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 "A skillful retelling of the

endlessly fascinating story of

the 1692 witchcraft crisis for

young readers ... a gripping,

sophisticated narrative."

—Mary Beth Norton

MYSTERIES OF
the salem
WITCH TRIALS

AUTHOR OF THE SIBERT AWARD-WINNER

SIR WALTER RALEGH AND THE QUEST FOR EL DORADO
what really happened

mi
''Massachusetts,
169:f.
In a plain meetinghouse, a woman stands before

her judges. The accusers, girls and young women,

are fervent, overexcited, just on the edge of

breaking out into convulsions. The accused is a

poor, unpopular woman who had her first child

before she was married. As the trial proceeds, the

girls

that the
begin to wail, tear their clothing, and scream

woman is hurting them. Some of them

m oCD
W
O 0)
expose wounds to the horrified onlookers, holding

out the pins that have stabbed them— pins that

go
have appeared as if by magic. Are the girls acting,

or are they really tormented by an unseen evil?

Whatever the cause, the nightmare in Salem has

ft
o
begun: The witch trials will eventually claim twenty-

five lives, shatter the community, and forever shape

the American social conscience. Q}

o>
Acclaimed historian Marc Aronson sifts through
the facts, myths, half-truths, misinterpretations, and

theories around the Salem witch trials to present us

with a vivid narrative of one of the most compelling

mysteries in American history. Witch-Hunt is a

brilliant book that will stimulate and challenge

readers to come to their own conclusions about

what really happened during those terrifying

months of accusations, trials, and executions.

A JUNIOR LIBRARY GUILD

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 '44

, Witch-
HUNT
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MYSTERIES OF
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WITCH TRIALS

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Witch-
HUNT
MYSTERIES OF
the salem
WITCH TRIALS
^TT? cl ^l

Marc Aronson

ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

New York London Toronto Sydney
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to Ginee Seo for suggesting this

subject to me and for providing challenges and

insights that helped me turn an accumulation of
research and ideas into a book. George Nicholson
was a most helpful adviser and guide in the mysteries
of publishing. I have also been fortunate in receiving
assistance from scholars. Professors Charles Cohen
and Randall Balmer provided useful bibliographic
leads, as did Andre Carus. Professor Bernard
Rosenthal read the entire manuscript carefully, was
gracious in his comments, and saved me from a

number of errors.
It was my great good fortune to be able to read an
early copy of Mary Beth Norton's landmark new study
of Salem, In the Devil's Snare, just as my book went into

production. As readers of the text and notes will see, I

was able to enrich my narrative with her new insights,

and, on two important points where I had not followed

Professor Rosenthal's advice, her better example
allowed me to recognize the folly of my ways. She was

generous, too, in saving me from a number of small

and foolish errors. But to get a full sense of her fresh

approach and new interpretations, I urge my readers

to go on to read her pathbreaking book. Finally,

Richard Trask, archivist at the Danvers Archival
Center, who is so often helpful to scholars of Salem,

i^viK-
generously gave me informed guidance on images. Of
course, I am solely responsible for all the facts, con-
clusions, and remaining limitations in this book.
Ken and Alexis Krimstein were wonderful com-
panions when I wrote this book, and their recording of
the late Nina Simone singing "Sinnerman" probably
provided whatever narrative gusto is in the text. Shirley

Budhos's loving attention to my son gave me great

freedom to write. Marina, as ever, was the very best of

readers: questioning, engaged, demanding only the

best. There is probably no better way to become a

writer than to be married to one who is constantly

challenging herself and setting a high standard for the

family.

^vii^
 CONTENTS
Note to the Reader x
A Note About the Images in This Book xiv
On Spelling, Word Usage, and
Dates in This Book xv
INTRODUCTION: Of Dark Forests
and Midnight Thoughts I

"The Queen of Hell" 3

Two Familiar Fairy Tales 7
Skittering Shadows 14
Belief or Fraud? 16
PROLOGUE: The
Boston, 1688:
Possession of the Goodwin Children 21
Mather vs Glover 23
Of Meetinghouses and the Blood of
Wolves: The Puritan Journey 25
Testing a Witch 31
Exploring the Invisible World 35
Lessons and Warnings 37
CHAPTER I: Two Salem Families, 1641-1692 41
The Putnams and the Porters 43
The Theft 49
A Minister's Warnings 5^
CHAPTER II: Two Mysteries 55
The First Mystery 57
The Second Mystery 62
The Second Mystery Deepens 67
CHAPTER III: The Mysteries End and
the Hearings Begin 75
The Usual Suspects 77
Tituba's Confession 82
CHAPTER IV: The Accuser: Ann Putnam Jr. 89
Biting, Pinching, and Choking 9^
Of Tests and Wishes 9^

-^vlilK-
CHAPTER V: The One and the Many 103
Martha Corey 105
"Confess and Give Glory to God" II4
CHAPTER VI: From Hearings to Trials 123
"Alas, Alas, Alas, Witchcraft" 125
To Hear and Decide 130
One Dead: Bridget Bishop 134
CHAPTER VII The Man : in Black 141
Vengeful Ghosts 143
Two Men in Black 147
CHAPTER VIII: "Choosing Death with
a Quiet Conscience" 155
"If I Would Confess, I Should
Have My Life" 157
A Confused Jury 163
"Till the Blood Was Ready to Come
Out of Their Noses" 165
CHAPTER IX: "That No More Innocent
Blood Be Shed" 173
Mary Easty 175
"It Was All False" 181
"I Do Most Heartily, Fervently,

and Humbly Beseech Pardon" 184

CHAPTER X: "A Great Delusion of Satan" 189
Ann Putnam Jr. Speaks 191
Wheels Within Wheels 202
EPILOGUE: Explaining Salem 207
Fraud, Witches, Hysterics, Hallucinators 209
APPENDIX: The Crucible, Witch-Hunt, and Religion:
Crossing Points of Many Histories 221
Timeline of Milestones in Puritan History 229
Important Dates in Puritan History Before 1692 229
Chronology of Events in the Salem Witch Crisis 231
Notes and Comments 234
Bibliography 2 56
Index ' 261

