Take a walk through 1692 Salem, MA. Follow the links, making your own decisions as you go along and find out... Will you come out alive?
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/salem/
Questions to explore:
- Describe why answering their questions truthfully could be a death wish.
- How did you do?
- How did this exercise make you feel about the Salem Witch Trials?
in the salem witch trial if you confessed you did not die and if you do not confess you still will die but, by hanging. so in reality it was pointless either way you would die eventually because if you confessed soon or later you would get killed by the villiagers. i personaly died by hanging because i did not confessed. this exercise showed me that the salem witch trials were pointless the ones who confessed did not die and the ones who did confess died. so it was a really unfair way to settle a trial. even if you were inoncent.
ReplyDeleteBy answering the questions honestly, you are saying things that the public does not want to hear. in their minds you are already convicted of the crime. all they want to do is see you hang. they are all superstitious, they flinch even at the mentioning of the word witch. I said that i wasnt a witch, and i was hanged. the girls blamed me for their afflictions, and a convicted witch testified against me. this exercise has shown me how unfair, and cruel the salem witch trials were. basically anyone accused of being a witch died, unless they were willing to admit that they were, and the give other information about witches. even then theres a possibility of death. all these witch trials were pointless to me.
ReplyDeleteI thought this interactive website was very interesting, it showed us a lot about the Salem Witch Trials. It showed all of the things they had to go through during these trials. If they answered truthfully, death could be their sentence, but when i picked yes, i lived. When i lied about it, they found out anyways and i died, so i say why not just tell the truth. i really feel that this website really helps us all see what the salem witch trials were really like and what was happening during them. I don't exactly know if i would want to be a part of one of these trials, because i don't think there was anyway for them to really tell if someone was a witch unless they told everyone that they were. it would be a very hard decision. I chose No on my first try and i died, so something tells me lying about it wouldn't be the best thing in that situation.
ReplyDelete--Gabby :)
I feel like no matter which way you answer, yes or no, when asked if you are a witch, you will probably be killed. If you say yes, they will obviously know that you are a witch, and kill you. If you say no, but they still think you are, they will kill you because you are a witch and because you lied about it.
ReplyDeleteI said no, that I was not a witch, when i answered the question. I thought that, since they will almost definitely kill you if you say yes, that I should at least try to say no and have a chance to live. But, I died anyways. Then I went back and said yes, and I lived. I don't understand why they don't just kill all the girls that were witches and everyone that they could prove were also involved with witchcraft.
I feel like the Salem Witch Trials were a very unfair time and there were a lot of confused people. There were probably many people who were killed that were innocent people and did not have anything to do with withcraft. Many people would accuse others of withcraft if they did anything out of the ordinary or that they did not approve of. That person would be sentenced to be hanged. It was probably an almost every day thing for people to be hearing stories of withcraft, or to see people being hanged, or going to trials for people who were accused. Therefore, many people were probably superstitious of everybody. Some people might have just had mental disorders, or something of that sort, and were accused of being a witch. I think that many innocent people were hanged that did not need to be sentenced to death.
Answering the questions truthfully is a way of telling the people what they don't like to hear. They catch you "lying" and they punish it. I answered yes and nobody expected it, and I was not guilty. I was willing to admit it. They wanted to hear if I knew about other witches and I testified against somebody else and got them hanged. It shows how terrible and unfair the trials were. If you confessed, you lived. If you didn't confess, you died. Its a flip of a coin.
ReplyDeleteWell if you were accused of being a witch, your dead. Simple as that. It seem to me that the villagers didnt care if you confessed or not. If you didnt confess it seemed to be a more painful death because you were hanged. I was hung because I did not confess. So I went back and confessed and it seemed to me that I died quicker. I feel bad for the innocent one that were accused and were killed. Also i feel that the trials were extremely unfair.
ReplyDeleteIt is obvious that many of the townsmen who were condemned in these trials were indeed innocent. The towns people seemed to want all of the afflicted hung right up to the last minute before the execution and then changed their minds and morned the trials. No matter what u answered to the confession it was a lose-lose situation. I think the girls just wanted to drag everyone down with them so they wouldn't catch all the blame and the shame that followed witch-craft.
