Dreams in the Witch House: Lore, Familiars, and the Devil's Book

This week I've been reading "The Dreams in the Witch House," H.P. Lovecraft's classic 1932 tale of witches, creepy little monsters, and non-Euclidean calculus. This is one of those Lovecraft stories I come back to repeatedly, and re-reading it this time I was struck by how Lovecraft incorporates real New England folklore and history into it. Much of the story is focused on how one becomes a witch, something that was central to the 17th century Puritan witch trials. There is also a particularly creepy familiar spirit in it. 

Here's a basic plot summary, but you can also read the story yourself here. Walter Gilman is a college student at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts, where he is studying mathematics and folklore. Gilman is convinced there is a connection between advanced mathematics and the old New England witch stories, and his research leads him to rent a room in a squalid boarding house that was built in 1600s known as the Witch House.

Gilman's room was once the abode of Keziah Mason, who was arrested for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials. Under questioning, Mason told Judge John Hathorne that certain lines and angles could be used to move "through the walls of space to other spaces beyond," and then later disappeared from her locked jail cell. Strange geometric curves and angles were found drawn on the cell's walls with "some red, sticky fluid." Centuries later, Keziah Mason is said to haunt the Witch House where she once lived, appearing there at night with Brown Jenkin, a human-faced rat that serves as her familiar spirit. 

Muzski - muzski.deviantart.com, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Gilman thinks Mason knew the secret of traveling through other dimensions. Soon in his sleep he dreams that he can too, inspired by his study of mathematics and the strange angles of the walls and ceiling in his room. In his dreams, he flies through "limitless abysses of inexplicably coloured twilight and bafflingly disordered sound; abysses whose material and gravitational properties, and whose relation to his own entity, he could not even begin to explain." He dreams that he visits other planets, including a world whose heavy gravity almost crushes him, and one where he sees a vast city and strange non-humanoid beings. In his journeys he also sees Keziah Mason and Brown Jenkin, who seem to be following him around the universe in his dreams. 

Spoiler alert: Walter Gilman is not dreaming. He really is traveling through the universe and other dimensions, and Mason and Brown Jenkin really are following him. Since he has intuitively and unconsciously mastered the art of extra-dimensional travel, they recognize him as a fellow witch, and want him to be fully initiated into the dark mysteries of witchcraft: 

He must meet the Black Man, and go with them all to the throne of Azathoth at the centre of ultimate Chaos. That was what she said. He must sign in his own blood the book of Azathoth and take a new secret name now that his independent delvings had gone so far. What kept him from going with her and Brown Jenkin and the other to the throne of Chaos where the thin flutes pipe mindlessly was the fact that he had seen the name “Azathoth” in the Necronomicon, and knew it stood for a primal evil too horrible for description.

Oh, and they want him to sacrifice a human infant as well. I won't give away the ending, but it's one of the gorier and gruesome endings to a Lovecraft story. 

H.P. Lovecraft loved New England and its history, and incorporates lots of local references into "The Dreams in the Witch House." John Hathorne (mentioned above) was a real Salem witch trials judge and an ancestor of Nathaniel Hawthorne; the infamous Cotton Mather is mentioned as well. Walter Gilman's hometown is Haverhill, Massachusetts, the same as me! One of his mathematics instructors at Miskatonic University is Professor Upham, a name possibly inspired by Charles Upham, the historian who wrote Salem Witchcraft (1867), one of the first important studies of the Salem trials. And there actually are several buildings in Massachusetts called the Witch House, including the most famous one in Salem. 

Original 1933 illustration from Weird Tales

The crux of the story is whether Gilman will become fully initiated into witchcraft. Will he sign his name into the Black Man's book using his own blood? Lovecraft pulled this concept directly from records of the New England witchcraft trials. The Black Man was a Puritan term for the Devil, and he and his book were mentioned in many witchcraft trials. The book was a Satanic parody of the Bible and of the covenants that Puritans signed when they joined churches. According to the Puritans, signing your name in the Black Man's book made you a witch. Lovecraft made up the part about sacrificing an infant, though. That does not appear in any New England witch trials, although certainly witches were accused of harming babies and children. The Puritans also believed that the Devil would baptize his witches after they signed the book, which doesn't appear in Lovecraft's story. It's probably just too tame for a horror story. 

