" The irresistible locked room mystery of the matter is what keeps us coming back to it. In 300 years, we have not adequately penetrated 9 months of Massachusetts history. If we knew more about Salem, we might attend to it less, a conundrum that touches on something of what propelled the witch panic in the first place. Things disturb us in the night. Sometimes they are our consciences. Sometimes they are our secrets. Sometimes they are our fears, translated from one idiom to another. Often what pinches and pricks, Nas, claws, stabs, and suffocates, like a 17th century which, is the irritatingly unsolved puzzle in the next room. "

― Stacy Schiff , The Witches: Salem, 1692