Wilmot Redd, the Witch of Marblehead

This is my second post about Marblehead. As I mentioned in my last one, Marblehead is incredibly charming and beautiful. It's the archetypal old New England seaside town. And as we all know, old New England towns often have some weird legends attached to them...

Engraving of a witch by James Caulfield, courtesy the Wellcome Collection

In Marblehead, that weird legend is about Mammy Redd, a fearsome witch who lived in the 17th century. According to various 19th century sources, Mammy Redd was a hideous old woman who terrorized the people of Marblehead. In New England Legends and Folklore (1883), Samuel Adams Drake wrote the following about her:

This woman was believed to possess the power of malignant touch and sight, and she was able, so it was whispered, to cast a spell over those whom she might in her malevolence wish to injure. To some she sent sickness and death, by merely wishing that a 'bloody cleaver' might be found in the cradle of their infant children.

A popular rhyme about Mammy Redd from the 19th century described another of her evil powers:

Old Mammy Redd

Of Marblehead

Sweet milk could turn

To mould in churn

Other versions of the rhyme specify that the mold looked like "blue wool," which sounds pretty gross. Ruining dairy products (milk, cream, or butter) is a classic New England witch's hex. 

Photo by my friend Onix Marrero

The legend of Mammy Redd is based, quite loosely, on Wilmot Redd (or Read, depending on the source), a Marblehead woman who was executed during the Salem witch trials. She was the wife of a fisherman and, like many of the woman accused of witchcraft by the Puritans, was older and cantankerous. Some sources describe her as "grouty," which means rude or ill-tempered. She was not a witch, but was simply unpopular. 

Most records from her trial are lost, but those that remain describe an argument Redd had with a neighbor, Mrs. Syms. Syms believed Redd's maid had stolen some bed linens, and  exchanged harsh words with Redd. At the end of the argument, Redd supposedly cursed Syms, telling her she would never defecate or urinate again. Soon after, Syms began to suffer from constipation and had difficulty urinating. These problems only ended once she moved away from Marblehead. 

This is an absurd thing to be executed for, but the Salem judges accepted even the most ridiculous accusations at face value. During her questioning, the afflicted Salem girls (the driving force behind the witch hunt) claimed they saw Wilmot Redd's spirit offering them the Devil's black book to sign. This alleged vision sent the girls into convulsions. While most people in the courtroom took them seriously, Wilmot Redd did not. When a judge asked her opinion of the girls' convulsions, she said "My opinion is they are in a sad condition." Grouty to the end, Wilmot Redd was hanged on September 22, 1692 at Gallows Hill in Salem. 

Photo by Onix Marrero

Like everyone executed for witchcraft in Salem, Redd's body was discarded in an unmarked grave somewhere near Gallow's Hill. Perhaps her family retrieved it and secretly reburied her, perhaps not. Many years later, the town of Marblehead erected a monument to her in Old Burial Hill graveyard. As you can see from the photo, people leave coins at her grave to honor her memory. 

The town also named this small behind pond behind Old Burial Hill Redd's Pond in her honor. She and her husband lived next to the pond in the 17th century, and although her house is long gone her memory and legend still survives to this day. 

Photo of Redd's Pond by Onix Marrero

*****

If you like witch legends and the history behind them, you might like my newest book, Witches and Warlocks of Massachusetts, which is available wherever you buy books online. 

Did Moldy Grain Cause The Salem Witch Trials?

I think most people agree on the facts of the Salem witch trials. In 1692, nineteen people were executed for witchcraft, one died while being tortured, and several died in prison. More than 150 people from Massachusetts and Maine were accused. The trials ended as soon as they began, and were the last major witchcraft trials in New England.

There had been other witchcraft trials in 17th century New England, but none as large and deadly as the Salem trials. Historians have argued for years over what caused this terrifying social anomaly. Proposed explanations include mass hysteria, greed, Puritan misogyny, discord among neighbors, and stress caused by Indian attacks. There is probably some truth in all of these, but what if the cause was not social but biological? What if the Salem witch trials were caused by a fungus that grows on moldy grain?

The moldy grain theory first appeared in the April 2, 1976 issue of Science magazine in an article by Linnda R. Caporael titled "Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem?" Caporael was a biology grad student at UC Santa Barbara, and she hypothesized that the Salem trials had been caused by ergot, a fungus that grows on grains, particularly rye.

Caporael's article explains that ergot (claviceps purpura) often grows on rye (and sometimes other grains) when the weather is warm and wet. Rye was the most widely planted Old World grain among the Puritans, and the spring and summer of 1691 were hot and humid in Massachusetts. The rye harvested that year would have been consumed in 1692. She theorizes that it was infected with ergot.

Barley infected with ergot, from Wikipedia

People who eat ergot-infected grains can develop a disease called ergotism. It comes in two varieties. Gangrenous ergotism causes an infected person's extremities to die and rot away. Fingers, toes and ears develop gangrene and fall off. Picture leprosy, but caused by grain. Scary! The second variety is called convulsive ergotism, which has very different symptoms, including the following:

• Tingling sensations in the skin and fingers
• Vertigo
• Headaches
• Ringing in the ears
• Vomiting and diarrhea
• Hallucinations
• Bodily convulsions

Ergot contains the alkaloid isoergine, aka lysergic acid amine, a molecule similar to that found in LSD, which can cause hallucinations. Perhaps all those Puritans were just having a really bad trip?

Caporael's article goes on to explain how some of the behaviors seen in the Salem witch trials might be caused by convulsive ergotism.

Accusations of choking, pinching, pricking with pins, and biting by the specter of the accused formed the standard testimony of the afflicted in almost all the examinations and trials. The choking suggests the involvement of the involuntary muscular fibers that is typical of ergot poisoning; the biting, pinching, and pricking may allude to the crawling and tingling sensations under the skin experienced by ergotism victims. Complaints of vomiting and "bowels pulled out" are common in the deposition of the accusers. The physical symptoms of the afflicted and many of the other accusers are those induced by convulsive ergot poisoning. (Linnda R. Caporael, "Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem?", Science, vol. 192, April 2, 1976) 

The article also suggests that the demons people saw were just hallucinations, such as the thing with a monkey's body and bird's feet that choked John Londer while he slept, as were the spectral witches that people saw inside their homes or roaming the landscape. The Puritans didn't have a scientific understanding of ergotism so they explained away the strange symptoms as evil magic sent by witches.

