The Salem Witchcraft, the Planchette Mystery, and Modern Spiritualism: With Dr. Doddridge's DreamStowe, Harriet Beecher
History
The Salem Witchcraft, the Planchette Mystery, and Modern Spiritualism: With Dr. Doddridge's Dream
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Spiritualism; Upham, Charles Wentworth, 1802-1875. Salem witchcraft; Witchcraft -- Massachusetts -- Salem
and mercy's sake, to deliver me out of the paws of those roaring lions,
and jaws of those tearing bears, that, ever since that time, they have
not had power so to afflict me until this May 31, 1692. At the same
moment that I was hearing my evidence read by the honored magistrates,
to take my oath, I was again re-assaulted and tortured by my
before-mentioned tormentor, Rebecca Nurse." "The testimony of Ann
Putnam, Jr., witnesseth and saith, that, being in the room where her
mother was afflicted, she saw Martha Corey, Sarah Cloyse, and Rebecca
Nurse, or their apparitions, upon her mother."
"Mrs. Ann Putnam made another deposition under oath at the same trial,
which shows that she was determined to overwhelm the prisoner by the
multitude of her charges. She says that Rebecca Nurse's apparition
declared to her that 'she had killed Benjamin Houlton, John Fuller,
and Rebecca Shepherd;' and that she and her sister Cloyse, and Edward
Bishop's wife, had killed young John Putnam's child; and she further
deposed as followeth: 'Immediately there did appear to me six children
in winding-sheets, which called me aunt, which did most grievously
affright me; and they told me that they were my sister Baker's children
of Boston; and that Goody Nurse, and Mistress Corey of Charlestown, and
an old deaf woman at Boston, had murdered them, and charged me to go
and tell these things to the magistrates, or else they would tear me to
pieces, for their blood did cry for vengeance. Also there appeared to me
my own sister Bayley and three of her children in winding-sheets, and
told me that Goody Nurse had murdered them.'" (Vol. ii. p. 278.)
All the efforts made to procure testimony against the venerable
gentlewoman's character issued in a charge that she had so "railed at" a
neighbor for allowing his pigs to get into her field that, some short
time after, early in the morning, he had a sort of fit in his own entry,
and languished in health from that day, and died in a fit at the end of
the summer. "He departed this life by a cruel death," murdered by Goody
Nurse. The jury did not consider this ground enough for hanging the old
lady, who had been the ornament of their church and the glory of their
village and its society. Their verdict was "Not Guilty." Not for a
moment, however, could the prisoner and her family hope that their
trial was over. The outside crowd clamored; the "afflicted" howled and
struggled; one judge declared himself dissatisfied; another promised to
have her indicted anew; and the Chief Justice pointed out a phrase of
the prisoner's which might be made to signify that she was one of the
accused gang in guilt, as well as in jeopardy. It might really seem
as if the authorities were all driveling together, when we see the
ingenuity and persistence with which they discussed those three words,
"of our company." Her remonstrance ought to have moved them:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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