• 64 prompts
  • Checked October 2026

Salem Witch Trials Writing Prompts

Letters, diaries and arguments from Salem in 1692: a rumor, a hearing, an accusation next door, a doubt said aloud.

Salem Witch Trials Writing Prompts

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  1. Compare Salem in 1692 with a time a rumor ran through your own school or town, without naming anyone.Angle: say what was claimed, what counted as proof, and who asked for more.
  2. Write a letter from a Salem prisoner of 1692 to the children left at home, about the garden and nothing else.Angle: every line about beans and weeding carries what she cannot write down.
  3. Design a memorial for the Salem trials in words: what it is made of, where a visitor sits, what is carved on it.Fact: the memorial park dedicated in Salem in 1992 has a stone bench for each person executed in 1692.

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All 64 prompts

A village afraid 13

  • A family driven from the Maine frontier by war arrives in Salem Village with one cart. Write their first Sunday among strangers. Fact: fighting on the Maine coast from 1689 to 1692 sent refugees into Essex County, where Salem lies.
  • A girl in Salem Village in 1692 sees how the grown-ups listen when another girl falls ill. Write what she decides not to do. Fact: after the first two girls fell ill in 1692, other young women in the village began to behave the same way.
  • A mother in Salem Village in 1692 tells her children what not to say outside the house. Write her list and the reason for each line. Fact: in New England at that time quarrels with neighbors often led to accusations of witchcraft.
  • A traveler passes through Salem Village in the spring of 1692 and writes one page in his journal about how people look at each other. Angle: he has heard nothing of the accusations; let him notice only doors, glances and silences.
  • Explain to a reader of today why people in Salem in 1692 believed a witch could be anyone, without making fun of them. Fact: New Englanders of 1692 believed that anyone, man, woman or child, could have made a pact with the Devil.
  • Follow one rumor through Salem Village for a single day in 1692: who tells it at the well, who adds to it, who believes it by dark. Angle: change one detail each time it is told, and let the last teller be certain of it.
  • The jail fills faster than any court can hear the Salem cases. Write a jailer's count at the end of May 1692. Fact: when the Salem court first met at the end of May 1692, 62 people were in custody.
  • Someone cries out in the middle of a sermon in Salem Village in 1692. Write the service as a visitor in the back row. Fact: in 1692 a guest preacher in the Salem Village meetinghouse was interrupted several times by outbursts.
  • Write a Salem Village quarrel over a fence line as two neighbors would each tell it in 1691, a year before anyone is accused. Fact: before 1692 Salem Village was known for disputes over property lines, grazing rights and church privileges.
  • Write a winter evening in Salem Village in February 1692 as the doctor who is called to a sick child and finds nothing he can name. Fact: in February 1692 two girls of Salem Village, aged 9 and 11, fell ill; a doctor found no physical cause.
  • Write the day in 1692 when the accusations reach a town that thought Salem's trouble was Salem's alone. Fact: the accusations began in Salem Village and spread to many other towns, Andover and Topsfield among them.
  • Write the Salem Village meeting of 1672 as a farmer who wants a church nearer home than the one in town. Fact: in 1672 the people of Salem Village voted to hire a minister of their own, apart from Salem Town.
  • Write the Salem Village minister's pay dispute as a farmer who must hand over corn he can hardly spare. Fact: in 1689 Salem Village agreed to pay its minister 66 pounds a year, two thirds of it in provisions.

In the meeting house 12

  • A clerk at a Salem examination in 1692 must write down everything that is said. Write his page, and the line he hesitates over. Fact: the first three people accused at Salem were questioned by magistrates for several days from March 1, 1692.
  • A judge leaves the Salem court after two weeks. Write the note he leaves behind, in which he never says exactly why. Fact: one judge resigned from the Salem court on or about June 16, 1692.
  • A juror in Salem in 1692 lies awake the night after a verdict. Write what he keeps going over. Fact: twelve jurors of the Salem trials later asked forgiveness for their part in them.
  • A magistrate at a Salem hearing in 1692 asks the same question five ways. Write the five, and the answer that never changes. Angle: the accused has only the truth, and it sounds weaker each time she has to repeat it.
  • A new court opens in Salem in January 1693 with one rule changed. Write its first morning as a prisoner who has waited since summer. Fact: the Salem court of 1693 did not allow spectral evidence, and its first five defendants were found not guilty.
  • A prisoner is found not guilty in 1693 after the Salem accusations and still cannot go home. Write her letter asking a cousin for money. Fact: in 1693 people found not guilty of witchcraft were not released until they had paid their jail fees.
  • A witness in a Salem court in 1692 swears she saw the shape of the accused in a place where the accused was not. Write the question you would ask her. Fact: this was called spectral evidence: testimony that a person's shape or apparition had been seen.
  • The accusers at a Salem hearing in 1692 look at a prisoner and say this is not the man. Write his walk home. Fact: in 1692 one accused man was released when the Salem accusers agreed he was not the person they had seen.
  • The court that will try the Salem cases is set up in a hurry. Write May 27, 1692, as the clerk who copies out the order. Fact: a special court was ordered on May 27, 1692, and first sat in Salem Town on June 2.
  • Write a list of what a Salem court of 1692 counted as evidence, then sort it by what a court would accept now. Fact: at Salem, confessions, the word of other confessors and objects found in a home were all used as evidence.
  • Write a minister's letter of 1692 advising a Salem judge to be careful with evidence that nobody else can see. Fact: in June 1692 ministers advised the Salem court to use a very critical and exquisite caution.
  • Write a Salem hearing of 1692 from the back bench, as someone who came in only to get out of the rain. Fact: a Salem examination was held in public, and the magistrates pressed the accused to confess.

