At Groton, Mass., in 1671, Elizabeth Knap was more singularly beset than
most others of that century who were deemed bewitched. The authority
transmitting an account of her is exceptionally good, having been written
by Rev. Samuel Willard, minister then at Groton, in the prime and vigor of
life. He had graduated at Harvard College twelve years before, afterward
became minister at the Old South Church in Boston, and was for several
years at the head of Harvard College. The girl in question was his pupil,
residing in his family during the earlier portion of her affliction, and
was under his watch till its close. His opportunities for observing the
case in its rise and progress were certainly very good, and he made a
journalistic account of its phases and progress under many specific dates
from October 30, 1671, to January 15, 1672, a space of eleven weeks or
more. He was an attentive observer and close questioner of the girl, and
also a cautious and intelligent chronicler.
She was at first subjected to extraordinary mental moods and violent
physical actions, which came on rather gradually, showing themselves in
marked singularities of conduct, for which she, when questioned, would
give little if any account. Strange, sudden shrieks, strange changes of
countenance, appeared first. These were soon followed by the exclamations,
"O, my leg!" which she would rub; "O, my breast!" and she would rub that,
it seeming to be in pain. Her breath would be stopped. She saw a strange
person in the cellar, when her companions there were unable to see any
such. She cried out to him, "What cheer, old man?" Afterward came fits, in
which she would cry out sometimes, "Money, money!" offered her as
inducements to yield obedience; and sometimes, "Sin and misery!" as
threats of punishment for refusal to obey the wishes of her strange
visitant. She said the devil appeared to her, and that she had seen him at
times for three years. He often talked with her, and urged her to make a
covenant with him, which she refused to do. November 26, six persons could
hardly hold her. The physician, who for about four weeks had considered
and treated the malady as a natural one, now pronounced it diabolical.
She barked like a dog, bleated like a calf, and seemed at times to be
strangled. At length distinct utterances came out. "A grum, low, audible
voice" said to Mr. Willard himself, "You are a great rogue--a great
rogue;" and yet "her vocal organs did not move." The voice was replied to
as being that of Satan himself, and its author responded, "I am not Satan;
I am a pretty black boy; this is my pretty girl; I have been here a great
while." "When he said to me" (Mr. Willard), "O, you black rogue, I do not
love you," I replied, "Through God's grace I hate thee." He rejoined, "You
had better love me." The strength shown through the girl, the writer and
witness says, "is beyond the force of dissimulation, and the actings of
convulsions are quite contrary to these actings." Through all her
sufferings "she did not waste in body or strength." Speech came from her
without motion of the organs of speech. Also "we observed, when the voice
spoke, her throat was swelled formidably, at least as big as one's fist."
She said she "saw more devils than any one there ever saw men in the
world."
No attendant sacrifice of life gave intensification of interest to this
Groton case, and it failed to become prominently conspicuous among
witchcraft events. Still it is more instructive on some points than almost
any other one of them. Here first have we found in colonial history any
statement that an intelligence speaking through a borrowed or usurped form
disclosed _who_ he was.
Mr. Willard, to whose care this girl was intrusted, and in whose family
she had been a resident, was convinced that some other being than the girl
herself was giving utterance through her lips, and in harmony with a
necessary inference from the general faith of his times, addressed the
unknown one under supposition that he was veritably _The Devil_. The being
thus accosted promptly said, "I am not _Satan_; I am a pretty black boy."
The girl said she had been accustomed to see her visitant, at times,
during three preceding years, and that she saw more devils than any one
there ever saw men in the world. Her notions in reference to the proper
application of words were obviously just as loose as the prevalent ones in
community then, which deemed any spirit visitant whatsoever a devil, or
the devil. An observer of such beings as she saw would to-day call them
spirits. When she perceived and called out to some personage invisible to
her companions, saying, "What cheer, old man?" she plainly indicated that
the being thus hailed was apparently neither more nor less than an old
man, and he, judged by her address to him, was by no means austere or
repulsive; and yet he doubtless was one of those whom she, or whom the
reporter of her utterances, was accustomed to call _devils_. There is no
indication that she ever saw one specially huge, malformed, malignant
personality, or that she ever intended to indicate perception of such a
one.