Brown Jenkin, Keziah Mason's familiar spirit, is very similar to the familiars found in New England witch trials. The Puritan's claimed that the Devil gave witches small demons, called familiar spirits, to do their bidding. In return, the witches just had to feed them with their blood. The trials of the Salem witch trials mention familiar spirits who appeared in a variety of forms, including birds, cats, and wolves. Like Brown Jenkin, some appeared as monstrous hybrids. For example, Bridget Bishop was accused of having a familiar that looked like a monkey with rooster feet and a human face, and Sarah Osborne's familiar was supposedly a small humanoid covered in hair. Lovecraft's Brown Jenkin would fit right in with these two.

One interesting thing I noticed on re-reading "The Dreams in the Witch House" is that Keziah Mason and Brown Jenkin are trying to help and protect Walter Gilman during his trips through space and time, even though he doesn't realize it. For example, when he finds himself on a planet with heavy gravity they show him how to travel back to Earth. It's only when he refuses to sign the book that they become hostile towards him. He's not acting the way a witch should!

"The Dreams in the Witch House" has been filmed at least three times, once in 2005 as part of the Masters of Horror anthology TV series, and also as a low-budget movie earlier this year, at last according to Amazon Prime. A version of "The Dreams in the Witch House" will also air later this month as an episode of Guillermo del Toro's new anthology Netflix show Cabinet of Curiosities. I hope they include all the weird New England witch references in it!

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If you want to read more about New England witches, please check out my book, Witches and Warlocks of Massachusetts. It's available wherever books are sold online and is perfect October reading!

Satanic Imps, A Wizard and Grim Predictions in Easton, Massaschusetts

A while ago my friend Sam Baltrusis asked me if I knew anything about a haunted mill pond in Easton, Massachusetts. I did not – this legend was new to me. I am always excited to learn about a new local legend, so thank you Sam for pointing me towards this one. 

I did some research and found some interesting stories about the pond and the alleged wizard who used to live nearby. If you visit Mill Pond in Easton today, you will find the following sign:

 “Site of the the sawmill built by John Selee in the 18th century and continued by his son, Nathan, a wizard who purportedly used satanic imps to run the mill at night.”

William Seltzer Rice, "Mill on the Stanislaus," 1940

The sign was put up in 1999, and I appreciate that Easton’s Conservation Commission included the legend of Nathan Selee on it. Legends like this one are an interesting and important part of our local history and heritage. And who doesn't love a story about Satanic imps?

Nathan Selee was born in 1733, served as a private in the American Revolution, and died in 1815 at age 82. That’s what Vol. 103 of the Daughters of the American Revolution Lineage Book (1928) tells us. The Lineage Book doesn’t say anything about Selee’s alleged supernatural antics, though. For that, I turned to to William L. Chaffin’s History of the Town of Easton (1886), which says the following about the Selee sawmill:

Nathan Selee sawed lumber there late in the century; and strange stories were told, and even believed by superstitious people, about the Devil or his imps running the mill at night, Nathan Selee being reported as knowing too much about magic arts, and being on too good terms for awhile with their author. But sawing logs by water- power on cold nights seems rather uncongenial work for his Satanic Majesty; it would be more easy to credit his running a steam saw-mill, with a blazing furnace. It is wiser to acquit Mr. Selee of any such questionable partnership, and to think that the rolling and buzzing of wheel and saw, which the belated passers-by supposed they heard, were all in their own brains, and might easily be accounted for by the strength and quantity of hard cider or New England rum they had taken.

According to legend, witches were often given small demons (called familiars or imps) to help them with their work by the Devil, and male witches were often credited with being unnaturally industrious by their superstitious neighbors. These are of course only legends, and Chaffin is basically saying Nathan Selee's neighbors were just drunkards who mistook the routine sounds of the mill for something supernatural. 