A neighbor is accused 13

  • A husband stands up at his wife's examination in Salem to object. Write the next ten minutes. Fact: in April 1692 a man who objected during his wife's examination at Salem was arrested that same day.
  • A respected church member is accused in Salem in March 1692. Write what the congregation whispers the next Sunday. Fact: in March 1692 full church members were accused at Salem, and people saw that membership was no protection.
  • A servant in a Salem household in 1692 is an accuser one week and accused the next. Write her two diary entries. Fact: one servant who had been among the Salem accusers was herself arrested and examined in April 1692.
  • A warrant is out in Salem in May 1692 and the man it names is not at home. Write his family's answers at the door. Fact: by May 1692 some of those accused at Salem were avoiding arrest, and two men were never caught.
  • A woman of seventy-seven is condemned at Salem in 1692 and her family makes a plan. Write the night of it without saying where she goes. Fact: a woman of 77, convicted at Salem in 1692, escaped with the help of family and friends.
  • An accused neighbor in Salem in 1692 is urged to confess to something she did not do. Write the night she decides. Fact: the museum in Salem says those who confessed in 1692 did so under extreme pressure.
  • An accused woman is let out of the Salem jail in 1692 and taken back a few days later. Write the days between. Fact: one woman was freed at Salem in 1692 when her accusers wavered, then arrested again when they changed their minds.
  • The constable knocks at the house next door in Salem Village in 1692. Write the minute from behind your own shutter. Angle: say what you know about your neighbor that you could tell, and whether you tell it.
  • Most of the accused at Salem are women, but not all. Write the day in 1692 a farmer hears his own name cried out. Fact: men were accused at Salem as well as women; five of the nineteen people hanged were men.
  • Write a letter from a Salem prisoner of 1692 to the children left at home, about the garden and nothing else. Angle: every line about beans and weeding carries what she cannot write down.
  • Write the petition that neighbors sign for an accused woman in Salem in 1692, and the talk at the one door where someone refuses. Fact: forty neighbors signed a petition in support of one woman accused at Salem.
  • Write the walk past an accused family's house in Salem in 1692, as a friend who used to stop in. Angle: count the steps from the gate to the corner, and say what you do with your eyes.
  • Your family's cow dies in Salem Village in 1692, and a neighbor you once quarreled with is already under suspicion. Write what you say when you are asked. Fact: a Salem complaint began when someone decided that a loss, an illness or a death was caused by witchcraft.

The one who speaks up 13

  • A cloth merchant spends four years collecting papers about the Salem trials that no local printer will touch. Write the day he sends them abroad. Fact: a Boston merchant gathered records of the Salem trials from 1693 to 1697; his book was printed in London in 1700.
  • A critic of the Salem trials writes that many guilty people should go free before one innocent person is condemned. Write the reply of someone still afraid. Fact: a critic of the Salem trials wrote in 1695 that a hundred witches should live before one innocent person died.
  • A man is jailed for a year over a book that criticizes the Salem trials. Write his statement on the day he is found not guilty. Fact: a man who criticized the Salem trials in print in 1695 was jailed twelve months, then found not guilty.
  • A minister petitions the assembly in June 1692 against the evidence used at Salem. Write the day the answer comes. Fact: a minister who challenged the Salem court's spectral evidence in June 1692 had to post a 200-pound bond.
  • A villager in Salem says aloud in March 1692 that she does not believe the accusers. Write the week that follows. Fact: a woman who voiced doubt about the Salem accusations in March 1692 was soon accused herself.
  • The governor comes back from the war in Maine in the autumn of 1692 and reads what has been done at Salem. Write his letter to London. Fact: in October 1692 the governor wrote that he had put a stop to the Salem court; no one was executed after that.
  • Leading ministers begin to doubt the evidence used at Salem. Write the conversation in which one persuades another. Fact: the Salem trials ended when leading clergymen came to doubt spectral evidence.
  • One of the Salem accusers wants to take back what she said in 1692. Write the hour she tries to tell someone. Fact: in the years after the Salem trials several accusers admitted that they had made up their charges.
  • Someone prints a pamphlet of doubt about the Salem trials without a name on it. Write the printer's worry. Fact: an unsigned tract on the Salem trials gave Philadelphia as its place of printing; it was likely printed in Boston.
  • Speak up for an accused neighbor in Salem in 1692 in a letter you know may be read aloud. Choose every word for that. Angle: say only what you saw with your own eyes, and say how long you have known her.
  • Write a dialogue between two people called only S and B, one from Salem and one from Boston, who disagree about the trials of 1692. Fact: an unsigned tract on the Salem trials was written as a dialogue between S and B, and B urged caution.
  • Write about the person who stays silent in Salem in 1692, and why. Do not excuse them and do not condemn them. Angle: give them one thing to lose, and one moment when speaking would have been easy.
  • Write the speech of someone who stands up in a Salem meeting in 1692 to say the evidence is not evidence. Angle: the speaker must insult nobody in the room, and must name what would change their own mind.

