his issue. Historians Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum cogitate the idea of these economic tensions and social factionalism being the reason for the mass hysteria in Salem at the time of the accusations. The other validation of the witch episodes was that of Laurie Winn Carlson's, stating that the accusations were linked to a pandemic disease of encephalitis. Carlson's view on the situation is more lunatic than the wild speculations of the adolescent girls when they were in the climax of their afflictions, therefore, making social factionalism, the patterns of the accusations, and communal identity the correct reasons for the S
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