Salem is small by European standards and enormously important, because the record survives and because of how it ended.
It began in the household of the Reverend Samuel Parris in Salem Village early in 1692, with afflictions in two girls. Three women were accused: Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba, an enslaved woman in the Parris household. Tituba confessed at length, named others, and gave the magistrates a conspiracy to look for. The accusations spread through Essex County and eventually reached people of standing, including a former minister of the village and the wife of the governor.
A special court was convened. Nineteen people were hanged on Gallows Hill. Giles Corey, an elderly farmer, refused to enter a plea, and was pressed under stones until he died, a procedure used to compel a plea rather than as a punishment. Others died in gaol, including Sarah Osborne and an infant.
What made the convictions possible was spectral evidence: sworn testimony that the shape of the accused had appeared to a witness and tormented them, while the accused was demonstrably elsewhere. Nothing can be answered against such testimony, since the defence that you were somewhere else is exactly what the charge already concedes.