Salem Village 1692

 I watched the program “Witches of Salem” on the Discovery+ streaming channel.  I feel bad for those people, and especially the victims, that their community had to fall into such a nightmare of misguidance and psychological and emotional turmoil.  Those people were living in a true nightmare of fear, darkness and confusion without enough surrounding enlightenment to help pull them out of it.  Not soon enough anyway.  I want to return to this topic later.  There is so much to think about. 

From what I recall and can surmise from this documentary, a final catalyst that set off the horror was when a doctor told the village, hell and brimstone, preacher that his daughter was suffering from some kind of bewitchment. 

I need to rewatch this documentary and whatever else is available.  I’m so drawn now to this unfortunate historical event.

We all think or perhaps have thought of the Salem Witch Trials as just a crazy story from our country’s past history that we at some point learned of, but there was a community of people who actually experienced it first hand in their lives.  I can’t imagine being a witness to or living the experience of having one’s own community fall into such a nightmare.  We all depend on the collective sanity that surrounds us.  The people of Salem Village were victims of serious Puritan religious abuse.

#mindfullofthosefromthepast

10/29/23 I keep finding myself wanting to make additions to this post, so from now on I will include the date of my addition.  I already snapped this Halloween decoration of mine in half and threw it in the trash because of line number five.  I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to use something terrible that happened in history as a source of material for Halloween spirit and amusement.  I also don’t know how I was so stupid to have not thought about it and not noticed this.  It’s not a cool spooky idea for Halloween.  It goes to show that no matter how old we get, we still have plenty to learn and understand.  It also shows how easy it is to not take things seriously that we are far removed from via time, distance or experience. 🙁