Caporael's article really struck a chord when it was published. It received quite a bit of publicity, and even made the front page of The New York Times in an article titled "Salem Witch Hunts in 1692 Linked to LSD-Like Agent." LSD was a widely used drug in the 1970s and the link with contemporary drug culture made sense to a society dealing with its own hallucinating kids.

The ergot theory still remains popular, even though most people now don't know where it came from. I often see commenters online mention ergotism when discussing the Salem trials, and it comes up sometimes when I talk with people about New England witchcraft. Just a few weeks ago I was leading a tour in Boston and when I mentioned witchcraft someone asked about ergotism.

People still remember Caporaels' theory, but they don't remember the rebuttal that two psychologists published a few months later. Nicholas Spanos and Jack Gottlieb published an article titled "Ergotism and the Salem Village Witch Trials" in the December 24, 1976 issue of Science. The two authors outline some compelling reasons why ergotism did not cause the Salem trials.

First, only people suffering from Vitamin A deficiency contract convulsive ergotism; people with healthy vitamin A intake get the gangrenous variety. Vitamin A is found in dairy products and fish. Salem Village was a successful farming community with lots of cows and Salem Town was a seaport with lots of fishing activity. It seems unlikely that anyone had a Vitamin A deficiency.

Further, ergotism usually strikes entire families (since everyone is eating the same grain). That did not happen in Salem, where only a few members of families were afflicted by witchcraft. The afflicted girls also did not report diarrhea or vomiting, and more importantly they did not die or develop permanent dementia, which happens in severe cases of ergotism. Their skin also did not turn a livid color, which is another symptom of the disease.

The afflicted girls did not actually suffer convulsions or pain in a way that was consistent with ergotism. They would suffer fits and convulsions when a suspected witch was brought into the courtroom for them to see, but their symptoms would subside when the suspect confessed, when passages were read from the Bible, or when the suspect touched them. Their convulsion were clearly not the symptoms of a disease. As Spanos and Gottlieb write:

The afflicted girls were responsive to social cues from each other as well as from the accused and were therefor able to predict the occurrence of each other's fits. In such cases one of the girls would cry out that she saw the specter of an accused witch about to attack another of the afflicted. The other girl would then immediately fall into a fit.... 

... Taken together, these facts indicate that the afflicted girls were enacting the role demoniacs as that role was commonly understood in their day. (Nicholas Spanos and Jack Gottlieb, "Ergotism and the Salem Village Witch Trials, " Science, December 24, 1976)

Spanos and Gottlieb also point out that the afflicted girls were only a small subset of all the witnesses in the Salem witch trials. Dozens of people testified against the accused witches, and most of them showed no symptoms of ergotism at all.

So it seems extremely unlikely that ergotism caused the Salem witch trials or even played any role at all. It's too bad, because modern science is great at treating physical disease, but not so great at dealing with psycho-social eruptions. We can probably prevent outbreaks of ergotism, but that won't help us prevent future witch hunts. Witch hunts still occur around the world, and we've even seen seen similar phenomena within the last few decades in the United States, like the Satanic panic of the 1980s or the evil clown scare of 2016. If only they were as easy to treat as a troublesome fungus.

Becoming A Witch, New England Style

The following letter appeared in my mailbox the other day:

Dear New England Folklore,

Thank you for writing such an awesome blog. I really love reading your posts about witches and witchcraft. I have some annoying neighbors and would like to ruin their butter, sicken their livestock and cause their crops to fail. How can I become a witch? It sounds like fun.

Your faithful reader,

Darlene in Dunwich

Gee Darlene! Thanks for the wonderful letter. Personally I don't think you should use malevolent magic to revenge yourself on your neighbors, but you do ask a good question. How does one become a witch? There are several different opinions on the matter.

For many modern spiritual witches (Wiccans and others who follow witchcraft as a religious path*), becoming a witch involves being initiated by someone who already is one. These initiations usually involve sacred oaths, nudity, some good-natured torture, and the imparting of secret knowledge. This initiatory model was started by Gerald Gardner (1884 - 1964), the father of modern witchcraft and the first person to declare himself a Wiccan. Gardner claimed that he himself was initiated by a pre-existing coven, but the rituals he created include many elements from other sources, including Freemasonry and the works of Aleister Crowley.


This type of initiation would be quite foreign to a traditional New England witch. All those candles and chants and incense - why, it's downright Popish! The stories about Puritan witchcraft initiations describe something simpler and much more bare-bones. The Puritans sought to strip away all extraneous elements from Christianity, and this impulse is also reflected in their stories about witchcraft, which they viewed as Christianity's evil twin.

A modern witchcraft initiation. Nothing this exciting happens in traditional New England folklore!

Most stories simply involve someone signing their name in the Devil's big black book. Often it is implied that they are signing in blood. A lot of these stories come from confessions collected during the witch trials. Puritan magistrates thought the Devil was behind all witchcraft, and they would get people to confess the Evil One's involvement any way they could. I mentioned that there may be some good-natured torture in a Wiccan initiation. The torture used by the Puritans was not in any way good-natured.

For example, during the Salem trials teenaged witch suspect Richard Carrier and his brother Andrew were bent over backwards and tied head to ankle. They had initially plead innocent but - no surprise - after this painful torture they confessed to signing the Devil's book in an apple orchard in their own blood. They also said the Devil had baptized them in a waterfall in Newbury. Several other Salem suspects also claimed the Devil baptized them.

The Satanic baptism is obviously an inversion of the Christian baptism, while the Devil's black book is the dark twin of the book that Puritans signed when becoming members of their local Puritan congregation. The classic New England witchcraft initiation is basically a distorted reflection of Puritan religion. Interestingly, some suspects confessed that the Devil only wanted their service for a set number of years. This is also a reflection of New England Puritan society, where many people were indentured servants who sold themselves to masters for a set period of time.

