SKEPTICAL National Capital Area EYEfiles.ncas.org/eyes/SE-18.1.pdf · 2006. 7. 27. · Amazing Randi” and the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), was held at the soon-to-be-torn-down

SKEPTICAL EYE○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

• encourages critical and scientific thinking • serves as an information resource on extraordinaryclaims • provides extraordinary evidence that skeptics are cool

National Capital Area

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Vol. 18, No. 1 2006

The Salem witchcraft trials areevents that most Americans haveheard of, but about which theyactually know very little. For ex-ample, some people believe that

witches were burnt in Salem. Actually, theprescribed punishment for witchcraft underEnglish law was hanging. Another commonlyheld belief is that the witchcraft hysteriastarted when a group of young girls in Salem,under the tutelage of Tituba, an African slave,used magical spells to try to find out the occu-pations of the men that they would marry.

This cluster of beliefs now has the statusof an academic urban legend. The notion that agroup of girls was using magic to find outabout their future husbands stems from a care-less reading of a remark of Rev. John Hale,who wrote that one of the young accusers hadconfided to him her own use of magic in thisway.

The idea that a group of girls in SalemVillage could meet clandestinely to carry onmagical séances represents a failure of the his-torical imagination. The girls lived on widelydispersed farms; many were domestic ser-vants; and all lived in very cramped housesunder constant adult supervision and surveil-lance. A perusal of the floor plan of any 17th

century New England house shows that per-sonal privacy simply did not exist.

Finally, the belief that the slave Titubawas African has been put about by academicactivists eager to highlight African-American

contributions to American history (even if thatcontribution is the creation of a moral panic).This claim flies in the face of the clear, unam-biguous statement of Rev. Samuel Parris, herowner, that she was an Indian.

After generations of shame over thewitchcraft trials, the town of Salem has nowdecided to capitalize on it. Thus, Salem has itsSalem Witchcraft Museum, its Salem WaxMuseum (with tableaux of the trials) and theWitch House (actually the house of Justice ofthe Peace Jonathan Corwin,). Ironically, al-though the trials did, indeed, take place in Sa-lem, the witchcraft hysteria in 1692 started inSalem Village (now the township of Danvers),and most of the accused witches resided inother townships. A 17th century inhabitant of

Mysterious Delusions:Witchcraft in Salem

by Walter F. Rowe, Ph.D.Professor, Department of Forensic Sciences

The George Washington UniversityWashington, DC

1876 illustration of thecourtroom; the centralfigure is usually MaryWalcott

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So-calledIntelligentDesign is NotScience 24

MichaelServetus—Deathby Fire 26

Origin of ModernDay Occult 30

about NCAS 32

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prez sezby Gary Stone

National Capital Area Skeptical Eye (ISSN 1063-2077)is published by the National Capital Area Skeptics, POBox 8428 , Silver Spring, MD 20907.

Copyright © 2005 National Capital Area Skeptics. Signedarticles are the opinions of the authors. Opinions ex-pressed herein do not necessarily reflect the position of theeditors, the Board of Directors, or the National CapitalArea Skeptics.

24-hour phone number: 301-587-3827e-mail: [email protected] Eye input: [email protected]: http://www.ncas.orgNCAS discussion group: [email protected]

NCAS Board of DirectorsExecutive CommitteeGary Stone, presidentJim Giglio, vice presidentMarv Zelkowitz, secretaryGrace Denman, treasurerChip Denman, spokesperson

Other Board membersSharlene DeskinsHerb M. FederhenNeil InglisCurtis HaymoreBrian MortonEugene W. Ossa

Editor/Designer/PhotographerHelen E. Hester-Ossa

Guest EditorSharlene Deskins

Meredith RodeWalter F. RoweTim ScanlonScott SnellJamy Ian Swiss

recycled paper

Dear NCAS Members:As the annual NCAS board electionarrives, it is a good time to take stock.Although the recent informal NCAS membersquestionnaire was not designed to produce ro-bust statistical inferences about the entireNCAS membership, a simple tabulation of theresponses does provide the following insights,which will be helpful in planning futureNCAS activities. Thanks to all who partici-pated. Keep your suggestions coming [email protected].

These five issues were ranked equallyhigh by the most respondents:■ Creationism/Intelligent Design, Evolution,

Religion vs. Reason, Separation of Churchand State

■ K-12 Science Education, Science Literacy,Critical Thinking, Political Correctness

■ Unscientific/Alternative/Quack/Fringe Sci-ence/Health/Medicine/Psychology: e.g.,Herbal Medicines, Medical Charlatans,Medical Scams, False Memories

■ Scientific ignorance, misuse of Science/Statistics/Data in media/politics/publicpolicy/ government regulation; fads inmanagement, health, and self-help

■ Explanations/Debunking of Cold Readings,Hoaxes, Frauds, Scams, Psychics, Pseudo-scienceAs indications of NCAS members’ wide-

ranging interests, these other issues were men-tioned by one respondent each:■ Anomalous science and technology■ Archeological controversies

coming events

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Current NCAS president, GaryStone, has served in manycapacities in NCAS over the years,most recently as vice president ofthe board of directors. Gary oftenwill be seen videotaping the monthlyNCAS presentations for posterity.

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The 2005-2006 NCAS Lecture season endsin May. There will be a social for NCASmembers in June—details forthcoming.

The Board has decided to resume holdingmonthly NCAS events in Virginia as wellas Maryland, true to the “Capital Area”part of our name and mission. In the com-ing 2006-2007 lecture season, talks will be

at the Tysons-Pimmit Library in Virginiaon September 9, November 11, December9, and February 10. Dates are being re-served for NCAS talks at the Bethesda Li-brary in January, March, April, and May.The NCAS annual program will be held inOctober at a venue to be determined.

Skeptical Eye Vol. 18, No. 1 2006 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 3

■ Astrology■ Biological sciences■ Conspiracy theories■ Cosmological controversies■ Government disinformation■ Low energy nuclear reactions■ Occult beliefs, how they affect culture■ Post Modernism■ Space■ Systems Biology■ Unconventional ideas in science, the value of■ UFOs

Respondents said they were able to attendweekend daytime NCAS events in MetroMontgomery County (94%), D.C. (77%),Metro VA (72%), and Metro PG County(61%). For evening events it was MontgomeryCounty (72%), D.C. (50%), Metro VA (44%),and Metro PG (38%).

Regarding subway or bus transportation,half the respondents said that subway/bustransportation is “very important” (11%) or“somewhat important” (38%) for their atten-dance at NCAS events—correspondingly, theother half of respondents said that subway/bustransportation is “not at all important” (44%)or “not very important” (5%).

The percentage of respondents who werediscouraged in attending high-interest NCASevents by each of these factors were: conflict-ing obligations (61%), day or time (27%), lo-cation (16%), too far (16%), didn’t see notice(11%), forgot (11%), don’t like gatherings(5%).

Shown below are the percentages of re-spondents who said they could attend NCASevents at these times:

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MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT SUNFirst WeekMorning 16.7 11.11Afternoon 55.6 55.56Evening 38 27 22 27 11 55.6 22.22Second WeekMorning 27.8 16.67Afternoon 55.6 55.56Evening 38 27 16 22 11 44.4 22.22Third WeekMorning 27.8 11.11Afternoon 61.1 50Evening 38 27 22 27 11 50 22.22Fourth WeekMorning 27.8 16.67Afternoon 61.1 50Evening 38 27 22 27 11 55.6 27.78

Percentages of Respondents Who Said TheyCould Attend NCAS Events at These Times

The zip codes from which people come toattend weekend and week night NCAS eventswill take a little longer to analyze. Several dif-

ferent inferences are possible from the data. Ifyou are interested in helping with that analy-sis, please contact me.

We received many excellent comments,suggestions and specific offers to helpNCAS—we’ll soon follow-up on each ofthose individually.

Gary Stone, [email protected]

elections coming soon

Elections for the NCAS Board of Direc-tors will be coming soon. The Boardmembers up for election/reelection thisyear are: Sharlene Deskins Herb Federhen

Bing Garthright Curtis Haymore Ron Levin Walter Rowe Scott Snell Jamy Ian Swiss Be watching your mail!


The Amazing Meeting 4

James “The Amazing” Randi, host of TAM4

Todd Robbins and the Human Pretzel, which included AdamSavage from Mythbusters

ChristopherHitchens’trademark savagewit flattenshypocrisy insidethe DC Beltwayand around theworld, laying barethe “permanentgovernment” ofentrenchedpowers andinterests. He’s theauthor of manybestsellers. FromMother Theresa toMichael Moore, noone is abovescrutiny.

Randi and NCAS’ own Chip Denman and Eugene Ossa. Other NCAS members who attendedwere Grace Denman, Curtis Hayfield, Helen Hester-Ossa, Scott Snell, and Jamy Ian Swiss.