Looking back, years later 13

  • A class of schoolchildren finds one name from Salem in 1692 that was never cleared. Write the letter they send to the legislature. Fact: the last Salem conviction was reversed in 2022, after pressure from schoolchildren who found the gap.
  • A family is offered money by the province in 1711 for what happened at Salem in 1692. Write the argument over whether to take it. Fact: in 1711 the Salem convictions of 22 people were reversed, and 578 pounds 12 shillings was set aside.
  • A grandchild in 1730 asks a grandmother what she did in Salem in 1692. Write the answer she gives and the one she keeps to herself. Angle: she was eleven then; let the grandchild ask the second question you would ask.
  • A judge of the Salem trials stands in his church while his apology is read aloud. Write those minutes as someone three rows back. Fact: on January 14, 1697, a fast day for the Salem trials, a judge had his apology read to his congregation.
  • Compare Salem in 1692 with a time a rumor ran through your own school or town, without naming anyone. Angle: say what was claimed, what counted as proof, and who asked for more.
  • Correct a friend who says people were burned at the stake in Salem. Do it kindly, in one paragraph. Fact: no one was burned at the stake in Salem; the nineteen people executed in 1692 were hanged.
  • The court of 1702 found one word for the Salem trials. Write a paragraph on what that word did and did not repair. Fact: in 1702 the General Court of Massachusetts declared the Salem trials unlawful.
  • Design a memorial for the Salem trials in words: what it is made of, where a visitor sits, what is carved on it. Fact: the memorial park dedicated in Salem in 1992 has a stone bench for each person executed in 1692.
  • The place once called Salem Village has another name now. Write a walk through it with a map of 1692 in your hand. Fact: Salem Village is today the town of Danvers, Massachusetts.
  • Researchers with old maps and ground radar settle where the Salem hangings of 1692 took place. Write the morning they are sure. Fact: in 2016 a research team identified the Salem site at the base of Gallows Hill; a memorial followed in 2017.
  • Write a paragraph on what caused the afflictions at Salem in 1692 that admits what nobody can know. Fact: the museum in Salem says a single cause is unlikely and a combination of factors far more likely.
  • Write a Salem Village church meeting of 1703 that votes to undo something it did in 1692. Fact: on February 14, 1703, the Salem Village church voted to reverse the excommunication of one of the condemned.
  • Write the public apology of a former Salem accuser, fourteen years on, in your own words. She may not blame anyone else. Fact: on August 25, 1706, one of the most active Salem accusers publicly asked forgiveness in church.

How it works

These Salem witch trials writing prompts treat 1692 as a study of fear and evidence. The witnesses are made up, nobody real is named, and no prompt takes the accusations as true: the subject is what neighbors believed and did.

Read the full guide

Witch trial writing prompts about evidence

Twelve prompts sit in the hearing room. A clerk must write down everything said. A witness swears she saw the shape of someone who was elsewhere, which the court called spectral evidence. A new court in January 1693 refuses that kind of testimony, and its first five defendants are found not guilty.

The one who speaks up, and the years after

Thirteen prompts follow people who doubted aloud: a villager, a minister, a merchant collecting papers. Thirteen more look back, from the apology read in a Boston church in 1697 to the schoolchildren whose pressure cleared the last name in 2022.

  • Write the fear as real to the people who felt it. The prompts work only if the neighbors are not fools.
  • For any accusation, ask what would have counted as proof against it. Often nothing would.

Questions and answers

What are good Salem witch trials writing prompts for a history unit?

Ones that ask about proof. Sort what a court of 1692 counted as evidence by what a court would accept now. Or write the petition that forty neighbors signed for an accused woman, and the one door where someone refused.

When did the Salem witch trials happen?

Between February 1692 and May 1693, in colonial Massachusetts. More than 200 people were accused and nineteen were hanged. The accusations began in Salem Village, which is the town of Danvers today.

Do the prompts include magic or spells?

No. They are about real events of 1692, in which people were accused of something they had not done. Witches of fantasy have a list of their own, the witch story ideas.

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