I realize this may sound a little tame to you, Darlene. Like eating at a Dunkin' Donuts, New England witchcraft is effective but doesn't have a lot of sex appeal. Well, if you want something a little more sexy, I'd suggest reading Vance Randolph's Ozark Magic and Folklore (1947), which contains folklore he gathered in the 1930s and 1940s. There are some interesting parallels between Ozark and New England folklore, but the stories about witchcraft initiations are much different.

Well, that's how you can become a witch. But don't rush into it, because you may already be one! Some modern witches think that witches are born, not made. A few go so far as to claim that some people carry "witch-blood" inside them and are descended from the Nephelim, the fallen angels from the Book of Genesis. I suspect the idea of witch-blood was popularized in the modern era by Jack Williamson's 1948 pulp novel Darker Than You Think, but it does have deep roots in European folklore. For example, Merlin is often said to be the half-human offspring of a human woman and a demon.

Some European cultures claim that children born in strange ways or at strange times are destined to become magical beings, regardless of their parentage. For example, in Renaissance Italy children born feet-first were said to mature into either witches or witch-fighters, while in Greece babies born on Christmas day grew up to be kallikantzaroi, hideous evil monsters. So perhaps you are already a witch! (More details on this idea can be found in Carlo Ginzburg's Ecstasies: Deciphering The Witches' Sabbath (1993)).

I haven't found any comparable lore from New England, but many stories from this region don't really indicate how people become witches. They tend to focus instead on how to detect and defeat them. The Puritan leaders were convinced that all witches got their power from Satan, but this opinion wasn't shared by everyone. The average person didn't really care where witches came from. For many people they were not part of a demonic conspiracy but were instead, like March blizzards or stony soil, just part of New England they had to deal with.
 
*Mandatory disclaimer - Unlike the witches from folklore, modern spiritual witches are mostly nice people and don't go around cursing livestock or ruining your butter. Don't confuse modern witches with the witches from folklore!

The True Story of Mary Sibley and Tituba

I've just started to watch the TV show Salem. It premiered last spring, but I don't get the channel it was on so I'm watching it now through Netflix. I'm only a couple episodes into it, but I'm already compelled to comment.

The show is a historical horror fantasy set in Salem during the 1692 witch hunts. Although we all rationally know weren't any real witches in Salem, just political turmoil and personal grudges, the show turns that on its head. Salem's premise is that although the people executed for witchcraft were innocent, they were framed by the town's real witches, who operated unseen and undetected.

This idea was also the premise of a 2008 comic book, Salem: Queen of Thorns. In that comic the real witch was a huge supernatural tree-monster (the Queen of Thorns), but in the TV show Salem people who really lived are being portrayed as Satanic witches. I have to say, it's a little weird. Weirder even than a giant tree-monster witch.

Salem: Queen of Thorns.

The leader of the witches is Mary Sibley, the wife of George Sibley, the wealthiest and most influential man in Salem. Mary was once in love with heroic soldier John Alden, but when he didn't return from war she became bitter, gave her unborn baby and her own soul to the Devil, and entered into a loveless marriage with George Sibley. Oh, and she controls George with a toad-shaped familiar that she placed in his stomach. That all happens in the first fifteen minutes of the first episode.

Mary is supported, but perhaps also controlled, by her sinister yet sexy Afro-Caribbean slave Tituba. There's lots of erotic lesbian energy between the two characters, and Tituba often rubs herbs and oils on Mary's naked body and reminders her of her vows to Satan. Again, this all happens in the first first episode.

Mary Sibley (Janet Montgomery) and Tituba (Ashley Madekwe) in Salem.

I suppose I should just relax and enjoy the show like the Puritan era True Blood knockoff that it is, but somehow I'd enjoy it more if all the characters were fictional.

The real Mary Sibley played a small but significant role in the actual Salem witch hunt. Mary and her husband Samuel (who was not particularly wealthy or influential) were neighbors of Reverend Samuel Parris. During the winter of 1691 - 1692, Reverend Parris's daughter Betty and her cousin Abigail Williams had been acting strangely. They had made been making odd noises, moving in unusual ways, and complaining of mysterious pains. The local physician thought it might be witchcraft. Reverend Parris and his wife tried to treat the girls' ailments through prayer.

On February 25, 1692, Reverend and Mrs. Parris left Salem to hear a minister speak in another town. Mary Sibley came over to the Parris house and told the reverend's slaves, Tituba Indian and her husband John Indian, to make a cake from the girls' urine and rye flour. Following Mary's instructions, the slaves baked the cake and then fed it to a dog. Mary, Tituba and John then watched the dog to see if it acted strangely.

This type of cake was known as a witch cake, and was method for diagnosing witchcraft. If the girls really had witchcraft in their body, it should also be in their urine. If the dog acted strangely after eating their urine it would be proof the girls were indeed bewitched.

History does not record how the dog reacted, but we do know how Reverend Parris acted. He was furious. All magic was considered evil magic, and he believed Mary Sibley's benign attempt to help the girls had opened the door to greater evil. He may have been right, since after witnessing Mary's magic the two girls began to actually see human forms tormenting them. Previously they had just suffered vague physical maladies. It seems likely that her actions strongly suggested to Betty and Abigail that they were bewitched, and they began to act accordingly from that point on.

Reverend Parris gave Mary Sibley a stern private lecture, and she publicly and tearfully confessed her errors to the Salem Village congregation on March 25, 1692.

Mary fades from history at this point and didn't play any further role in the Salem witch trials.  However, some writers have suggested that her witch cake was the incident that really kicked off the witch craze. They speculate that Betty and Abigail might have stopped their odd behavior if Mary hadn't asked Tituba and John to bake the witch cake.

That's something we can never know, but we do know that things didn't go too well for Tituba and her husband. Tituba was one of the first people accused of witchcraft by the afflicted girls, and John was accused soon after. Neither was executed, and they survived the trials the same way most others did - by accusing even more people of witchcraft.