^'n^
 Note to the Reader

As you will see, there are many different ways to

interpret the witchcraft trials that took place in Salem,

Massachusetts, in 1692. But there is one thing you can

be sure of: If you have previously read novels for
younger readers or popular adult accounts about those
fascinating and frightening times, or if you have visited
Salem itself, a good part of what you know is wrong.
Over the centuries the actual events that took place that

year were surrounded with a series of stories based on

misinterpretations, fantasies, and half-truths that were

passed along so many times from book to book that

eventually they were treated as true.

For example, in one frequently told story the out-

break of witchcraft accusations begins when a black, or
half-black, slave named Tituba teaches her Caribbean

voodoo-inspired magic to local girls. Another staple

scene of books on Salem opens with a couple of girls

using occult methods to divine their future husbands'

professions. When the experiment produces a ghastly

result, the girls are terrified, and their strange symp-

toms set off all the witchcraft accusations. We read of
Satanic rituals in the woods, reminiscent to us now of
scary practices in horror movies or of the allegedly
ancient pagan practices that some claim to be reviving
today. On the other side of the equation, the Puritan

ministers, especially Cotton Mather, are often por-

^x^
 Note to the
Reader

trayed as driven, harsh inquisitors bent on oppressing

women and stamping out any sign of spontaneous,
life -affirming fun. Arthur Miller's play The Crucible

combines many of these themes in a vividly rendered

narrative. In his drama the events in Salem are
explained as arising from a fear of sexuality, a willing-

ness to give in to powerful families, and a tendency to

demonize enemies.
In fact, Tituba was certainly an Indian, not
African, and there is absolutely no evidence that she

made use of any rituals of her own. If she practiced any

"magic" at all, she used techniques she learned from
the English. It is far from clear that the girls who were
first afflicted were trying to figure out who their hus-
bands would be through the old English practice of
dropping an egg white in water and studying the
shapes. Carefully read, the one record that perhaps

indicates that a girl was spooked by seeing the image of

a coffin in the water turns out to be a muddled blend-

ing of different stories.
Many people in New England believed in and used

charms, astrological charts, and rituals handed down

through the centuries to fend off evil influences, fore-
tell the future, or interpret God's will. Though there

is only very fragmentary evidence of this, it is not com-

pletely impossible that some even thought of them-
selves as witches. But there is no connection between
these examples of folk magic and the modern practice

of Wicca. The Puritan ministers, including Mather,

^xiK-
Witch-
HUNT

were much more measured and troubled in their

response than legend would have it. The Crucible is a psy-

chologically astute historical drama that is quite useful

for understanding the 1950s in which it was written,
but it is no guide to making sense of events in the
1690s.
For decades scholars have tried to clear away this

underbrush and to make sense of what the original

sources actually tell us. I am the beneficiary of their

diligence and have been inspired to make a few correc-
tions of my own. You can see the trail of historical
detective work in the "Notes and Comments" section
at the back of this book.
If you would like to learn more about the events of

1692 by visiting modern Salem, you will see the traces

of the very stories scholars no longer accept. You can

learn of supposedly real witches and visit amusement
park—style haunted houses. These venues either offer
some fun and scary thrills or "honor" the witches of the
past by recognizing them as believers in a kind of alter-
native, female -oriented nature religion. Other reen-
actments tell the anti- Puritan version of the Salem

story, depicting replicas of the dungeons of the day or

reading from actual transcripts, to show how mean and
cruel the judges and ministers were. These exhibits and
performances are more or less entertaining, but they

are not very helpful in understanding the past.

We can say what did not happen at Salem. It is much

harder to say what did. The challenge of this book is to

-i^xil^
 Note to the
Reader

give you enough information to begin to think that

through for yourself. If the study of the witchcraft

accusations, and of the mythologies that have grown up
around them, teaches anything, it is that we must be
careful with evidence. But caution is not the same as

resignation. We are not likely to ever know, with cer-

tainty, why the events at Salem unfolded as they did.

Yet looking for new clues about Salem, re-examining

old ones, formulating theories, and testing them is

ever the more fascinating just because it is an ongoing

process. Being careful not to recycle false stories, you

just may arrive at the one that is closest to being true.

Precisely because the most diligent scholarship will

probably never be able to "solve" all the mysteries of

Salem, there is room for your imagination. At the heart

of the whole story is one central question: Why did the
accusers do it? Why did they twitch and scream and
bleed in court? Why did they cause nineteen people to
be hanged and a total of perhaps twenty-five to die?
Many of the accusers were teenagers. I hope that when
you reach this question again, in Chapter X, you will
have enough historical context to use your own experi-

ence, your own sense of yourself as a modern teenager,

to try to picture them, your ancestors centuries ago. A

group of individuals acted as a pack to attack and
destroy others. Is that because they were in such a dis-

tressed state of mind that they actually believed their

neighbors were agents of evil? If so, what horrors, real

or imagined, could have driven them to that state? Or

-SxiliK-
Witch-
HUNT

is it that the attackers themselves knowingly acted in evil

ways? If they did, why did they? And why were some able
to resist?

