Part 27

One R. P., dated Salisbury, August 9, 1692, and forwarded to Jonathan Corwin, a document ranking among the ablest on record against the legal proceedings of that day, in which he says, "I suppose 'tis granted by all that the person of one that is dead cannot appear, because the soul and body are separated, and so the person is dissolved, and so ceaseth to be; and it is certain that the person of the living cannot be in two places at one time." That writer conceived that man's personality ceased at death; therefore he logically inferred that the personality of the prophet Samuel had gone out of existence, and said, "The witch of Endor raised the DEVIL, in the likeness of Samuel, to tell Saul his fortune." We find in many places the cropping out, in those days, of the same idea. Susanna Martin indicated her belief that it was the devil who appeared to the woman of Endor, and not the glorified Samuel. Premises deemed valid by some men in 1692, would, if applied in that direction, support the conclusion that the Moses and Elias who appeared to Jesus and others on the mount of transfiguration were nothing but the devil in the shapes of those old prophets. Belief that the devil personated Samuel is to us no more unphilosophical than is Upham's conclusion, that "by the immediate agency of the Almighty the spirit of Samuel really arose." Paul taught that there _is_--not that there is to be hereafter, that there is now--"a spiritual _body_." All clairvoyants to-day can see such a body belonging to a human form, and sometimes see it being far away from the form to which nature attached it. Each human being now possesses both a natural or physical and also a spiritual _form_. That position of R. P. and Susanna Martin was unsound which held that the physical body was essential to personality. Also, since the Almighty originally infused through nature, elements and forces which admit of the return of spirits by natural processes, it is as unphilosophical to hold that Samuel was raised by the immediate agency of the Almighty, or miraculously, as it would be to ascribe an American traveler's return home from Europe to the _immediate_ agency of the same Being. Natural laws and forces permitted, under possible conditions, the return of Samuel himself. Such conditions existed often in and around the hospitable and sympathetic woman of Endor, who was no _witch_, in the now common meaning of that word; who was not called such in the Bible,--but only a person who had a _familiar_ spirit, that is, a spirit so constantly present, and having such ability of communion with her, as made the spirit seem to her like one of her family--her familiar. A spirit thus attendant on a mortal may be either good, bad, or indifferent, and may be cognized by those persons whose constitution and development are such that their inner senses can report to their external consciousness. The existing properties of that woman, which permitted some special spirit to frequently dwell and commune intelligibly with her, and be cognizable by her inner senses as a dweller in her household, as her familiar,--such properties would enable her to perceive the form and hear the voice of another spirit, who might be called to her presence for an urgent purpose, as naturally as the outer eye which sees one external form is competent to see another. Samuel, when wanted, came and was seen by the clairvoyant woman, but not by the external eyes of either Saul or his attendants. The case was very like what occurred at the first examination under an accusation for witchcraft at Salem Village. Sarah Good then said, "None here see the witches"--that is, none see spirits--"but the afflicted and themselves,"--that is, none but the afflicted and the accused, of which she was one. In other words, the actual doers of the marvelous works, the spirits, are seen only by the accusers and the accused--the clairvoyants here. It is true that in the more modern instance the spirits seen were often, though not always, those of living persons. But this does not affect the principles of explanation. Those persons who are so unfolded as to see spirit-forms can sometimes see them, whether they be still attached to the outer ones or be liberated. Spirits, both some who had been entirely liberated from the flesh, and other flesh-clad ones whose encasements were translucent, could be seen by members of the accusing "circle," and by some others of like combinations, even when the court and the mass of attendants upon it might fail to see anything of the kind. The horses and chariots of fire were as clearly seen by Elisha on the hills of Dothan, while his servant was blind to them, as they were after the young man's inner eyes were opened so that he too saw the helping and protecting hosts. The change was in the young man himself, and not up on the hills. Departed spirits are where they feel our aspirations for their presence, and the opening of our inner sight, at any time or in any place, might render them visible.

Returning to Susanna Martin, we find that one William Brown, of Salisbury, made deposition in 1692, "that, about one or two and thirty years ago, his wife met Susanna in the road, who 'vanished away out of her sight,' ... after which time the said Martin did many times appear to her at her house, and did much trouble her.... When she did come, it was as birds pecking her legs, or pricking her with the motion of their wings; and then it would rise up into her stomach with pricking pain, as nails and pins, of which she did bitterly complain.... After that it would up to her throat in a bunch like a pullet's egg; and then she would turn back her head and say, 'Witch, you shan't choke me.'"