When I was a child I learned that Tituba was the person who started the witch craze by telling Betty and Abigail stories of voodoo and black magic. But as I've since learned, this idea was started by historians in the 19th century who wondered why nice rational white people would do something as crazy as hunt witches. Clearly, they thought, the idea of witchcraft must have been introduced into Salem by Tituba, who they imagined to be an irrational black woman. It couldn't have been someone a nice white lady like Mary Sibley.

More recently,  historians have learned that Tituba has been misrepresented. The only act of magic she ever performed was to bake the witch cake, and she executed this piece of traditional English magic at the bidding of Mary Sibley. There was no voodoo involved at all. It also seems likely that she was not black, but was an Arawak Indian from the Caribbean. It had been assumed that her last name was Indian, but the word "Indian" may actually just have been a descriptor. Not Tituba India, bur rather Tituba, Indian.

We've also learned that no race or ethnic group - white, black, Arawak, etc. - is more rational or irrational than any other. Well, I hope we've learned that. But I think that's important to keep in mind if you watch Salem. Rationally, we all know there weren't any witches in Salem. We know Mary Sibley wasn't a witch, that Tituba was framed, and that she probably wasn't black.

But somehow, irrationally we're still entertained by a show where the Salem witches are real, Tituba is a manipulative evil black Jamaican woman, and Mary Sibley suckles her familiar with blood from her thigh. So as you watch Salem, and maybe even enjoy its trashy supernatural melodrama, remember what you're seeing is not true.

And when you shut off the TV just remember: there were no real witches in Salem. 

Abigail Hobbs, Poor Little Witch Girl

As I read about the Salem witch trials, sometimes I feel like I'm really getting to know a particular person. Abigail Hobbs, accused of witchcraft at age 14, is one of them.

Maybe I'm just projecting my modern attitudes onto a completely different historical era, but when I read about Abigail Hobbs I get the impression of a bratty teenage Goth girl. For example, here is the transcript of one of her interrogations. The judge has asked her when she first encountered the Devil:

Abigail: About 3 or 4 years ago.

Judge: What did he say to you?


Abigail: He said he would give me fine things, if I did what he would have me.

Judge: What would he have you do?

Abigail: Why, he would have me be a witch. 

Her use of the word "why" gives the impression that she was relaxed, and almost mocking. "Of course he wanted me to be a witch," she implies. "Why else would I be on trial?"

Before coming to Salem, Abigail Hobbs had lived with her father and stepmother in a settlement at Casco Bay in Maine. In the 1690s Maine was a dangerous frontier area, rife with wild animals and marauding Wabenaki Indians, but Abigail roamed freely outside the palisades surrounding the settlement. She even spent nights alone in the woods.

When asked by neighbors why she was unafraid outside in the dangerous forest, she replied that she had "sold herself body and soul to the Old Boy." I like to think she said this sarcastically, to scare her pious and nosey neighbors. Chadwick Hansen, in his crazy book Witchcraft at Salem, thinks Abigail Hobbs really was a witch based on statements like this. I prefer to think of her as a proto-Goth girl out to shock.

As Indian attacks made Casco Bay increasingly dangerous the Hobbs family moved south to Topsfield, Massachusetts, which is next to Salem. Abigail continued to be a wild child. She mockingly baptized her mother while at a neighbor's house, openly defied her parents in public, and told people who criticized her that she could see the Devil sitting behind them.

Needless to say, these antics soon led to Abigail being accused of witchcraft. Like most of the other accused, she soon realized that the best way to delay execution was to tell the judges what they wanted to hear. She confessed to witchcraft. She claimed she tortured and killed neighbors by sticking pins in poppets, and ate red bread and red wine at the witches' sabbat. She also accused several others of witchcraft, including John Proctor of Salem and George Burroughs, the former Salem minister who had moved to Maine.

In the fall of 1692 Abigail was sentenced to be executed, but by early 1693 the trials had collapsed and the order was never carried out. Governor Phipps signed a reprieve and Abigail was spared the hangman's noose. Unfortunately many of the people she had accused were not so lucky.

I like to think that Abigail Hobbs was a just free-spirited teenager growing up in a dangerous time. Maybe her blasphemous, screw-you attitude started out as a reaction to the unstable environment of Casco Bay, but by the time she arrived in Massachusetts people took her all too seriously.

You can read the transcripts of Abigail's trials here.

Witches and Bay Leaves: A Witch Story from Hampton

Modern witches and Wiccans sometimes use the phrase, "If you can't hex you can't heal" when discussing magical power. Although you don't hear this phrase much among the general population, I think it does convey the ambiguous way most people view magic. Magic is a neutral force that doesn't necessarily follow any set moral code. If someone can use magic for good, what's to stop them from using magic for evil?

It's not a new concern, and it was certainly found among the English who colonized this area. Many people who tried to help their neighbors with good magic eventually found themselves accused of witchcraft. One of these was Rachel Fuller of Hampton, New Hampshire, who was put on trial in 1680.

Before her trial Rachel was something of a self-proclaimed expert on witches and allegedly had the ability to see them, even when they were invisible to most people.

Witches, she said, had pulled a boarder out of his bed at Henry Robie's tavern so they could ride him with an enchanted bridle. Rachel also claimed she had seen several local witches, including Eunice Cole,  practicing their dark arts. Goodie Cole and her companions magically put their husbands and children asleep so they could travel abroad at night and work mischief.

Bay leaves - flavorful and magical.

 Rachel fell under suspicion herself when she tried to help her neighbors, the Godfrey family, with their sick infant son. The Godfreys thought their child had been enchanted, and threw hot coals from the fireplace into his urine. If a witch was involved, this would make him or her appear. (For more details on how this works, see my posts about witch bottles and witch cake.)

Rachel soon appeared at the Godfrey's house and acted strangely.

... by and by Rachel Fuller came in and looked very strangely, bending, daubed her face with molasses, as she judged it, so as that she had almost daubed up one of her eyes, and the molasses ready to drop off her face; and she sat down by Goody Godfrey, who had the sick child in her lap, and took the child by the hand; and Goodwife Godfrey, being afraid to see her come in in that manner, put her hand off from the child and wrapt the child's hand in her apron.