In one way, the accusers were products of their

time and were very different from you. This book, and
the notes in the back, will give you the chance to see

how different they were. But in another sense your

knowledge of yourself does give you a way to begin

envisioning and imagining them. And the great joy of
history is that as long as we are careful with evidence,

we have the power to constantly re-create the past in

our minds. I hope you will join me in that process.

Perhaps you will discover something about Salem none
of us have so far been able to see.

^ ^ K-

A Note About the Images in This Book

The only images that have survived from the period are

of a few of the most famous judges and ministers, and

only one building is still standing in Salem. Any paint-
ings readers may have seen in other books were done in

the nineteenth century, and while they may have been

generally accurate we know almost nothing about what
the accusers and the accused looked like. This means
that any book about Salem will either include new art,

or have only text pages.

-^xiv^
 On Spelling, Word Usage,
and Dates in This Book

I have not used the original spelling or punctuation

in the transcripts of the pretrial hearings, which are the
main source we have about the events. Here is a typical

line: "And further I heard him tell Jeams bridges . . .

that he loved a gurll at forteen years ould: which: said

bridges: oned to be the truth." (Modern-day transla-

tion: "And further, I heard him tell James Bridges . . .

that he loved a fourteen-year-old girl, which that same

Bridges owned [admitted] to be the truth.") There is a

certain pleasure in decoding this writing, but for the

purposes of clarity, I have modernized the spelling and

punctuation.
I have chosen to use the term Indian rather than
Native American for a variety of reasons. For one, The
British Museum Encyclopedia of Native North America, by Rayna
Green (director of the American Indian Program,
National Museum of American History, Smithsonian
Institution) and Melanie Fernandez (acting first

nations officer at the Ontario Art Council), explains

that "most American Indians prefer to refer to their

tribal names, using the general term 'Indian' and,

more rarely, 'Native American' in everyday speech"

(p. 109). This accords with what I have heard from

other experts. I do not believe there is a truly "correct"

-^xvg-
Witch-
HUNT

term now, and it would be anachronistic to use a

modern phrase for seventeenth- century peoples. For

another, using Native American would lead to a hopeless

muddle when referring to Tituba, an Indian from
Barbados, who may or may not have had North
American Indian roots. She was native and American
but probably not Native American in the modern
sense, and the same applies to her husband, who was
named John Indian.
The New Englanders of the time still used the
Julian calendar. They refused to accept the Gregorian
calendar, in part because it had been approved by the
pope. That meant they considered New Year's Day to

be March 25» ^^^ thus all dates in January, February,

and most of March were from the previous year. So

March I, 1692 —a very important date in the story— is
written in documents of the time as either March I,

1691, or March I, 1691/2. I have written all dates in

modern form. As long as you know the general rule,

you should be able to make sense of original sources

even when their dating seems to differ from mine by a

year.

^xvi^
 n *..| J^t;

-^J
7
T %. 4^ . ^ -i ? ^ ^ i^ '
^fc^^C C^

/ *^ ri%^

INTRODUCTION

' Xl# dark forests

and Midnight
Thoughts

w -
 •

:/

I ^^ ^MA.-
"The QUEEN of hell"

May 31,1 692 in a plain Salem meetinghouse

a woman stands before her judges. The magistrate —we are not

sure if it was John Hathorne or Jonathan Corwin—speaks with the

stern, suspicious voice of the community. The accusers, girls and

joung women, are fervent, overexcited, just on the edge of break-

ing into convulsions. They are so tormented, it is as if their very

bones are being pulled out of their sockets.

Judge: Abigail Williams, who hurts you?

Abigail Williams: Goody Carrier of Andover.

Judge: Elizabeth Hubbard, who hurts you?

^as-
Witch-
HUNT

Elizabeth Hubbard: Goody Carrier.

Judge: Susannah Sheldon, who hurts you?

Susannah Sheldon: Goody Carrier. She bites me,
pinches me, and tells me she would cut my throat,

if I did [do] not sign her book.

The accused is a poor, unpopular woman from Andover, who

had her first child before she was married. She is also suspected of
having spread smallpox and has spoken sharply to her neighbors.

No wonder she is called ''Goody" (Goodwife); only married

women of high status are called ''Mrs. " But she is unrelenting in

maintaining her innocence.

Judge: What do you say to this you are charged

with?

Martha Carrier: I have not done it.

Susannah cries out, saying she can see an evil man or the

devil himself, dressed in black. This evil specter appears many

times and is called "the black man.

Ann Putnam Jr. suddenly feels a pin being stuck in her.

Judge: What black man is that?

Martha Carrier: I know none.

Ann sees the man; she insists he is here in the room. And Mary
Warren takes up Ann's part; she is feeling something piercing her

skin.

-^4^
 Of dark forests
and Midnight Thoughts

Judge: What black man did you see?

Martha Carrier: I saw no black man but your

own presence.

The girls are beginning to wail now, baring their wounds, hold-

ing out the very real pins that draw their blood, collapsing as ifstruck

down by invisible rays bla^ngfrom Marthas eyes. The judge believes

thejoung women are under demonic attack and uses their agonies

to press Martha to confess her own sin. But Martha, stoic, almost

disdainful in her calm disgust, sees only lies.

Judge: Can you look upon these and not knock

them down?
Martha Carrier: They will dissemble if I look

upon them.
Judge: You see you look upon them and they fall

down.
Martha Carrier: It is false; the Devil is a liar. I

looked at no one since I came into the room but

you.

Standoff: The unswerving judge, the unbending accused. And

now the accusers ratchet up the emotions another notch.

Susan has fallen into a kind of trance, and she sees ghosts

materialiie in the room.

Susannah Sheldon: I wonder what [how many]

could you murder, thirteen persons?