The Amaz!ng Meeting 4,hosted by James “The

Amazing Randi” and theJames Randi Educational

Foundation (JREF), washeld at the soon-to-be-torn-

down Stardust Hotel &Casino in Las Vegas from

January 26-29, 2006.James Randi has an

international reputation as amagician and escape artist,but today he is best knownas the world’s most tirelessinvestigator and demystifier

of paranormal andpseudoscientific claims.

All photos by Helen Hester-Ossa

➨➨➨➨➨


Grace & Chip Denman, National Capital Area Skeptics (NCAS).Daniel W. “Chip” Denman is a statistician at the University ofMaryland. He teaches “Science and Pseudoscience” for theHonors Program, and recently created a graduate course ininformation visualization for the College of Information Studies.He is a past-president and co-founder of NCAS. Grace is alsoa co-founder and current treasurer of NCAS.

Mac Kingand hiscloak ofinvisibility

Randi and the Amazing Levitating Astronaut, Ed Lu. Since obtaining hisPh.D., Dr. Lu has been a research physicist working in the fields ofsolar physics and astrophysics. He’s also spent 207 days in spaceaboard the Space Shuttle and ISS, and was a volunteer in “The FirstCard Trick in Space.”

Magician and comedian Mac King wasnamed “Magician of the Year” by the MagicCastle in Hollywood, broke a GuinnessWorld Record, just appeared on his specialfor NBC, was voted the 6th best show inLas Vegas, and his new book has justentered its 5th printing. King is shown herepulling a Fig Newton out of his pants

Award-winning magician,psychologist, and author,Dr. Richard Wiseman is

frequently seen on Britishtelevision and has given

lectures in many differentcountries. He pays

particular attention to thepsychology behind belief

in psychics and mostrecently, alleged

hauntings.

Dr. Stanley Krippner hasconducted workshops andseminars on personalmythology, dreams, hypnosis,and/or anomalous phenomenain over a dozen differentcountries. He is a Fellow of theSociety for the Scientific Studyof Religion, and has publishedcross-cultural studies onspiritual content in dreams.

Lt Colonel Hal Bidlack, Ph.D., (left) is an Associate Professor ofPolitical Science at the USAF Academy. He has a long history with the

JREF, and has previously performed as Master of Ceremonies,speaker, and presenter. Dr. Michael Shermer (right) is the Director of

the Skeptics Society, founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine, columnistfor Scientific American, and producer of the TV series, Exploring the

Unknown. His many books include: The Borderlands of Science, HowWe Believe, and Why People Believe Weird Things.

Daniel Dennett’s research centerson philosophy of mind and

philosophy of science, particularlyas those fields relate to evolutionarybiology and cognitive science. He is

currently the Austin B. FletcherProfessor of Philosophy and director

of the Center for Cognitive Studiesat Tufts University. (No, your eyes

aren’t fooling you, Dennett andRandi look very similar.)

TAM4 continued from previous page

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In 1969, ProfessorMurray Gell-Mannreceived the NobelPrize in physics for hiswork on the theory ofelementary particlesand is author of thepopular science book,The Quark and theJaguar, Adventures inthe Simple and theComplex.

Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage are the Mythbusters, a couple of guys with lots ofspecial effects experience who test urban legends and blow stuff up. Part science, parteducation, their hit show on the Discovery Channel shows that science can be fun as wellas informative. Shown are Hyneman, Kari Byron (one of the Mythbusters team),Savage,and Penn Jillette.

Adam Savage of Mythbusters speaks to Ovation Award winner Julia Sweeney, who isbest known for her character Pat on Saturday Night Live, and her acclaimed Broadwayshow “God Said, Ha!”. She has worked on the shows Sex & the City and DesperateHousewives and has written and performed 2 one-woman monologues. Julia won herOvation Award for her current one-woman show, “Letting Go of God.”

Carney showmanToddRobbins and Paul

Harris, of “The PaulHarris Show” on News-

Talk 1120 KMOX .

Ellen Johnson is thePresident of American

Atheists, which defendsthe civil rights of

nonbelievers, works forthe separation of church

and state, andaddresses First

Amendment issues. Asecond-generationAtheist herself, she

organized the historic“Godless Americans

March on Washington”in 2002.

Dr. Carolyn Porco is aleader in the

exploration of the solarsystem. She wrote her

thesis on Voyager,has worked on the

Mars Observer, theLunar Explorer, and

Cassini. Her companyproduces space

imagery in an artisticand educational

manner.

Known to viewers from hit shows Northern Exposureand Empty Nest, Paul Provenza is on the cuttingedge of comedy. Most recently, Paul directed theaward winning documentary, The Aristocrats.

TAM4 continued from page 5

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➨

Jamy Ian Swiss hasperformed internationally

for corporate clients,lectured to magicians in 13

countries, and madenumerous television

appearances includingCBS 48 Hours, PBS Nova,the PBS documentary TheArt of Magic, and Comedy

Central. He is a co-founderof the National Capital

Area Skeptics and acontributor to Skeptic

magazine.

Penn Jillette is half ofthe duo known as Penn& Teller. They defylabels, and, at times,good taste. They’veperformed together formore than 25 years;skewering the genre ofmagic, their sold-outaudiences, andthemselves — veryoften all at the same

time, within one mind-boggling evening. Penn isshown here in his Americanflag shirt, which he laterliterally took off his back forthe auction to benefit theJames Randi EducationalFoundation. Randi wearsthe shirt, below, during theauction.

Todd Robbins, above and above left, demonstrates hiscarney skill of sword swallowing. Todd Robbins is theworld’s foremost purveyor of reality at its mostamazing—He is the classiest act to ever grace the stageof the American Sideshow. You may have seen him onone of the over 100 TV appearances he has done!These include multiple appearances on DavidLetterman, Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien; and the NBCspecial Extreme Variety.

Artist Jose Alvarez (aka “Carlos”) donated to the JREF auction twopieces of quartz artwork that raised more than $6,000 apiece.

TAM4 continued from previous page


Salem Village would nod knowingly at thismodern example of Salem Town’s gettingover on Salem Village.

The 17th Century New England MindThe Salem witchcraft trials occurred at the

very beginning of the scientific revolution.Copernicus’ heliocentric solar system was justbecoming widely accepted. Robert Hookes’Micrographia (the first book on microscopy)was just off the presses. Isaac Newton hadpublished his Principia Mathematica in 1687.In 1692 Rev. Richard Bentley presented thefirst popularization of the Newtonian worldsystem when he delivered the first Boyle Lec-ture. Robert Boyle, the father of chemistry,discoverer of Boyles’ Law of Gases, and au-thor of the Sceptical Chymist, had died theprevious year and left an endowment for lec-tures demonstrating the compatibility of sci-ence and Christianity.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony was, inmany ways, an intellectual backwater. Therewere no newspapers; books were rare andcostly. In most households reading materialwas restricted to the Bible and the almanacsissued by Harvard College. At Harvard Col-

lege the principal scien-tific textbook, CharlesMorton’s CompendiumPhysicae, was neveractually printed; gen-erations of Harvard un-dergraduateslaboriously copied itstext by hand. New En-gland was, however,unique in the history ofcolonization in the largenumber of collegegraduates who had im-migrated. It has beenestimated that duringthe first decades of theBay Colony, one inforty men held a collegedegree—a far higherproportion than wouldhave been found in thegeneral population ofGreat Britain at that

time. In 1636 the Bay Colony had establishedHarvard College “To advance Learning andperpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave anilliterate Ministry to the Churches.” Althoughthe emphasis of the early curriculum of theCollege was on classical languages, the cur-riculum also included Aristotelian philosophy,logic, mathematics, physics, and astronomy.The quality of the education provided atHarvard was highly regarded: Oxford formallyrecognized a Harvard A.B. as equivalent to anOxford A.B. Given that Harvard College wasthe only institution of higher learning in NewEngland, it is not surprising that many of themajor figures in the Salem witchcraft trialswere Harvard graduates: William Stoughton,deputy governor and chief justice of the spe-cial court that tried the witches; NathanielSaltonstall and Samuel Sewell, members ofthe special court; Increase Mather, negotiatorof the colony’s new charter, President ofHarvard College, pastor of Old North Churchin Boston, and ultimately a harsh public criticof the special court; Cotton Mather, son of In-crease Mather, pastor of Old South Church,prolific writer and the strongest public de-fender of the trials and the special court; JohnHale, minister of Beverly, Massachusetts, wit-ness at several of the witch trials, and authorof one of the few contemporary books on thetrials; George Burroughs, former minister ofSalem Village and supposed leader of the NewEngland witches; and Samuel Willard, minis-ter of the Third Church in Boston and a harshpublic critic of the special court. SamuelParris, in whose home the witchcraft hysteriabegan, had attended Harvard but did not take adegree: he was forced to leave college uponthe death of his father.