Then the said Rachel Fuller turned her about, and smote the back of her hands together sundry times, and spat in the fire. Then she, having herbs in her hands, stood and rubbed them in her hand and strewed them about the hearth by the fire. Then she sat her down again, and said, Woman, the child will be well! and then went out of the door.

Then she went behind the house; and Mehitable Godfrey told her mother that Goody Fuller was acting strangely. Then the said Mary Godfrey and Sarah, looking out, saw Rachel Fuller standing with her face towards the house, and beat herself with her arms, as men do in winter to heat their hands, and this she did three times; and stooping down and gathering something off the ground in the interim between the beating of herself, and then she went home.

There are a couple ways to interpret this. If you were Rachel Fuller, you would say you came to help a neighbor heal their sick child. It was just a coincidence that you showed up after the coals were thrown into the urine. If you were one of the Godfreys, you would say the coals and urine compelled Rachel to appear because she was the witch who enchanted their child. Her alleged healing magic was just a further attempts to harm the child.

Rachel also told the Godfrey children that if they put sweet bay leaves around the windows and under the thresholds no witch could enter the house. The children did this, but because they ran out of leaves one door was left with a small space unprotected.

When Rachel next came to visit she did not enter through the backdoor, which was her normal entrance, but instead came in the front door. This was of course the door that was not completely protected. Twelve-year old Mehitable Godfrey later testified that

... though the door stood open, yet she crowded in on that side where the bays lay not, and rubbed her back against the post so as that she rubbed off her hat, and then she sat her down and made ugly faces, and nestled about, and would have looked on the child, but I not suffering her, she went out rubbing against the post of the door as she came in, and beat off her hat again, and I never saw her in the house since; and I do further testify that while she was in the house she looked under the door where the bays lay.

Although Rachel had been the one to recommend the bay leaves as protection, the Godfrey's claimed they were actually working against her since she was the true witch.

The Godrey's child died soon afterwards. Rachel was put on trial for murder in the summer of 1680, but was found innocent due to a lack of evidence. Interestingly John Godfrey, the father of the child, had himself been accused (and acquitted) of witchcraft three times in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Witchcraft trials were often motivated by property disputes and bad blood between neighbors, but beyond these purely mundane causes I think it's interesting to see how ideas about magic play out in the trials.

My sources about Rachel Fuller were Emerson Baker's book The Devil of Great Island, and this great genealogy site that has records of Rachel Fuller's trial.

Richard Carrier: Confessions of a Cider-Drinking Witch

Richard Carrier was only eighteen years old when he and his younger brother Andrew were accused of witchcraft.

He was quite surprised, but should he have been? His mother, Martha Carrier, had recently been accused of witchcraft herself, and the Carrier family had never been popular in Andover, Massachusetts. They were considered poor even by the low standards of 1692 New England, and they were also pugnacious - Richard had been in fistfights with several other men and boys. When smallpox struck their family they had lived as pariahs on the outskirts of town.

When the constables brought Richard and his brother to Salem for questioning, they were obviously terrified. (Records note that Andrew was so frightened he stuttered when he spoke.) Both brothers pled innocent, but the afflicted girls who had accused them convulsed wildly in their presence, indicating guilt. The Carrier boys were brought into an adjacent room, where the questioning continued privately and the constables tied their heads to their ankles. Under this torture, they confessed to being witches.

When he was returned to the courtroom, Richard told how the Devil had first approached him on the Andover road one night in May of 1691. The dark man in the high-crowned hat claimed he was Jesus, and offered Richard new clothes and a horse in return for making his mark in a red book. A tempting offer for a poor Puritan, and Richard signed. His initiation was complete when the Devil baptized him in a waterfall at Newbury, Massachusetts. His brother Andrew later signed the Devil's book in an apple orchard in the presence of Richard and their mother.

 

As a witch, Richard followed Satan's orders. He sent his spirit to torment Timothy Swan of Andover, who had argued with another witch about the price for thatching her roof. Richard used a simple poppet to torment the wife of Salem Village's minister Samuel Parris. He attended the witch meetings, which his spirit was summoned to by the beating of a drum.

And he drank stolen cider. 

Mary Lacy, who had been accused of witchcraft shortly before the Carrier brothers, had told the court that she, the Carrier family, and other witches had flown to the home of Elizabeth Ballard and drunken all the cider in her cellar.

"Sometimes we leave our bodies at home, but at other times we go in our bodies and the Devil puts a mist before their eyes and will not let them see us." Mary Lacy had drunken the cider while invisible.

Richard confessed to this as well, but said his spirit had done it while outside his body. Mary Lacy supported his confession. "He went in his spirit, and his body lay dead the while out of doors."

After he confessed, the afflicted girls touched his hand without convulsing, a sign of his true contrition. The court spared Richard and Andrew's lives because they had confessed to witchcraft. Their mother never confessed, and was hanged. 

***

There are lots of things I find interesting about Richard Carrier's story. For example, he was male (most of the accused witches in Salem and New England overall were women) and the torture he and Andrew endured is horrifying.

What struck me the most, though, was the cider. Richard and all the confessed witches created stories about their witchy exploits that were believable to their accusers. People in Puritan New England believed in the reality of witches; it was part of their shared worldview. Everyone knew what witches did. All it took was a little persuasion (or torture) to tell a convincing story about your own actions as a witch.

And apparently, witches sent their spirits or invisible bodies to drink their neighbors' cider. Elizabeth Ballard's cider would have been alcoholic cider, which was one of the main drinks at the time. Water was often polluted, tea was expensive, and grain for beer was too hard to grow. People drank hard cider morning, noon and night.

Spirits entering a house to drink liquor (or eat food) is an old folklore motif. For example, the Swedish historian Olaus Magnus wrote in his History of the Northern Peoples (1555) that at Yuletide werewolves break into cellars to drink beer and mead. The line between werewolves and witches is blurry, since both are shapeshifters. Many people who confessed to being werewolves talked about sending out their spirits in the shape of a wolf, much as witches sent their spirits to do mischief.