^5^^
Witch-
HUNT

Mary Walcott can see the dead spirits too, thirteen ghosts

hovering in the air. And now all the afflicted people scream and

howl. Elizabeth and Ann go beyond claiming to see ghosts; they tell

the court that they are sure that Martha killed thirteen people in

Andover.

Martha Carrier: It is a shameful thing that you

should mind [take seriously] these folks that are

out of their wits.

Judge: Do you not see them?

Martha Carrier: If I do speak, you will not

believe me [will you]?

The accusers insist that Martha, too, can see the ghosts.

Martha Carrier: You lie. I am wronged.

Mercy Lewis falls into a violent fit, as if driven mad by

Martha's opposition. By this point, the court record tells us, ''the

torture of the afflicted was so great that there was no enduring of

it, so that she [Martha] was ordered away and to be bound hand
"
and foot. . . . The afflicted meanwhile [were] almost killed.

How could such a scene take place in a legal hearing?

How could solemn, thoughtful, rational men have taken

seriously the screams of accusers whose visions were never

scrutinized? How could these same judges ignore the sober
honesty of the accused? A leading minister later described
Martha as a "rampant hag" who had been promised that she

-^6^
 Of dark forests
and Midnight Thoughts

would be made queen of hell by the devil himself. This

seems so unlike the Martha who appears in the transcripts
that the minister appears to be writing about a different

person. But he wasn't; the difference is in our perception

of her, which leads us to the next question: Why would

young people join together to attack someone they had

hardly, if ever, met, knoMdng their wails and visions and fits
would lead to her death?

In order to begin answering these questions, we

have to step outside the courtroom, into the world of
fairy tales.

Though there is nothing left of the original building, this is the site of the meetinghouse in which
the first accused witches were questioned.

Two FAMILIAR
FAIRY tales Think back to the stories you read or
heard as a child: tales in which fairy godmothers offer
servant girls wonderful clothes so they can attend

grand balls; in which villagers wander off the road into

-^7^
Witch-
HUNT

the dark forest and are lost to wolves and monsters that

lurk in the shadows; in which malicious old women

cast spells and confer with their evil black cats; in

which foolish or greedy farmers sign pacts with a

strangely elegant man, catching sight of his cloven hoof

or trailing tail or getting a whiff of sulfur only when it

is too late.

Now imagine what the world would feel like if these

were not charming old fables, but true. Martha

Carrier's own eight-year-old daughter described just
such a world to Judge Hathorne. Sarah Carrier was
sweet-tempered, easy to talk to, and certain she had {
been a witch ever since she was six years old. She had
been converted by her mother, she said, who lured her
into touching the red book with the white pages.

Martha appeared to her as a cat, one that could terrify

her by threatening to tear her to pieces but one that

could also wing her spirit away over the treetops to
attack others.

What if, like Sarah, you knew as sure as the sun

would rise in the morning that witches lived among
you and could bring pain, even death, to you, your
defenseless babies, your precious livestock and crops?
What we call "fairy tales" are often simply the record of
the world as many of our ancestors experienced it. Evil

spirits, and the witches who courted them, supplied

causes for events that were otherwise inexplicable.

Witches were conduits of harm who brought pain and

suffering into people's lives. They offered a very con-

^8^
 Of dark forests
and Midnight Thoughts

Crete and emotionally appealing explanation for the

often perplexing and painful twists and turns of life.

Read a fairy tale carefully, and you can see the logic

behind the witchcraft trials.

Take the story of Sleeping Beauty. Once upon a

time, the story begins, there was a royal couple unable

to have children. When they finally do have a daughter

and hold a grand celebration, they slight one old
woman while giving gifts to all the others. The old
woman's fury, her anger at not getting her due, makes
her decide to kill — or permanently put to sleep — the
beautiful baby.

Anyone who reads the fairy tale today is sure to care

about the child. We want the old woman to be pre-
vented from doing her evil deeds, maybe even killed.

We are reacting in exactly the same way as did villagers

who, for hundreds of years, condemned witches. After
all, the story leaves out two big questions: Why did the
king and queen slight the old woman, and how were
they able finally to have a child? One way to answer
these questions is to see the old woman as a midwife, a
wisewoman, the one who made Sleeping Beauty's birth
possible. Another is to picture her as an unpopular,
perhaps unattractive and bitter old woman, whom it

was easy to ignore. In either case, how did the royal

couple, the "good guys," repay the woman who
answered their prayers (in version one) or the poor
outsider who was envious of their good fortune (in

version two)? By ignoring her, slighting her, and then,

^9^
Witch-
HUNT

when she shows her anger, by destroying her. And we

cheer them on.
Studies of the witchcraft cases in sixteenth- and
seventeenth- century England for which court records
have survived show that about 8o percent of those
accused were women. Though the term witch applied
equally tomen and women, women wound up in court
four times as often. One historian's analysis of the II4
witchcraft cases in New England in the seventeenth

century (not including the Salem episode) shows that,

again, at least 80 percent of those formally charged
with being witches were women. The more closely his-

torians have looked at these records, the more clearly

they have seen stories much like the beginning of

Sleeping Beauty: a man or woman who was owed some-

thing and didn't get it; a woman whom people

depended on for medical help but thus also feared; a

man or woman who had suffered losses and who then

turned angry and vengeful, was very likely to be called
a witch.

