Giles Corey Array: The Salem Witch Trials

hen it came to sentencing the accused, there were only a few ways that they got punished. Most of the supposed witches died in jail, some were hung, but one member of the community was stoned to death. Giles Corey was an old man who farmed and was the husband of Martha Corey. One day, Martha was accused of witchcraft after she questioned about the lack of evidence behind the malice trials. After voicing this to the community, people then came forward and accused Martha of being a witch. She was then sent to jail awaiting her trial (Linder). Her husband then came to her defense and was then accused himself of being a wizard. After being accused of this, Corey decided that he did not want to stand trial. In the eyes of the community, this was …show more content…
During the trials, the court held it a number of ways. The five different ways were reciting the Lord’s prayer, physical evidence, spectral evidence, confession, and witness testimony. Reciting the Lord’s prayer was evidently not as simple as they believed it to be, “But the young girls who attended the trial were known to scream and writhe on the floor in the middle of the test” (“Witchcraft in Salem”). Even though these were important, the evidence that mattered most was spectral evidence. Spectral evidence is “when the afflicted girls were having their fits, they would interact with an unseen assailant – the apparition of the witch tormenting them” (Louis-Jacques). This was a huge part of the trial, it was what determined whether the accused was truly guilty or not. An example of spectral evidence is when the “Devil’s Book” was mentioned. They would depict interactions with the devil or accusers would say accusations of them seeing the witchcraft. Physical evidence took an important part of the trial as well. When someone who was accused had marks such as birthmarks, warts, and moles, it was a supposed way the devil entered their