We don't believe in these things in the 21st century, of course, but a surprising number of people leave out milk and cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve. But that's just for children, right?


In parts of Medieval and Renaissance Europe it was believed that a night-riding goddess and her followers (sometimes called the Good Ladies) traveled across the countryside. To gain their favor, people would leave out food and beverages for them. In the British Isles, food was left out for faeries and elves. In many countries, food and beverages are still left out for the wandering spirits of the dead who might enter the home.

The origins of this belief in traveling spirits that enter your house to eat and drink is quite murky. Writers like Carlo Ginzburg and Claude Lecouteux trace it back to ancient shamanic practices and ideas about the dead. It sounds good to me. Apparently it is a very resilient belief that has changed shape and expressed itself differently over time.

For Halloween, maybe I'll leave out some cider for who or whatever is wandering around that night, and be thankful that I can write about this topic without being tortured. 

***

I got the information about Richard Carrier from Marilynne Roach's wonderful The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Chronicle of New England Under Siege.  This is the book if you want to read a straightforward and detailed narrative of what transpired in Salem.

Rebecca Nurse Homestead and Cemetery

At the time of the infamous witch trials, Salem was much larger than it is today and was divided into two parts: Salem Town and Salem Village.

Salem Town (which today is the modern city of Salem) was a wealthy coastal trading port. Salem Village (which today is the town of Danvers), on the other hand, was an inland village focused on agriculture. According to Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum's book Salem Possessed, the citizens of Salem Village were divided over their relationship with the larger and wealthier Salem Town. Some villagers, including Reverend Parris and the Putnam family, wanted the village to become independent. Others appreciated the business opportunities that came their way from Salem Town and wanted to remain part of it. Boyer and Nissenbaum claim these political tensions gave rise to the witchcraft accusations. I think there were probably a lot of reasons, but I'm sure they added fuel to the fire.

Most of the initial accusers and the people they accused lived in Salem Village, although the accusations eventually spread throughout the colony. Danvers has downplayed the important role it played in the Salem witch trials but there are still a few interesting historic sites you can visit. When I was in Danvers with Lori visiting the hospital cemetery we decided to see some.

The first was this monument erected in 1992 on the 300th anniversary of the trials. It is quite large and dramatic, but is located on a relatively quiet suburban street. Unlike the city of Salem, which generates a lot of tourism from witchcraft, Danvers is really low-key about it.

After the monument we stopped by the Rebecca Nurse homestead, a multi-acre historic site. Rebecca Nurse was a prominent and pious member of the Salem Village community, so it was shocking to her neighbors when she was accused of witchcraft. (Her sisters Mary Eastey and Sarah Cloyce were accused as well.) Many of her neighbors signed a petition supporting her, and the judges initially found her innocent. However, some of the afflicted girls (including Ann Putnam, whose family had a history of property disputes with the Nurses) continued to cry out that Rebecca's phantom was tormenting them. The judges changed their verdict to guilty, and Rebecca was hanged on July 19, 1692. She was 71 years old.

Like all those executed in the trials her body was buried in an unmarked grave on Gallows Hill in Salem Town, but her family took it and re-buried it on her homestead. The family cemetery still exists, and is a short walk from the main house. Rebecca's grave is now marked by a large monument that her descendants erected in 1885.

The bones of George Jacobs, another victim of the Salem trials, are also interred in the Nurse cemetery. George was executed in August of 1692 at the age of 70 after being accused of witchcraft by, among others, his granddaughter Margaret. Margaret herself had been accused earlier, and knew that by confessing and accusing others she could escape execution. Margaret did survive, but wrote she had accused her grandfather only "to save my life and to have my liberty." She visited her grandfather in jail before he died to get his forgiveness.

After he was hanged George's body was taken from Gallows Hill and buried on his family's farm. His bones had to be moved when the property was sold to developers, and were finally laid to rest in the Nurse cemetery in 1992. His monument, although only 20 years old, is a replica of a traditional 17th century grave stone.

Margaret Jones, the Witch of Charlestown

The 1692 witchcraft trials in Salem are the most famous of their kind in New England, but the unfortunate men and women who died in Salem weren't the first to be executed as witches in Massachusetts. That claim to fame belongs to Margaret Jones.

With her husband Thomas, Margaret was one of the earliest settlers in Charlestown (now part of Boston but at the time a separate town). Margaret was an herbalist and midwife who treated her sick neighbors with various teas and concoctions.

People who have the power to heal also have the power to harm, and eventually some of Margaret's patients began to murmur against her. They claimed she said if they refused to buy her medicines they would never get well. I suppose you can take this two ways. Obviously, if your doctor is prescribing something you should take it if you want your condition to improve. On the other hand, if you believe in witchcraft, you might think your doctor is bewitching you just so she can keep selling you medicine...

 Soon her neighbors began to openly accuse Margaret of witchcraft, claiming she

"was found to have such a malignant Touch, as many persons were taken with Deafness, or Vomiting, or other violent Pains or Sickness."

Margaret was arrested and accused of witchcraft. It was widely believed at the time that witches suckled their familiar spirits through strange "witch teats", which could be located anywhere on their body. It was also believed that these spirits needed to feed frequently, and would come to the witch for sustenance even if the witch was imprisoned.

The authorities assigned a guard to watch Margaret while she was in jail to see if her familiar appeared. It did. The guard claimed he saw her suckle a small child in her locked cell. When he opened the cell door to confront her the child disappeared. Clearly, she was a witch.

Margaret was executed by hanging on June 15, 1648. She protested her innocence until the very end, and denounced her accusers and the judges.

"The same Day and Hour she was executed, there was a very great Tempest at Connecticut, which blew down many Trees, etc. "

This was further taken as proof that she had indeed been a witch.

The law at that time required spouses of accused witches to also be arrested. Thomas tried to escape Boston by booking passage on a ship leaving the city, but the ship had trouble keeping its balance even though the weather was calm. When the crew realized that Jones was Margaret's husband they handed him over to the authorities. The ship righted itself after he was removed from the ship. It's not clear what happened to Thomas, but it doesn't seem that he was executed.