The purposes and moods of Mr. Willard's interlocutor seem to have been
playful and kindly, rather than morose and satanic. Temporarily
reincarnated spirits are often prone to smile at the long-faced and
cringing thoughts which their advent evokes in persons not accustomed to
interviews with them. "You are a great rogue--a great rogue," and "you had
better love me," can hardly be deemed ill-timed or inappropriate
expressions from a lively boy, whatever his hue, who, on being mistaken
for the devil, would naturally banter the sedate clergyman whose creed
forced him to regard such a visitant as the Prince of Evil. He said truly,
and in better spirit than the minister's, it would be better for you to
love than to "hate" me.
Common fairness asks all men to regard any speaker's account of himself as
true, until some reason appears for distrusting him. No word or deed
ascribed to this pretty black boy, who said he was not Satan, renders the
accuracy of his statement doubtful. Distrust of him, if it spring up, will
probably be the offspring of prejudices, combined with ignorance of spirit
methods of opening ways to reach man's cognizance, and win him to seek
communings with his preceding kindred who possess more experience and
consequent greater wisdom than pertains to any dwellers in mortal forms.
Our incrustations of ignorance and prejudice withstand every gentle
appliance, and yield only to sledge-hammer blows.
Sensations, conditions, and various powers attendant on Elizabeth Knap
were emphatically extraordinary. Detailed journalistic account of them
having come down from a sagacious, cautious, truthful, and cultured
man--from one of the eminently trustworthy men of his generation--demands
credence. He says the strength of her body was "beyond the force of
dissimulation;" that "six persons could hardly hold her;" and that "the
actings were contrary to those of convulsions."
Another point is, that through the eleven weeks of such rough exploits,
"she did not waste in body or strength." Cotton Mather speaks of some who
were so preserved through similarly tortured states, that, "at the end of
one month's wretchedness, they were as able still to undergo another."
Similar preservation of flesh and strength, amid fastings and most
excessive activity, are frequent experiences to-day with the highly
mediumistic, especially in the earlier stages of their dominations by
invisibles.
Speech came from her without motion of her vocal organs. That much may
pertain to simple ventriloquence; but Mr. Willard says also that "we
observed, when the voice spoke, her throat was swelled formidably, at
least as big as one's fist." Ventriloquence has not usually such an
adjunct as that. Moreover, the minister was convinced that the utterings
were prompted by other will than hers.
This girl's experience abounds in evidences that her spirit faculties of
perception were so freed from hamperings by the outer body, that she could
consciously see, hear, and converse with spirits, and that her physical
system was subject to control by them for speech in varied forms and
modes, and for strange and violent action by her limbs.
In parts of the narrative which we have not copied, it appears that
accusation came from her lips that Mr. Willard himself and some other
godly ones in his parish were her tormentors. This was saying to Samuel in
most startling manner, as one of old did to David, "_Thou art the man_;"
for at that day faith was common that the devil had not power to accuse a
godly person, could not indeed accuse any others than guilty ones of being
contributors to outworkings of witchcraft. If the announcement was true,
Mr. Willard and other good ones, according to the faith of some at that
day, were covenanters with the devil. It was a fearful moment when such
accusation of the good clergyman fell upon his ears from the lips of his
tortured pupil. His resort, and that of another accused one, was to
prayer; and we can readily fancy that petitions heavenward then rose up
from the lowest depths of true and earnest souls, and went forth, in the
girl's presence, with such psychologizing power as loosened the hold of
any spirit possessing her form, and allowed her to regain full possession
and control of all her normal powers.
This subject of spirit control retained consciousness during her
entrancements, or during the times when her body was subject to a will not
her own, as many mediums do at this day. Consequently she would possess
more or less knowledge of whatever was said or done by her organs and
limbs, whoever controlled them. Being young, she could scarcely be
competent to make, and keep in remembrance, the broad severance of her
individual responsibility for what was done by others and what by herself,
through use of her own physical faculties. It was natural--almost
necessary--that she should become self-condemnatory for having had done
through her what gave distress and anguish to her friends, even though she
had lent no voluntary aid to the deeds, nor had power to prevent their
being enacted.
We presume her statement was true that Mr. Willard and the others then
accused were, though unconsciously, made to be contributors of aid to the
controllers of his pupil; true that she felt the workings of emanations
from them. Twenty years afterward an "afflicted" one in Salem Village
began to cry out upon this same man as being one of her afflicters. And
why? Because, probably, of constitutional properties in him which spirits
could avail themselves of as helps for entrancing or controlling
mediumistic persons. The laws which governed detection of tormentors of
the bewitched will come under more extended consideration in subsequent
parts of our work. Results indicate that Samuel Willard's system possessed
either material or psychic properties, or both, which exposed him to
accusation of bewitching some sensitives, whose perceptive powers could
trace back to their source any mesmerizing forces that entered into and
acted efficiently upon their own systems.