ReplyDeleteI found that the Salem Witch trials were pointless. Many innocent people were killed without any proof. I said I wasn't a witch and was hanged anyways. It was a completely unfair process. They went on the word of young girls, that lied just to accuse people of being a witch. I don't understand why these girls would want to accuse all of these people of being a witch, knowing that they would eventually be killed. No matter if you answered truthfully or not, you still would be considered guilty, and die a harsh death.
ReplyDeleteI see now why it can be deadly to answer the questions truthfully. I told the truth about not being a specter and I was hanged in front of the whole village. When I went back and "confessed" my horrible crime, my life was spared. I'm not sure why confessing pleased the jury, maybe it’s because that's what they wanted to hear. I do not think this is fair at all. My mother always told me "always tell the truth, if you know in your heart your innocent, don't give in." After exploring this site it makes me very angry about the Salem Witch Trials. I would hate to live in a time like this, not knowing if you would be an accused specter next week by the lying "afflicted" girls. In reality if I were in this place I would never confess, I would die a proud death and stand up for what I knew was right.
ReplyDeleteIf a person chose to answer the questions truthfully, then they were more likely to be hanged, this seems to contradict everything that i know. IF a person is "telling" the truth then a jury should listen with open ears. But during the witch trials the jury seemed to want people to die in some way or another. I chose to deny being a witch and not confess. In the end I was hanged, but it was not until being tried twice by two different juries. The people of Salem just wanted to see someone condemned. This exercise made me see the problems of the witch trials. The people did not listen to the actual testimonies of the accused. It was entirely unfair to those that were accused of being witches.
ReplyDeleteI thought that this experience was really interesting. I think that telling the truth could get you killed because nobody would believe you if you said you were not a witch. The first time i went through it i lied, said I was a witch, and lived. In some way, lying helped protect myself. Everyone in the community is constantly convicting others of witchcraft and you would be better off confessing to being a witch, even when you believe that you aren't. This website makes me glad that I am not living during this period. You aren't save no matter what you do and being hanged is always a possibility. This whole time period was just ludicrous.
ReplyDeleteOnce someone was accused of witchcraft by the afflicted girls, the community had it set in their minds that they WERE witches. If the accused claimed to be innocent during his or her trail, that person would be "lieing" as far as the towns people were concerned. If somehow the jury found him or her to be innocent, the afflicted would pitch a fit until the "witch" was retrailed and sent to the gallows. By answering truthfully, the accused person left his or her fate in the hands of the afflicted girl.
ReplyDeleteI answered truthfully; therefore, I died... ceased to live, bye-bye, dunski, adios, hasta luego.
I loved the interactive part about this website! Instead of simply reading about what happened, I was able to see the harsh conditons and the torment that the accused "witches" had to go through. Before this activity, I knew that the Salem Witch Trials were horrible. I never fully understood how bad the conditions were, or that a bunch of young girls could accuse you of something so intense, without any ground to stand on, yet still get away with it.
Chelsea :)
I think answering the questions made it seem more real. But it was highly unfair. No matter if you told the truth if u were convicted of being a witch your fate already was decided. I answered honestly and i got hanged. This exercise was very interesting to me and showed me how unfair and cruel the Salem witch trials were. Even telling the truth gets you hanged. Answering their questions truthfully made me understand the process. No matter what you said they would link it to being a witch, and if that happens you are automatically condemned a witch. no matter what way you answer your sentence is already established.
ReplyDeleteIf being accused of witchcraft and you answered no, the judges would most likely not believe you and sentence you to hang. Although if you answered yes, the judges would not sentence you to hang but just simply let you off the hook. Even though you were let off the hook, the villagers would most likely torture you their whole life or just straight up kill you.
ReplyDeleteI lied and said that i was a witch. Honestly, i thought that i was going to be hanged instantly. But surprisingly i was sentenced not guilty.
