The terrible incident at Salem was not the last American witch hunt. It was also not the end of Puritan oppression in the region. They would leave a last impact on both New England and American history.
And no aspect of the Puritan experience remains as vivid in American memory as their fear of monsters, specifically the fear of witches that led to the trials of hundreds of settlers during the 1600s. For most of us today, the witch trials seem to be a brief flirtation with an irrational past.
But there was nothing irrational about Salem to the Puritans. They hunted monsters for a generation before Salem, believing that strange creatures lurked in the “howling wilderness.” They imagined their religious experience as a war with monstrous beings birthed by the Devil. It was a struggle with the forces of darkness that turned the New World into a place teeming with such monsters in the minds of the Puritans.
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