This might be true, but it seems Nathan Selee definitely had a sorcerous reputation around Easton, because Chaffin includes another legend about him in his History:

Mr. Selee was a clairvoyant, and many stories are current of what he saw and foretold. He was in Stimson Williams's house on one occasion, and knowing his gifts in that direction, one of Mr. Williams's daughters asked him to tell her fortune, but he declined; and after leaving the house, he said to a man who came out with him that if she could see what the next week would bring her, she would not have asked to have her fortune told. She died the next week.

Spooky! That sounds like a classic legend to me. Despite supposedly having accurate psychic powers, though, Nathan Selee ultimately gave up on the magical arts. He didn't want to deal with the Devil. Again, from Chaffin’s History of the Town of Easton: 

The story is still believed also, that, having sought long for a certain book on magic which he thought would perfect him in the art, the door of his shop opened one day and a stranger handed him the book and vanished. Directly upon the departure of this strange visitant a wild storm began to rage; the winds howled, the lightnings flashed, the thunders roared, and destruction seemed to impend. Mr. Selee took the book and all other books of the kind that he possessed, and threw them into the fire; and then going to the door and looking out he saw the sun shining, and everything beautiful and peaceful. This determined him to have no more to do with the dangerous subject.

I'm not sure why folks in Easton thought Selee was a wizard. In the 1600s, people who were demanding and cantankerous were the ones often accused of witchcraft by their neighbors. I haven't found anything that indicates Selee was either of those things, but that may have still been the case. 

Happily, Nathan Selee was born after the witchcraft trials ended, because otherwise his sorcerous reputation could have led to his execution by hanging. Rather than a tragic tale, he's left a legacy of interesting legends and a nice sign alongside a peaceful pond. 

I wish I had learned about this story while I was writing my book Witches and Warlocks of Massachusetts, but maybe I can include it in a second edition? If you want to read lots of other stories about witches in the Bay State, you can find my book wherever you buy books online. 

Pyewacket: A Familiar Spirit with Origins in New England

Matthew Hopkins was a notorious witch-finder who terrorized the East Anglia region of England from 1644 to 1647. His short but infamous career happened during the English Civil War, when there was a lot of social unrest, and Hopkins made money by charging different towns to find the witches who supposedly caused it. It is estimated he was responsible for the deaths of 300 innocent people.

Hopkins died at the age of 27 in 1647 from tuberculosis, but before his death he published an influential witch-finding manual titled The Discovery of Witches (1647). In the book he claims he got started in the witch-finding business because there were several women in his home town of Manningtree who were witches. Here (writing about himself in the third person) he explains what happened:

... In March 1644 he had some seven or eight of that horrible sect of Witches living in the Towne where he lived, a Towne in Essex called Maningtree, with divers other adjacent Witches of other towns, who every six weeks in the night (being alwayes on the Friday night) had their meeting close by his house and had their severall solemne sacrifices there offered to the Devill...

Hopkins goes on to write that he heard one of the witches calling out to her familiar spirits. Familiar spirits were allegedly magical entities that witches commanded to do their bidding. They often appeared in the form of animals, and many people believed they were demons loaned to witches by the Devil and that they nourished themselves by sucking the witches' blood.

An illustration from The Discovery of Witches

Hopkins wrote down the names of the familiar spirits the Manningtree witch called. Those names were Holt (who appeared as a white kitten), Jarmara (a fat legless spaniel), Vinegar Tom (a greyhound with the head of an ox), Sack and Sugar (a black rabbit), and Newes (a polecat or ferret). She summoned other familiar spirits as well: Elemanzer, Peckin the Crown, Grizzel Greedigut and Pyewacket. It's quite a list of names, and in case you suspect Hopkins just made them up he writes that their names were such as "no mortall could invent."

I don't think he's quite right. I think Hopkins or his associates actually did invent most of those names, but he didn't invent the name Pyewacket. That's the name of a Native American tribe that lived in New Hampshire and Maine in the 17th century. Matthew Hopkins never visited New England, but he probably did hear about the explorations of Darby Field.