In the 17th century virtually everyone be-lieved in witchcraft. Indeed, virtually everyculture has accepted the reality of witchcraft.In pre-Christian belief systems, witches werepersons with access to supernatural powerswho committed acts of maleficium againsttheir neighbors. Witches destroyed livestockand other property; they made adults and chil-dren sick. The Golden Ass of Apuleius pro-vides a compendium of witchcraft belief inancient Greece and Rome. Some of the testi-mony in the Salem witchcraft trials focused on

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Giles and Martha Corey.He was pressed to deathwith stones; she was hung.

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supposed acts of maleficium committed by theaccused, but such testimony was clearly a gar-nish to the real case against the witches: theirparticipation in a satanic conspiracy.

The New England Puritans added anotherlevel to this pre-existing belief system. Ac-cording to the Puritan’s Calvinist theology, anomnipotent God gave Satan the power to af-flict Christians to test their allegiance to God.Satan was conceived as heading an antichurchthat mirrored the Christian church in hierarchyand liturgy. Satan tempted or afflicted personsto gain their allegiance. The temptations andafflictions could come directly from Satan orthrough his emissaries (witches). Satan’s re-cruits would sign his book and participate inthe witches’ sabbat. The sabbat included amockery of the Eucharist: the witches wouldeat red bread and drink red wine, often recitingthe Lord’s Prayer backwards.

The New England Puritans saw thewitches and their sabbats as part of a wide-ranging conspiracy against their colony andtheir church. Satan and his minions intended tooverthrow all the churches and bring in therule of Satan. Satan would supply his follow-ers’ material wants and his followers would allbe equal. The size of the witch conspiracy wasvast: one of the confessed witches told au-thorities that there were 307 witches in NewEngland.

The idea that New England was uniquelytargeted by Satan and his minions resonatedwith the New England Puritans’ belief that theestablishment of the Bay Colony was a reli-gious event second in importance only to theoriginal establishment of the Christian church.The New England Puritans were building aGodly commonwealth, purged of the accumu-lated corruptions of Catholicism and main-stream Anglicanism. Satan would, of course,attempt to destroy this effort to return to thepurity of the early Church.

At a deeper level, many prominent NewEngland Puritans (of which Cotton Mather ismerely one example) were suffering a crisis offaith. The rapidly developing materialism ofearly modern science tried their faith in an om-nipotent, omniscient God who was intimatelyinvolved in the day-to-day workings of theworld. If it could be demonstrated that witches

existed, then the reality of a supernaturalrealm would have been demonstrated.Then God could exist. If there were nowitches, there was no God.

During the Salem witchcraft trialsvarious types of evidence were used toprove that an accused person was awitch. The most controversial evidencewas what was called ‘spectral evidence.’An afflicted person would claim to see aspecter of the witch; the specter might pinch,scratch, or bite the afflicted person to force thevictim to sign Satan’s book. The accuserswere often able to display bite marks on theirarms, as well as pins or knife blades stuck intheir flesh. As the Salem witchcraft hysteriaprogressed, the specters began also to confessto serious crimes, such as murder. In the 17th

century Christian theologians were divided onthe use of ‘spectral evidence.’ Some thoughtthat it could be used in court because they be-lieved that Satan could not send forth the spec-ter of an innocent person. Other theologiansthought that accepting ‘spectral evidence’amounted to accepting the testimony of Satan.As will be seen, the issue of the admission of‘spectral evidence’ ultimately provoked strongpublic criticism of the trials from the Puritanelite.

Other tests were also used. If the accusedwitch glanced at the accusers and the accusersthen went into fits, this showed that the ac-cused had ‘overlooked’ the victims. When ac-cusers went into fits the ‘touch’ testwould then be applied. The accusedwitch would be compelled to touchthe afflicted; if the fits ceased, thatwas evidence that the accused wasindeed a witch. The ‘overlooking’and ‘touch’ tests figure significantlyin accounts of the Salem witchcrafttrials because the accused and ac-cusers confronted one another inopen court so that there was ampleopportunity for the accusers to col-lapse in fits that would be quietedby the touch of the accused. Thesein-court attacks on the accusers alsomet the legal requirement for twowitnesses to a single act of witch-craft.

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Cover to JohnHale’s book

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The bodies of accused witches were alsosearched for the Devil’s Mark: any unnaturalexcrescence on the skin. In Europe, it was be-lieved that Satan placed two types of marks onwitches. The first was a sort of brand that wasplaced on witches to identify Satan’s own.Such marks could be identified by their lack of


■ 1688: In Boston, Martha Goodwin is ‘bewitched’ by GoodyGlover; Cotton Mather attempts to treat Goodwin; he pub-lishes Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts andPossessions, describing Goodwin’s affliction.

■ 1689: Samuel Parris becomes new minister of Salem Villageand moves there from Boston.

■ 1691: Some Salem villagers quarrel with Parris and stop pay-ing his salary.

■ January 1692: Abigail Williams, Elizabeth Parris, and otheryoung girls begin acting strangely.

■ February 1692: Doctor treating children suggests cause oftheir afflictions may be witchcraft; Tituba bakes a ‘witchcake;’ Elizabeth Parris accuses Tituba and later Sarah Goodand Sarah Osborne of witchcraft; Tituba, Sarah Good, andSarah Osborne are arrested.

■ March 1692: Tituba confesses to practicing witchcraft andconfirms that Good and Osborne are also witches; moreyoung girls join accusers; more women are accused of witch-craft, including Martha Cory, Rebecca Nurse, Dorcas Good,and Elizabeth Proctor.

■ April 1692: More villagers are accused, including SarahCloyse, John Proctor, and Giles Cory; Accuser Mary Warrenattempts to recant accusations, then rejoins accusers; formerSalem Village minister George Burroughs is accused; accu-sations spread to neighboring Andover, where Abigail Hobbsconfesses and names other witches.

■ May 1692: New Royal Governor Sir William Phips estab-lishes Court of Oyer and Terminer under Lieutenant Gover-nor William Stoughton with prominent judges such as JohnHathorne, Nathaniel Saltonstall, and Samuel Sewall as mem-bers; Essex County grand jury and petit jury are summonedto hear cases.

■ June 1692: Cotton Mather suggests that court not use spectralevidence; Bridget Bishop is convicted and sentenced todeath; Rebecca Nurse is acquitted, then convicted and sen-tenced to death.

■ July 1692: Rebecca Nurse, SusannahMartin, Elizabeth Howe, Sarah Good,and Sarah Wildes are hanged on Gal-lows Hill in Salem Town.

■ August 1692: John and Elizabeth Proc-tor, George Burroughs, and others con-victed and sentenced to death; GeorgeJacobs Sr., Martha Carrier, GeorgeBurroughs, John Willard and JohnProctor are hanged on Gallows Hill;Elizabeth Proctor is found to be pregnant.

■ September 1692: Giles Cory is pressedto death in effort to force him to enter aplea; Martha Cory, Margaret Scott,Mary Easty, Alice Parker, AnnPudeator, Willmott Redd, SamuelWardwell, and Mary Parker are hanged.

■ October 1692: Cotton Mather producesdefense of trials; Increase Mather de-nounces the use of spectral evidence;Rev. Samuel Willard and ThomasBrattle produce critiques of the trials;Governor Phips blocks further use ofspectral evidence, prohibits further ar-rests, releases many accused witches,and dissolves Court of Oyer and Terminer.

■ November 1692: General Court estab-lishes Superior Court to try remainingwitches.

■ January 1693: Superior Court ordersexecution of condemned whose hang-ings were postponed because of preg-nancy; Governor Phips blocks order;most of the remaining accused are re-leased from jail.

■ May 1693: Governor Phips pardonsthose still in jail.

A Brief Chronology of the Salem Witchcraft Trials

sensation. Hence, the standard test for thistype of mark was to prick it with a needle andobserve the accused witch’s reaction. Theother type of mark was a preternatural teatwith which the witch suckled his or her famil-iar, a supernatural companion capable of tak-ing a variety of forms, including cats and ➨➨➨➨➨


Andover witches, readily confessed to being awitch and named other members of the witchconspiracy. In May Sir William Phips, thenewly appointed Royal Governor, arrived fromEngland with the new colonial charter.

To deal with the witchcraft crisis Phipscreated a special Court of Oyer and Terminerto try the accused witches. A special court wasneeded because the abrogation of the old colo-nial charter and its replacement with a newone had left Massachusetts without any legalsystem. Some historians have asserted that thewitchcraft trials were, therefore, technicallyillegal. The court would be headed by thedeputy governor William Stoughton andwould include a number of noted magistrates.A grand jury and a petit jury were also sum-moned for Essex County (which included Sa-lem Village, Salem Town, and Andover). TheCourt of Oyer and Terminer and the EssexCounty juries acted with commendable zealand efficiency. An accused witch could be in-dicted, tried, convicted, and condemned todeath, all in the same day. By October 19witches had been hanged, one accused witchhad been pressed to death for refusing to pleadto the charges, dozens of witches had con-fessed, and over a hundred accused witcheslanguished in jail.