From the point of view of people in the farms and

small villages of England and New England, a witch
tended to be someone who did not fit in. She was a

woman who had few or no children, or was past her

childbearing years, and yet owned property. She was a

person, in other words, who lived outside the pattern

of life people expected of a woman, in which her role

and her assets were devoted to her family. And she was

especially suspect if she was outspoken, not modest and

^HIOK-
 Of dark forests
and Midnight Thoughts

quiet. A man or woman who was bitter, who was angry,

who disrupted the harmony of daily life was the very

image of a witch.
This was all the more true if the person had a rea-
son to be angry. Accusers often saw evidence of witch-
craft in people whom they had refused to help. As in
the story of Sleeping Beauty, the frustration, anger,
and envy of the outsider only made those who had
rejected that person think it was more likely that he or
she would turn outside the community for aid. And
who better to help bitter people to get revenge than

Satan, the Prince of Darkness, the angel whose own

envy of God made him try to subvert all of creation?
Sleeping Beauty shows how readily we side with

witchcraft accusers. Another story, that of Cinderella,

helps explain why our ancestors felt so troubled by
seductive spirits. That familiar tale tells of a servant
girl who is really suited to be the bride of a prince but
who is forced into harsh labor by her evil stepmother,
until she is saved by a fairy godmother who is able to

give her magical entry into a royal ball. Here is how a

very similar story, changed just slightly, actually took

place in 1671.

It might well have been one of those gray, cold New

England days when the chill gets into your bones and
layers of homespun do little to keep it out. The sky on
those days is filled with clouds, and the sun's light is

pale and thin. It is a cruel tease, promising warmth it

never delivers. At any moment a wind gust can bully

^\\^
Witch-
HUNT

you, telling you that coldness is in charge here, winter

is the rule. Suddenly, everything in your own life feels

as bare, stony, and harsh as the landscape around you.

Perhaps it was on a day such as this that Elizabeth

Knapp, a teenage girl from a troubled family, was

doing chores. She was now a servant, working for the
Reverend Samuel Willard and staying in his home. The
reverend was a learned man, much respected, and
nothing like Elizabeth's own father, who often ran
afoul of the law. Perhaps he seemed like a savior to

Elizabeth, a good strong man who was everything her

undependable father was not. He gave her work and a

roof over her head. But in a way, he, too, was unreli-
able, for he was often away, and she was left alone on
those gray New England days, endlessly sweeping and
hauling, cleaning and cooking, being useful and silent.

Suddenly, a voice spoke to Elizabeth in her mind.

It was a grand voice — as grand as the Reverend
Willard' s —but it was evil. The devil offered to relieve

her of one of her chores by taking in the wood chips

she still had to bring in for the family fire. Elizabeth

refused. But when she came into the house, she saw the
chips already there. Elizabeth was terrified. What had
she done? Had her resentment and envy let the devil

in? Had she already made a pact, signed her name in

his book in blood? Was she lost and damned?

Elizabeth was haunted by her discontentment, by the
voice she heard in the shadows, by the devil, who
seemed to loom so close to her inmost thoughts. How

'5H12K-
 Of dark forests
and Midnight Thoughts

far is this scenario of a strange dark man saving a ser-

vant girl from her chores from that of Cinderella's

fairy godmother turning a pumpkin into a coach?

Once again, behind a familiar fairy tale is the world of
witches.

Listen now to another one of Martha Carrier's

accusers, twelve -year- old Phoebe Chandler. Phoebe's
mother asked her to fetch some beer to slake the thirst

of nearby workers. As Phoebe neared the fence to the

lot they were in, she heard "a voice in the bushes
(which I thought was Martha Carrier's voice, which I

know well) but saw nobody, and the voice asked me

what I did [was doing] there and whether [where] I was
going, which greatly frightened me, so that I ran as fast

as I could to those at work."

Phoebe escaped, but when her mother sent her
back a few hours later on another chore, "I heard the
same voice, as I judged, over my head, saying I should
[would] be poisoned within two or three days, which
accordingly happened, as I conceive, for I went to my
sister Allen's farm the same day; on Friday following,

about one half of my right hand was greatly swollen and

exceeding painful."
A walk in the sunshine for Phoebe was like the plot
of a horror film for us. In every clump of grass lurked
the mysterious voice of an angry neighbor, who might
be an agent of the devil and who had the power to make
her sick if she did not obey. Phoebe was not an excep-
tionally overimaginative girl. Nor was Benjamin

-^13^
Witch-
HUNT

Abbot, a grown man who had very similar experiences.

When he got into an argument over some land with

Martha Carrier, she seem^ed to curse him by warning
that she would stick as close to him as bark to a tree. All

of sudden he began to suffer mysterious ailments,

including a swollen foot and a running sore, which
disappeared once Martha was arrested.
If your daily experience includes curses that come
true, it makes perfect sense that your friends are
haunted by ghosts in a courtroom and are attacked by

evil spirits that only they can see. Much of what we know
about such beliefs comes from the court records of
witchcraft trials, which are imperfect sources. People
often speak very carefully when their words result in

winning or losing a case. The transcripts were taken

down by individual friends of the court, not official

recorders, and were not meant to be word-for-word

accounts. Many have been lost. But court records and
fairy tales are not the only ways to peer back into the
collective of such accusers as Sarah Carrier, Elizabeth
Knapp, Phoebe Chandler, and Benjamin Abbot.

Skittering
SHADOWS How do we explain the inexplicable
today? We are told by people we respect that micro-
scopic germs and viruses cause disease, that vast high-
and low-pressure systems stretching across the globe
create local weather patterns, and that ribbons of
nearly invisible genetic material determine what color

^n4&
 Of dark forests
and Midnight Thoughts

eyes our children will have; but few of us have actually

done experiments to test these ideas or have even care-

fully read the studies conducted by others. We accept

these theories, which do not match what we see with

our own eyes, on faith. In the seventeenth century

most people accepted on faith a very different under-
standing of how the invisible world interacted with

daily life. They believed that God ultimately judged

and determined everything—that was the single clearest

"cause" for any effect seen in the world. But many also

believed that there were other invisible forces, good

and bad, present in their lives. And so do we, even
now.
When a dark shadow skitters across the floor, how
sure are you of what you saw or did not see out of the

corner of your eye? When you know someone envies

you or has reason to resent you, and you see that per-

son stare at you and then you suddenly experience a

strange pain, don't you wonder if that person somehow

managed to make you suffer? When you want some-
thing with all your heart, don t you wish rituals or cere-
monies designed to invoke the aid of spirits might help
you? Don't you test out what kinds of deals you would
be willing to make with anyone or anything to get your
way? And then don't you worry about what you might
have given away? When you or someone you love has a
setback, don't you ask yourself. Is it something I did? and
then try to solve the problem by changing your life?

