The Witch Who Loved Satan in The Shape of A Bear

Most people are familiar with the Salem witch trials, but there were many other witchcraft accusations in early New England history. Some of these stories are quite interesting, like the following. 

In the year 1660 William Holmes of Scituate*, Massachusetts learned that a rumor was being spread about his wife. The rumor claimed Goodwife Holmes was a witch, and it was being spread by one of the Holmes's neighbors, Dinah Sylvester. 

Goodman Holmes was outraged and took Sylvester to court for slander. It took about a year for the case to come to trial, but finally in May of 1661 Sylvester testified as follows:

Magistrate: "What evidence have you of the fact that William Holmes's wife is a witch?"

Sylvester: "She appeared to me as such."

Magistrate: "In what shape did she appear?"

Sylvester: "In the shape of a bear."

Magistrate: "How far off was the bear?"

Sylvester: "About a stone's throw from the highway."

Magistrate: "What manner of tail had the bear?"

Sylvester: "I cannot tell as his head was towards me."

Sylvester went on to tell the court that Goodwife Holmes was not the only one near the highway in the shape of a bear. The Devil was there as well, and he too was in ursine form. And the Evil One was feeling frisky; he and Goodwife Holmes were making love as only two bears can. 

Apparently Sylvester gave explicit details of the lovemaking she saw by the side of the road, but they were blacked out of the final records. The court didn't seem to find her story convincing, and not just because it was so outrageous. Laws at the time specified at least two people needed to bear witness against a witch, and no one else came forward to support Sylvester's testimony.

The court did find Sylvester guilty of slander, though, and sentenced her to either pay Goodman Holmes five pounds (a huge amount of money at the time) or be publicly whipped. They also offered a third option: she could publicly acknowledge that she lied about Goodwife Holmes being a witch. She took the the third option. 

Aside from the Satanic bear sex, there are some interesting aspects to this story. One is the location. Scituate was at the time part of Plymouth Colony, which included not only the modern city of Plymouth but also Cape Cod and most of Southeastern Massachusetts. Plymouth Colony was founded by the Pilgrims, and they seem to have been a little mellower than the other Puritans who founded Massachusetts Bay Colony and Connecticut. Although there is a lot of witch folklore from Plymouth Colony, there were only two trials involving witches. Sylvester admitted she lied in the trial involving the bear, and in the other case the woman accused of witchcraft was acquitted. Compare that to the many witch trials in Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut, which led to the execution of more than 30 people. 

Dinah Sylvester is another interesting part of this story. She appears in several court cases from that time. In 1666 she and her brother were accused of attacking a town constable who was arresting their mother. She was later accused of fornication (having sex while unmarried), and in 1669 is mentioned in a case against Elkanah Johnson, whom Sylvester claimed was the father of her baby. 

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* Older sources say Scituate, modern sources say Marshfield. I think this is because parts of Marshfield used to belong to Scituate, but I am not sure.

Sources: Elizabeth Renard The Narrow Land (1934), Frederick Freeman The History of Cape Cod: The Annals of Barnstable County, Including the District of Mashpee, Volume 1 (1858),  and James and Patricia Scott Deetz The Times of Their Lives: Life, Love, and Death in Plymouth Colony (2001).

Cat Folklore, Part II: Black Cats at Halloween

Despite New England's rich history of witchcraft and ghosts, Halloween has only been celebrated here since the mid-19th century. The first English settlers were Puritan and abstained from celebrating holidays like Christmas and Halloween. The Algonquians who lived here before them of course did not observe Halloween, which is of European origin.

Things changed in the 19th century when large numbers of Irish and Scottish immigrants began arriving in New England. They brought their observance of Halloween with them. Although there were tensions between these newer Gaelic arrivals and the Puritan's Yankee descendants, the Yankees did slowly adopt Halloween as a holiday. By the early 20th century it was widely celebrated among both children and adults in New England and other parts of North America. 

An early 20th century black cat doorstop.

 Now, onto the cats. The black cat was a popular Halloween symbol and appears in many descriptions of the holiday from that time. For example, the November 1, 1912 edition of The Vermont Phoenix describes the following party held by the Brattleboro Baptist Bible school:

... about 200 persons were present. Halloween games were played. The junior department held a party in the chapel, which was decorated with jack o'lanterns and black cats, the children making the decorations. Halloween stunts were performed. 

According to November 4, 1909 issue of The Republican, black cats were also popular in Belfast, Maine:

The Halloween Whist party under the direction of the Universalist Social Aid in Memorial Hall last Friday evening was a social and financial success.... The main hall was decorated with pine trees, Halloween crepe paper, black cats and jack-o-lanterns...