The proceedings of the Court of Oyer andTerminer now came under public attack. Aconvocation of Puritan ministers convened byIncrease Mather in Cambridge harshly criti-cized the court’s use of spectral evidence.


birds. Puritans, both in Britain and in New En-gland, seem to have conflated the two kinds ofmarks. Accused witch Rebecca Nurse was ex-amined at least twice by a jury of women: thefirst examination found a witches teat near herprivate parts; it was gone when the second ex-amination was conducted. As might be imag-ined, given 17th century standards of hygieneand medical care, it would not have been diffi-cult to find all sorts of ‘preternatural’ excres-cences on the bodies of the accused.

Satan Unleashed in SalemA detailed chronology of the Salem witch-

craft outbreak is given in the sidebar. Thewitchcraft hysteria began in February 1692when the daughter and niece of Rev. SamuelParris, the minister in Salem Village, began todisplay strange and disturbing behavior. Rev.Deodat Lawson, a former minister in SalemVillage who came to deliver a sermon inMarch 1692, has left a vivid account of theantics of Parris’ niece, Abigail Williams. Shefluttered about the parsonage on tiptoe, wav-ing her arms and crying ‘whish, whish.’ (Thisbizarre behavior would have brought a chill toanyone familiar with the testimony in the BurySt. Edmunds witchcraft trial: one of the af-flicted children in that case had fluttered aboutmurmuring ‘hush, hush.”) Abigail thenclimbed into the fireplace and threw burninglogs out into the room. The next day in churchAbigail repeatedly interjected loud commentson Lawson’s sermon. A doctor who examinedthe afflicted girls could find no medical reasonfor their behavior and suggested that the girlswere being bewitched. When prayer and fast-ing failed to ameliorate the children’s condi-tion and the children began to accuseneighbors of being witches, the matter wasturned over to local justices of the peaceJonathan Corwin and John Hathorne for inves-tigation. Corwin and Hathorne conducted theirinquiries in the worst possible way: they ex-amined the afflicted girls and the accused to-gether in public. The afflicted girls now beganto suffer fits when confronted with the accusedwitches. By April a number of accusedwitches had been arrested and the hysteria hadspread to the neighboring township ofAndover. Abigail Hobbs, one of the accused

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Examination of a Witch



Mather published Cases of Conscience, inwhich he presented a detailed critique of thecourt’s handling of the cases. More liberal Pu-ritans, such as the Rev. Samuel Willard andThomas Brattle provided their own public con-demnations of the court’s faulty logic andfaulty application of English law.

In 1692 Samuel Willard was minister ofthe Third Church in Boston. Although he wasone of those accused of being a witch, he re-fused to mute his criticism of the special court.He wrote the preface to Increase Mather’sCases of Conscience. Willard also publishedhis own short pamphlet Some Miscellany Ob-servations on Our Present Debates RespectingWitchcrafts, in a Dialogue Between S. & B.,despite Governor Phips’ prohibition of furtherpublications relating to the witchcraft trials.The pamphlet reiterated Increase Mather’scriticisms, but with a more biting tone. The Sand B in the title refer to Salem and Boston.Willard framed his critique as gentlemen ofBoston (i.e., the Bay Colony’s intellectualelite) trying to correct the logical and legal er-rors of the gentlemen of Salem (i.e., hayseedrubes). Willard’s condemnation of the courtwould have carried special weight among liter-ate New England Puritans. Some years beforethe Salem witchcraft outbreak, Willard hadbeen confronted with the demonic possessionof his servant girl, Elizabeth Knap. Knap haddisplayed many of the symptoms of the af-flicted girls in Salem. She also accused some

of the residents of Groton (where Willard wasthen living) of being witches. Unlike SamuelParris, Willard refused to allow the names ofthe accused to be made public (even in hiswritten account of this episode, he suppressedtheir names). Willard believed that Knap waspossessed by Satan and that her accusationswere prompted by Satan. Eventually Knap’safflictions abated (although she apparently didnot return to normal). Willard wrote a verydetailed account of the episode, which hepassed on to Increase Mather, who publishedan abbreviated account of Knap’s possessionin his book Memorable Providences.

Early in October 1692, Thomas Brattle,one of the members of Rev. Samuel Willard’sThird Church in Boston, wrote a circular lettercriticizing the trials. Brattle is usually de-scribed in books about the Salem witchcrafttrials as a rich merchant. His father had madehis fortune as a merchant, but Brattle himselfwas given to more intellectual endeavors. Hewas probably the only empirical scientistworking in the British colonies in 1692.Brattle had received both his A.B. and A.M.from Harvard College. He had made tele-scopic observations of the Comet of 1680-81that were used by Isaac Newton in thePrincipia to calculate the orbital elements forthe comet. Newton refers to Brattle in thePrincipia as ‘our observer in New England.’Brattle had spent a number of years in Lon-don, where he became a friend of chemistRobert Boyle, architect Sir Christopher ,Wrenand Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed. Brattleeven had two papers published in the Philo-sophical Transactions of the Royal Society:“Eclipse of the Sun and Moon observed inNew England,” (1704) and “Lunar Eclipse,New England” (1707). Brattle is frequentlydescribed as a Fellow of the Royal Society.However, my search of the list of Fellows ofthe Royal Society on the Royal Society’swebsite failed to confirm this claim. He hasevidently been confused with his brother, Wil-liam, who was elected Fellow in 1714.

Nicholas Noyes, the second minister at theSalem Town church, had provided a “scien-tific” explanation for “overlooking” and the“touch” test. According to Noyes, when awitch looked at one of the afflicted, poisonous


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“The Trial of GeorgeJacobs, August 5, 1692.”By T. H. Matteson, 1855.

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particles streamed out of the witch’s eyes andaccumulated in the body of the afflicted. Whenthe witch touched the afflicted victim, the ma-lignant particles flowed back to the witch’sbody. Noyes was attempting to provide a “sci-entific” basis for the touch test using the Car-tesian concept of effluvia. Brattle’s letterrefuted this theory as being based on a misun-derstanding of the Cartesian theory. He alsopointed out that the accusers’ claims to seespecters when their eyes were shut were false,because humans cannot see with their eyesshut. Noyes’ theory of the touch test harkedback to the ancient theory of vision accordingto which streams of particles leave the eye andinteract with the object seen. Brattle uses themore modern theory that vision is caused bylight rays entering the eye.

Governor Phips’ response to this storm ofprotest was to abolish the Court of Oyer andTerminer. He then had the accused witchesreleased on bail. When these accused witcheswere brought to trial in early 1693, the prohi-bition of the use of spectral evidence resultedin all but three being acquitted. Phips threwout the three convictions and also blocked theexecutions of witches (such as the pregnantElizabeth Proctor) who had been convictedand sentenced to death before the abolition ofthe Court of Oyer and Terminer. By the latesummer the surviving accused witches wereout of jail and beginning to pick up the piecesof their lives.

Any explanation of the Salem witchcrafttrials must deal with certain key facts. First,the accusers in Salem and Andover (the othervenue of witchcraft accusations) were over-whelmingly female (17 women versus 2 men)and mostly young. The ‘core’ accusers (i.e.those who appeared most frequently as wit-nesses) consisted of

■ Abigail Williams (11 or 12)

■ Ann Putnam, Jr. (12)

■ Betty Hubbard (17) servant

■ Mercy Lewis (19) servant, leader of thegroup

■ Mary Walcott (17) servant

■ Mary Warren (20) servant

■ Susannah Sheldon (18) servant

The fits of theafflicted at firstinvolved spas-modic move-ments of thehead and limbs;feelings of beingpinched,scratched, or bit-ten; temporaryparalysis; inabil-ity to breathe,accompanied bysensations ofchoking and hal-lucinations. Astime passed thehallucinationsbecame morespecific: the af-flicted saw spec-ters of theaccused andspecters of the“black man;” these specters attempted to getthe afflicted to sign Satan’s book and partakeof the wine and bread of the sabbat; in addi-tion to biting or pinching the afflicted, thespecters threatened to tear the afflicted topieces; and eventually specters of victims ofthe accused witches also appeared, crying outfor vengeance. During examinations beforemagistrates and at trial, the afflicted sufferedfits in which they complained of being bittenor scratched. The fits were precipitated by theglance of the accuser or by the specter of theaccused. The afflicted might be rendered muteor caused to mimic the speech and movementof the accused. The examination of John Proc-tor (the protagonist of Arthur Miller’s TheCrucible) conveys a picture of what occurredduring many of the examinations and trials:

■ Q. What do you say Goodman Proctor tothese things?

■ I know not, I am innocent.

