December 1691, in the Boston area: the rural community of Salem Village is, in the midst of misfortune, a stone’s throw from Salem Town, an expanding port city, and whose freezing winter has less impact on the economy there. Indeed, the small rural village below the valley is suffering martyrdom.
Among the inhabitants are Titubaa slave sold in Barbados to the Reverend Samuel Parris, who officiates within the community. His Amerindian origins give him a dark complexion and special skills, including Betty Parris et Abigail Williams, the daughter and the niece of the reverend will pay the price: following having forced the slave to teach them the art of divination, they would have been seized with convulsions and hallucinations. The diagnosis of the doctors is without appeal: demonic possession.
It is in this setting, conducive to occult deviations and fear, that the story of a disproportionate witch hunt unfolds. A freezing winter, harvests that will be ruined even before the first buds appear, hunger that torments stomachs and minds struck by fear of an attack by Native American tribes… Everything is in place for the area to be transformed into an uncontrollable powder keg, and a receptacle for all fantasies.
What was the evidence to accuse Tituba, along with other Salem residents, of witchcraft? Can we rationally explain the manifestations of the demon? H-Hour lifts the veil on this incredible affair, which had more than twenty people executed.
