Imagine, for a moment, a criminal trial where an adolescent accuser testifies that an adult defendant tormented the child … in a dream. Jurors agree to acquit, but then return a guilty verdict after the judge reminds them of testimony.

That would bring cries of outrage, right?

Today perhaps, but not in one Massachusetts community made famous more than 300 years ago because of its swift system of criminal and religious justice. By the time the madness that gripped Salem Village ended in 1693, 19 women and men accused of practicing witchcraft were hanged in an effort to terminate contracts with the Devil. A dozen others died in prison.

After visiting the Salem Witch Museum two years ago, tourist Tim Sutter of Bloomington, Ill., began reading up on the famous trials and became captivated by the tales of the collective hysteria that consumed the small farming community. Salemwitchtrials.com resulted from the 27-year-old web developer's interest in the legal proceedings, which also spawned numerous books, documentaries, poems and countless college dissertations.

The Web site features links to transcripts of some of the pre-trial interrogations of suspected witches — many of whom went to the gallows insisting that they were innocent and charging their accusers of being bewitched themselves. The site also provides biographies of key players and a scholarly essay written by Sutter that puts the trial and its aftermath into perspective given the puritan values of the community.

Sutter believes crop failures, a harsh winter and a community/church power struggle combined to make Salem Village ripe for accusations of witchcraft that began with two sisters and spread to a half-dozen others. Many of those condemned to death were convicted solely on "spectral" evidence, testimony about their spirits tormenting their accusers in various ways.

"There were Indian attacks, illnesses and the [town] charter was up. There was a lot of stress," Sutter said during an interview. "[Witchcraft] served as a scapegoat for the stresses they were facing during that time period. Of course, it is kind of hard for us to relate to now, 300 years later."

When schoolchildren e-mail Sutter with questions about the trials, he tells them to think about their own experiences with prejudice, social cliques and rumor mongering. The Salem witch trials were similar, but carried to the extreme, he said.

Salem Village split with the Town of Salem in the mid-18th Century and changed its name to Danvers, but the transcripts of the trials have been preserved and periodically published, sustaining interest in the period.

"It's the whole whodunit aspect. Although we know a lot of the facts of what happened, it still has not been explained as to why this occurred," said Richard Trask, Danvers' town archivist. "Just about every generation since the 1690s has come up with a new explanation."

One of the explanations offered in modern times centered around speculation that a fungus growing on rye meal caused many of the "afflictions" reported by accusers of suspected witches.

"There are so many survived records of the events, so any one can become an amateur sleuth or historian, and read and digest and come up with some explanation. What made the girls accuse? What made the people go forward with it?" Trask said. "It really is one of the better events in history that has a lot of primary source material to it."

Sutter, whose site links to transcripts of the trial posted by the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia, said he enjoys using the primary source material to correct wrong impressions many people have formed about one of the more fascinating periods in America's pre-Revolutionary War history.

"There are a lot of misconceptions out there. There are still a lot of people who believe they were burned at the stake. That's grossly inaccurate," Sutter said. "The puritans believed that was inhumane. They believed hanging was more civilized."

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