Abigail Williams cried out, there isGoodman Procter going to Mrs. Pope,and immediately, said Pope fell into a fit.-


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Samuel Sewall, Trial Judge



■ [The Court] You see the devil will deceiveyou; the children could see what you wasgoing to do before the woman was hurt. Iwould advise you to repentance, for thedevil is bringing you out.

Abigail Williams cried out again, there isGoodman Procter going to hurt GoodyBibber; and immediately Goody Bibberfell into a fit.

The accused were initially the “usual sus-pects:” low status, middle-aged women whohad had previous brushes with authority—in-cluding previous accusations of witchcraft.Accused men were initially relatives (hus-bands, brothers, or sons) of accused women;however, as the witch hunt intensified, menwere charged in their own right (e.g. GeorgeBurroughs, who came to be regarded as thehead of the satanic conspiracy against NewEngland). Increasing numbers of high-statusindividuals were accused (such as the wife ofGovernor Phips, Captain John Alden, andRev. Samuel Willard).

Searches for ExplanationsOver the years since 1692 a variety of ex-

planations for the outbreak of the witchcrafthysteria in Salem have been advanced. Theexplanation of the accusers and the membersof the Court of Oyer and Terminer—that there

really were witches engaged in a conspiracy tooverthrow the Christian churches and institutethe rule of Satan—was quickly rejected. Dur-ing the Enlightment, the sympathies of histori-ans shifted from the afflicted children to theaccused witches. The accusers came to beviewed as liars who faked their fits and mali-ciously accused innocent neighbors. This viewis still held by some modern historians. Onerecent historian has even gone so far as to de-scribe the accusers as a group of girl juveniledelinquents. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is,of course, based on the fraud explanation.There is some evidence to support the chargethat the afflicted girls were faking—at least insome instances. Robert Calef, an outspokencritic of the Salem witchcraft trials, describesan interesting episode of the trial of SaraGood:

At the trial of Sarah Good one of the af-flicted fell in a Fit, and after coming out of it,she cried out of the Prisoner, for stabbing herin the breast with a Knife, and that she hadbroken the Knife in stabbing her, accordinglya piece of the blade of a knife was found abouther.

A young man present in the courtroomrecognized the piece of the blade as beingfrom a knife that he had broken the day before,in the presence of the afflicted witness. TheCourt merely admonished the witness not totell lies and permitted her to testify in theGood case and others.

To modern skeptics the bite marks, pins,and knife blades displayed by the afflicted ac-cusers fairly scream fraud. However, the ma-jority of modern historians accept both theinnocence of the accused and the reality of theafflictions. The afflictions seem too severe andlasted too long to be wholly due to fraud. Inthe 1940s the old Enlightenment view of theafflicted girls as frauds began to be replacedwith greater sympathy for the afflicted. If therewere no witches and the girls were not mali-cious liars, then some naturalistic explanationfor the girl’s sufferings and for their accusa-tions had to be found. These naturalistic expla-nations have included toxins, pathogens, masshysteria, and a variety of psychological stres-sors.


Trial of an AccusedWitch in Salem

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Jimson WeedThe Jimson weed theory is the oldest

toxin theory. Marion Starkey credits thistheory to reporter Donald Willard of the Bos-ton Globe. Willard’s two young children hadsuffered convulsive seizures, falling fits, andpainful spasms. The children also experiencedtwitching and burning sensations in their armsand legs. The children’s physician traced theirailment to contact with the stalks and burrs ofJimson weed, a member of the nightshadefamily. Jimson weed was brought to New En-gland from the West Indies in the 1600s.Willard speculated that Tituba may have dosedthe Parris children with infusions of Jimsonweed. Needless to say, there is no evidencethat Tituba dosed the children with Jimsonweed or any other herbal remedy. This theoryleaves unanswered the question of why theaccusers’ fits continued long after Tituba wasimprisoned (Tituba was among the firstwitches to be jailed and one of the last to bereleased from jail, because it proved to be dif-ficult to find a buyer for her). The Jimsonweed theory does not account for the fits incourt; nor does it account for the content of thehallucinations.

ErgotismIn 1976 psychology graduate student

Linnda R. Caporael published an article in thejournal Science in which she proposed thatconsumption of foodstuffs contaminated withergot fungus could account for the symptomsexhibited by the supposed victims of witch-craft. The family of Thomas Putnam couldhave been exposed to ergot-contaminated ryefrom their fields along the Ipswich River.Putnam, as a major supporter of Samuel Parrisin Salem Village, would have inadvertentlycontributed contaminated rye to Parris’s pan-try. Abigail Williams and Elizabeth Parriswould have ingested the ergot fungus in theirfood.

Ergot develops more abundantly duringwet seasons. The summer of 1691 had beennotably hot and humid, so that the growth ofergot would have been favored. As it grows,ergot fungus produces a number of alkaloidswith chemical structures related to LSD (lyser-gic acid diethyl amide): erogotamine (and

otherergopeptines),ergonovine, andmethylergonvine.The use ofmoldy rye in theMiddle Ageswas responsiblefor St.Anthony’s Fire(ergotism),which was char-acterized bygangrene of thelimbs and hallu-cinations. The cause of the gangrenous formof the disease was the lack of blood flow inthe extremities caused by the powerful α-ago-nist effects of the ergot alkaloids, and theirassociated CNS stimulatory effects. There is,however, no evidence of the gangrenous formof ergotism in Salem. Dr. Nicholas Spanos andhis Ph.D. student Jack Gottlieb have pointedout that the convulsive or hallucinatory formof ergotism (as opposed to the gangrenousform) occurs only when there is a severe defi-ciency of Vitamin A in the diet. Vitamin Aoccurs in fish and dairy products, both ofwhich would have been readily available toSalem villagers. In any case, the ergot theorydoes not account for the content of thevictim’s hallucinations.

EncephalitisResearcher

Laurie WinnCarlson has pro-posed an out-break ofencephalitislethargica as anexplanation forthe Salem witch-craft outbreak.There was a ma-jor outbreak ofthis disease inEurope in 1916-1930. Its symp-toms includedrestlessness, de-


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The June 10, 1692Hanging of Bridget

Bishop

William Stoughton, Judge



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lirium, hallucinations and delusions, lethargy,stupor, and muscular rigidity. Mortality ratesin the 1916-1930 pandemic were high: 20-40% of affected patients in London and 40%in Austria. Many survivors later developedparkinsonism. Oliver Sacks’ book Awakeningsdescribes the author’s attempts to treat survi-vors of the encephalitis lethargica pandemic.The cause of the encephalitis lethargica epi-demic remains unknown, but an arbovirus is apossibility. There is no evidence of any ex-traordinary morbidity among the accusers dur-ing the Salem witchcraft trials. So far as I candetermine, none of the core group of accusersdied during the trials; many seemed to havelived normal life spans.

The Jimson weed, ergotism, and encepha-litis theories cannot account satisfactorily forthe demographics of the accusers, virtually allof whom were young women. Carlson sup-poses that young women would have beenmore exposed to the insect vectors (mosqui-toes) that spread arboviruses because theywould have had the chore of milking and feed-ing their families’ cows. However, in a periodwhen almost everyone worked out of doorsand when there were no window screens, theentire population would have been exposed tomosquito-borne illnesses. Carlson attempts toshow a similarity between the hallucinationsproduced by encephalitis lethargica and thoseexperienced by the afflicted girls in Salem byciting an auditory hallucination in which anencephalitis lethargica victim heard the clack-

ing of skeletal bones. Unfortunately, this typeof auditory hallucination was never reported in Salem.

Mass HysteriaMarion Starkey and Chadwick Hansen

have advanced the theory that the accuserswere victims of mass hysteria. The latest ver-sion of the American Psychiatric Association’sDiagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM IV)replaces the term ‘mass hysteria’ with theterms ‘Mass Sociogenic Illness’ and ‘MassSociogenic Illness by Proxy.’ Both Starkeyand Hansen rely on the early work of Charcotand Freud on hysteria. Hansen elaborates thetheory to a greater degree than does Starkeyand adds the suggestion that some of the ac-cused were really practicing witches. Practic-ing witchcraft in a culture that believes in itcan induce serious, even life-threatening hys-terical symptoms in the targets of the spells.Both Starkey and Hansen place the origin ofthe hysteria in the theocratic culture of the Pu-ritan New England, with minimal concernabout political and military conditions in theyears leading up to the witchcraft outbreak.

