Watch Movies2Watch. 1692, Salem, Massachusetts; 162 people are arrested on charges of witchcraft. Five die in jail, one is crushed to death and 19 die on the gallows. The Salem witch trials have long been regarded as the textbook example of what happens when people are overwhelmed by hysteria. Now, author and historian, Katherine Howe, returns to the site of her ancestor's execution to discover how the very latest research has unearthed a chilling possibility that the most famous witch trial in the English speaking world was actually the result of a cynical plot by Salem's embattled Puritan Minister: Samuel Parris.