Interacting in this exercise better helped me understand how dumb and pointless the Salem witch trials really were. Either way you answer, soon enough you are going to die. So i really dont see the point in the Salem witch trials. Peace out!!!
-Andrew R
already establish.
ReplyDelete~caryssa
I feel that when they are asking you you if you are a witch, that they already have thier mind set to you being a witch. When they ask you they just want to hear that you are a witch. So if you tell them no i am not and try hard to make them believe it, its not going to work. they have it set in stone in their brain that you are indeed a witch. So no matter what you are going to die. This situation is a lose lose to me. It seems terrible to me to read about this because of people that would kill people because they are different. The people of salem even put an infant in jail and left it there to die! That is terrible. It is an infant. How in the world do you know if that kid is a witch or not. And even if it was you could teach it the proper ways of life while it was still young. I would hate to be put in this situation because it would hurt me to think that everybody does not believe me and they want me to die. I would not know what to do and would just want to get out of that town.
ReplyDeleteThis link helped me realize that the Salem Which trials were a very unfair and unjust event in early American history. It did not matter if you confessed that you were a which or not because you were probably going to die anyway. The trails were unfair becuase they were on complete speculation. The only evidence was that these girls said they were being tormented by you. Personally I denied being a which and was hanged, but like many other people during that time period I told the truth but it did not matter. My fate was already sealed.
ReplyDeleteThe people of Salem didn't want to hear the truth, they wanted to persecute those that they deemed "evil", even though it wasn't their place to. And those who confessed after being tortured and thrown in jail then tried to save themselves by implicating other innocent people. The strictness of the puritans fed into the hysteria that happened in Salem. You didn't really have a choice of what to do, because if you didn't confess you were convicted anyways, and if you did confess, you either died or had to testify against other "witches". So you were dead either way.
ReplyDeleteAnswering their questions truthfully could be a death sentence, because the girls who are being "afflicted" could just lie to counter anything that I were to say. This excercise just prooved even more how I feel about the witch trials, that they are based more on hearsay than anything else. The will of the council is the only thing that keeps you alive or not. Answering "Yes" and confessing to something you are not guilty of seemed like the only way to survive, so in this case maybe lying was the only way to keep from being burned at the stake. I dont believe that the majority of the women condemned were even witches, but for those who were, I think that it was their only way to rebel against such a opressive society. Because honestly, who derived this whole idea of witchcraft anyway?? I think it was more of the magistrates and religious fear than anything else.
ReplyDeleteAnswering questions truthfully would have been a bad choice for anyone. As the game would prove, telling the truth bought you a death sentence. The people would not believe you were not a witch because it would be likely for a witch to lie. The people of Puritan Massachusetts knew no other way to think; the "great" preachers of the time, like Cotton Mather and John Edwards, instilled in the people a sense of fear for anything unholy. Should a townsperson truly believe you were not a witch, he or she would never admit it, because the support of a purported witch would result in a similar accusation.
ReplyDeleteThat was the case for denial of being a witch. If you were honest, there was no way out. The only other way out, as the website revealed, was to confess of witchcraft but then claim you'd been bewitched by someone else, one who'd already been declared as a satan-worshipper. If you didn't accuse someone else, they'd take your confession seriously and you'd be hanged.
The decision is tricky; die or condemn another to death. I wouldn't want to die, but I wouldn't want to be the reason my friend was hanging from an oak tree.
Overall, the Salem Witch Trials sound downright insane to me. At the time they were probably more "typical", considering religious persecution was an everyday thing, but to think that people would be hanged because of supposed witchcraft is unreasonable. I also wonder what influenced those few girls to act possessed and accuse others of putting spells on them. Was it foul play, or some hallucination, or did the devil actually come to them? It's difficult to know, but I wouldn't doubt that one mischievous lie snowballed into an ordeal that resulted in 25 people being executed.
In the case of the Salem Witch Trials, telling the truth is the last thing an accused witch should should do. I think it's clear that the people of Salem were convinced that all of the accused people were actually witches, so to say that you're not is a waste of time. As this experience showed, it's more about whether or not the town will have mercy on you; so say you are a witch gives you a better shot at living than telling the truth does.