Village FactionalismPaul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum have

made an exhaustive study of the bitter feudsthat existed in Salem Village. The Salem Vil-lagers fought over property boundaries, inher-itances, debts, and the Salem Village church.Unlike other Massachusetts communities, Sa-lem Village lacked internal mechanisms forresolving these disputes. Whenever the farm-ers of Salem Village went to court, they had togo to Salem Town and appear before townmagistrates. Even their church fell under theauthority of the ministers in Salem Town.Boyer and Nissenbaum interpret the witchcrafttrials as a fight between the Putnams (conser-vative farmers at the western end of the vil-lage) and the Porters (wealthy landowners andmerchants in the eastern end of the village andin Salem Town). They see many of the ac-cused as surrogates for Porter family membersor associates too powerful to be accused di-rectly. Thus, Rebecca Nurse was a surrogatefor Elizabeth Verens Putnam, the daughter ofIsrael Porter, the head of the Porter family.Elizabeth Putnam was the stepmother of Tho-


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The Hanging ofGeorge Burroughs


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mas Putnam, whose wife and daughter wereprominent accusers and who signed many ofthe formal complaints against accused witches.On the death of Thomas’s father, she had man-aged to get herself and her eighteen-year-oldson Joseph Putnam (Thomas’s half brother)named as administrators of her late husband’sestate. Thomas was largely disinherited andJoseph instantly became one of the wealthiestcitizens of Salem.

Although Boyer and Nissenbaum’s SalemPossessed has been hailed as a classic andbeen used as a text for many years in coursesin American Studies, their theory has a dis-turbing ad hoc quality. A commonsense read-ing of their theory of village factionalismwould lead one to predict that the accusedwitches would be the leaders of the hated andfeared Porter clan of mercantile capitalists.Instead the accusers focused on minor Porterallies (when the accused had any connection tothe Porters at all). The idea of surrogacy is re-quired to avoid having the theory fail the mostobvious empirical test. By rendering theirtheory unfalsifiable by empirical tests, Boyerand Nissenbaum have also made it unscientific.

‘Uppity Women’Historian Carol Karlsen has proposed that

the accused women were those who had chal-lenged the normally subordinate position ofwomen in Puritan culture. Many had laidclaim to money and/or property in their ownright; many were outspoken about the inequi-ties of New England society. However,Karlsen did not compare the accused withcomparable non-accused women. Were non-accused women docile quietists? This theoryalso fails to account satisfactorily for the factthat the accusers were overwhelmingly otherwomen. The accusers as a group definitelyturned the hierarchy of Puritan New Englandon its head: young women had made them-selves the center of attention.

Gender and age issues in New Englandwitchcraft cases have been studied by historianJohn Putnam Demos. He looked at the wholebody of witchcraft accusations in New En-gland. He has advanced the theory that witch-craft accusations arose out of an implicitconflict between young women about to enter

adulthood (accusers) and older post-meno-pausal women who had failed to acquirewealth, status, and/or a large number of off-spring (accused). The young women were re-sisting being recruited into the fellowship ofthe downwardly mobile. Demos theory is at-tractive and may fit what might be called nor-mal witchcraft accusations. Demosacknowledges that his theory does not fit theSalem witchcraft trials, which involved moreaccusations spread over a larger geographicalarea than normal witchcraft trials.

Politics and WarHistorians Charles Upham (former minis-

ter and mayor of Salem Town) and Mary BethNorton have emphasized the political and mili-tary context of the Salem witchcraft trials asproviding at least a partial explanation for the1692 outbreak of witchcraft accusations. In the1680s the government of King James II hadabrogated the original charter of the BayColony, replaced it with a new royal charter,and appointed Sir Edmund Andros as royalgovernor. Governor Andros declared all legalactions under the old charter to be null andvoid. All land titles were declared to be in-valid; valid titles could, of course, be obtainedfrom the new colonial government for a fee.Andros also forced Congregational churchesin Boston to share their meeting houses withAnglican congregations, despite the fact thatthe meeting houses were private property. Fi-nally, Increase Mather slipped out of Massa-chusetts on a mission to London to renegotiatethe colonial charter. While he was gone, Androswas overthrown in an armed insurrection: he and

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Repentance ofJudge Sewall in

1692


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his cronies were seized and thrown intoprison. The committee leading the rebellionissued manifestos demanding that the citizensof Massachusetts be accorded the ‘rights ofEnglishmen.’ Fortunately for the Massachu-setts, James II was himself overthrown in 1688in the Glorious Revolution. His successors,William and Mary, might be more sympatheticto the plight of the New England Puritans ormight view with alarm the arrest of a duly ap-pointed royal governor. During 1692 Massa-chusetts waited anxiously for a new charterand a new governor.

Many historians of the Salem witchcrafttrials have failed to note that in 1692 Massa-chusetts had been at war for nearly three years.One of the first acts of King William after heascended the throne was a declaration of waragainst France. For Massachusetts, the warbegan with Indian attacks on frontier settle-ments instigated by Count Frontenac, theFrench governor of Canada. One of the firstwas an attack on Dover, New Hampshire, inwhich Major Richard Waldron was put todeath with frightful tortures, the town wasburned to the ground, about half the peoplewere massacred, and the remainder were car-ried away and sold into slavery. Further at-tacks struck Pemaquid and York, Maine;Durham, New Hampshire; Groton, Massachu-setts; and Schenectady, New York.

The attacks on frontier settlements re-sulted in an influx of displaced settlers intoSalem Village and other Massachusetts towns,

particularly those in Essex County. Salem Vil-lage and Essex County were by no means safehavens: between 1689 and 1692 three resi-dents of Salem Village were killed by Indianswithin the boundaries of the village. Just sixmonths before the outbreak of witchcraft inSalem, Essex County was ordered to organizemounted patrols of the roads of the county todetect Indian war parties. During the Salemwitchcraft trials there was an Indian attack onBillerica, home of one of the confessedwitches (one who confessed that she hadcovenanted with Satan for his protectionagainst the Indians). In 1697 both Andoverand Haverhill (just across the Merrimac Riverfrom Andover) suffered heavy attacks. Thelevel of violence in these attacks is exempli-fied by the ordeal of Hannah Dustin, the wifeof a farmer near Haverhill. She saw her homeburned by Indians and her newborn childdashed to death against a tree. She, her neigh-bor, Mary Neff, and an English boy namedSamuel Lennardeen were carried away as cap-tives. En route to their village the Indian raid-ers made camp in the snow. While the Indiansslept Hannah killed ten with a hatchet (an in-jured Indian woman and an Indian boy es-caped). At dawn Hannah scalped the deadIndians and carried the scalps back to Massa-chusetts, where she received a bounty of £50for them. Dustin is reputed to be the firstwoman in what is now the United States tohave a statue erected in her honor. She hastwo: one in Haverhill and one in New Hamp-shire. The one in Haverhill shows Hannahfirmly gripping her hatchet.

Many New Englanders thought there wasa conspiracy against them involving theFrench, the Wabanaki Indians, and some oftheir own English leaders. The ‘black man’claimed to be seen by so many of the afflictedaccusers and confessed witches was presum-ably an Indian sachem or shaman. It is impor-tant to remember that for New Englanders‘black’ equaled ‘Indian.’ Very significantly,confessed witch Abigail Hobbs first encoun-tered the ‘black man’ in the woods in Maine.‘King of the Witches’ George Burroughs livedmost of his adult life on the Maine frontier andwas a protégé of Joshua Scottow, a frontierleader particularly reviled for his failure to


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Salem in the 1700s(School Street)

Skeptical Eye Vol. 18, No. 1 2006 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 19continued on page 20 ➨

come to the aid of a beleaguered band of mili-tiamen. Mercy Lewis, the leader of the coregroup of accusers, had lived on the Mainefrontier—at one time in the same house withBurroughs.

As attractive as Mary Beth Norton’stheory that the Salem witchcraft trials arosefrom the stresses of protracted warfare is, itfails to explain why King Philip’s War in the1670s did not result in a similar outbreak ofwitchcraft hysteria. During King Philip’s Warthe Maine frontier was also attacked. Much ofthe intense fighting in King Philip’s War alsooccurred within the boundaries of the NewEngland colonies. For example, The GreatSwamp Fight, the most significant engagementof the war, took place near what is now West-erly, Rhode Island.

The Witches of AndoverAlmost all accounts of the Salem witch-

craft trials focus on the witches of Salem Vil-lage. There were thirty-nine accused witchesin Salem Village and Salem Town. However,there were forty-three accused witches in theneighboring township of Andover. More thanthirty of the accused witches confessed.Chadwick Hansen has proposed that historiansshould speak of the Andover witchcraft trialsor perhaps the Essex County witchcraft trials.Compared to the Salem witches, very little isknown about the Andover witches. TheAndover witches by and large confessed andwere held in jail until Governor Phips grantedthe imprisoned witches bail. Because theywere never brought to trial, the documentaryrecord of the accusations against them issparse. The Andover Historical Society has anongoing project to collect information aboutthe Andover witches. Nevertheless, what littleis known about the Andover witches seems tocontradict both the ergotism theory and thevillage conflict theory put forward by Boyerand Nissenbaum. Andover is geographicallydifferent from Salem Village and lacks thelow-lying swampy areas. While there is someevidence of village factionalism in Andover,the Andover witchcraft accusations seem tohave involved much intra-family conflict.

