Essex, gave himself the title Witchfinder General; Parliament never granted it. With John Stearne he hunted witches across East Anglia from 1644 to 1647 and published The Discovery of Witches in 1647.
9. Which king wrote the 1597 book 'Daemonologie', a guide to hunting witches?
Answer: James VI of Scotland
Daemonologie was written by James VI of Scotland (later James I of England) and published in Edinburgh in 1597. His obsession stemmed from the North Berwick witch trials of 1590-91, when he believed witches had raised storms against his ship.
10. In which 1960s sitcom did witch Samantha twitch her nose to cast spells?
Answer: Bewitched
In Bewitched, which premiered on ABC on September 17, 1964, Samantha Stephens (Elizabeth Montgomery) cast spells with a signature nose twitch. The gesture actually came from Montgomery twitching her upper lip, a habit spotted by director William Asher.
11. Who was the chief judge of the Salem trials' Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692?
Answer: William Stoughton
William Stoughton, lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, was appointed chief justice of the special Court of Oyer and Terminer created by Governor William Phips in May 1692. He accepted spectral evidence and, unlike Samuel Sewall, never publicly repented.
12. Which French heroine was burned at the stake in Rouen in 1431 after a heresy trial?
Answer: Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc was convicted of heresy by an English-backed church court and burned at the stake in the Old Market Square of Rouen on 30 May 1431, aged about 19. She was declared innocent in a 1456 retrial and canonised in 1920.
13. Witch-prickers jabbed suspects with needles hunting for a mark that did what?
Answer: Felt no pain and did not bleed
Professional witch-prickers stabbed suspects with needles or bodkins looking for the Devil's mark, believed to be numb and bloodless when pierced. Some prickers cheated with blunt or retractable points to guarantee a 'find' and collect their fee.
14. Which 1953 play dramatises the Salem trials as an allegory for McCarthyism?
Answer: The Crucible
Arthur Miller's The Crucible, which opened on Broadway in January 1953, retells the 1692 Salem trials as an allegory for the anti-communist hearings of the McCarthy era. Miller himself was later questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
15. 'Double, double toil and trouble' is chanted by witches in which Shakespeare play?
Answer: Macbeth
The cauldron chant beginning 'Double, double toil and trouble' comes from the three witches in Act 4, Scene 1 of Shakespeare's Macbeth, where they conjure apparitions that give Macbeth his fatal prophecies.