The Belfast socialites were quite busy that Halloween; there were multiple parties to attend:

Last Monday night the young ladies of the Biliken club entertained the young gentlemen at a Halloween supper at Pensobscot cottage on the Allyn shore, with Miss Katherine E. Brier as hostess, assisted by Mrs. Luville J. Pottle.... The table decorations and place cards were in the form of sunflowers. The fortune cards were decorated with cupids, witches, black cats, etc. 

And the October 29, 1910 issue of The Norwich Bulletin gave the following advice to Connecticut Halloween party hostesses:

The candle shades to give the effect of ghosts and witches should be of red and black coloring. Quaint little ones with the heads of black cats on them may be purchased at any store, but clever fingers can easily make them at home.

But why stop at candle shades? Why not have real live black cats in your party?

A pumpkin as centerpiece might hold a bowl of yellow chrysanthemums and if the hostess owns or can borrow a couple of live black cats it would give a most realistic effect to have these in the dining room rubbing against the guests. 

Let's just hope your guests aren't allergic to cats. Newspapers at this time were also filled with ads for Halloween decorations, many of them black cat themed. For example, here is one in the October 29, 1912 issue of The Bridgeport Daily Farmer from Radford's department store in Connecticut:

Using black cats as party decor probably doesn't seem strange to readers of this blog. Witches, ghosts and black cats are all just part of Halloween's festive ambience, right? But for our New England ancestors, Halloween represented a big shift in how they viewed the supernatural. Things that are now just considered spooky fun were once a very serious matter.

Cats, often black in color, appear in the 17th century witch trial accounts, and witch trials were very, very serious matters. For example, in 1692 a Boston serving girl named Mercy Short was tormented by demons after she taunted Sarah Good, who had been jailed for witchcraft. Short's demonic possession drew the attention of Boston's leading ministers, including Cotton Mather, and even of the colony's governor. During one of her fits, Mercy revealed that the Devil's "Book of Death" had been hidden in the attic of a neighbor's house. If someone could retrieve it her torments would stop. The governor commanded a servant to search the attic:

When the Servant was Examining the place directed, a great Black Cat, never before known to bee in the House, jumping over him, threw him into such a Fright and Sweat, that altho' hee were one otherwise of Courage enough, he desisted at that Time from looking any further (from Cotton Mather's A Brand Pluck'd out of the Burning).

Clearly, that black cat was not a laughing matter. Around the same time, Stephen Johnson of Andover, Massachusetts, age 14, confessed to the judges in Salem that the Devil had invited him at midsummer to become a witch. The Devil appeared first as a bird, then a black cat, and finally as a man before Stephen sold his soul to him. Mercy Wardwell, another Andover teenager, confessed that the Devil appeared to her as two cats.

The Devil was not the only one who took feline form. Witches often appeared as cats as well. The Cape Cod witch Liza Tower Hill took the form of a cat to terrorize a family who mistreated her daughter. John Godfrey, a witch from Haverhill, Massachusetts, took the form of a black cat and threatened Isabelle Holdred in her sleep after they argued over money.

Stories like these persisted in New England long after the witch trials ended. Sallie Somers, the alleged witch of Southwest Harbor, Maine, would spy on her neighbors in the shape of black cat. She died in 1832 when someone shot her in feline form with a silver bullet. In 1892, Clifton Johnson recorded a story in Western Massachusetts about a black cat whose paw got caught under a millstone. When the miller got home he found his wife with a damaged hand and knew she was a witch.

In the 1930s, people in New Hampshire also told a story about a witch in the shape of a black cat to Eva Speare for her book New Hampshire Folk Tales. And even in the 2000s, Christopher Balzano was told a story about a witch's ghost appearing as a black cat that walked on its hind legs for his book Dark Woods: Cults, Crime, and the Paranormal in the Freetown State Forest.

I don't cite all those stories to scare you, but just to show there is a very persistent tradition linking black cats with witchcraft and the Devil in New England. Given that tradition, it is amazing New Englanders were willing to abandon their superstitions and embrace the witches and black cats of Halloween. Clearly, cultural events like the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution played a big role in changing their minds, but it's still inspiring to read about New Englanders celebrating witches and black cats rather than hanging and shooting them. Things that once were frightening have become fun. Sometimes there is such a thing as progress. 

