OCTC students host Salem Witch Trials exhibit

OWENSBORO, Ky. (WEHT) — Students at Owensboro Community and Technical College (OCTC) have pulled together an art exhibit worthy of the Halloween season. The exhibit tells the story of those accused during the Salem Witch Trials.

In the year 1692, 25 people were killed in Salem, Mass. after being accused of some form of witchcraft. OCTC history professor Matt Alschbach says any time the subject came up his students were locked in. So, he made a decision over the summer that it would be the center of a lesson in creating museum quality displays.

Students were given a month to sift through a database for firsthand accounts, including court documents and police reports from the period. Art and essays are on display at the college’s library, in the Learning Resource Center, through Nov. 1.

“It’s been incredible. I’ve had emails from people who say that they are the descendants of people that were in the witch trials, and they want to come out and see the exhibit,” says Professor Alschbach,.

Students say their findings sent them headfirst into lessons on criminal justice, gender, culture and religious identity.

Officials say 200 people were accused. They say research over the last 40 years has uncovered the perspective of more women, revealed issues of sexism and the need to make sense of the loss of family members in the Indian War through religion.

One student describes her subject Susannah Martin.

“She was seen as less than as a knowledgeable. Her greatest offender…her husband died. She was penniless. She lived 20 miles away in Amesbury, Mass….had no idea who even accused her. She never knew the girls,” says Avery Bowlds, a freshman at OCTC.

Another student was tasked with studying the very first accusers.

“I wasn’t biased toward any particular view of what caused it and what started it. I would say it definitely required empathy,” says Lawes Payne, a first year at OCTC and senior at Hancock County High School .

Professor Alschbach says research shows animals also played a huge part in people’s suspicians.

“[Puritans believed] it was actually the devil appearing to them in the form of an animal and trying to convince them to sign a pact with the devil…black cats, yellow birds, dogs, crows. We call these animal familiars,” says Alschbach.

Officials say they’ll play into today’s perspective of cats being great companions with a cat adoption event. In collaboration with the Daviess County Animal Shelter, it will take place at the College’s library on October 30th. Officials say it’s also a tribute to the ties between cats and witches.

Attendees can even donate money to make an adoption possible for someone who cant afford the fee.

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