"The reverend and worthy author having, at the direction of his Excellency the governor, so far obliged the public as to give some account of the sufferings brought upon the country by witchcrafts, and of the trials which have passed upon several executed for the same: "Upon perusal thereof, _we find the matters of fact and evidence truly reported_, and a prospect given of the methods of conviction used in the proceedings of the court at Salem. "Boston, Oct. 11, 1692. "WILLIAM STOUGHTON, "SAMUEL SEWALL." Manifestation of one class of phenomena presented at those trials has not been noticed in the preceding pages; viz., the appearance of the spirits of particular departed ones to many of the accusing girls. It is obviously true that those clairvoyants were very much oftener beholders of the spirits of those still dwelling in mortal forms than of those who had escaped from thralldom to the flesh. Still there were then some cases in which the spirits of some who had been known in that vicinity, and whose bodies were moldering beneath its soil, were both seen and heard. Among others, two former wives of Burroughs were named. Mather says (p. 282), "Several of the bewitched had given in their testimony that they had been troubled with the apparitions of two women, who said they were G. B.'s two wives; and that he had been the death of them.... Now, G. B. had been infamous for the barbarous usage of his two successive wives, all the country over. (p. 286.) ... 'Twas testified, that, keeping his two successive wives in _a strange kind of slavery_, he would, when he came home from abroad, pretend to tell the talk which any had with them; that he has brought them to the point of death by his harsh dealings with his wives, and then made people promise that, in case death should happen, they would say nothing of it; that he used all means to make his wives write, sign, seal, and swear to a covenant _never to reveal any of his secrets_; that his wives had privately complained unto the neighbors about _frightly apparitions_ of evil spirits, with which their house was sometimes infested," &c.