An episode of, hmm, Ripley's maybe? attributed the Salem Witch Trials to ergot in the grain supply. It was actually just a sociopathic teen bitch that made the accusations, and then recanted them 20 or so years later, but not before a bunch of superstitious and/or hateful a-holes murdered a bunch of their neighbors.
Salem witch trials;
No, not ergot. The girls were daughters of a Preacher in the town. They had a West Indian Slave woman who did divination. That may have been the doorway into what they did.
The adults at the trial should have treated them as demon possessed rather than accepting their spectal witness.