1648. MARGARET JONES manifested startling efficacy of hands and medicines,
consternating keenness of perceptives, predictions subsequently verified,
and the presence of a vanishing child. Such was her witchcraft; and for
this she was executed.
1656. ANN HIBBINS comprehended conversation between persons too distant
from her to be heard normally, ... and was hanged.
1662. ANN COLE had her form possessed and spoken through by either the
devil or other disembodied ones, and by them made both to express thoughts
that never were in her mind, and to further the conviction and execution
of the Greensmiths.
1671-2. ELIZABETH KNAP'S external form was strangely convulsed and
agonized by an old man, and also spoken through by one who called himself
a pretty black boy.
1680. WILLIAM MORSE, in his home, where lived his good wife, who had been
called a witch, saw pots, andirons, tools, and household furniture
generally, seem to take on wills of their own, and rudely play many a
lively gymnastic game.
1688. JOHN GOODWIN saw four of his children subjected and tortured
immediately subsequent to the scolding of one of them by a wild Irish
woman; and the same one afterward was made to play the deuce in Cotton
Mather's own house. Mrs. Glover was hanged for bewitching; and also she
_continued to torture the same children after her spirit had left its
outer form_.
The above cases occurred prior to the holding of "The Circle" at Salem,
before the establishment of a school at which the arts of "necromancy,
magic, and spiritualism" might be learned. Generally the performers named
thus far had no visible confederates. If sole actors, their geniuses were
vast, and the fonts of malice or of benevolence in some of them were both
very capacious and copiously overflowing.
1692. TITUBA, the slave, avowed having been forced by something like a
man, and his four female spectral aids, to pinch the two little girls in
her master's family at the very time when they were first mysteriously
afflicted. She furnished strong evidence that a tall man with white hair
and serge coat, invisibly to others, frequently visited her, compelled her
aid, and kindled and long kept adding fuel to the fires of witchcraft at
Salem Village. For this she was imprisoned thirteen months, and then sold
to pay her jail fees.
SARAH GOOD was seen as a specter, was accused of hurting by occult organs
and processes; became invisible by those standing guard over her;
announced to the magistrates the great explanatory fact that none but the
accusers and the accused, that is, none but clairvoyants, could see the
actual inflictors of the pains endured. Also she fore-sensed a fact that
occurred when Mr. Noyes died in an after year. She was hanged.
DORCAS GOOD, not five years old, was big enough to have her specter seen,
to have her spirit-teeth bite, and also to see clairvoyantly. The little
witch was sent to jail.
SARAH OSBURN was sighted by the inner optics of the accused, and she heard
voices from out the unseen. This feeble one was sent to jail, and soon
died there.
MARTHA COREY was charged with afflicting; also she avowed heresy
pertaining to witchcraft. Though interiorly illumined far beyond her
accusers and judges, and enabled to smile amid their frowns, she was
executed.
GILES COREY, seen as a specter, and accused of harming many, would make no
plea to his indictment. Pressure, applied for forcing out a plea, extorted
only his call for "More weight, more weight,"--and his life went out.
REBECCA NURSE, venerable matron, daughter of a mother who had been called
a witch, and conscious of personal liability to then prevalent fits, was
seen by, and accused of hurting, members of The Circle. Therefore she must
be hanged--though jury first acquitted, and then, under rebuke, called her
guilty; and though governor pardoned, and then revoked his clement act.
Fealty to witchcraft creed in that case triumphed, though nearly defeated
twice.
MARY EASTY, noble woman, sister of the above, and daughter of the same
witch-blooded mother, once arrested and discharged, and then re-arrested,
because seen by inner eyes and accused of bewitching, rose sublimely above
thoughts of self and dread of death, and appealed to the magistrates, in
clear, strong, and forceful language, to change their course of
procedure, to spare the innocent, and become wisely humane.
SUSANNA MARTIN, spectrally seen, and a reputed witch during more than a
score of years, bravely faced the dangers besetting an accused one, was
self-possessed before the magistrates, was spicy, shrewd, and keen in her
answers to their questions, but failed to descend to confession, and died
on Gallows Hill.
MARTHA CARRIER, having been a clear seer for forty years, and long visible
by others similarly unfolded, was brave, self-possessed, and ready with
pointed retort. Because hard to subdue, accusations came thick and heavy
upon her from "The Circle" almost _en masse_, and she too was doomed to
mount the ladder.
SARAH CARRIER, daughter of the above, eight years old, stated instructive
facts in her experience as a clairvoyant, and notably said that her own
_spirit_ could go forth to others and hurt them; also that her mother's
was the only spirit with which she entered into the compact that made her
a witch.
