Sunday, June 27, 2010

A Slideshow of Our New England Coastal Trip


Emily wrote down her Thoughts on our visit to Salem:
We went to Salem and checked out the museums. The first one we went to was the Witch Dungeon Museum. Apparently, Salem is very big on huge creepy mannequins, because they were EVERYWHERE! I mean in every museum and shop (basically). But other that that, the museum was great. exept for the first part where I got scared out of my wits when they started a play on the witch trials. But then i think i over reacted because the acting was very very good. Then we went to the Witch History Museum. The tour guide was kind of robotic, but all was good there too. It was kind of all the same info, but from a different perspective. then we went to the Pirate Museum it was so much fun, and a good change of pace. I liked our tour guide because he used humor to teach instead of going all blah about it. The last one we went to was the wax museum. It showed the founder and how the trials all got started, like the other tours ( and with, like, the same big scary mannequins) I also got my hand waxed there. but what I learned was amazing. it all got started by a maid telling stories of voodoo to young impressionable girls that are very, very, bored. then they started to go into trances and histerical fits. then they called the doctor and the Dr. didn't know that much so he blamed it on witches. then the girls were used to hunt witches all over! No one was safe from being called a witch. and they all were innocennt. some of them pleded guilty. but if you could not recite the Lord's Prayer clearly, loudly, and crisply, they went to gallows hill to be hanged.(hanged bothers me because i know it should be hung but hanged is the propper term!! grrrr!)only 14 women and 5 men were killed. Burning at the stake was outlawed in the states, but not in England and outward. Yes, it was spread all over the world.but then the girls made a big mistake. they called the governor's wife a witch. then, the Governor got called a witch (not wizard) for trying to protect his wife. since the Governor still had his power, he outlawed the spectral evidence. that was a yellow canary, black cat, ect. that was invisible to the rest of the people. then since spectal evidence was the only "evidence" they had, they had to let everyone go. The funny part about it was that you had to pay for the prison food, a bed and everything else. probably the rope for your hanging. The people who could not afford a room got a coffin sized one where you could barely move. The witch hysteria lasted only about 13 months. Eighteen people were hanged and one was crushed to death by heavy stones. Yea, English torture. This was a bad time for Salem, but they recovered in time.

No comments: