Salem witches were hanged instead of being burned

Why Salem’s condemned were hanged

The Salem witch trials took place in Massachusetts, an English colony whose criminal justice system followed English legal practice. In England and its colonies, people convicted of witchcraft were treated as felons and executed by hanging. Burning at the stake, though strongly associated with witchcraft in popular imagery, was more characteristic of some European legal traditions—not the usual punishment in English law.

In 1692, the executions took place at a gallows site near Salem. The familiar picture of a bonfire therefore tells a broader story about witch persecutions, not what happened to those condemned in Salem.

The exception was not a burning

Most of the people sentenced to death in the Salem cases were hanged. Giles Corey, who refused to enter a plea, died under heavy stones during a separate punishment known as pressing; he was not burned or hanged. Others died in jail before they could be executed.

That distinction matters: Salem’s tragedy was carried out through the ordinary machinery of the colony’s courts and gallows, rather than the spectacular stake imagined in many retellings.

This article describes beliefs and cultural traditions, which are not necessarily scientifically established facts.

Salem witches were hanged instead of being burned

Why Salem’s condemned were hanged

The exception was not a burning

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Salem witches were hanged instead of being burned

Why Salem’s condemned were hanged

The exception was not a burning

A bigger world.One discoveryat a time.

Keep exploring

A modern barista might charge protective wards by observing the Moon

In Eastern Europe, old women left jars of milk at doors said to keep witches from entering homes

Warlock originally meant oathbreaker instead of male witch

Ursula Southeil, known popularly as Mother Shipton, is widely regarded as one of England's greatest mystical prophetesses, supposedly predicting the Great Fire of London and the invention of iron ships.

Witch marks were considered undeniable, damning evidence of a mystical pact with the devil during medieval trials, but in reality, they were literally just ordinary moles, skin tags, or weird freckles.

Helen Duncan was the absolute last person imprisoned under the British Witchcraft Act in the twentieth century

A bigger world.
One discovery
at a time.