When someone you know is really, really, really upset—

-^15^
Witch-
HUNT

scary, frightening, out of control, in tears, rage, wild-

ness — can you tell whether that person is faking it or in
a true crisis or in some weird state you don't under-
stand? When our nation is attacked, don't you walk
more fearfully, want to destroy our enemies, and have a

clear and preset image of who they may be?

The world of the Salem witches is in one sense long

ago and far away. But in another sense, it is the world

as we experience it at dusk, when dark shadows make
everything seem eerie, or when we are up alone late at

night, or anytime when we are not participating in the

common world we share with parents and teachers,

friends and relations. If you begin reading about the
seventeenth century with those moments in your

mind, it is not so distant at all. No matter what we say

on tests and in public, in private we often explain the
world the same way our ancestors did. And yet there

are no longer court cases in the United States in which

you can be tried for being a witch. So something has
changed dramatically from then to now. We have
driven the monsters into our private thoughts and
onto the faces of our political opponents. They are no
longer out there as a supernatural force. The Salem
witch trials are the record of that transition.

BELIEF
or FRAUD? The fact that many people in
seventeenth- century New England believed in witches,
devils, spells, and amulets does not mean that everyone

'snsts-
 Of dark forests
and Midnight Thoughts

did, and certainly not in every case. Throughout the

l6oOs, people came into New England's courts accus-
ing their neighbors of being witches. Surprisingly, in
most cases the judge or the jury ruled against the accus-
ers or chose not to execute those who were convicted.
This was not an expression of doubt about witchcraft
itself, which both the law and common belief asserted

was real. Rather, it was because witchcraft was a hard

case to prove. Unlike courts on the European conti-
nent, those in England and New England would not
accept evidence obtained by torture. Defenders of tor-
ture believed that getting the truth was so important,

the court could use any means to obtain it. (This very
argument was raised in the United States after the

September II, 200I, terrorist attacks.) English courts

protected suspects against this treatment, but that

made it harder to prove cases against them. In New
England the courts went even a step further, by ban-
ning traditional "tests" to uncover witches. Suspects,
for example, could not be dunked in water (with the

idea that a real witch would float), as had often been

done in England.
The higher bar for evidence matched a mood of
suspicion in New England's courts. Even though nearly
everyone agreed that witches really existed, when it came
to making a legal judgment, those same believers had
a canny eye for misguided people, disturbed people,
people who were just using the courts to settle scores.

One common way for an accused witch to fight back

^17^
Witch-
HUNT

was to bring his own lawsuit, claiming that the indict-

ment was an insult and made himi look bad in the eyes

of the community. Often enough, the accused won

these cases.

The Salem story is unusual— not because there were

claims of witchcraft, but because the courts believed
them from the first. Then the rules of evidence
seemed to change, probably allowing both physical and
psychological torture; Sarah Carrier's young brothers,
for instance, may well have been subjected to terrible

abuse in prison. Soon men joined women in being

accused, convicted, and executed in numbers that had

never been seen before in North America; and finally,

more and more people began to confess. What started

out as a relatively typical and minor case exploded

into a crisis. Explaining why that happened in 1692,

just eight decades before the American Revolution,
requires more than seeing into the minds of New
Englanders who heard the devil whispering to them on
dark nights. It also raises the sickening possibility that

cynical or angry or disturbed people used popular

ideas about the powers of evil for their own evil ends.

Perhaps the nineteen people who were executed by

hanging (an additional man was killed by being pressed
to death by heavy stones for refusing to make a plea,

and at least five other people, including two infants,

died in prison) were not the victims of the beliefs of
their time, but rather victims of one set of their neigh-

bors who were willing, even eager, to participate in

%s{18&
 Of dark forests
and Midnight Thoughts

legal murder and of another group too afraid to stop

them. This very concern haunted many people at the

time, from the greatest ministers and leaders to young
servants and children. How they responded to this
concern is the heart of the Salem story. For the
mounting executions forced a people dedicated to liv-

ing by God's laws to keep asking themselves whether

they were enforcing those divine rules or abusing
them. This was a great test for the New England
Puritans, and it began in 1688, in Boston.

-a 19?^
 %»' « ^ " **

PROLOGUE

Boston, 1688: The

Possession of the
|. ^.
Goodwin
1.4 ^
$f
Children
'^ * ^^ ^^ ,
 ^/

H^ t^^^-
!«*• *4v*r

/./

"
/ 1 '"

n t
 MATHER
YS GLOVER The trouble began in the summer
of 1688. Thirteen-year-old Martha Goodwin noticed
that some of her family's linen was missing and
sharply questioned their washerwoman, who she sus-
pected had stolen it. The laundress's mother was furi-

ous and attacked Martha with terrible words. Goody

Glover's "bad language" seemed to afflict Martha like

a contagious disease. The girl, and soon her three

younger siblings, fell into fits. These seemed so
painful that the prominent minister who later wrote
up the case reported that "it would have broke a heart
of stone to have seen their agonies." When the

