Was 2016 The Year of The Witch?

This year is grinding to a close, so I thought I'd see what stories on this blog from 2016 were the most widely read.

I was kind of surprised by the result. Overwhelmingly, stories about witches and witchcraft were the most popular this year. Monsters, haunted locations and weird seasonal folklore all took a back seat - 2016 was the year of the witch here on New England Folklore.


Drumroll, please! Here are the top five stories I posted this year:

1. By far the most popular story was this one from January about the Dogtown Witches. These 18th century widows made their living as fortune-tellers, herbalists, and by threatening to bewitch travelers passing through their North Shore village. The story of the Dogtown witches is charming, empowering and a little scary. In short, it's everything I like in a Yankee witch story. As an added bonus, Dogtown Common (the village where they lived) is now an abandoned ghost town in the middle of an enormous forest in Gloucester.

2. Readers also really liked this post about "How to Make a Witch Bottle," a type of classic New England defensive folk magic. Maybe people reacted to the crafty aspect. All you need is a jar, some nails, and your own urine. How much easier could it be? On the other hand, maybe a lot of my readers are plagued with supernatural problems and feel the need to defend their homes with magic. I hope that's not the case, but 2016 has been a very strange year...

3. In February of 2016 Robert Eggers's art-horror film "The Witch" was released to wide critical acclaim. I loved the movie, but I've heard mixed things from friends. Some horror movie fans were bored and confused by the slow pace and 17th century dialect, and art film aficianados didn't see it because they were afraid of the violence and bloodshed. I think the main audience for this film was intelligent people who love the creepy side of folklore, which happily describes all of this blog's readers. My review of "The Witch" was the third most popular post of 2016, and focused on how the film did and didn't reflect authentic New England witch lore. Spoiler alert: New England witch lore has fewer naked people and goats.

4. Do you see what I mean about 2016 being the year of the witch? So much witchcraft, but I'm not complaining. One exception to the witchcraft trend was this post about Connecticut's haunted fairy village. I spent much of 2016 researching New England fairy lore, so I was happy that readers responded well to this one. The legend features sinister fairies, an axe murderer, and a cursed ghost town, so there is a lot to respond to.

Image from From Roadtrippers.com.

5. Rounding out the top five is another witch-oriented post. I asked "How Did Tituba Become Black?", and that question apparently resonated with readers. Tituba was one the key figures in the Salem witch trials. A slave in Reverend Samuel Parris's household, Tituba was one the first people accused of witchcraft. She set the pattern for all the trials with her vivid confessions and incriminated several others as witches. Popular culture has depicted Tituba as black for many years, but she was actually an Aarawak Indian from the Caribbean. Read the post to find out how this transformation happened. (Hint: Arthur Miller and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow both made it happen.)

Ashley Madekwe as Tituba on TV's Salem.

I've had a lot fun writing this blog in 2016, so thank you for reading and letting me share my obsession with the weird side of New England. I hope you'll keep reading in 2017. Happy New Year!

The Devil In The Shape of A Hog: Three Encounters With Satanic Pigs

What do you picture when you think of the Devil? Maybe you picture a man with fiery red skin, horns, and a tail. Or perhaps you picture someone with bat wings and a goat's head. Maybe you just see a black goat, as in the recent movie The Witch.

The New England Puritans saw the Devil quite a bit, but they didn't necessarily picture him the same way we do now. Many people who encountered him described as a man in black clothing wearing a tall hat, which were signs of wealth. The Puritans were deathly afraid of the local Indian tribes, so to others the Devil appeared as man with tawny skin like an Indian's.

And to others, he appeared as giant hog.

On March 1, 1692, Reverend Samuel Parris's slave Tituba confessed to the Salem magistrates that the Devil had asked her to serve him as a witch.

Judge Hathorne: What? Have you seen a man come to you and say serve me? What service?

Tituba: Hurt the children and last night there was an appearance that said "Kill the children" and if I would not go on hurting the children they would do worse to me.

Judge Hathorne: What is this appearance you see?