Darby Field was an Irishman who came to New England in the 1630s and settled in New Hampshire around 1638. Many of the colonists were focused on work, family and God, but Field apparently had a more inquisitive spirit. Although he worked as a ferryman he could also speak the local Alonquin dialects and was interested in exploring the area around him. In 1642 he decided to climb the White Mountains and hired some local Native guides from a village called 'Pigwacket' to help him. Pigwacket was Field's rough English transcription of Pequawket, a name of one of the Abenaki groups that lived in New Hampshire and Maine. 

Field's mountain-climbing expedition was well-known at the time and appears in both Massachusetts governor John Winthrop's journal and in a book by the explorer Ferdinando Gorges. It seems likely that Matthew Hopkins heard the name Pigwacket and incorporated it as "Pyewacket" into The Discovery of Witches. The Puritans erroneously believed that Native Americans worshipped the Devil so it makes that Hopkins would use a Native American word as a demon's name.

The Pequawket sadly no longer exist as a distinct group - they've merged with other Abenaki tribes - but the name Pyewacket continues on long after Hopkins's death. Pyewacket is the name of Kim Novak's cat in the movie Bell, Book and Candle (1958), has appeared as a character in several novels, and is the title of a recent horror film. I searched Tumblr and saw a lot of photos of animals named Pyewacket, while Instagram has over 7,000 posts with the hashtag #pyewacket. The dominant colonial culture's use of the word has outlived the actual indigenous people who inspired it. 

I don't think Pyewacket's origins in New England (and in Puritan xenophobia) is well-known. I just stumbled on it recently in Emerson Baker's excellent book A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and The American Experience (2015). There's always something new to learn about our region's weird history. 

A Mountain Lion in Brookline Massachusetts?

If you ever want to read strange things you should look through your town's police blotter. Many unusual occurrences happen every day and most people don't even notice - except for the police. For example, here are a few interesting things reported in the August 16, 2018 edition of The Brookline Tab, the local newspaper for Brookline, Massachusetts.

"Tuesday, Aug. 7 - Suspicious person on Harvard Street: At 7:28 p.m. a caller reported that a man wearing mask, aviator glasses, a skull head necklace and an American flag pin was harassing the caller's girlfriend.  

Wednesday, Aug. 8 - Assault and Battery on Beacon Street: At 5:31 a.m. a caller reported that at midnight  his roommate threw a jar of mayonnaise at the back of his head."

Those aren't the worst of it. Next to the list of police incidents is an article titled "Police: Man wearing nightgown and garter gropes woman." It describes how a "stocky man in his 20s wearing a black dress or nightgown with a lace garter belt" grabbed and groped a woman at the intersection of Washington Street and Salisbury Road early on the morning of August 6. Yikes!

Perhaps the summer heat is driving people to commit weird crimes. But I'm not sure what to make of this report:

"Wednesday, Aug. 8... Strange looking animal on Addington Road: At 10:01 p.m. a caller reported a strange looking animal walking back and forth in the area. The caller thought it might be a mountain lion as it was too big for a fox or coyote."

Brookline has a lot of wildlife (rabbits, geese, turkeys, coyotes) but as far as I know there aren't any large carnivorous cats roaming around. And to make things stranger, Addington Road is in the densely settled Aspinwall Hill area. It's only a few blocks away from the Green Line. It is definitely not a rural area. Could there really be a mountain lion in Brookline?

There are a few possible answers:

1. The caller was mistaken.
If you're a natural skeptic you'll find this the most appealing explanation. Ordinary things often look very different in the dark, and the caller probably really saw some other animal (a dog or coyote). Maybe they just saw a raccoon or skunk which looked bigger in the dark, or misperceived the shadows thrown by leaves and streetlights. 

Addington Road in Brookline

Humans have an innate tendency to see living beings in inanimate phenomena. For example, have you ever seen a stick in the grass and thought it was a snake? This psychological trait is called pareidolia and it seems to be an evolutionary survival from a time when humans always had to be on the lookout for predators. It's safer to think something is a mountain lion rather than assume it is just a shadow. You wouldn't want to blunder into a large hungry cougar!