The art on the facing page, which is also used throughout the book, is a part of the actual record
of the pretrial hearing on May 18, 1692 ^en Ann Putnam Jr. testified against Sarah Buckley. -^ 23 K*
Witch-
HUNT

respected physician Thomas Oakes was called in, the

only possible explanation he could offer for the chil-

dren's suffering was witchcraft.
Luckily, it was not hard to guess who was respon-
sible for harming the Goodwin children. Glover— her
first name is not known for certain, though she is

often mistakenly called "Mary" —^was made -to -order

for the part. An angry older woman, she was just the
sort of person whom people suspected of being a

witch. In fact, not six years earlier, as a woman lay

dying, she had revealed to another woman that Glover

had bewitched her to death. And just as the woman
who was carrying this secret was prepar-
ing to testify against the witch, her
son was assaulted by a "black
thing with a blue cap" that
room to tor-
appeared in his
ment him. Though Glover
was just a poor woman, she
seemed able to cause great
harm by using the powers
of evil. Her imprisonment
immediately healed the youngest
of the Goodwin children, but when
she again railed at them, Cotton Mather was a young minister when he
- came to the Goodwin household. He went on
the other three relapsed. to write many books and became a leading
r-r-. o rr .
, authority^ on Puritanism in Massachusetts.
lo race oii against

Glover and the devil— the evil one who surely was

responsible for the anguish Glover was causing the

-SI 24 Fir
 Boston, 1688:The Possession
of the Goodwin Children

Goodwin children— a young but important minister

arrived at the household. He was Cotton Mather— son
of Increase Mather, one of the leading ministers and
theologians of his day, and grandson of John Cotton,
one of the most important ministers and authors in
the early history of New England. In his lineage, his
already impressive learning, and his presence, Cotton
Mather was the ideal person to aid the Goodwin chil-
dren. If he could entrap Glover and get her to reveal
her Satanic bond, he could free the young people from
her malign influence.
Mather, already in Boston, arrived at their home to

try to help four children who lived near the church in

which he preached. But he was also there to participate

in what he knew was a far larger and more momentous

cause. This case was both a test and a potential rallying

point for all of New England Puritans.

Of MEETINGHOUSES and the

blood of WOLVES:
the PURITAN journey The Puritans mission in
America was clearest in the early days of their New
England settlements. The Puritans had arrived on
ships. Built of long wooden planks, their churches were

like simple wooden boats on land, safeguarding the

believers inside. And, as one of their descendants,

Nathaniel Hawthorne, wrote, when one of them killed

a wolf, he claimed his reward by nailing it "on the porch
of the meetinghouse," where the blood would drip onto

•^25 Br
Witch-
HUNT

the doorstep. This balance of simple strength and

fierce combat was the essence of Puritanism.
Puritans turned completely away from what they
saw as the old props of religion. Rich cathedrals full of
statues, stained-glass images, ceremonies where the
scent of incense or the sound of ancient chants might set

the mood, priests speaking in a foreign language —all

had no place in their religion. Instead, they built their

faith on clean, simple planks, like the timber of their

churches, on the Word of God as written in the Bible,

translated into English, and shared by the congregation.

The Puritans, or "the Godly" as they were often

called in England, were pleased with their spare,

simple churches with their hard wooden benches.
Religion for them was not a moment here or there —
sermon on the Sabbath Day, a prayer at meals, pious

phrases on holy days. Nor were they called "Puritans"

because they wanted a pure, clear faith filling every

part of life and every moment of every day. Each
household was considered a little congregation, with
the father as a kind of minister. He would lead the

family in prayer and Bible reading, and he would dis-

cipline those who needed it. Children were viewed as

prideful and stubborn. Their early education involved

breaking them of that willfulness and making them
more humble and obedient. While in some ways this

was a very severe kind of family life, Puritans thought

of it as based on love. They believed that husbands and
wives should love each other, passionately and inti-

^26)^
 Boston, 1688:The Possession
of the Goodwin Children

mately. And the harsh treatment of young children

only made sense since it gave them the best chance of
discovering God's love, which was the greatest gift of
all.

The Puritans believed that each person was on the

most difficult, dangerous, and uncertain path: the
journey toward God. In England they had to struggle

against the government even to practice their faith.

Their absolute devotion to religion as they under-

stood it, their unwillingness to accept compromise,
and their hatred of Catholics clashed with the policies

of English kings content with an easier faith that asked

less of people. Faced with this kind of opposition in
1603, King James I warned that he would chase them
out of the country. But this persecution only
strengthened their faith. Puritans who crossed the sea
and arrived in New England felt they were participat-

ing in a new kind of pilgrimage, the physical epic of

starting over in a new land. And the physical was

linked to the spiritual growth. Every tree felled, field

planted, simple meetinghouse built was a step in the
creation of the kingdom of the Lord.
The Puritans were a minority among the English

settlers in New England, and from the first, they had

conflicts with others who came to North America only

to make money or to live according to their own rules.

But their sense of what crossing the ocean meant was

very influential. Anyone today who feels that Americans
have a special destiny as a force for religious faith or

>^27K-
Witch-
HUNT

democracy or economic opportunity is sharing in and

carrying on the Puritans' vision of this land.