As with all the witchcraft trials, it's both interesting and upsetting to see how the belief in witchcraft colored people's perceptions. A sick person who doesn't get better? Must be witchcraft. A storm in Connecticut? Witchcraft. A rocking ship? Witchcraft. It was almost impossible to argue against it. 

I got most of this information from Rosemary Ellen Guiley's Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft, and also from Wikipedia.

Getting Familiar with the Witch's Familiar

"Sarah Good, what evil spirit have you familiarity with?"
"None."
"Have you made no contact with the Devil?"
"No."
"Why do you hurt these children?"
"I do not hurt them. I scorn it."
"Who do you employ, then, to do it?"
"I employ nobody."
"What creature do you employ, then?"

In a modern court case, when the accused is asked about accomplices everyone assumes the accomplice is human. In the Salem witch trials, the accused were interrogated about their familiar spirits. The Puritans believed familiar spirits, or familiars for short, were demonic entities given to witches by the Devil to work their mischief. They often took the form of animals, but occasionally were also humanoid or monstrous in appearance.

A 17th English century illustration of witches and their familiars.

The origin of this belief probably lies deep in mankind's past. In many societies, shamans make pacts with animal spirits to help them in their work for the community. Even in 17th century England, many cunning folk (magical practitioners who worked beneficial magic) claimed they derived their skills from familiar spirits, often a fairy of some kind.

Unfortunately, the Puritans in both old and New England didn't believe there could be beneficial familiar spirits. Familiars belonged to the realm of the Devil, and having a familiar was proof of selling yourself to that realm.

In Salem, people were accused of being served by a variety of spirits:

• Four-year old Dorcas Good accused her mother Sarah of "having three birds, one black, one yellow and that these birds hurt the children and afflicted persons." I don't think the third bird was ever described.
  

• The slave Tituba also testified that Sarah Good was served by a yellow bird, as well as a cat.

• Tituba claimed that accused witch Sarah Osburn also had a familiar spirit, with "wings and two legs and a head like a woman." The familiar could change its shape and become fully human.

• Sarah Osburn was also served by a "thing all over hairy, all the face hairy, and a long nose, and I don't know how to tell how the face looks." It walked on two legs, and was about three feet high. Tituba had seen it standing in front of the fire in the Reverend Parris' house at night.

• John Louder claimed that Bridget Bishop sent her familiar to torment him at night. The spirit, which had the body of a monkey, the feet of a rooster, and a human face, crept into his bedroom while he slept and asked Louder to become a witch. He refused, and banished it with a prayer.

Perhaps you've heard the old saying, "It's colder than a witch's tit?" It seems likely that this phrase is derived from the belief that witches suckled their familiars from small, unnatural bodily protrusions called witch's teats. Familiars fed on a witch's blood, of course, not milk. These protrusions were allegedly cold and without any feeling. During trials, accused witches were stripped and searched for witch teats. Moles, pimples, and flea bites were misidentified and used as evidence of witchcraft.

I got most of this information, and the surreal descriptions of the familiars, from Chadwick Hansen's Witchcraft at Salem.

Next week: Crazy witchcraft stories from the Merrimac Valley!

How to Make a Poppet

I think most people are familiar with the concept of a voodoo doll. It's a small human figure meant to represent an individual for magical purposes.

The term "voodoo doll" is really a misnomer. Using dolls to cast spells has a long history, and isn't even particularly associated with Voudou, which is really an Afro-Caribbean polytheistic religion.

In colonial New England these dolls were known as poppets, which is an old spelling of puppet. They were often cited in witchcraft trials as evidence of malicious magic. For example, Goody Glover, and elderly Irish woman accused of bewitching several Boston children, had in her home

"several small images, or poppets, or babies, made of rags and stuffed with goat's hair and other ingredients. When these were produced the vile woman acknowledged that her way to torment the objects of her malice was by wetting of her finger with her spittle and stroking of these little images."

See? No pins are necessary to torment your victims, just a little spit. And Goody Glover later showed that your doll doesn't even need to be well made - a common stone will do.

Before her execution Goody Glover was visited in prison by Cotton Mather, who prayed for her soul. But, as soon as he was out of her sight, he said she "took a stone, a long and slender stone, and with her finger and spittle fell to tormenting it; though whom or what she meant, I had the mercy to never understand."

Goody Glover's trial happened in 1688, and set the stage for the Salem trials of 1692. Poppets once again played an important role.

An early American poppet on display at the Salem Witch House.

Two men testified against Bridget Bishop that while doing work in her cellar, they tore down a wall to find "several poppets made up of rags and hogs' bristles with headless pin in them with the points turned outward..." This evidence helped make her the first person executed in the Salem witch trials.

Poppets were also used as evidence against Candy, a slave in the Salem Village house of Nathaniel Putnam. She kept in her room "a handkerchief wherein several knots were tied, rags of cloth, a piece of cheese, and a piece of grass." These must have been a very simple dolls indeed, but the afflicted girls claimed they could see the specters of Candy and the Black Man (i.e. the Devil) pinching the dolls, which caused them great pain. Candy was later forced to eat the grass, which she claimed burned her skin. Candy confessed to being a witch, and ultimately escaped execution.

Given all the bad energy surrounding poppets in this part of the country, I'm reluctant to provide specific instructions. However, I found this video (with peppy music) that shows you how. Watch it if you dare!



The quotes in this post were from Chadwick Hansen's Witchcraft at Salem.

Next week - Witches' familiars!

The Salem Witch House and Jonathan Corwin

October is Halloween month. The days are getting darker, the air is getting cooler. It puts me in the mood for spooky stories, and tales about witches.

Tony and I went with our friends Lori and Dave up to Salem for our annual pilgrimage. This year rather than visit a cheesy (but scary) haunted house we went someplace with an authentic connection to the Salem witch trials - the Salem Witch House, the former residence of witch trial judge Jonathan Corwin.


Located just off the main drag, the Corwin house is an impressive example of 17th century architecture. Jonathan Corwin bought the house in 1675, but I believe it was built in the 1650s. Now that's an old house!