2. It really was a mountain lion. 
Mountain lions were once common in New England but were exterminated by the European settlers. There are still mountain lions in the western parts of the country and in Florida, but none around here. Despite this New Englanders report seeing mountain lions to the present day. For example, in 2014 citizens of Winchester, Massachusetts reported seeing a large feline creature in town, as did people in Rhode Island, while in the 1980s a mountain lion reportedly terrorized parts of Cape Cod. There's even a bulletin board for New England mountain lion sightings.

However, local wildlife authorities claim there are no mountain lions in New England. Well, to clarify, they say there is "no evidence of a reproducing mountain lion population." To quote this official Commonwealth of Massachusetts site:

Mountain Lions became scarce in the East after a bounty system wiped out most predatory animals. Today, Mountain Lions are found in the mountainous regions of the West. There is also a small population in southern Florida. 

Despite this fact, Massachusetts residents continue to report Mountain Lion sightings. It is difficult to know if someone saw a Mountain Lion without any tangible evidence. 

Nowadays, many reports include photographic evidence, thanks to camera phones and trail cameras. There have been only two cases where evidence supports the presence of a Mountain Lion in Massachusetts. All other reports of Mountain Lions in Massachusetts have turned out to be other animals.

In April 199, a hunter found unusual animal scat near the Quabbin Reservoir; lab tests confirmed it came from a mountain lion. In March 2011, a forester photographed animal tracks in the snow near the Quabbin, which were again confirmed to be from a mountain lion. Those are the only two cases of authenticated mountain lion evidence in modern Massachusetts.

Totally excited for monster-hunting - just as long as I never find one!

However, in June 2011, a male mountain lion was struck by an SUV and killed in Milford, Connecticut. DNA testing showed that the animal had traveled all the way from South Dakota to Connecticut, a distance of 1,800 miles. Most mountain lions don't roam that far. Still, I suppose there is a very, very slim chance that a mountain lion made its way from a western state to New England and came into Brookline. 

3. Manitous, witches, phantom animals.
Maybe it was really a mountain lion. Or maybe the caller was totally wrong and mistook something ordinary for a large predator. It was either real or it was not. The answer is either yes or no, right?

I think there is a third possibility, though, somewhere in that weird realm where myth, folklore and psychology collide. People in New England have been seeing unusual (dare I say unnatural?) animals for centuries. For example, the Algonquins believed the forests were haunted by a black fox. The fox was often glimpsed by could never be captured or killed, even by the most skilled hunter. It was a manitou, or spirit-being. 

The Puritans saw equally strange creatures. Puritans didn't believe in manitous, so they associated these strange animals with witches and the Devil. Witches and their familiar spirits were said to assume the shapes of cats, pigs, birds and strange bestial hybrids. For example, on February 27, 1692 Elizabeth Hubbard was walking home from her uncle's house in Salem Village when she realized a large animal was stalking her. She thought it might be a wolf, although wolves were rare even in the 1690s. There was something unnatural about the creature and although it didn't harm her she thought it might be a witch in animal form.

On April 19 of that year, Abigail Hobbs mentioned unusual animals in her testimony before the Court of Oyer and Terminer:

"I will speak the truth," she said. "I have seen sights and been scared. I have been very wicked. I shall be better, if God will help me." 

"What sights did you see?" asked Hathorne.  

"I have seen dogs and many creatures." 

"What dogs do you mean? Ordinary dogs?" 

"I mean the Devil." 

(quoted in Marilynne Roach, The Salem Witch Trials. A Day-By-Day Chronicle of A Community Under Siege, 2002)

Even in our modern, post-Puritan world people continue to see animals. Cryptozoologists and paranormal researchers often call them phantoms since they leave little evidence behind. For example, in 1976 a large black dog terrorized the town of Abington near Massachusetts's infamous Hockomock Swamp. A police officer shot at the beast after it killed two ponies but it ignored the bullets and walked off into the swamp. 

I didn't see a mountain lion, but there were a lot of wild turkeys down this path. I turned back!

