Although Hansen's theory that fear initiated the peculiar behavior in the "afflicted" girls', it is questionable when taking into consideration the confession of Ann Putnam Jr., years after the trial. Earl Rice Jr. reveals that in August, 1707, thirteen years after the trials, Ann Putnam Jr., age twenty six, gave a letter of confession to the Reverend Joseph Green to read aloud to the congregation of the Salem Village church. It read:

The second theory that explains the causes of the Salem witch trials is public and mass hysteria. Hysteria can have varying meanings pertaining to the Salem witch trials. In Earl Rice Jr.'s terms, hysteria is "unmanageable fear or emotional excess (103)." Hansen proposes the use of the word hysteria in a literal, medical sense, as being mentally ill. Hysteria is a unique and abnormal mental disease. What makes it so interesting is that it causes physical symptoms that someone would not normally experience. "Mental conflicts are unconsciously converted to symptoms that appear to be physical, but for which no organic cause is found." Hansen insists that witchcraft was truly practiced in Salem Village. He states that the mental illness, hysteria, of the girls' was occasioned by guilt from their practices of fortune telling at their secret meetings (Julie Carnagie 156). It is possible that the people of Salem were so swamped in the superstitions of the community that they convinced themselves that evil forces had bewitched them. These mental stresses would consume their minds and convert into physical manifestations. When the emotional disturbances set in, the hysteria began. As Upham explains, the victims were able to perform the unnatural twisting motions without feeling the pain (396). It cannot be said that all of the "afflicted" were hysterical, as some were most likely able to create affliction on queue, in order to get attention, or to justify the problems of the community.

"Indeed, these courtroom fits were so convincing that most of the indictments were for witchcraft committed during the preliminary examination, rather than for the offenses named in the original complaint...the direct cause of these fits in the courtroom or out of it, was, of course, not witchcraft itself, but the afflicted persons' fear of witchcraft. If fits were occasioned by fear of someone like Brigit Bishop, who was actually practicing witchcraft, they might also be occasioned by fear of someone who was only suspected of practicing it (Rice Jr. 70)."

Sarah Osbourne was an elderly, widowed woman who had not gone to church in about one year, which was considered a Puritan sin. Sarah Good was a poverty stricken woman who begged from door to door. Good's life brought her two prominent misfortunes. One misfortune was the death of her dad, John Solart, who committed suicide. Because he killed himself, it "disgraced the family," in the eyes of Puritans. The second misfortune was two failed marriages. Good's first husband died, and when her second husband died, he brought her to poverty through bad credit. Because Tituba was Parris's slave, and well known to the girls' it is not surprising that they named her a witch. (Rice Jr. 32,36)

The first theory formulated to explain the causes of the Salem w

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