In the United States when someone mentions witches, our thoughts immediately drift to

Salem, Massachusetts. It only makes sense considering that the Salem Witch

Trials are still a hot topic today, 329 years after the last one was executed for being a witch.

Salem has embraced its star-kissed arena and welcomes thousands of tourists every year.

Most come to see the sites associated with the witch trials and the streets are crawling with tourists

through the whole month of October. If you dig a little deeper into America's belief in witches,

you will find that Salem wasn't the first witch hunt to take place here. That actually happened

30 years earlier in 1662, a witch hunt that would result in 7 trials and 4 executions.

The family griefs stricken were desperate for answers. They could only reflect upon the words

that their daughter had said the night she returned from the neighbor's house.

Father, father, help me help me. Good wife Ayers is upon me. She chokes me. She kneels on my belly.

She will break my bowels. She penches me. She will make me black and blue.

After Elizabeth's death, whispers of witchcraft envelop the town.

Fingers were pointed towards several towns people. Panic ripped through the streets. For Hartford

had been the side of the first ever execution of a suspected witch in the colonies a generation

ago on May 26, 1647. On that day, Alice Young was sent to the gallows erected at the Hartford's

meeting house square. Connecticut's old state house now stands where the gallows once stood.

Good.

Witchcraft was one of the 12 capital crimes decreed by Connecticut's colonial government in 1642.

The legal precedent cited the word of God. Biblical passages such as Exodus chapter 22,

verse 18, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. And Leviticus chapter 20 verse 27,

a man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard shall surely be put to death.

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