"Betty" Parris was the nine year old daughter of the Salem villages' reverend Parris and was the first to become ill after being "bewitched" as most people thought. Her contortions, convulsions and outbursts of gibberish at first baffled everyone, especially when other girls began to show the same symptoms as her. Shortly after her illness the Salem witch trials began with the girls accusing neighbours of witchcraft.

Supposedly, she and her cousin, Abigail Williams, were taught some methods of fortune-telling by Tituba, their father's Barbados slave.

According to the play The Crucible, "Betty" and other girls start to act like they were being bewitched because they were scared. The night before "Betty" fell sick, Abigail Williams,other girls, and her were dancing in the woods. One of the girls was also running around naked, which Reverend Parris failed to mention in the courts or to anyone in general.