ReplyDeleteThis shows how crazy the people of Salem were... basically unless you "admitted" to being a witch, you were killed if you got accused.
Telling the truth in this situation will lead you to your death inevitably. this is because noone will believe you, they will just think you are a witch because you are lying. If you confess to be a witch, knowing that your not, all you have to do is say you were posessed by another witch, and you will live. The way all of this plays out shows how corrupt the Salem Witch Trials were. These innocent people who plead not guilty were hanged unjustifiably by poor witchcraft accusations. A very unfair and biased society, this was.
ReplyDeleteAnswering truthfully to any question in this situation is almost asking to die. They don't want to hear the truth. No matter what you say, they will tell you what you are. They will tell you that you are a witch. Whether you are or not is not the question. Because they don't really care. When I went through this website the first time, I selected yes. I was tried and sent to prison. To the prisoners, it was a form of hell. Some were released, if they could pay their jail fees. Others weren't as lucky and they died there. Suffered there. The second time I went through the website i clicked no. I was hanged. They didn't believe anyone when the claimed to be innocent. The magistrates didn't want to hear the truth. They had already made up there minds before the trials started. This exercise frightened me and intrigued me at the same time. I'm looking forward to learning more about the Salem Witch Trials.
ReplyDeleteAnswering the questions truthfully were completely pointless. You were more than likely going to die because you're not telling the public what it wants to hear. They would even make up lies to try to make sure that you were dead. With this, they had evidence against an accused witch, and you would have probably not much more than just a few petitions and good word from neighbors saying that you aren't. I went through the first time and chose no, and I was hung. I went through a second time, and I said yes. When I said yes, it told me I was a survivor. I learned a lot from this exercise because I did not know anything about the Salem Witch Trials. I feel that the trials were very brutal. It seems as though the outcome you expected from an accused witch's trial happened. I think it's ridiculous that the whole ordeal was rooted from a few girls who had some sort of disorder.
ReplyDeleteWell.....the Salem Witch trials has always been an interest of mine. As a child I used to think that I myself had supernatural powers as did most other children. I loved to run around shooting imaginary beings with my laser vision and then levitating to get away from them. Haha I was quite the imaginative child! When asked whether I was a witch or not the frist time on the website I clicked yes. Then I started to be melested with questions about when I became a witch and who else is one with me. I guessing it would be like that or even worse when tried as a witch in Salem during the 1600's. Beside the mass accusations and accusings of my fellowtowns men everyday and everywhere I walked that is. Then again...if you were questioned and you answered "no," I still feel like your comments would be ignored and you would be suspected as a witch anyways. The support for their theory would be that you must be a witch if you were considered as one by a fellow townsman. You couldn't just be accused and then say no and be able to walk away. The same thing applies to telling the truth. If you were asked and you said no truthfully, the outcome could possible be the same as if you had said yes truthfully. The judge would have their own opinion in that matter and I honestly think that the accused didn't have much of a say in their trial. Meaning they wouldn't have the proper chance to plea their case.
ReplyDeleteI think that no matter which you choose, you're probally going to be killed anyway just because you are accused of being a witch. I said that I was a witch and then I answered the question. I mean they're going to kill you if you say that you are a witch and they're going to kill you if you're not a witch. It's a loose loose situation. I'd rather die for something they think I am rather than die for nothing and the telling the truth. I think the Salem Witch Trials were really unfair at times. It was really unpredictable and spur of the moment. Honestly I think it was usually based upon how the people doing the accusing were feeling that day. Whatever happened that day obviously just happened whether it were innocent people or guilty people, they were killed.
ReplyDeleteAnswering their questions truthfully could be a death wish because if you say that you aren't a witch, they would have tested you on that and you would have probably eventually been killed. I admitted that I was a witch even though I really wasn't because I wanted to save my life. This excercise made me feel sad for the women in the Salem Witch Trials because it didn't seem fair and it didn't matter if u were honest or not; you were just saying what the people wanted to hear in order to live!
ReplyDelete