Tituba: Sometimes it is like a hog and some times like a great dog. (Note: this appearance she sayeth she did see four times.)

Judge Hathorne: What did it say to you?

Tituba: The black dog said "Serve me," but I said I am afraid. He said if I did not he would do worse to me.

(Testimony recorded by Ezekiel Cheever on March 1, 1692.) 

The Devil and his demons appeared to the people of Salem in a bewildering variety of forms: dogs, cats, humans, human-headed birds, and long-nosed hairy little humanoids with wings. Satan's manifestation as a hog was just one among many shapes he took.

But it was shape he took in other times and places as well. For example, the Devil also appeared as monstrous hog in Milford, Connecticut. Four men sat down near a large boulder to play cards, an activity forbidden by the Puritan leadership. Their game was interrupted by the appearance of a huge hog, which frightened the men so much that they abandoned their cards and fled.

Once four young men upon ye rock
Sate down at chuffle board one daye
When ye Deuill appearde in shape of a Hogg
Ande frighten'd ym so they scampered awaye
Ande left Olde Nick to finish ye play.

That little poem appears in Edward Rodolphus Lambert's 1837 book History of The Colony of New Haven, Before and After The Union with Connecticut. Lambert calls it an "ancient stanza" and I am not sure of its origin. The rock under discussion was named Hog Rock after this incident with the Devil. At some point after the Revolutionary War the rock became known as Liberty Rock, which is its official name today.

Liberty Rock, formerly known as Hog Rock.

Milford is blessed to have another boulder also known as Hog Rock, which is located on an offshore island. According to legend, the pirate Captain Kidd may have buried some of his treasure underneath it. Milford's a lucky town to have two such legendary boulders!

According to George Lunt's 1873 book Old New England Traits, the Devil also appeared as a hog in the Massachusetts town of Topsfield, where he menaced travelers trying to cross a bridge over the Ipswich river:

He appeared in the shape of a monstrous hog, taking his station, at night, in the very centre of the bridge; and those who had occasion to cross it, on horseback or on foot, were either fain to turn back, as he encountered them, bristling and snarling, or rushed by, if their occasion demanded it, in a state of extraordinary trepidation. 

This went on for quite a while until Topsfield's minster, one Revered Capen, decided to take care of the Devilish problem. One night he went to the bridge and saw the monstrous hog. The Satanic swine grunted and snorted at the minister, but he was undaunted by its bestial display. He calmly faced the beast and said:

You that were once an angel of light, ain't you ashamed to appear in the shape of a dirty swine?

Ouch! Take that, Satan. The reverend's insult was more than the devil-hog could take, and it leapt into the Ipswich River, never to be seen again.

Parson Capen House, Topsfield, Massachusetts.

George Lunt says this happened about 100 years before the book was written, during the lifetime of his father. The minister in the story may be Joseph Capen (1658 - 1725), who led Topsfield's church for more than 30 years. Capen's house is now a museum that is open to the public. Please leave your pet pigs in the car if you come to visit.

Although I jest a little bit, I do find these stories fascinating and creepy. The thought of monstrous devil pigs is more unsettling to me than the thought of demonic goats. Goats have a certain dignity and majesty (it's the horns I guess), and although pigs are very intelligent animals there is something about their omnivorous appetite that is unnerving. Plants, animal flesh, garbage - they'll eat it all. I can see why the Puritans thought Satan might take the form of a hog.

How Did Tituba Become Black?

Tituba is one of the key figures in the Salem witch trials. A slave owned by Reverend Parris of Salem Village, she was one of the first people accused of being a witch. She was also one of the first people to accuse others of witchcraft while she was on the stand.

I think it's well-known these days that ethnically Tituba was an Arawak Indian. Reverend Parris and his family had lived as plantation owners for many years in the Caribbean, the Arawak homeland. It seems likely the Parrises purchased Tituba and her husband John as slaves while living in Barbados.

Although historians know that Tituba was an Indian, pop culture tends to portray her as being of African descent. (For example, on the TV show Salem Tituba is played by a black actress and speaks with a Caribbean accent.) For many years I also thought she was black, based on what I had learned when I was a kid.