Much more testimony was adduced to show that this woman's apparition was very frequently seen; and not only seen, but was a source of exceeding sufferings to many people. This argues nothing against her character, but plainly hints that the relation of her inner to her outer form was such that the former could be seen and felt by many persons who either constitutionally or from sickness, or both, were very sensitive. Such persons often saw her spirit-form, and suffered from its psychological

## action. That peculiarity perhaps made her so luminous as to be observable,

and therefore accused, by "the circle," and the accusation brought her to the gallows.

MARTHA CARRIER.

The faculties and manifestations which nearly two centuries ago were deemed to constitute witchcraft, and the mode of eliciting proof of that crime then, stand forth very conspicuously in the history of the wife and children of Thomas Carrier of Andover.

_The Examination of Martha Carrier, May 31, 1692._

"_Q._ Abigail Williams, who hurts you? _A._ Goody Carrier of Andover.

"_Q._ Elizabeth Hubbard, who hurts you? _A._ Goody Carrier.

"_Q._ Susan Sheldon, who hurts you? _A._ Goody Carrier; she bites me, pinches me, and tells me she would cut my throat if I did not sign her book. Mary Walcott said she afflicted her, and brought the book to her.

"_Q._ What do you say to this you are charged with? _A._ I have not done it. Susan Sheldon cried, she looks upon the black man. Ann Putnam complained of a pin stuck in her. _Q._ What black man is that? _A._ I know none. Mary Warren cried out she was pricked. _Q._ What black man did you see? _A._ I saw no black man but _your own presence_. _Q._ Can you look upon these and not knock them down? _A._ They will dissemble if I look upon them. You see you look upon them and they fall down. _A._ It is false; the _devil is a liar_. I looked upon none since I came into the room. Susan Sheldon cried out _in a trance_, I wonder what could you murder thirteen persons! Mary Walcott testified the same: that there lay thirteen ghosts! All the afflicted fell into intolerable outcries and agonies. Elizabeth Hubbard and Ann Putnam testified the same: that she had killed thirteen at Andover. _A._ It is a shameful thing that you should mind these folks, who are out of their wits. _Q._ Do not you see them? _A._ If I do speak you will not believe me. You do see them, said the accusers. _A._ You lie; I am wronged. There is a black man whispering in her ear, said many of the afflicted. Mercy Lewis in a violent fit, was well, upon the examinant's grasping her arm. The tortures of the afflicted were so great that there was no enduring of it, so that she was ordered away, and to be bound hand and foot with all expedition; the afflicted in the mean while almost killed, to the great trouble of all spectators, magistrates, and others.

"_Note._ As soon as she was well bound they all had strange and sudden ease. Mary Walcott told the magistrates, that this woman told her, she had been a witch this forty years."

The foregoing record shows the fearful ordeal to which any one might be subjected upon whom an accusation of witchcraft fell, and the hopelessness of escape where spectral evidence was admitted and held to be reliable. Here was a woman who, it seems, had been conscious of spirit presence with her for "forty years," and her constitutional properties which permitted this were so luminous in the spiritual atmosphere, or medium of vision by inner eyes, that the clairvoyant girls readily caught sight of her, readily felt influences from her, and therefore accused her of tormenting them.

The general character and deportment of this woman prior to her arrest may not have won public approbation. When in presence of the magistrates she was self-possessed and not lacking in boldness; for otherwise she would not have told the judge that his own presence was the only black man she had seen there. She told her examiners that it was shameful for them to mind "these folks, who are out of their wits." She said to the girls, "You lie; I am wronged." Her presence permitted extraordinary visions, contortions, sufferings, and outcries, and probably emanations from her were special helps to the unwonted outflow.

_In trance_, one saw thirteen dead bodies, and charged the accused with having murdered them. It was _in trance_ that this was seen and said. If _entranced_, was the girl, then, a voluntary seer and speaker? No. Supermundane force was in action there. Entrancements and obsessions came upon all those youthful accusers fitfully--and the forms of the girls generally were tools operated by wills entering from outside. The tongue of that entranced accuser, like Ann Cole's, probably was "improved to utter thoughts that never were in her own mind."

Four of Mrs. Carrier's children were brought into court in company with herself, either as accused ones or as witnesses against some members of the family. "Before the trial," says Drake, "several of her own children had frankly and fully confessed not only that they were witches themselves, but that their mother had made them so." The artlessness and simplicity of their _confessions_ render them not simply entertaining, but more instructive than almost any other statements made at the examinations and trials. Little Sarah was asked,--

"How long have you been a witch? _A._ Ever since I was six years old. How old are you now? _A._ Near eight years old; brother Richard says I shall be eight years old in November next.