Perhaps more relevant to the Brookline sighting, phantom animals of the feline variety have also terrorized towns near the Hockomock Swamp:

In 1972, in Rehoboth, Mass., a "lion hunt" was organized by local police. Residents of the area had been terrorized by what they said was a large cat or mountain lion. Cattle and sheep n the area had been mysteriously killed and carcasses were discovered raked with claw marks. Police took casts of the animal's tracks and used dog and helicopter in an attempt to track it down. Nothing was caught. But similar incidents involving phantom cats have occurred in other places throughout the Bridgewater Triangle and across the nation. None of these mysterious felines has yet been captured. (Loren Coleman, Mysterious America, 2007)

Spirits, witches, phantom cats - I don't know what these strange animals are, but New Englanders have seen them for a long, long time. I think they'll continue to see them in the future. Perhaps the caller who reported seeing the mountain lion on Addington Street was just part of this long tradition. Weird things happen in New England all the time, even close to the MBTA.

Animal graffito in Brookline

John Godfrey: Witch and Troublemaker

When I was a kid in Haverhill, Massachusetts I wasn't that interested in local history. I knew about the city's heroine Hannah Duston, but that was about all I knew. Other stories from my hometown's past remained unknown to me. Perhaps if I had known about John Godfrey, a trouble-making witch who lived in the mid-1600s, I would have been more excited about Haverhill history.

Was Godfrey really a witch? Probably not, but he was definitely a trouble-maker. Most of what we know about him comes from court records in Essex County, where he was involved in dozens of legal cases. Sometimes he was the defendant, sometimes he was the accused. Most of these court cases involved disputes over small amounts of money or property; in others Godfrey sued neighbors for slander. At other times Godrey appeared in court to face charges of drunkenness, theft and cursing.

As historian John Demos writes, "Taken as a whole, the records depict a man continually at odds with his peers..." And as we know, people at odds with their peers in 17th century New England were often accused of witchcraft.

It appears that John Godfrey emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony sometime around 1635 and found employment as a herdsman in the town of Newbury with wealthy settler John Spencer. Godfrey was most likely a teenager at this time. Young Godfrey was kind of odd, and even then some folks thought he might be a witch. For example, in 1640 he talked with a Newbury man named William Osgood about finding a new employer. Osgood at the time was building a barn for Godfrey's current employer, John Spencer.

John Godfrey, being then Mr. Spencer's herdsman, he on an evening came to the frame where diverse men were at work; and said that he had gotten a new master against the time he had done keeping cows. 

The said William Osgood asked him who it was; he answered he knew not. He again asked him what his name was; he answered he knew not. He then said to him, "How wilt thou go to him when thy time is out?" He said, "The man will come and fetch me." Then William Osgood asked him "Hast thou made an absolute bargain?" He answered that a covenant was made and he had set his hand to it... 

William Osgood then answered "I am persuaded thou has made a covenant with the Devil. He (Godfrey) then skipped about and said, "I profess, I profess." (from David Hall's Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England (1991). I added modern punctuation for clarity.)

Osgood may have lied about this conversation, but its also possible Godfrey was actively cultivating an image as a witch. As a young man with no family and a lowly job, he may having a reputation as a witch was a way to gain some influence and intimidate people. That's just speculation on my part, but it seems some people in 17th century New England did knowingly cultivate witchy personas. Further supporting my hunch, Godfrey later explained to one Charles Brown of Rowley how the Devil took care of his witches:

...Godfrey spoke that if witches were not kindly entertained the Devil will appear unto them and ask them if they were grieved or vexed with anybody and ask them what he should do for them and if they would not give them beer or victuals they might let all the beer run out of the cellar and if they looked steadfastly upon upon any creature it would die... (Hall, Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England (1991).)

It's easy to picture Godfrey explaining this to Brown, and then asking him for food and drink in a vaguely threatening tone. Hand it over, friend, because I might just be a witch!