Ashley Madekwe as Tituba on Salem.

So how did Tituba become black in the popular American imagination? Historian Ben Ray's 2015 book Satan and Salem gives some clues.

Ray claims that it started with famous New England poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In 1868 Longfellow published a work called the New England Tragedies, which included the play Giles Corey of the Salem Farms. Tituba is one of the main characters.

As the play opens, Tituba is in the woods outside Salem. As she gathers herbs to work evil magic she says:

I know them (herbs), and the places where they hide
In field and meadow; and I know their secrets,
And gather them because they give me power
Over all men and women. Armed with these,
I, Tituba, an Indian and a slave,
Am stronger than the captain with his sword,
Am richer than the merchant with his money,
Am wiser than the scholar with his books,
Mightier than Ministers and Magistrates...

So it's pretty clear that Tituba is an Indian in this play, correct? Well, things get a little murkier in a later scene where Tituba asks Mary Walcott to look into a mirror as part of a magic spell:

TITUBA.
Look into this glass.
What see you?

MARY.
Nothing but a golden vapor.
Yes, something more. An island, with the sea
Breaking all round it, like a blooming hedge.
What land is this?

TITUBA.
It is San Salvador,
Where Tituba was born. What see you now?

MARY.
A man all black and fierce.

TITUBA.
That is my father.
He was an Obi man, and taught me magic,
Taught me the use of herbs and images...

An illustration of Tituba (dressed like an Indian) and Mary Walcott from Longfellow's play.

In Longellow's play Tituba's father is not only black, he taught her Obi (or Obeah), which is a system of African-derived magical and religious practices similar to Voudoun/Voodoo. There's no evidence that any of this is true. As far as historians know, Tituba's father was not of African descent and she didn't know Obeah or Voodoo. The only magical act she undertook - making a witch cake out of rye and urine - was done at the behest of Mary Sibley, an Englishwoman who lived near the Parrises. A witch cake is a form of English magic, not Voodoo.

Lonfellow was a popular writer, and Ray claims his play planted the idea that Tituba was at least partly black in the American imagination.

Although Ray doesn't discuss her, historian Marion Starkey probably helped perpetuate the image of Tituba as half-black and half-Arawak. Starkey describes her as "the ageless Tituba, said to be half Carib and half negro" in her popular 1949 book The Devil in Massachusetts. The text on the back cover of my copy describes it as "an authentic historical narrative," but Starkey's description of Tituba just isn't correct. Maybe she got it from Longfellow's play?

Starkey also incorrectly claimed Tituba taught the Salem girls Voodoo:

But there were presently occasions when, in the absence of the elder Parrises, Tituba yielded to the temptation to show the children tricks and spells, fragments of something like the voodoo remembered from the Barbados.

Starkey's books is still popular today.

Tituba teaching the children magic - something that never happened.

Ray claims that another playwright, the 20th century's Arthur Miller, completed Tituba's transformation from Arawk to black. Like Giles Corey, Miller's 1953 play The Crucible features Tituba as a main character. The stage directions describe her this way:

The door opens, and his Negro slave enters. Tituba is in her forties. Parris brought her with him from Barbados, where he spent some years as a merchant before entering the ministry. 

Tituba is not even half-Indian in Miller's play, but is entirely of African descent. That's a big difference between the two plays, but similar to Longfellow Miller also perpetuates the myth that Tituba knew some type of Caribbean magic. In The Crucible, she holds magic rituals in the woods with some of the Salem girls:

I saw Tituba waving her arms over the fire when I came on you. Why was she doing that? And I heard a screeching and gibberish coming from her mouth...

The Crucible is one of the classics of American theater. It's still performed frequently even today and is assigned to high school students all across the country as required reading.

Longellow and Miller weren't historians - they wrote plays and poetry based on history. Writers certainly are allowed artistic license with historic characters, but the challenge is that The Crucible is the main way many Americans learn about Salem.

