In late 1691, two girls in Salem, another town in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, claimed that three women in the town were witches. The first person in America to be accused of being a witch was a lady named Tituba. Authorities arrested these women, but then more accusations and trials followed. Soon many people in the town believed that there was a witch doing harm to them. By the fall of 1692, more than 185 people had been accused of witchcraft. Authorities tried and convicted 24 women and 6 men for being witches. 19 of these people were executed!

The witch scare ended after community leaders spoke out against the trials and convictions. They believed that the evidence of witchcraft was not true. They suspected that people accused others as witches due to disagreements or possibly as a way of getting revenge against someone they didn't like. The Massachusetts governor released from jail all remaining people charged who had been charged with witchcraft. The colony eventually declared witchcraft trials illegal.