Molly Bridget and the Bewitched Pigs: A New Hampshire Witchcraft Story

Molly Bridget lived in Portsmouth, New Hampshire during the 1700s. Molly made her living telling fortunes for sailors and young lovers (as fortune tellers do) but over time she developed a reputation for being a witch. People in Portsmouth grew to fear and hate her.

Molly was never wealthy to begin with, and as she grew older she slipped into poverty. Sometime around the Revolutionary War she wound up living in Portsmouth's almshouse (or poorhouse). This was not to her liking so she decided to move south to Boston for a fresh start.

Unfortunately her reputation preceded her and when she arrived in Boston the following occurred:

Finding her way to Boston, the police gave her warning to leave the city forthwith.
"Why?" she asked.
"Is not your name Molly Bridget?"
"No, sir," she replied. "Do you think I am such a despicable creature as Molly?"
(Charles W. Brewster, Rambles About Portsmouth. Second Series. 1869)

The police weren't fooled. Molly realized that she wouldn't be able to leave her old identity behind so with a heavy heart she returned to Portsmouth and the almshouse.

An English woodcut of a witch from 1643

The almshouse was managed by a man named Clement March. One day in 1782 Mr. March noticed that the almshouse's pigs were acting strangely. His thoughts immediately turned to his resident witch, Molly Bridget. Had she bewitched the pigs?

There was only one way to find out. Like many people at that time, Mr. March believed that when a witch cursed something (or someone) they created a magical connection with the object of their curse. If Molly had cursed the pigs there was a connection between her and the animals. Molly's evil magic flowed from her into the pigs through this connection, but Mr. March thought he could use the connection to his advantage. He could make pain flow from the pigs back into Molly. If Molly felt enough pain she would stop cursing the animals.

Putting his plan into action, Mr. March took a knife out to the stye and cut off the pigs' ears and tails. He thought that this would be enough pain to cure the pigs of their strange behavior, but that was not the case.* He then decided to up the ante and burn their severed ears and tails, but when he went to gather them up the ears and tails were missing. Clearly this was more witchcraft! He surmised that Molly had made them disappear somehow.

Not willing to give up, Mr. March gathered the dead leaves and wood chips that were in the pig stye. These were soaked in the pigs' urine, feces, and blood, and therefore still had a connection to the animals and to the witch who had theoretically cursed them. He then burned the chips and leaves in the almshouse's various fireplaces.

The fires had a sudden and violent effect on Molly Bridget:

After the fires were kindled, Molly hastened from room to room in a frenzied manner. She soon went to her own room, and as the flames began to subside her sands of life began to run out, and before the ashes were cold, she was actually a corpse. (Brewster, Rambles About Portsmouth, 1869)

Mr. March and the residents of the Portsmouth almshouse took this as proof that Molly had indeed cursed the pigs. On the day of her funeral a violent storm struck Portsmouth, which was taken as further evidence that she was a witch.

*****

Like last week's post about the witch of Pepperell, this story shows how the belief in witchcraft lingered in New England well past the witch trials of the 1600s. Also like last week's legend, there's no official documentation about Molly Bridget and her witchcraft. The only account I've found is in Charles W. Brewster's Rambles About Portsmouth (1869). 

So is this story true or just a legend? Brewster has the following to say on the matter:

These are facts - how far the results were induced by the superstitious feelings of that day, the reader is left to judge. The poor creature might have believed herself a witch, and the expectation expressed that the burning of the pigs' tails would kill the witch, might have so wrought upon her mind as to produce the result.

I might also suggest that stories like these tend to become more legend-like over time. Perhaps Molly Bridget just died from natural causes and people in Portsmouth created the legend about her death over the years. By the time Brewster wrote down the story 80 years later it had become the traditional witch legend it is now. 

* I don't think cutting off an animal's ears and tail will ever improve its behavior. Be kind to animals!

Recent UFO Sightings in New Hampshire

It's easy for me to get lost in New England's old weird folklore. Every now and then I need to stick my head up from the old books and look at what's happening now - New England's new weird folklore.

A lot of people use the word paranormal when they are talking about strange modern phenomena. 'Paranormal' sounds more scientific than 'folklore,' and I suppose it suits the technological era that we live in. But I don't think it's dismissive to lump modern paranormal phenomena with older folklore. Both terms refer to the same thing: weird activity or stories that don't comfortably fit in other more reputable categories like history, science, or religion.

Anyway, regardless of terminology, on December 1, 2014 someone stopped at a traffic light in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and saw a UFO. They didn't see a metallic spaceship or anything of that sort, but instead some mysterious lights in the sky. Shining through the cloud cover they could see a large white circle of lights. Sometimes the lights had a bluish tinge, sometimes pinkish, but mostly they remained white.

There was an additional light that rotated around the circle of lights, but the circle itself stayed stationary.

It stayed in the same place with the bigger light just rotating around the circle of stationary light. I kept trying to see if there was a craft there, but could not make out any shape of a craft as this was just above the cloud cover. My first thought is that whoever it was must have thought they were hiding above the cloud, but the lights were clearly visible.

When the traffic light turned green the witness drive forward and pulled off the road, but when he looked back up the UFO had disappeared.

