Why Did The Salem Witch Trials Occur? The Puritans couldn’t stand non-conformity! You needed to be a good little automaton for that society or you would likely be branded a witch….by some teenage girls who dreamed you were a witch?! What!? Yup the powers that be in Salem, MA in 1692 believed teenage girls who claimed people were witches when they dreamed about them. People died because of “spectral evidence”?? A production of the Wayward Things Network