It's a little strange that so many people think the Salem witch trials were started by a black Voodoo priestess, when that really wasn't the case at all. Our understanding of American slavery might be one of the reasons this myth keeps lingering. When Americans think of slaves in North America, they tend to picture people of African descent. It's obviously true that most slaves were black, but a very tiny percentage of them (like Tituba) weren't.

I also suspect, but have no way of proving, that maybe a little lingering racism and sexism help this myth persist. We now know that the Salem witch craze wasn't caused by a black woman, but for some reason a lot of us still think it was.

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. 

The Only Thing Worse Than A Witch Hunt... A New Show About Salem Witches

I recently learned that a new show about witchcraft in Salem will be airing this spring. It's simply called "Salem", and will start on Sunday, April 20. Here's the trailer. Watch it in full-screen mode if you can, because the lighting is very dark.

I'll have to reserve my judgement until the show actually premieres, but the trailer gives me some mixed feelings.



First, the good feelings. I'm a horror fan, and the trailer is definitely creepy. Black magic? Pig monsters in the woods? Sign me up. More importantly, though, I'm excited to have a show about witchcraft in New England, and whether this show is good or bad I'll watch it. This area of the country has a rich folkloric heritage of magic and witchcraft, and I'm glad someone's drawing upon it for a TV show.

It also looks like they've tried to create some kind of authentic atmosphere, which I appreciate. So many films and TV shows about Salem witches are quite obviously not filmed in Massachusetts, but the brief glimpse of the town in the trailer gives me some hope the producers are trying to accurately recreate 17th century New England.

But obviously this show is not striving for complete historic accuracy, which is where I have mixed feelings. It looks like Ashley Madekwe plays a young, sexy Tituba, and all the actors have have good teeth and look really clean. When I watched the trailer again just now I was struck by how many people flash their pearly whites, but flouride, floss, and orthodontists just weren't available back then. I suppose Tituba may have been young and sexy, but it's not something the records indicate, and the people in 17th century Salem were probably dirty and pockmarked from various diseases. They were not the type of people a modern audience would want to watch in a show that promises "sensuality" and sexy witches. Well, at least most people wouldn't want to watch it.

"Salem" is made to entertain, so I can give the historical inaccuracy a pass, but the thing that makes me uncomfortable about this show is that in reality there were no witches in Salem. And this is where I have bad feelings. The tag line in the trailer is "The only thing worse than a witch hunt is a witch," which sound clever but just isn't true. Twenty-five people died as a result of the Salem witch hunt; zero people died because of witches. A witch hunt is much, much worse than a witch.

There are witches out there in the world. Some of them exist in folklore and fairy tales, some of them lurk in the deep archetypal recesses of our minds, and some of them are polytheistic nature worshipers who own herb shops in Salem. But none these witches can cast spells to make you sick, possess your children, or steal your spouse. They can't defy the physical laws of nature any more than you or I can.

Three hundred years ago the people in Salem didn't know this, or if they did they were too afraid to speak the truth. But we know this now and we shouldn't forget it, even when we get caught up watching a show with seductive witches and hideous monsters. So I'll watch "Salem", but I'll try to remember that history, with it's pogroms and massacres and witch hunts, is scarier than anything I'll see on TV.

American Horror Story: Did Tituba Practice Voodoo?

We've been watching season three of American Horror Story, and last week's episode ended with a confrontation between Fiona Goode the supreme witch (played by Jessica Lange), and Marie Laveau the immortal voodoo queen (played by Angela Bassett). As they argue in a New Orleans hair salon, Marie claims that the witches stole their power from Tituba, who practiced voodoo in Puritan Salem. (To be clear, Voudou or Voudoun is an African-based polytheistic religious system; in popular culture, voodoo is a magical system that is derived from Voudou.)

Angela Bassett as Marie Laveau

American Horror Story is of course fiction and created to entertain (which I think it does), but it usually works in some historical information as well. So who was Tituba, and did she really practice voodoo or Voudou?