Devout Puritans interpreted everything that hap-

pened to them on their pilgrimage in the new land
epidemics of illness, wars with Indians, the sickness or
health of their families, earthquakes, even the severity
of New England winters — as judgments of their behav-
ior. They saw themselves as living out the story of the
Jews, the chosen people in the Bible, who had to wan-
der in the wilderness after they left Egypt. The stark

meetinghouse colored with the blood of a wolf was the

modern version of the tents of the Jews, carrying the
Word of the Lord to the Promised Land.
Puritans drew great strength from seeing themselves
in combat with the world around them. In their wars

against the Indians, for example, they could be com-

pletely and coldly destructive. For a time they offered

bounties for the scalps of murdered Indians. In this

sense they were like those fundamentalists of all reli-

gions today who can justify extreme measures against

others—whether that be attacking U.S. cities, killing

doctors who perform abortions, or settling in occupied

territories — on the grounds that they have a divine right

to take them. They considered themselves an outpost of
saints in a hostile wilderness. Any victory against their

foes seemed to prove the rightness of their mission; any

defeat was a sign of God's dissatisfaction.

Seeing themselves as a spiritual community,

Puritans especially feared being attacked by the devil,

-1^28^-
 Boston, 1688:The Possession
of the Goodwin Children

the enemy of God. Those who rejected God entirely

and made pacts with the devil were, in the eyes of

Puritan believers, a combination of our worst fears of

spies and terrorists. Since you could not immediately
recognize these traitors, they could pass as the most
pious of churchgoing neighbors—which meant you
constantly had to be on guard. Anyone who yearned for
a simpler, easier way to happiness could be tempted.
According to one woman who confessed to being a

witch during the Salem trials, the devil promised her,

"We should have happy days and then it would be better

times for me." The devil felt equally present to people
who thought they were failing God. Like Elizabeth
Knapp, they feared they had lost their souls already.

Witchcraft and prayer actually had something very

important in common. If the devil was lurking nearby,
turning people into witches, then God was equally close

at hand, saving souls. The threat of one proved the exis-

tence of the other. This equation was very important to
Cotton Mather when he came to help the Goodwin chil-

dren, for on every front the mission that had brought

his family to New England was under assault.

Four years before, in 1684, the frighteningly

pro -Catholic Charles II had dissolved the original
charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which had
allowed the Puritan leaders to govern as they saw fit.

New England was now being run by an arrogant

Englishman named Sir Edmond Andros. Andros was
questioning whether long- established farmers really

-a29ES-
Witch-
HUNT

owned their land. Worse, he was insisting that any

Christian could come into the community. That

meant that Q^uakers had to be tolerated. All good
Puritans knew that Q^uakers trembled and shook in
their meetings and claimed to be in touch with an
inner light. To the Godly, this sounded suspiciously
like possession. Puritans were being told to allow
people who might be directly in touch with the devil
into their towns and villages.

Outside New England's borders the news was

equally frightening. King Philip's War, a ferocious

conflict with the Indians a decade earlier, had led to

extremes of death and suffering on both sides.

Though unprecedented killing and cruelty allowed

the New Englanders to win, the war left scars: disabled

men, lost relatives, and the certainty that remaining

Indians could see their neighbors only as mortal ene-

mies. Farther north, the Catholic French and their
Indian allies were a constant threat. In order to help
people picture the danger witchcraft posed, Cotton
Mather described the devils themselves as something
very like those Catholics. Think of them, he urged, as

"vast regiments of cruel and bloody French dragoons

[soldiers], with an Intendant [general] over them,
overrunning a pillaged neighborhood."
Despite these very serious threats, young people
did not seem to need the church in the same ways as

their parents. And even those in the older generation

paled in comparison to their forebears, who had

-I^30tr
 Boston, 1688:The Ppssession
of the Goodwin Children

braved the unknown in an effort to create a model

society in a new land. For Cotton Mather, a tangle with

a witch was an opportunity to remind everyone in New

England of why they were there: They were participants
in a great battle, a cosmic struggle as in biblical times,

and they could never take their enemy, the true enemy
of God, too lightly.

Testing
WITCH
a What was a witch? It depended
upon whom you asked. On the popular level, judging
by the way people told stories and eyed their neigh-
bors and brought cases to court, a witch was a person
who could do harm through magical means. A witch,
male or female, could curdle milk, hobble animals,
and even cause young children to sicken and die.

There were many folkways that told people how to

figure out if someone was a witch, and how to com-
bat one who had been flushed out. For example, one
English folk belief held that if a child or baby was

passed through a hole in a natural object such as a

rock or a tree, that child would be immune to witch-

craft. Apparently, there was a tree in Salem that had

a gap of just the right size, and parents continued to

pass their babies through it long after the trials. The

last recorded case of using the tree this way took place
on July 8, 1793.
Some of the methods for telling the future, doing
harm to others, and detecting malign forces were part

^31^
Witch-
HUNT

of what Mather called "little sorceries" but which we

would no longer call "witchcraft." The year before the
Salem outbreak, Mather lamented that "in some
towns it has been a usual thing for people to cure
hurts with spells, or to use detestable conjurations,
with sieves, keys, and peas, and nails, and horseshoes,
and I know not what other implements to learn the

things for which they have a forbidden, and an impi-

ous curiosity. 'Tis in the Devil's name that such things

are done."

The rituals Mather cited were the seventeenth-

century equivalent of such diversions as checking your

horoscope in the daily paper, hunting for four-leaf-
clovers, or consulting a Ouija board. For instance,
according to a late -sixteenth- century English manu-
script, the sieve and scissors were used this way: "Stick

a pair of shears [scissors] in the rind [handle] of a

sieve and let two persons set the top of each of their
forefingers upon the upper part of the shears holding
it with the sieve up from the ground steadily; ask Peter
and Paul whether A, B, or C hath stolen the thing
lost; and at the nomination of the guilty person the
sieve will turn around."
English settlers brought these practices with them
across the Atlantic, but Mather and other leading
ministers were trying to eliminate them. On the one

hand, they thought these games were dangerous, for

they toyed with using the devil's own powers, even if

they were not used for devilish ends. The ministers saw

-j^32^
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