Due to my own active interest in the witchcraft trials, I wanted to take the time to tell you a story that is hard to believe. And the only reaon it is hard to believe is because such a thing contibuted to the deaths of so many people, some even across the oceans.

Behavioral psychologist Dr Linda Caporael, while a graduate student, decided to look a little deeper into the Witch Trials of Salem Massachusetts. Unlike most of us, she did not believe that panic and mass hysteria was responsible for producing the symptoms that led to the arrest of 24 people, 19 of which were later executed as witches. The remaining 5 people died in jail.

The symptoms that these people described for bewitchment seemed familiar to the doctor, and so she began an investigation. Convulsions, tormented visions, crawling insects....the same symptoms which can be cause by a bad trip on LSD. Doctor Caporael finally discovered that the Puritans' rye crop had become infected with ergot fungus, thus contaminating their bread which was one of their main staples.

Going back over the areas, where most of the Witchcraft trials in Europe had taken place, produced a cross reference according to the weather and rye-farming patterns. Conclusion: Haight Ashbury, otherwise known as the halucinogen LSD or acid, was the culprit. The only bewitchment here was from tainted bread and therefore drug induced.