Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern SpiritualismPutnam, Allen
Religion
Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism
Putnam, Allen
Spiritualism; Witchcraft -- New England
"In 1662, at Hartford, Conn., one Ann Cole, a young woman who lived next
door to a Dutch family, and, no doubt, had learned something of the
language, was supposed to be possessed with demons, who sometimes spoke
Dutch, and sometimes English, and sometimes a language which nobody
understood, and who held a conference with one another. Several ministers,
who were present, took down the conference in writing, and the names of
several persons mentioned in the course of the conference as actors or
bearing parts in it; particularly a woman, then in prison upon suspicion
of witchcraft, one Greensmith, who, upon examination, confessed, and
appeared to be surprised at the discovery. She owned that she and the
others named had been familiar with a demon, who had carnal knowledge of
her; and although she had not made a formal covenant, yet she had promised
to be ready at his call, and was to have had a high frolic at Christmas,
when an agreement was to have been signed. Upon this confession she was
executed, and two more of the company were condemned at the same time."
Hutchinson also credits to Goffe's diary the statement that "after one of
the witches was hanged, the maid was well."
Another account of this Ann's case, furnished by an eye-witness and
personal hearer when she was in her trances, has been transmitted. The
writer of it promptly made, but afterward lost, minutes of what he heard
from her lips, and about twenty years afterward wrote his remembrances of
the manifestations, and forwarded the following account to Increase
Mather:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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