I Was A Teenage Witch: Stories from the Salem Witch Trials

When most people think of a witch, they picture an elderly, disheveled woman wearing rags. This is the archetypal witch in Western culture, but when you read through witch trial accounts you'll see that all kinds of people were accused of being witches. For example, while many people accused in the Salem witch trials were indeed elderly women, many others didn't fit that profile. Women of all ages were accused, as were men. In fact, even teenagers and children were accused of and confessed to being witches.

For example, fourteen-year old Will Barker Jr. told the judges that one night while he was bringing the cows home from grazing the Devil appeared in the form of a dog. Barker ignored the Devil's enticements, but after a sleepless night the Devil appeared to him again in the form of a "black man." This is an ambiguous term that has several meanings in the witch trials. In some cases it means a man in black clothing, sometimes it means a man with dark skin, and in other cases it means a man with coal black skin. It's not entirely clear which Barker intended, but apparently he found the Devil more persuasive as a human than as a canine. Baker agreed to serve the Devil and flew with him on a pole to Five Mile Pond in Andover where he was baptized as a witch. In return for his services Barker was promised a new set of clothes, but he told the judges the Devil never honored his end of the bargain.

From Wikipedia

Stephen Johnson, also age 14, was out planting corn at midsummer when the Devil came to him in the shape of a small talking “speckled bird.” The next day he came again as a black cat. Johnson ignored the Devil those first two times. It was only when he came in the shape of a man that Johnson put his fingerprint on a sheet of paper and promised to serve the Devil. (In return for selling his soul he was supposed to receive some new boots, but he never got them.) Shortly afterwards, while swimming alone in the Shawsheen River, the Devil appeared with two men and two women and baptized him by tossing him in the water.

Can you see the pattern here?

Mercy Wardwell, age 15, said the Devil came to her first in the shape of a dog, but later looking like a man whose romantic attentions she had rejected. Wardwell did not get the luxury of a baptism in a pond or river. Instead, the Devil simply dunked her head into a bucket of water. On the other hand, Betty Johnson, who was 21 but described by her parents as "simplish at best," confessed that the Devil first came to her in the shape of a man, but then later appeared as two cats. She was baptized as a witch in a neighbor's well. The Devil said he'd give her a shilling but never did.

From the Public Domain Review

Richard Carrier, age 18 and son of accused witch Martha Carrier, told the judges that one night while walking home he encountered a well-dressed man with a high-crowned hat. The man claimed he was Jesus Christ, so the teen signed his name in the man's book. Big mistake. The man in the hat was of course really the Devil, who promised he'd give Carrier a horse and some new clothes. As you can guess, neither one ever materialized. The Devil later appeared to him as a little yellow bird.

Mary Lacy Jr., age 15, confessed that the Devil initially appeared to her as a horse, but later looked like a "round gray thing." She refused his offer of baptism and didn't sign his book, but still agreed to serve him. The Devil told her she would want for nothing in the world. He encouraged Lacy to misbehave and run away from home, which she did.

The repetitive elements are pretty apparent in these accounts. The Devil approaches the potential witch several times in different forms. Sometime he is an animal, sometimes he is a man. The Devil makes a deal with the witch, but ultimately never keeps his side of the bargain. The witch signs a document and agrees to serve the Devil. The Devil baptizes the witch.

Of course, not all these stories are exactly the same. Mary Lacy didn't agree to baptism or make a bargain, or specifically mention the Devil appearing as a man. Mercy Wardwell saw the Devil first as a man, and then as two cats; the others said they saw the Devil in a different order, first as an animal and then as a human.

These teenagers were all from Andover, Massachusetts, and were all interrogated in Salem on July 21, 1692. On the one hand, they probably all were imitating each other when they made their confessions. By July it had become widely known that no one who confessed had been executed, so many defendants from Andover were told by their relatives to confess to save their lives. Richard Carrier was at first hesitant to confess, but after the judges tortured him by tying his neck to ankles (!) he told them what they wanted to hear. These stories of the Devil in many shapes were told to avoid torture and death.

On the other hand, the judges and spectators that were present found these stories convincing. They didn't think of them as lies told by scared young adults but as true accounts of how the Devil operates in the world. The Andover teens created these stories using elements from their culture's view of the spiritual world. These stories give us insight into the older mental world that used to be prevalent in New England. It's terrifying to think they were elicited by threat or application of torture but still fascinating to learn how our local ancestors thought people became witches.

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There are lots of sources for information about the Salem trials, but one of my favorites is Marilynne Roach's The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-By-Day Chronicle of A Community Under Siege. It's very thorough!