was companion prisoner of Sarah Good and Tituba on the memorable first
week in March, 1692. Thirty years before, she had been married to Thomas
Prince, and at the time of her arrest was wife of Alexander Osburn;
consequently she was well advanced in years. She also had long been an
invalid, confined during long periods to her bed. Her worldly
circumstances were comfortable--she and her family were neither poor nor
rich--were neither very low nor very high on the social scale. _But she
had heard words coming forth from unseen lips._ And on February 25, her
apparition appeared to and annoyed Ann Putnam. Nothing has been noticed in
the records which indicates that Ann ever spoke of any perceptions by her
inner senses prior to that date, or that any member of the circle,
excepting Tituba, preceded Ann in having opened vision. The latter saw
"the tall man, with white hair and serge coat," as early as January 15.
But Tituba's voice, had she have spoken, would have been powerless. Ann's
position in society was high; she belonged to a family of wealth, culture,
influence, and high respectability. Her mystical words were potent. In
four days subsequent to her first reported vision of apparitions, three
women were under arrest for witchcraft, and Ann's father was one of the
very efficient advocates of prosecutions for that crime. Feeble,
"bed-ridden" Sarah Osburn, of whom Upham speaks as one whose "broken and
disordered mind was essentially truthful and innocent," and whose
residence was at least a mile and a half north from Mr. Parris's home, and
quite distant east from Ann's, on a road not likely to be often traveled
by her, was among the marked and blasted three. Why? None now, perhaps,
can tell with certainty. Probabilities alone can be adduced. Our
supposition is, that at the moment when Ann's keen and far-sweeping inner
sight was opened, and spirit substance, instead of material light, became
her medium of vision, the most brilliant objects to meet her gaze, in all
the region far around, would be one or more of the mediumistically
unfolded persons dwelling there. From those among that class whose
systems were fountains of emanations which at the time impinged upon her
sensibilities, and did not harmoniously coalesce with her elements, and
therefore acted as quasi acids upon her alkalies, or as alkalies upon her
acids, produced painful effervescences which might ensue naturally, apart
from the aid of any manipulating intelligence; or, if some intelligent
being were observant of the currents and conditions of spirit magnetisms
or forces then, and disposed to either intensify, abate, or modify their
natural action, he might do so, and also could manipulate them to
furtherance of his own ends, whether beneficent or malignant. Then and
there, even high benevolence in one whose vision swept the far future,
might take such primal steps as short-sighted mortals must look upon as
necessarily altogether harmful in both immediate and remote results.
Such natural laws as reign supreme in spirit-realms may have led to the
selection of secluded, inoffensive, "essentially truthful, and innocent"
Sarah Osburn, as one of the tormentors of the girls, who were either
schooled in magic by their own elected study and practice of it, or were
constitutionally fitted for fitful enfranchisement of their inner
perceptive organs while yet dwellers in their mortal forms, and whose
bodies could become tools for other minds to use. If she was simply the
voluntary actor out of her own "cunning or imposture," little Ann Putnam,
twelve years old, brightest among the bright, and member of one of the
most intelligent and religious families of the Village, she also must have
been herself a _devil_, and so devilishly a devil, that even Cloven-foot
might feel it a duty to pass his scepter into her hands. But grant that
she was a medium through whose form other minds and wills could act, as
she in fact was, and then we can regard her physical form as simply an
instrument through which an intelligence other than herself manifested
action to human senses; and thus we can deem _her_ guiltless, whatever
shall be our judgment of the intruding performer upon her "harp of a
thousand strings."
Parts of the testimony in the case of Mrs. Osburn reveal her possession of
mediumistic susceptibilities. As with Joan of Arc and many others, so with
this woman; the inner ear could hear voices from some source impalpable by
external senses.
"(It was said by some in the meeting-house that she had said that she
would never be tied to that lying spirit any more.)
"_Q._ 'What lying spirit is this? Hath the devil ever deceived you and
been false to you?'
"_A._ 'I do not know the _devil_. I never did see him.'
"_Q._ 'What lying spirit was it, then?'
"_A._ 'It was a _voice_ that I thought I heard.'
"_Q._ 'What did it propound to you?'
"_A_. 'That I should go no more to meeting. But I said I would; and did go
the next Sabbath day.'"--_Woodward's Hist. Series_, No. I. p. 37.
Although the timid prisoner said only that she _thought_ she heard a
voice, the reader will notice that she made no denial that she had
previously said "that she would never be tied to that _lying spirit_ any
more;" therefore by fair implication she conceded that she had once, if
not many times, heard a voice which she had openly spoken of as having
been that of a _lying spirit_; and also that she had more or less been
instructed by and followed his, her, or its advice. The fact that she was
enjoined not to go to meeting any more, argues nothing either against the
spiritual source of the advice, or the good intent of whoever gave it. She
had long been a sickly, bed-ridden woman; therefore such advice might have
been given by any wise Christian physician. We are not concerned with
either the moral or religious states of invisible actors and speakers, but
are looking specially for some of the more distinct evidences that
invisible intelligences of some quality enacted Salem witchcraft, and,
therefore, looking for the peculiar properties of both the embodied
persons through and those upon whom they directly acted.
Sarah Osburn, though a secluded, respectable, inoffensive woman well
advanced in years, was an early victim before the sweeping blast that
rushed over the Village. Too feeble to endure the hardship of prison life,
she died in jail before the day for her trial. She who heard voices from
out the realm of silence, possessed inner faculties in fit condition to
permit effluxes that reached and annoyed the mediumistic children, who
traced them back to her, and made statements which brought her under
suspicion of being a covenanter with the devil. Such capabilities
constituted her crime--her witchcraft--and incited a devil-fighting people
to persecution which hastened her exit to the realm from which the
advisory voices had come upon her ears.