Tituba was a slave owned in the 1690s by Salem Village's minister Samuel Parris. After his daughter Betty, her cousin Abigail Williams and other local girls began to have fits, they accused Tituba of bewitching them. Some writers, like Marion Starkey, have claimed the girls made these accusations because Tituba taught them voodoo-style magic. In particular, Starkey's The Devil in Massachusetts claims that the guilt and conflict the adolescent girls felt about practicing Tituba's magic was the spark that ignited the Salem witch trials.

This probably never happened, but it sure looks dramatic!

However, there's not much evidence that Tituba practiced any magic at all, let alone voodoo or Voudou. According to Marilynne Roach's The Salem Witch Trials, there's just one documented incident of Tituba performing magic.

On February 25, 1692, before she was accused of being a witch, Tituba made a cake made from the afflicted girls' urine and fed it to a dog. This was a form of diagnostic magic. If the dog became sick after eating the cake, it would prove the girls had witchcraft-tainted urine and were indeed bewitched. Baking a witch cake is not a practice associated with Voudou or voodoo, but is part of English folk magic. Tituba was in fact instructed to make the cake by Mary Sibley, an English neighbor of the Parrises.

When Tituba did confess to being a witch, her confessions matched those of her English Puritan neighbors. She had flown through the air on a pole to the witch meetings, had been pressured by the Devil to serve him, and had been offered animal familiars. These are all part of English witchcraft belief, not Voudou. Another Salem slave named Candy was accused of witchcraft, and her confessions also matched her Puritan neighbors. I think it's safe to assume the slaves were just telling the judges what they wanted to hear. It was the safest strategy to prolong your life during the Salem trials.

It's also not entirely clear if Tituba was of African, or even part-African, descent. The trial records refer to her as Tituba Indian, and her husband as John Indian. It appears they had come originally from the Caribbean, and some historians have claimed they were actually Arawak Indians rather than Africans. On American Horror Story Marie Laveau does mention that Tituba was an Arawak, but any connection between Arawak religion (now extinct) and voodoo or Voudou is mostly speculative.

American Horror Story also has a minotaur in it, so I'm not expecting historical accuracy. The show entertains while discussing broader social themes, and this season seems to be partly about racial conflict. If that turns out to be the case Tituba certainly fits right in.

Witch Cake - A Recipe You Won't Like

Here's a funky little recipe from the 1600s that I doubt you'll like. It's for something called witch cake. The secret ingredient? Human urine.

Back in February 1692, some of the young girls in Salem Village were acting strangely. Puritan girls were definitely supposed to be seen and not heard, and these girls were really causing a commotion. Among them was Betty Parris, the daughter of Salem Village's minister.

William Griggs, the local physician was called to take a look at them. Maybe he could explain why these young ladies were acting out. His diagnosis? Witchcraft! Someone had bewitched the young girls!

Now, if you were to go to your doctor today and get a weird diagnosis for your kids you'd want a second opinion. The villagers felt the same way, but they didn't have easy access to multiple physicians.

Instead, a local woman named Mary Sibley suggested the Parris's slave Tituba make a cake out of rye meal moistened with urine from the bewitched girls. After the cake was baked (imagine what the kitchen smelled like!) it was fed to a dog, who was to be studied for signs of bewitchment. If it acted strangely after eating the cake, it was proof the girls really were under the influence of baleful magic. I suspect any dog would act strangely after eating a cake made with urine.

Although witch cake probably sounds strange to contemporary readers, believe it or not there was a theory behind it. The Puritans (and many other pre-industrialized people) believed that because witches directed their magic towards a person's body, the magic would also be present in the products of that person's body. Therefore, if someone had evil magic operating on them that magic would also be in their blood or urine, and could be passed onto anything that consumed them (like a dog).

The witch cake operates similarly to the witch bottle, but the witch bottle was used as defensive magic while the witch cake was used merely to prove there was witchcraft present.

Strangely, there's no record of what happened to the dog who ate the witch cake in 1692. The girls didn't improve, however, and eventually accused Tituba of being one of the witches tormenting them.

I found a lot of this information from various places on the Web and also in Marion Starkey's book The Devil in Massaschusetts.