Jonathan Corwin was born in 1640, and became quite wealthy as a merchant. He served Salem (and Salem Village) as a magistrate, and dealt mostly with petty crimes like public drunkenness and burglary. However, given the penal code of the day, even though the crimes were petty I am sure he delivered some harsh punishments. For example, convicted burglars were branded with a "B" on their hands or forehead, depending on their number of convictions.


Corwin was appointed to serve on the witch trials only after Haverhill's Nathaniel Saltonstall resigned. Saltonstall had quit in protest over the admission of spectral evidence in the trials.


People at the time believed that witches could send their souls (or specters) to attack their victims. The afflicted girls in Salem Village claimed they could see the specters of the witches who were attacking them. Although no one else was able to see them, this spectral evidence was still allowed in the court.


It appears that Jonathan Corwin had no qualms about accepting spectral evidence, but not much is known about his role in the trials. Records from the time are incomplete. Corwin did sign multiple arrest warrants and transcribed the records of several trials.


Corwin's role in the trials did not have a negative effect on his reputation. Although it was eventually acknowledged that the trials killed twenty innocent people, Corwin went on to serve on the state legislature. He died in 1718 at the age of 78.


The Salem Witch House is definitely worth a visit. The architecture is great, and the building is filled with furniture and artifacts from the 17th century. They let you take photos (no flash allowed), which I think is unusual for a house museum. There are also some interesting displays around the house about witchcraft beliefs of the time.

I got my information about Jonathan Corwin from Wikipedia.

Next week: how to make a poppet!

Nathaniel Saltonstall, Salem Witch Trials Judge

I went to my ancestral Haverhill home today, and stopped by the Pentucket Cemetery on Water Street. Lots of interesting people are buried there, including some victims of the raid that made Hannah Duston a national heroine.

The most impressive monument belongs to the family of Nathaniel Saltonstall, who was one of the judges at the Salem witchcraft trials in the 1690s.



Saltonstall was born in Ipswich in 1639, attended Harvard, and eventually became Haverhill's town clerk. He married Elizabeth Ward, who was the daughter of John Ward, the minister who founded Haverhill. In short, he was kind of a bigwig.

When the 1692 witch craze broke out in Salem Village, Saltonstall was appointed to the Court Oyer and Terminer, a group of seven judges who would oversee the witchcraft trials.

Saltonstall only heard one witchcraft case, that of Bridget Bishop, who was found guilty and hanged on Gallows Hill. After this, he removed himself from the Court Oyer and Terminer. Salem was far from his home in Haverhill, but more importantly he didn't believe the afflicted girls were really possessed, and found the spectral evidence admitted in court unconvincing.



It wasn't so easy for him to escape the Salem madness unscathed, though. When he returned to Haverhill he started to drink heavily, and was reprimanded for it by Samuel Sewall, one of the judges who remained on the court. Even worse, the afflicted Salem Village girls claimed they saw Nathaniel Saltonstall's spectre with the other witches, and that he was a witch himself.

Because he was well-connected Saltonstall was never brought to trial. He weathered the witch craze, and eventually died in 1707. I don't know if he stopped drinking.



I got most of this information from Marion Starkey's The Devil in Massachusetts, plus several genealogical sources on Google books.

October Horror Mania: "More Weight!"

This weekend Tony and I visited Salem with our friend Lori. The town was in the grip of Halloween mania! Hundreds of people were walking around in witch hats, friend dough was for sale outside the cemetery, and we had to wait in lines to get into Samantha's costume shop and the witchcraft supply store Hex.

Of course, the hardships we faced as Salem tourists were nothing compared to what Giles Corey endured in 1692.

Fried dough outside the cemetery. Yes, it smelled really good.

Giles Corey was an elderly farmer in Salem Village who had a reputation for being stubborn and mean-tempered. As Marion Starkey writes in The Devil in Massachusetts,

This Giles even at eighty was a powerful brute of a man, slow of comprehension, but quick of temper, and so born to trouble as the sparks fly upward; his life had been punctuated by lawsuits and worse.

Starkey doesn't write what the "worse" was, but according to information at the Salem Wax Museum, Giles was rumored to have beaten one of his servants to death. He doesn't sound like a nice guy.

Giles Corey mannequin at the Salem Wax Museum.

His wife Martha was a strong-willed and outspoken woman, and expressed her doubts about the Salem witch trials when they erupted in 1692. Naturally this led to her being accused of witchcraft herself by the allegedly possessed girls.

Giles was called as a witness at her trial. He said he found it hard to pray when Martha was around and that he once found her mysteriously kneeling by the hearth at midnight. He initially agreed with the court that his wife was a witch, but when he himself was later indicted he changed his tune. He realized that she was as innocent as he was.

Although he wasn't too bright, Giles knew if he was convicted of witchcraft the authorities would confiscate all his property. So rather than stand on trial and lose his family's fortune, Giles refused to speak. If he didn't say a word there couldn't be a trial.

Sheriff George Corwin decided to make him talk. This is where things get gruesome.

The sheriff applied what was known as peine forte et dure, or hard and forceful punishment: slow crushing by heavy weight. Giles was stripped naked and tied to the ground outside the jail. Boards were placed across his chest, and rocks were piled on.

Giles still refused to talk.

The sheriff put on more rocks.

Giles didn't say a word.

The sheriff added more and more rocks. This continued for two days. According to tradition, the words Giles said were "More weight..."

Giles died after two days. His tongue protruded from his mouth due to the pressure on his body, and Sheriff Corwin allegedly pushed it back in using his cane.

Martha was hanged three days later. Their family, however, got to keep their land because Giles refused to speak.

Giles Corey stone at the witchcraft trial memorial.

Martha and Giles had both been excommunicated before their deaths, but this was revoked after the Salem witch trials ended. It doesn't seem to have helped Giles feel any better in his unmarked grave. His ghost is rumored to still haunt Salem, particularly around times of disaster. But unlike ghosts who arrive before disasters to give warning, Giles only seems to show up afterward.

He probably comes to gloat.