Godfrey left Newbury and became an itinerant herdsman, finding employment with a variety of landowners and farmers across Essex County in Massachusetts. Godfrey lived and worked in many towns, including Ipswich, Andover, Haverhill and Salem. He never married and had no children.

This made Godfrey an anomaly among the local Puritans, who generally were rooted in one location and had networks of close kin to support them. Historian John Demos speculates that Godfrey may have been homosexual, noting his unmarried status and his use of the term "c*ck-eating boy" to insult someone who got a herding Godfrey wanted for himself. This is just speculation, but it's not impossible. Legal documents clearly describe homosexual men living in the Massachusetts Bay Colony around this time.

By 1658 Godfrey's argumentative personality, unusual lifestyle and talk about witchcraft caught up with him. He was accused of witchcraft. Other witchcraft accusations followed in 1659, 1666 and 1669. Amazingly, Godfrey was never found guilty, but documents from his trials give a fascinating glimpse into 17th century witchcraft beliefs in New England.

For example, witnesses talk about familiar spirits, the small demons that did a witch's bidding. It was believed that witches had small teats hidden on their bodies from which their familiar spirits sucked blood for sustenance, and Charles Brown testified that he once saw Godfrey yawn in church and saw a strange teat under his tongue. Further, Job Tyler later testified that one night John Godfrey came to visit the Tyler family's house. When he entered the house a large black bird flew in the door with him. Godfrey tried to catch the bird, which finally escaped through a hole in the wall. When Job Tyler asked Godfrey why the bird came in the house, Godfrey answered: "It came to suck your wife." Maybe Godfrey was perhaps joking, but maybe he was implying that Goodwife Tyler was herself a witch. Either way he demonstrated his knowledge about familiar spirits. (Godfrey's comment reminds me of that really gruesome scene from The Witch with the crow!)

John Remington Jr., a fifteen-year old boy from Haverhill, also testified about a large black bird. Remington was riding a horse back to his family's home when the dog accompanying him began to whine and whimper. Remington also suddenly something strange that reminded him of apple cider. At this point a large crow appeared. Remington's horse abruptly fell on its side, injuring Remington's leg. When he recovered he mounted the horse again and rode towards home, but the crow followed, swooping down and biting the dog. Godfrey had argued with Remington's father earlier about working for him as a herdsman, but had not been hired. Godfrey was later heard to say that had Remington Jr. been a full-grown man something much worse would have happened to him. Remington's testimony implies that the crow was somehow controlled by Godfrey, but it's not clear if it was supposed to his familiar spirit, Godfrey transformed into a crow, or an animal he was controlling.

Strange animals appear in several other witnesses' testimony. Isabelle Holdred and her husband argued with Godfrey over money, and after the argument Holdred was assaulted by a progression of  animals that appeared to her over the course of several nights. Holdred was first attacked by a bumblebee, followed by a bear that growled and asked her if she was afraid. The next night a snake appeared, which frightened Holdred so much she couldn't talk for thirty minutes. A spectral horse also appeared in her bedchamber, as did a large black cat that lay on her as she slept and stroked her face. Holdred was the only one who saw those animals, but her son was with her when a neighbor's ox attacked her after looking at her with "great eyes."

Witnesses also claimed that Godfrey could send his spirit double (or specter, to use the Puritan terminology) to cause trouble. John Singletary, who had argued with Godfrey over money, claimed that he was visited by Godfrey's specter while in jail. The specter said that if Singletary paid Godfrey what he was owed he would free him. Singletary refused Godfrey's offer and tried to strike him with a stone, but "there was nothing to strike and how he went away I know not." Elizabeth Button claimed that Godfrey appeared in her bedchamber several times one night, even though the door was firmly bolted, implying that it was his spirit that had visited her.

A man named John Griffing even testified that Godfrey could travel over great distances quickly or appear in two places at once. For example, he once saw Godfrey on the road to Newbury at the same time Godfrey was confined to jail in Boston. Griffing also said he and Godfrey once set out together for the Rust family's house in Andover. It was a cold day and snow covered the ground. Griffing was on horseback and easily outpaced Godfrey, but when he go the Rust home he found Godfrey already inside, warming himself by the fire. Clearly he could only have gotten there by witchcraft.

