From among the works of witchcraft that occurred from 1648 to 1688, we
have now presented six cases, which bring into view some phenomena that
are very like many which are now called spirit manifestations. The
efficient touch of Margaret Jones, of Charlestown, the extraordinary
efficacy of her hands and simple medicines, her prophetic powers, the
keenness of her hearing, and the materialization of a spirit-child in her
arms, brought her to the gallows in 1648. Ann Hibbins, of Boston,
seemingly because of the wit-sharpening acuteness of her hearing, was
hanged in 1656. Ann Cole, of Hartford, Conn., in 1662, had her vocal
organs "improved" by some intelligence not her own for the utterance of
thoughts which were never in her mind, and some of the utterances through
her contributed to the conviction and consequent execution of the two
Greensmiths, husband and wife. At Groton, a spirit controlling the form of
Elizabeth Knap, in 1671, made avowal that he was "a pretty black boy, and
not Satan." At Newbury, in 1679, the wild dance of pots, kettles,
andirons, and things in general, came off on the premises of William
Morse. And at Boston, in 1688, inflictions upon the Goodwin children led
to the execution of Mrs. Glover, "one of the wild Irish."
Cases thus scattered in both time and space, half of them limited each to
a single actor or sufferer, and each differing widely from any other in
many of its prominent features, cannot satisfactorily be ascribed to
acquired skill in legerdemain, histrionic art, magic, or necromancy,
unattended by help from the living dead.
The name of the wild Irish woman, whose harsh language was speedily
followed by the distortions and sufferings of the Goodwin children, was
Glover. Calef calls her "a despised, crazy, ill-conditioned old woman--an
Irish Roman Catholic." The public believed that she put forth criminal
action upon that family, arrested her therefor, received at her trial some
indications that she had dealings with invisible beings, pronounced her
guilty of witchcraft, and hanged her. She doubtless forsensed retention of
power to act either directly or through others upon the objects of her
resentment, even after the gallows should have done its utmost work upon
herself. For it is stated that "at her execution she said the children
would not be relieved by her death ... and ... the three children
continued in their furnace as before, and it grew rather seven times
hotter than it was, and their calamities went on till they barked at one
another like dogs, and then purred like so many cats; would complain that
they were in a red-hot oven, and sweat and pant as if they had been really
so. Anon they would say cold water was thrown on them, at which they would
shiver very much. They would complain of being roasted on an invisible
spit; and then that their heads were nailed to the floor, and it was
beyond an ordinary strength to pull them from it."--_Annals of
Witchcraft_, p. 185.
Such facts were gathered from Cotton Mather's account; they come to us
from one whose influences and writings are alleged to have been most
strongly provocative of executions for witchcraft. Perhaps some of them
became so. But his presentation of both the momentous fact and its
confirmation by observed experiences, that the spirit of an executed
psychologist could act back from beyond the gallows, involved a crushing
argument against the wisdom of suspending her or any one else with a view
to stop bewitchment. The liberation of one's spirit increases its powers
for action upon surviving mortals. Mather's facts argued that.