"Who made you a witch? _A._ My mother; she made me set my hand to a book. How did you set your hand to it? _A._ I touched it with my fingers; and the book was red; the paper of it was white. She said she never had seen the black man ... that her mother had baptized her, and the devil or black man was not there, as she saw. Her mother said, when she baptized her, 'Thou art mine for ever and ever. Amen.'

"How did you afflict folks? _A._ I pinched them. She said she went to those whom she afflicted--_went_, not in body, but in her spirit. She would not own that she had ever been at the witch-meeting at the Village."

The _confessions_ (?) are beautiful and precious; they are robed in all the appropriate naivete of any school-girl's _confession_ that herself was a--_pupil_. Not a tinge of shame, sorrow, or humiliation is visible anywhere about them. Not a sign appears, that, in little Sarah's comprehension, there was anything more censurable, as in fact there was not, in her being a witch, than there is in the child of to-day being a Sunday school scholar. Disclosure of common occurrences at her home, which inborn faculties there as naturally brought into view, as other faculties there and elsewhere cause the limbs of childhood to expand and its intellect to unfold, constituted her confession of the witchcraft that pertained to her mother and herself.

The common mind, if not cautioned, will almost perforce attach meanings to the testimonies of Martha Carrier's children which never belonged to them. The detailings of facts and experiences not rare in that mediumistic family, were no confession of anything like what the public in any age has been accustomed to designate by the term witchcraft. In biblical times the occurrences might have been called prophecies--true or false--and to-day they would be regarded as spirit manifestations, or near kindred to such.

The little girl's _confessions_ are _precious_ as well as beautiful; they are instructive comments upon the creed held by the adults of her day; they give some support to the position that compact with some spirit was an element in preparation for working marvels. Her mother baptized her, and made her virtually sign a book, and then claimed her own child as hers "for ever and ever, Amen." The little child herself seems to have regarded this ratification of her mother's spirit claims upon her spirit as having made herself a witch; but such a witch as she was not ashamed to be, and saw no harm in being. Indeed, how can any other than perverted vision see harm in the girl's filial compact? Her clairvoyant and other mediumistic faculties had become so unfolded when she was about six years old, that she and her mother, as freed spirits, could, in conscious companionship, roam in spirit realms; and she, no doubt, felt that forces emanating from the mother aided in her unfoldment, and continued to have much sway over her in her mental journeyings and operations. She might with much propriety say that her mother made her a witch. And her case shows that the process for producing a witch might be much simpler and much less horrifying than the public in her day had any conception of. Indeed, witchification was then, and now is, a growth or unfoldment from God's plantings much more than a manufacture by the devil's or any mother's hands. She saw no devil, no black man--but only her own mother was concerned in making her a witch; and the mother probably made her a witch by processes as natural and legitimate as those by which she had previously made her a child.

The girl's power for afflicting was mental; her journeyings and pinchings were mental; and yet, no doubt, her grip was as sensibly felt by the nerves of those whom she pinched as would have been firm graspings of their flesh by her fingers of bones and muscles. It is the spirit only which feels hurts of the body, and a pinched spirit imprints the hurt on the flesh it is animating. This little girl's statements confirm Tituba's, and give credibility to the many declarations of the accusing girls that they were pinched, bitten, and tortured by persons whose outer forms were remote from them at the time. We live amid mysteries which one by one are getting revealed as time rolls on.

An instructive instance of the warping force of these prevalent beliefs in shaping the diction of the most erudite describers of witchcraft facts, is found in Lawson's summary of events, where, when commenting upon testimony like that given by little Sarah, he says, "Several have _confessed_ against their own mother, that they were instruments to bring them into _the devil's covenant_." But the girl's testimony mentioned a covenant with her mother _alone_, saying that the devil was not there, as she saw. It was Lawson, and not the girl, who brought the devil into this case.

The same writer further says, "Some girls of eight or nine years of age did declare that after they were so betrayed by their mothers to the power of _Satan_, they saw _the devil_ go in their _own shapes_ to afflict others." But the statement of Sarah is, that she herself went forth and afflicted in her spirit-form, and not that the _devil_ went in her shape. The cultured of that generation had _devil on the brain_ so severely, that they persistently brought him in even where the facts as presented by the witnesses plainly excluded him.

Richard Carrier, eighteen years old, son of Thomas and Martha, was examined.

"Have you been in the devil's snare?--Yes.

"Is your brother Andrew insnared by the devil's snare?--Yes.

"How long has your brother been a witch?--Near a month.

"How long have you been a witch?--Not long.

"Have you joined in afflicting the afflicted persons?--Yes.

"You helped to hurt Timothy Swan, did you?--Yes.

"How long have you been a witch?--About five weeks.

"Who was in company when you covenanted with the devil?--Mrs. Bradbury.