AftermathIn 1697 the Massachusetts Bay Colony

proclaimed a fast day, seeking to avert the an-ger of God, which had manifested itself in theconviction of innocents and the shedding oftheir blood. William Stoughton signed theproclamation as acting governor. SamuelSewall, one of the justices of the Court ofOyer and Terminer, had a statement seekingpardon for his role in the Salem witchcraft tri-als read by his minister Samuel Willard to thecongregation of his church. Thomas Fiske,foreman of the petit jury, and eleven of his fel-low jurymen recanted their verdicts; theyblamed the convictions of innocents to the‘mysterious delusions’ of Satan. In 1711 theMassachusetts Bay Colony paid restitution tothe surviving accused and to the families ofthose executed. This restitution covered actualfinancial losses (property of convicted witchesseized, outlays for the maintenance of jailedpersons, and so forth) rather than pain and suf-fering. During the first quarter of the 18th cen-tury, on a case-by-case basis, Massachusettsreversed the attainders of the surviving con-victed witches and restored their civil rights.No European government ever admitted that ithad made any errors during its witchcraft tri-als. Nor did any European government everpay any financial compensation to the familiesof convicted witches.


The Salem VillageMeeting House where

the trials took place

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Samuel Parris did not long retain his pul-pit in Salem Village. After much wrangling,he agreed to sign over the deed to the parson-age and its outbuildings to the village in returnfor his unpaid back wages. Parris was replacedby Joseph Green, a Harvard graduate who wasa friend of Thomas Brattle. Green embarkedon a program of reconciliation within the Sa-lem Village church: he persuaded the churchto rescind its excommunication of executedwitch Martha Cory and re-seated the church sothat Putnams and Nurses occupied the samebenches.

Increase Mather did not fare as well asmight be expected in the aftermath of the Sa-lem witchcraft trials. He was soon maneuveredout of the presidency of Harvard College. Hispolitical enemies in the General Court passeda law that required the President of Harvard toreside in Cambridge. Mather endured sixmonths in squalid rented living quarters beforehe threw over the presidency and went back toBoston. This left a group of theological liber-als in control of the College. Rev. SamuelWillard, the Vice President of the College, be-came acting president. Thomas Brattle becamea Fellow of the College, its treasurer and thede facto professor of mathematics and science.He and his brother William educated a genera-

tion of Harvard graduates in the fundamentalsof Enlightenment science.

The more humble figures in the Salemwitchcraft drama faded into the obscurity fromwhich they had briefly emerged. AbigailHobbs, who confessed to being a witch andwas convicted of witchcraft, married andraised a family. Mercy Lewis had a child outof wedlock on the Maine frontier; she marriedthe child’s father and moved to Boston.Susannah Sheldon was warned out of Provi-dence, Rhode Island, as a person of evil fame.She died some time before 1697. Mary BethNorton believes Sheldon to have been the girlwho experimented with fortune telling.Abigail Williams and Mary Warren cannot betraced. Williams’ cousin Elizabeth Parris mar-ried and had five children. Thomas Putnamand his wife Ann died in 1699; the Putnamestate was heavily encumbered with debt sothat their children received only modest inher-itances. Ann Putnam, Junior, died unmarriedin 1715. When she joined the Salem Villagechurch in 1706 she had had Rev. Joseph Greenread the following statement to the congrega-tion:

I desire to be humbled before God for ytsad and humbling providence that befell myfathers family in the year about 92, yt I thenbeing in my childhood should by such a provi-dence of God be made an instrument for ytaccuseing of severall persons of a grievouscrime wherby their lives were taken awayfrom them, whom now I have just grounds andgood reason to believe they were innocentpersons, and yt it was a great delusion of Sa-tan yt deceived me in that sad time, whereby Ijustly fear I have been instrumental with oth-ers tho’ ignorantly and unwittingly to bringupon myself & this land the guilt of innocentblood Though what was said or done by meagainst any person I can truly and uprightlysay before God & man I did it not out of anyanger, malice, or illwill to any person for Ihad no such thing against one of them; butwhat I did was ignorantly being deluded bySatan. And particularly as I was a chief instru-ment of accuseing of Goodwife Nurse and hertwo sisters I desire to lye in the dust & to behumbled for it in that I was a cause with oth-ers of so sad a calamity to them & their

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The Salem Witch House

Walter F. Rowe, Ph.D.,has been a Professor ofForensic Sciences at theGeorge WashingtonUniversity since 1990.He is a frequentcontributor to andspeaker at scientific andskeptical conferences.

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familys, for which cause I desire to lye in yedust & earnestly begg fforgiveness of God &from all those unto whom have given justcause of sorrow & offence, whose relationswere taken away or accused. (Signed) AnnePutnam.

This is the sole statement made by any ofthe accusers about the events of 1692 and itstext may have been crafted by Joseph Green asa part of his program of reconciliation withinthe Salem Village church.

By the 19th century Salem had becomethe most prominent negative lesson drawnfrom American history. It was supposed toshow the perils of fanaticism, particularly reli-gious fanaticism. Before the Civil War South-ern political leaders used Salem as an adhominem argument against the New Englandabolitionists. During the Civil War similar ar-guments were used in the North to marginalizethe radical abolitionists. It was during the ante-bellum controversy over slavery that Southernpoliticians started the calumny that the Puri-tans burned witches. There seem to have beenno large-scale witch hunts in the South duringthe colonial period. However, large numbersof legal documents in the South were de-stroyed during the Civil War, so it is impos-sible to determine how many witchcraftaccusations there were in the southern colo-nies.

Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is the bestknown modern evocation of the Salem witch-craft trials. The play takes significant libertieswith the facts: Miller makes Abigail Williamsolder and creates a love affair between her andJohn Proctor. This affair provides a motive forWilliams to falsely accuse Elizabeth Proctorof witchcraft. Miller wrote The Crucible as aresponse to Senator Joseph McCarthy and theHouse Un-American Activities Committee’scrusade against supposed communist sympa-thizers within and without the United Statesgovernment. When the play debuted in 1953,some of Miller’s friends objected that Millerwas presenting a false analogy. The playseemed to be saying that just as there were nowitches in Salem, there were no communistsin the government. Miller continued to defendthis analogy until his recent death. However,in the 1980s the National Security Agency re-


Dramatis Personae

Sir William Phips (1651-1695)

Sir William Phips was born atKennebec, Maine. He worked as ashepherd in Maine and then movedto Boston, where he became aship’s carpenter and ship captain.While living in Boston he married awealthy widow (a custom still keptalive among Massachusetts politi-cians). He went to England wherehe gathered financial support for a

salvage expedition to the Caribbean. In 1687 Phips was suc-cessful in salvaging treasure from sixteen sunken Spanishtreasure galleons. Ten percent of the salvaged treasure wentto the British Crown. In 1690 Phips led a successful attackon the French stronghold at Port Royal in Acadia. His subse-quent attempt to take Quebec, however, was an embarrass-ing failure that left the Massachusetts Bay Colony saddledwith a £40,000 debt. Phip’s success as a treasure hunter andIncrease Mather’s politicking in London led to Phip’s ap-pointment as the new Royal Governor. Phips returned withIncrease Mather to Boston to confront the crises of the Sa-lem witchcraft trials and the Second Indian War. During theSalem witchcraft trials, Phips’ wife was accused of being awitch. This may have influenced Phips’ decision to shutdown the Court of Oyer and Terminer. In his letters to thehome government, Phips attempted to whitewash his role inthe witchcraft trials: he grossly exaggerated the threat posedby the witches and then lied about the extent of his knowl-edge of the activities of the Court of Oyer and Terminer.Phips traveled to London to defend his actions as RoyalGovernor and died there in 1695.

leased decrypted Soviet cables from the 1930sand 1940s that show that the United Statesgovernment was infested at the highest levelsby Soviet agents. Miller was in a position tohave direct knowledge of communist infiltra-tion of a variety of nongovernmental organiza-tions: he himself had a long history as acommunist fellow traveler. Whatever else TheCrucible may be, it is definitely a piece of ag-itprop.

picture of Phips from http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/SAL_IPHI.HTM



Contingent EventsIn his book, Wonderful Life, Stephen Jay

Gould argued that the course of evolution in-volved a number of contingent, unpredictableevents. The course of history likewise may beinfluenced by contingent events. Even in massupheavals like the Salem witchcraft trialsmany crucial decisions are made by one per-son or by a small group of men or women.Had certain positions of authority been occu-pied by other persons the course of eventsmight have been different: there might havebeen no witchcraft trials at all or the numberof trials might have been very limited. Someof the accused (e.g., Rebecca Nurse) mighteven have been acquitted. Here is a partial listof contingent events (and the principal actors)where different actions could well have

changed the courseof events:

■ Quarrelingwith parishonersover salary andstatus (Parris)

■ Calling in themagistrates, ratherthan relying onprayer and fasting(Parris)

■ Preaching asermon on Christsummoning the 12disciples and call-ing one of them adevil (Parris)

■ Treating the accused as guilty (Hathorneand Corwin)

■ Conducting examinations in public(Hathorne and Corwin)

■ Appointing Stoughton as head of specialcourt (Phips and the Mathers)

■ Relying on spectral evidence (Stoughtonand other members of the Special Court)

■ Resubmitting Rebecca Nurse’s case to thepetit jury after her initial acquittal(Stoughton)

■ Not executing confessed witches (Phips,Stoughton, and other members of the Spe-cial Court)

To understand how individual actors canshape the course of history, consider events inwestern Massachusetts in 1734. A number ofresidents of Northampton began to experienceextreme anxiety. The young were particularlyafflicted, one 4-year-old girl hiding weepingand moaning in a closet for many hours eachday. Some of the townspeople even talkedabout the afflictions being caused by witch-craft. Unlike Samuel Parris, the local minister,Jonathan Edwards, chose to view the afflic-tions in Northampton as evidence of an out-pouring of God’s grace. The events inNorthampton were the beginning of a religiousrevival known as the Little Awakening. TheLittle Awakening led to the Great Awakening,a religious revival that swept the British colo-nies before the American Revolution.