In his usual temper and judgment witchward, Hutchinson pronounced the
sufferings of Elizabeth Knap "fraud, imposture, and ventriloquism"! Shade
of Samuel Willard! How look you now, and how shall we mortals look upon
the man, who, ninety years after your day, casting a glance backward into
the darkened chambers of the long past, perceived yourself to have been a
credulous dolt and simpleton, unable, by eleven weeks' close study and
vigilant watch, to determine that the source of marvelous phenomena
manifested in your own domicile, before your own attentive eyes, was
exclusively mundane? From looking at the occurrences, as they lay dormant
and half buried under the dust which ninety full years had been throwing
over them, Hutchinson saw at a glance that they were nothing but frauds,
impostures, and ventriloquism. You, Rev. Sir, at first doubted their
supermundane source, but study of and deliberate reflection upon them for
weeks satisfied you that your doubts were untenable; you obviously was
devoid of such credulity as enabled Hutchinson to very promptly obtain
conviction that your Elizabeth was but an actor of fraud and imposture.
Alas for your sagacity, Samuel Willard!
Upham makes no account of either Ann Cole or Elizabeth Knap, though these
were decidedly the best American prototypes of the magic-taught girls in
Salem Village, whose schemings and exploits he dwells upon at great
length. He claims that the witchcraft generators and enactors there
studied, schemed, and practiced in concert at "a circle," and thus learned
how, and by what means, to originate and perform it. All known
circumstances conspire to indicate that neither Ann Cole nor Elizabeth
Knap had either visible teachers or co-operators in their marvelous
operations. Therefore, had the historian adduced those two cases--these
good exemplars of the performers at Salem--perhaps he would have been
asked who trained the isolated performers twenty and thirty years before a
necromantic seminary had been founded, at which the arts of magic,
necromancy, and Spiritualism could be taught and learned. Was there
anywhere a prior institution of that kind? If not, then we ask, was any
circle kindred to that at Salem an essential--a _sine qua non_--to
acquiring competency for skillful practice of witchcraft? or of acts
called witchcraft of old? May not natural endowments sometimes be ample
qualification for admitting the evolvement through one's form of very
great marvels? If not, the sporadic performances at Hartford and Groton
are troublesome to account for.
The advent of one spirit to Elizabeth Knap, and his use of her organs of
speech in carrying on a dialogue with the Rev. Samuel Willard, is
distinctly stated by that trustworthy chronicler. Also, according to him,
the girl saw vast hosts of similar beings--yes, more in number than any
one present had ever seen men in their lives. Here, surely, is very strong
testimony to the general fact that spirit action took sensible effect upon
and among human beings away back in 1671-2, in the quiet inland town of
Groton.
What is fit treatment of such facts and testimony from such a source?
Should they be left unadduced and unalluded to, as they were by one
elaborate historian? Should they be called outgrowths from "fraud and
imposture," as they were by another? Or should writers upon the subject,
in manly way, both let the facts come forth and speak for themselves, and
leave the sagacity and veracity of their exemplary chronicler above
suspicion, till by facts, and fair deductions from them, they render it
probable that Samuel Willard was the slave of such delusion as
disqualified him for reasoning with common accuracy upon what his external
senses perceived day after day and week after week? Shrinking, by an
historian of New England's witchcraft, from distinct notice of Willard's
deliberate and carefully drawn conclusions from facts transpiring in his
presence, is not only a keeping back of important information, but
possibly is an implication either that Willard himself was an unreliable
witness, or a witness on the other side of the question, whose testimony
would be troublesome. Generous blood boils with rebuke when boasted
enlightenment either ignores or traduces the most competent and
trustworthy transmitters of marvelous facts, where so doing facilitates
command of room for setting up modern fancies in niches where ancient
facts have rightful foothold.
On the good authority of Samuel Willard we find that Elizabeth Knap saw
hosts of spirits, was roughly handled and spoken through by some of them,
and by one who said he was _not Satan_, but a pretty black boy. This was a
case of spirit manifestation.