Despite all this testimony against him, Godfrey was never found guilty of witchcraft. Perhaps the judges knew he was just a troublemaker who fought with all his neighbors. They certainly saw him in court often enough to be familiar with him! John Godfrey died in 1675, probably in Boston or Charlestown. Not much is known about his death, but fittingly there was a trial to decide who would receive his modest estate. Even in death Godfrey couldn't stay out of court.

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In addition to David Hall's book, I found John Demos's "John Godfrey and His Neighbors" in The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Apr., 1976) to be really valuable

Moll Ellis's Bee: The Witch's Familiar and the Human Spirit

Here's an interesting witch story from Cape Cod. I think it illustrates how really old metaphysical beliefs survived in disguise until quite recently in New England. The story is from William Root Bliss's 1893 book The Old Colony Town and Other Sketches.

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Everyone in Plymouth knew that Moll Ellis was a witch, but no one knew it better than Mr. Stevens. Moll and Mr. Stevens had argued about something (as people in small towns do), and for three years since she had tormented him in small ways with her witchcraft.

Stevens had been able to ignore the years of minor but annoying witchery, but his patience ran out one day when he was hauling a big load of hay in a ox-driven cart. The oxen had just pulled the cart across a stream when something spooked them. They reared up, and the hay fell into the stream and was ruined.

Mr. Stevens stomped over to Moll's house. He barged inside, and found her lying on her back with her eyes shut, "a-muttering dretful spell words." He yelled at Moll that if she every bothered him or his cattle again he would have her hung as a witch.

Frightened to find her enemy inside her home, Moll opened her eyes and apologized. She also said she would never bother him again, but while she was talking to Mr. Stevens something strange happened.

When she was talking, a little black devil, that looked just like a bumblebee, flew into the window and popped down her throat; 't was the one she had sent out to scare the cattle...

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That little black bumblebee is Moll's familiar spirit. According to New England folklore, the Devil gives his witches minor devils called familiars to work their mischief. Although sometimes monstrous in form, familiars most often appear as animals like birds, cats, dogs and toads. Insect familiars are rarer, but not completely unknown. In addition to Moll's bee, a witch from Rock's Village near Haverhill, Massachusetts had a familiar shaped like a junebug.

Like a lot of our local witch lore, the demonic familiar spirit is an idea that originated in Europe. But before it even became associated with the Devil and malevolent witches, it was a widely held metaphysical concept. For example, here is a story from a 14th century book about the Cathars, a heretical Christian sect.

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Two men were sitting by the side of a river when one of them fell asleep. As the other man watched, a small lizard emerged from the sleeping man's mouth. The lizard crawled along the river bank and then crossed over the river using a branch that extended from one bank to the other. While it was on the other side it crawled in and out of a donkey's skull that was lying on the ground.

The man who was awake moved the branch, trapping the lizard on the other side. As the lizard tried to find a way across the river the sleeping man began to thrash in his sleep. The man replaced the branch and the lizard scurried back into the sleeping man's mouth. When the sleeper awoke he told his friend how he had dreamt he crossed a mighty river and explored a palace that had many entrances and chambers.

The two men were quite puzzled by this and went to one of the Cathar religious leaders, who were known as the perfecti.

"The soul," he said, "resides permanently in the body of man; the spirit, on the other hand, goes in and out of the human body, exactly as the lizard who went from the sleeping man's mouth to the donkey's head, back and forth."

(The story is quoted in Claude Lecouteux's Witches, Werewolves and Fairies (2003).)

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The Cathar story is not the earliest version of this tale. Similar accounts appear in Norse sagas, and in a story about King Guntram, a Frankish king who lived in the sixth century. 

Somehow, this belief in an animal spirit that can leave the body survived for more than 1,300 years, finding its way from a story about a king to Moll Ellis, a witch who lived in Plymouth. Over time it became transformed from a neutral statement about human metaphysics to a demonic story to scare children, but it's still exciting to find these little ancient gems hidden in our local folklore.

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!