"Did she help you afflict?--Yes.

"Who was at the Village Meeting when you were there?--Goodwife How, Goodwife Nurse, Goodwife Wildes, Proctor and his wife, Mrs. Bradbury, and Corey's wife.

"What did they do there?--Eat, and drank wine.

"Was there a minister there?--No, not as I know of.

"From whence had you your wine?--From Salem, I think it was.

"Goodwife Oliver there?--Yes; I knew her."

Statements by this witness, and also his probable circumstances and condition, seem worthy of special note. Frankness glows on all that he said. He was stating facts, which, in his apprehension, were harmless, and why should he not let them out? He knew, probably, that his mother had all through his life been accustomed to see and act through other than her physical organs, and was conscious that during the last five weeks at least himself had been doing the same. The abilities came unsought into

## action--were outgrowths from the natures of his mother and himself, and

were not crimes. His long familiarity with the ostensible workings of such powers through his mother had shown him that they were neither diabolical nor censurable; and why not admit possession of them, and the acts they produced, whether through himself, his mother, or any one else? Neither the mother nor children in that family were afraid of ghostly beings, because able to confer with them intelligibly and sympathetically; and the ready admission by Richard that he had aided in hurting Timothy Swan, and been at a great witch-meeting, where they ate, and also drank wine, was no confession of any crime, but simple statement of facts. He was a medium, and also a frank and truthful witness.

He granted that he had been in the devil's snare. How much did this import? He and his brother Andrew both had been caught in it--one about four, and the other five, weeks prior to his statement. As certain atmospheric and other physical conditions often produce epidemic or wide-spread physical health or disease either, and certain public mental and moral states often act powerfully upon many minds, the great public excitement engendered by the arrest and prosecution of witches may well be deemed adequate to have unfolded latent mediumistic susceptibilities very widely; and it is not surprising that the children of a Martha Carrier should have such susceptibilities suddenly brought to their own cognizance, nor that they should as suddenly become well-fledged clairvoyants competent to wing their way widely and rapidly in the airs of a world in which spirits dwell; nor that they should be psychologized by spirit beings, and made to take part in any work, malignant or benevolent, which their controllers were bent upon executing. By being caught in the devil's snare, they probably meant neither more nor less than that they became mediums. All conditions like theirs the public was charging the devil with producing, and the young Carriers assented to that being done in their own case. Most things not of the earth, earthy, were then charged to the devil; and the mental powers of these children were not competent to show that their slippings out from their hampering bodies were effected without his aid.

Frequent mention occurs of witch-meetings at Salem Village, on the Green, or the minister's pasture, near Deacon Ingersoll's.

If any accused one had been seen in the company of assembled witches there, the fact was excessively damaging. Richard Carrier acknowledged having been there, and freely mentioned what persons were in the assemblage--but did not see a minister.

The records have not led us to suppose that Mrs. Carrier ever stood very high in public estimation. It is not improbable that influences from outside of her had often, during the forty years through which she had experienced them, made her life eccentric, and many of her actions mysterious. Even the aged and charitable Francis Dane said, "That there was a suspicion of goodwife Carrier among some of us before she was apprehended, I know; as for any other persons, I had no suspicion of them." We must infer from that statement that she was noted for some peculiarities which were not universally regarded with favor; suspicions hung around her.

She was accused by one of causing grievous sores in himself, of sickening his cattle, and working many injuries; by others also of hurting and bewitching them, and of having attended a witch-meeting. The accusing girls, as seen above, were most excessively agonized when in court with her. She may justly be regarded, we think, as being socially among the lower class of persons then accused; and yet we have met with nothing which will justify an inference that she was altogether unworthy of esteem, or even that she was emphatically bad in any respect. Mather called her _rampant hag_, and hence much of Christendom has been influenced to contemplate her with aversion. But whatever may have been her character, the sufferings of herself and family draw forth our sympathies.

If she said she had been a witch forty years, she meant only that for "forty years" she had been conscious of the ongoing of occult processes within and around herself. We doubt whether she applied the word _witch_ to herself, but can readily believe that she confessed to such experiences and performances as were in her day often called witchcrafts. That she detailed some experiences to Mary Walcott, which the latter termed witchcrafts, is highly probable. Neither the accused nor the accusers were accustomed to speak of seeing the devil; but it was the black man, or some other defined spirit,--not the devil,--according to their own statements. Yet when recorders and reporters undertook to give us either the substance of what was said, or a nearly verbatim report, they generally substituted devil for black man, or for any other unseen occult operator, whatever his, her, or its moral purpose or character. So, too, all specially marvelous works were called witchcrafts.