They were a series of hearings ended with county court trials to prosecute over 150 people – mainly women – charged with witchcraft in Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. Nineteen of the accused were hanged, one man was crushed to death and five died in prison.

All started with some very young girls who joined together and amused to foresee their future loves and so on. Probably they – and all the others – paid the consequence of a series of natural calamities which hit their counties and the fact that the Puritan communities of America felt they were in constant fight against the devil who might have appeared under any semblance. John Hathorne, one of Hawthorne’s ancestors – was one of the judges of the Salem Trials and Nathaniel was marked by that throughout his life.

Arthur Miller (1915 - 2005) the famous US dramatist and film director wrote his masterpiece The Crucible, a play which, taking inspiration from the Salem witch trials, speaks about the US government blacklists of 50s against anybody suspected of communism. Miller himself was inserted in those lists.

Nowadays people sometimes use the words "witch hunt" to describe what happened at Salem and also what has happen in other situations in which innocent people have been punished for things they did not do and, in particular, to refer to the US government blacklist of 50s or similar happenings of easy social, moral and political censure and consequent segregation.

(Isabella Marinaro)

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