Further ReadingThere are many websites related to the

Salem witchcraft trials, I have found the fol-lowing to be the most useful:

Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archivehttp://www.iath.virginia.edu/salem/home.html

This is website has a wealth of primarysource material: The complete SalemWitchcraft Papers, the WPA transcriptionof the surviving legal documents (arrestwarrants, summaries of examinations ofwitnesses, testimony before the examiningmagistrates and the like), as well as thecontemporary accounts of the witchcraft

Trial of Rebecca Nurse

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Susannah Martinportrayed readingher Bible in theSalem jail.Source MabelMartin:. By JohnGreenleaf Whittier,Boston: Houghton,Mifflen & Co. 1876,p. 43. Artist, MaryA. Hallock.

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smysterious delusions continued from page 21

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outbreak by Increase Mather, CottonMather, John Hale, Deodat Lawson,Samuel Willard, Thomas Brattle and Rob-ert Calef . The website is a researchproject of the University of Virginia’s lawschool.

Hawthorne in Salem

http://www.hawthorneinsalem.org/Introduction.html

This website focuses on NathanielHawthorne and his associations with Sa-lem; however, there are many interestingimages of sites associated with the trials.

There is a vast literature on the Salem witch-craft trials. The books listed below are some ofthe more interesting works in this field.

Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil’s Snare : TheSalem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692, 2002.

This book explores the relationship be-tween the accusers, accused, and theMaine frontier.

Laurie Winn Carlson, A Fever in Salem: ANew Interpretation of the New EnglandWitch Trials, 1999.

Carlson defends the thesis that the afflictedsuffered from encephalitis lethargica. Shemakes tendentious use of documents andoffers up much unsupported speculation.

Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of aWoman: Witchcraft in Colonial New En-gland, 1987.

Karlsen explores the gender issues in thetrials. She defends the thesis that the ac-cused women didn’t know their place inPuritan society; in particular, they were

women whocontrolled orattempted tocontrolmoney and/or property.

John PutnamDemos, En-tertainingSatan:Witchcraftand the Cul-ture of EarlyNew En-gland, 1982.

Demos ex-amines allthe New En-gland witchcraft accusations outside theSalem witchcraft trials. He tries to providea psychological explanation of witchcraftaccusations in terms of an implicit conflictbetween accusers (young women on theverge of adulthood) and the accused (post-menopausal women who had failed inlife).

Paul Boyer and Stephan Nissenbaum, SalemPossessed: The Social Origins of Witch-craft, 1974.

Chadwick Hansen, Witchcraft at Salem, 1969

Marion L. Starkey, The Devil in Massachu-setts: A Modern Enquiry into the SalemWitch Trials, 1949

Rev. Samuel Parris

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This scene, set in the Salem Village meeting house,shows Judge John Hathorne and the Rev. CottonMather interrogating Martha Corey, who stands in

the dock with her hands raised in prayer, with MaryWalcott, her accuser, sitting in a chair.

Source Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in ThePoetical Works of Longfellow. Houghton Mifflin

Boston, 1902. Artist, S. S. Kilburn, 1880, p. 747. http

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Ours is a pluralistic society, with wiseconstitutional protections against gov-ernment-sponsored establishment ofreligion—and for freedom of individual ex-pression of belief.

It is, therefore, an egregiously evil breachof mutual respect, civility, and the law for anyone religious group (majority or minority) totry to force its own religious views (main-stream or extreme) on the rest of society bytrying to take control of government institu-tions or government-sponsored activities, suchas public schools, that serve all Americans ofall religious and non-religious beliefs. Suchbehavior is just plain selfish.

On December 20, 2005, the United StatesDistrict Court for the Middle District of Penn-sylvania issued a ruling against the Dover,Pennsylvania, Area School District policy ofteaching so-called Intelligent Design in publicschool science classes and trying to discreditthe scientific validity of evolution theory—forreligious reasons.

That ruling is a benchmark in our under-standing and practice of the constitutionallymandated separation of church and state.

The court’s Memorandum Opinion estab-lishes legal precedent only in the Middle Dis-trict of Pennsylvania. But it offers extensivefact finding and legal analysis (far beyond thatquoted here) that will significantly inform anylitigation elsewhere regarding any attempts toteach so-called Intelligent Design in publicscience classes.

This article provides two relatively shortquotes from the court’s full 139-page Memo-randum Opinion, that fully and fairly charac-terize the ruling.

The court’s conclusion“The proper application of both the

endorsement and Lemon tests to thefacts of this case makes it abundantlyclear that the Board’s ID Policy vio-lates the Establishment Clause. Inmaking this determination, we haveaddressed the seminal question ofwhether ID is science. We have con-cluded that it is not, and moreover thatID cannot uncouple itself from its cre-ationist, and thus religious, anteced-ents.

Both Defendants and many of theleading proponents of ID make a bed-rock assumption which is utterly false.Their presupposition is that evolution-ary theory is antithetical to a belief inthe existence of a supreme being andto religion in general. Repeatedly inthis trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific expertstestified that the theory of evolutionrepresents good science, is over-whelmingly accepted by the scientificcommunity, and that it in no way con-flicts with, nor does it deny, the exist-ence of a divine creator.

To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evo-lution is imperfect. However, the factthat a scientific theory cannot yet ren-der an explanation on every pointshould not be used as a pretext tothrust an untestable alternative hy-pothesis grounded in religion into thescience classroom or to misrepresentwell-established scientific proposi-tions.

The citizens of the Dover area werepoorly served by the members of the

So-called Intelligent Designis Not Science

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On Dec. 20, 2005, the U.S. District Court for the MiddleDistrict of Pa. ruled against the Dover, Pa., Area SchoolDistrict policy of teaching so-called Intelligent Design inpublic school science classes and trying to discredit thescientific validity of evolution theory—for religious reasons.

by Gary Stone


Board who voted for the ID Policy. It isironic that several of these individuals,who so staunchly and proudly toutedtheir religious convictions in public,would time and again lie to cover theirtracks and disguise the real purposebehind the ID Policy.

With that said, we do not questionthat many of the leading advocates ofID have bona fide and deeply held be-liefs which drive their scholarly en-deavors. Nor do we controvert that IDshould continue to be studied, de-bated, and discussed. As stated, ourconclusion today is that it is unconsti-tutional to teach ID as an alternative toevolution in a public school scienceclassroom.

Those who disagree with our hold-ing will likely mark it as the product ofan activist judge. If so, they will haveerred as this is manifestly not an activ-ist Court. Rather, this case came to usas the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board,aided by a national public interest lawfirm eager to find a constitutional testcase on ID, who in combination drovethe Board to adopt an imprudent andultimately unconstitutional policy. Thebreathtaking inanity of the Board’s de-cision is evident when consideredagainst the factual backdrop whichhas now been fully revealed throughthis trial. The students, parents, andteachers of the Dover Area SchoolDistrict deserved better than to bedragged into this legal maelstrom, withits resulting utter waste of monetaryand personal resources.

To preserve the separation ofchurch and state mandated by the Es-tablishment Clause of the FirstAmendment to the United States Con-stitution, and Art. I, § 3 of the Pennsyl-vania Constitution, we will enter anorder permanently enjoining Defen-dants from maintaining the ID Policyin any school within the Dover AreaSchool District, from requiring teach-ers to denigrate or disparage the sci-

entific theory of evolution, and from re-quiring teachers to refer to a religious,alternative theory k

SKEPTICAL National Capital Area EYEfiles.ncas.org/eyes/SE-18.1.pdf · 2006. 7. 27. · Amazing Randi” and the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), was held at the soon-to-be-torn-down

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