Carl Jung in 1910 (from Wikipedia)

It's a cool sighting! I don't know what UFOs are, but people have been seeing them for centuries. There are many theories about what they are, but the psychiatrist Carl Jung might be able to shed light (forgive the pun) on this particular incident. Jung claimed there were similarities between UFOs and the many circular holy symbols in world religions. For example, he drew connections between saints' halos, Hindu and Buddhist mandalas, the wheel seen by the prophet Ezekiel, and modern UFOs. Jung claimed all of these were mystical experiences, and that circular shapes symbolized spiritual wholeness.

I like that theory, but what would he say about the large number of triangular UFOs seen in New Hampshire? Mark Podell, an investigator with MUFON (Mutual UFO Network), investigates 5 - 10 New Hampshire UFO sightings each month. Many people see circular UFOs, but many others see triangular lights in the sky. If you want to see one yourself, you might want to visit Franconia Notch at night. Podell says that's where 80% of the reports come from. I've been up there many times myself, and it is very, very dark at night. It's probably a good place to witness strange phenomena.

You can hear more from Mark Podell, and see a video of a possible UFO seen in Derry, in the video below.


I found the information about the UFO in Portsmouth from the MUFON website, which is always interesting.

October Monster Mania: Alien Abductors

This month I'm counting down to Halloween with some New England monsters. No witches or ghosts this month - they're so common around here they don't really count as monsters!

Let's start with a little story about an inter-racial couple living in New Hampshire in the early sixties. They both worked for civil rights, were members of the NAACP, and the husband sat on the local Civil Rights Commission. They were pretty forward thinking for 1961. New England has long been the home of innovators.

Betty and Barney Hill

But Betty and Barney Hill didn't become famous for their politics. They became famous because they were the first people in the world to be abducted by a UFO.

On September 19, 1961 the hills were driving home to Portsmouth from Canada when they saw a strange light in the sky. Betty first thought it might be a satellite, but it followed them for many miles. At one point it appeared to briefly land on Cannon Mountain, only to take off and follow them again. Finally, the light (now clearly a flying saucer) descended in front of the Hill's car, causing Barney to brake abruptly. Barney left the car to get a closer look at the saucer, which had moved away from the road and was hovering over an adjacent field. He saw some human (or humanoid?) figures looking through its windows at him. He panicked, returned to the car, and drove back to Portsmouth ASAP.

Sounds like the end of the story, no? It should be, but Betty was troubled by strange dreams throughout that fall, Barney developed warts in an unusual pattern on his genitals, and neither of them could account for two hours of missing time. They both seemed to have amnesia about part of their trip! Concerned, they talked with local UFO researchers and underwent several hours of hypnosis.

Their sessions with the hypnotists revealed what happened in those two hours. The Hills had been taken aboard the saucer by a group of small men with large bulbous foreheads. Betty's nervous system was scanned, samples of her skin and hair were taken, and the men tested her to see if she were pregnant. Barney received a similar exam, but his also included an anal probe (ouch!) and a sperm sample taken through a strange cup placed over his genitals. (The warts he developed mirrored the outline of the cup.)

Betty's drawing of one of the aliens.

The Hills gained notoriety when their story appeared in the press and as a popular book, The Interrupted Journey. It was later filmed as a TV movie, The UFO Incident.

Both of the Hills are now deceased, but their experience left an important legacy to American culture. Thousands of people have claimed since that they too were abducted by aliens, spawning a small industry of books and movies. Alien abduction was even studied by a Harvard psychiatrist.

Estelle Parsons and James Earl Jones (the voice of
Darth Vader) in The UFO Incident.

What really happened to the Hills? Was it all just lies? Were the memories really just constructed by the hypnotists? Was it a spontaneous release of the naturally occurring hallucinogen DMT? Perhaps the aliens weren't really from space at all, but are related to elves or fairies, who also show an unhealthy interest in human reproduction in old folktales.

Or, maybe, the Hills really were abducted by aliens.

Whatever the case, it's pretty dark in the White Mountains at night, particularly in the fall and winter. If you find yourself driving up there keep your doors locked!

Guy Fawkes Day

Halloween is a relatively new holiday in New England, and wasn't widely celebrated here until the 19th century when immigrants from Ireland and Scotland brought their traditions with them.

However, Guy Fawkes Day (a.k.a Pope Day or Pork Day) was celebrated annually on November 5, until it was eclipsed by Halloween. The two holidays have some interesting similarities. (FYI - Guy Fawkes was a Catholic conspirator who plotted to kill the King and Parliament of England with a hidden keg of gun powder, but was foiled. The holiday celebrates the survival of the King and the Parliament.)

Guy Fawkes Day was celebrated as late as 1893 in Newburyport, MA and Newcastle and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Men and boys in costume would parade through the streets carrying straw effigies (called either "guys" or "popes") which they would burn on a bonfire. Boys also carried lanterns carved from pumpkins, blew horns, and went begging for money and food from door to door. (B.A. Botkin quotes various sources on this).

The pumpkin lanterns, bonfires, costumes and the begging all became Halloween traditions. The anti-Catholic sentiment of Guy Fawkes Day happily died out, presumably because of the waves of Catholic immigration, but also possibly because the Catholic French were instrumental in helping the American Colonies in their war against England.

Interestingly, Alice Morse Earle in her 1893 book Customs and Fashions in Old New England writes that the begging of "ragged fantastics" (i.e. kids in costumes) on Thanksgiving Day (!) was a holdover from Guy Fawkes Day. Lesley Pratt Bannatyne notes that costumed begging was common in New York City for Thanksgiving as well. I guess it's only recently that trick or treating has been confined to Halloween.