REV. GEORGE BURROUGHS, sometimes supernally strong physically, because, as
himself asserted, an Indian, invisible by others, helped him; able, by
God's help as he claimed, to read his brother's thoughts; A freer and less
formal religionist than most clergymen of his day, because of his high
spiritual illumination; a humble but beneficent Christian--was, like his
exemplar, made to yield up life at the call of such as cried, "Crucify
him! crucify him!" If he was luminous, and spoke like an angel of light in
the hour of his departure, he was not Satan transformed, but George
Burroughs unvailing his genuine self.
1693. MARGARET RULE, the first of afflicted ones noticed in our pages,
endured her strange experiences last. The evening before her fits came on
she had been bitterly treated and threatened by an old woman whose curings
of hurts had put her under suspicions of witchcrafts. Margaret was not a
graduate from the Salem school, but was self-taught, if taught at all; and
yet she saw many specters--saw, in the night, a young man in danger of
drowning who was miles away from her; was lifted from her bed to the
ceiling above in horizontal position by invisible beings; fasted nine days
without pining; and saw and heard one bright and glorious visitant who
comforted and heartened her much. She under the special watch and care of
Cotton Mather, was held back, mainly perhaps by his advice, from any
divulgences which should endanger the lives of others. No blood was shed
because of her afflictions.
Twenty persons were put to death in Essex County, by the direct action of
government officials, between June 9 and September 23, 1692. Nearly or
quite two hundred were accused, arrested, imprisoned, and many more than
the executed twenty were convicted. Numerous arrested ones perished under
the hardships of prison life and gnawings of mental anxieties. Others had
health, spirits, domestic ties, and worldly possessions shattered to
pieces, and the condition of their subsequent lives made most forlorn and
wretched. Neither tongue nor pen can possibly tell their tale in its
fullness of horrors. Most excessively frenzying and woeful must have been
the privations, sufferings, heart-wrenchings, agonies of nearly all the
scattered residents of the then wooded region at and round about Salem
Village, when Christendom's mighty and malignant witchcraft devil was
believed to be prowling and fiercely slaughtering in their midst. No
blood, nor any other mark, on the door-posts would effectually warn the
fell destroyer to pass by and leave the occupants within unscathed.
Mysterious and fearful dangers flocked above, below, around, before, and
behind: they lurked here, there, and everywhere continually, so that none
could ever be at ease.
And now we ask, whether common sense admits that such credulity and
infatuation ever pervaded any hardy, energetic, and intelligent community,
in any county of Massachusetts or New England, in any age, as that girls
and old women, aided by a very few insignificant men, however bright,
cunning, roguish, playful, self-conceited, greedy of notice, or resentful
and malicious the leaders might be, could possibly so perform as to induce
Rev. Mr. Whiting, Samuel Willard, William Morse, Cotton Mather, Deodat
Lawson, Samuel Parris, Rev. Mr. Hale, and scores upon scores of other
intelligent, sagacious, and leading men, to present to the public, in
writing, such narratives as they did, and to essentially vouch for their
own belief in the positive occurrence of such "amazing feats" as they
described? We ask also, whether such frail enactors as a band of mere
girls and a few women must have been, could possibly devise and manifest
such tricks, and put forth such accusations, from any motives whatsoever,
as would cause the leading minds throughout a large section of the state
to regard the accused ones as allies of beings rising up from regions of
darkness, and making malignant and most baneful onslaught upon the
children of God and Christ, and upon the families and possessions of men,
in such numbers and with such force, that the civil power of the land was
urged and helped to put the gallows in use upon every one whose specter
was said to be seen and to torment? The amazing feats are well attested.
The more amazing deviltries both of the accusers and of courts and
executives, no one can doubt, if all the feats were offspring of mere
juvenile and senile cunning, fraud, and malice.
In the cases of Margaret Jones, Ann Cole, Elizabeth Knap, John Stiles, and
Martha Goodwin each, there is distinct mention of the presence, the
speech, or the action of some spirit. We found Tituba distinctly stating
that she saw, heard, and was made to help a nocturnal visitant whose
doings indicate that he was the originator of the vast Salem Tragedy: that
visitant was a spirit. Mr. Burroughs said, in explanation of his feats of
strength, that an Indian, invisible by others, was his helper. Margaret
Rule, as had Mercy Lewis the year before, saw, and each was infilled with
bliss by, a most glorious bright spirit. In our own day, in every city,
town, and hamlet of our land, as well as on the opposite shore of the
Atlantic, spirits are widely recognized as the authors of performances
alike strange and amazing in themselves, as those described in the
seventeenth century, which are there called witchcrafts. The primitive
records of American witchcrafts show that portions of it, and especially
that Salem witchcraft feats, were devised in supermundane brains, and
enacted under their supervision.