04: Remarkable Providences

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A PRODUCT OF THE WHISPERFORGE: SOUND & STORY, BROUGHT TO LIFE

[[MUSIC: “Lakeside Path” by Blue Dot Sessions]]

KATE: Hello, and welcome to Remarkable Providences, a podcast about discourse and demons, preachers and poltergeists, and, of course, the Salem witch trials. I’m your tour guide, Kate Devorak.

Reverend Samuel Parris of Salem Village found himself in a bit of a pickle. Not only was the Village attempting to oust him from his position as minister by cutting off his salary and provisions, he was now facing a new threat in his very home.

[[MUSIC: Tense]]

His nine year old daughter Betty and his eleven year old niece Abigail Williams had been struck with odd afflictions. They would scream and convulse, bark like dogs, throw themselves around the room, or sit nearly catatonic for hours on end. A local doctor, traditionally identified as Dr. William Griggs, could find nothing physically wrong with the girls, and instead concluded that they were “under an evil hand.” And everyone knew what that meant- witchcraft.

This is far from the first time the Puritans of New England had encountered a good old fashioned case of bewitchment. Since the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, there had been a decent number of well known and well documented cases of witches tormenting the bodies and souls of the innocent, mostly children. Enough that Betty and Abigail’s symptoms would have seemed frighteningly familiar.

Some of the best known examples of witchcraft and the supernatural in New England at this time come from two renowned Puritan ministers and authors, Increase Mather and his son, Cotton. Besides having really fun names, the Mathers were super influential in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, both in the religious and political spheres (though to be fair, there wasn’t much difference between the two at this point). As such, they would both end up involved in the Salem witch trials, partially because they would have been considered experts on the subject of the devil’s activities in the area based on their writings from the past few decades. Increase Mather published the 1684 book An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences, or Remarkable Providences (hey, that’s the name of this podcast!). In it, he paints the colony as a devil’s playground of sorts, where demons and witches were just another threat to add to the pile next to smallpox epidemics and ongoing clashes with the indigenous populations as God’s punishment for a community that has strayed from His light. Remarkable Providences (the book, not the podcast) was Increase’s attempt to scare the Puritans of New England straight with ghosts. Like, literal ghosts. His accounts cover everything from demonic possession to poltergeists to really bad weather (like spooooky bad weather) to, of course, bewitchment. One of the first he mentions is the 1662 case of Ann Cole, a girl from Hartford, CT who is described by Increase right off the bat as a person of real capital-P Piety and capital-I Integrity.

[[MUSIC: Quirky]]

Increase has a lot of fun with capitalization and punctuation in this book. In the case of the Pious Ms Cole, she was plagued with fits during which a demon would speak through her, identifying several people who were plotting against her and others, detailing these plots, or simply yelling unintelligibly. Mather describes this spirit as the capital-D Discourse, which is very funny to me. The Discourse apparently moved on from Ann Cole, afflicting a few of her neighbors who also reported feeling pins stuck into their arms. Of those named by The Discourse, two were executed for witchcraft- Rebecca Greensmith, a woman who was already suspected as being a witch and who confessed to the crimes, and Rebecca’s husband Nathaniel, by association. Increase reports that Ann Cole fully recovered after the executions and, quote, “continued well for several years, approving herself a serious Christian.” As a side note to the Cole case, Mather mentions that two other people named by the Discourse were subjected to the so called “water test” that some of y’all may have heard about. The water test is a sink or swim deal, in which a person’s hands and feet are bound, and they are thrown into a body of water, the idea being that if they float, they’re guilty, if they sink, they’re innocent. The magical thinking logic behind this is that witches reject Christian baptism, and so cannot be submerged in water, or that water is such a pure element, it would immediately expel the unclean soul. In any case, neither person dunked in the Cole case floated, and no other evidence could be brought against them, so good for them. Increase helpfully points out that the “water test” is not a valid method for identifying witches, since it is based in superstition instead of science. Which is probably why it was not used at any point in the Salem trials, because as you’ll see, they had other, more “logical” methods.

Then there’s the case of Elizabeth Knap, a 16-year-old maid from Groton, Massachusetts, which is located in the county to the northwest of Salem. In late 1671, Elizabeth was suddenly struck by strange fits which involved violent, seemingly involuntary movements of her body and extreme mood swings. She seemed very strong in her fits as well, as sometimes a whole group of men could not keep her still. In one incident, her tongue became stuck pressed to the top of her mouth, apparently on its own, for several hours, though several people tried to force it down. Then in December, a demon began to speak through her. Like Ann Cole, the voice that came from Elizabeth Knap spouted numerous blasphemies and curses against God and several people of the town. According to Samuel Willard, the minister of Groton at the time, who relayed the details of the case to Increase later, the voice seemed to come directly from her throat, and could be heard clearly even if her mouth was closed, or if she didn’t move her lips or tongue. Increase doesn’t dwell very long on the Knap possession, but does end on an interesting note. During a few of her fits, Elizabeth said that an apparition of one of her neighbors appeared to her, and that this woman was the one tormenting her. This neighbor was generally well liked, and considered to be particularly pious, and after she prayed with and for Elizabeth, Elizabeth Knap took back her initial accusation. She now said that the devil had used the likeness of her neighbor to trick her. Put a star next to that: it's a surprise tool that will help us later!

The bulk of the remainder of Remarkable Providences (again, the book, not me) is dedicated to accounts of what we today might call generic paranormal or poltergeist activity. We’re talking haunted houses, weird weather, invisible spirits throwing objects and pushing people around, that kind of thing. Which is all very interesting, just not particularly witchy, so we’ll move on to Increase’s son, Cotton.

A quick tangent before we get into Cotton Mather’s writings- I read these as part of an anthology of early New England supernatural accounts compiled by George Lincoln Burr, which is a great resource for contemporary accounts of the Salem Witch Trials, and also a wild ride. And I honestly think it would be irresponsible for me to talk about it without mentioning my favourite account in the collection: “Lithobolia: or the Stone Throwing Demon” by Richard Chamberlain.

[[MUSIC: Quirky]]

It’s more of a poltergeist story about, you guessed it, a demon that throws rocks at people, and it was released in 1698, so it’s not particularly relevant to the rest of my research; I just find it really funny. There’s a chapter in there called “The Author Himself a Victim”, which is followed, like, 5 pages later by “The Author Again an Object of Attack”, which makes me think of this serious Puritan minister shouting that while he’s running from phantom rocks like in those ghost adventure tv shows my mom watches. And honestly we’ve got to take levity where we can get it. But, back to witchcraft.

In keeping with the series’ theme of unfortunate men, it is my great and sincere displeasure to introduce Cotton Mather. Ok, maybe that was a bit harsh, but also: was it? I’ll discuss Cotton’s life and legacy in a later episode, but for now I’ll just say that while I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to his entire body of work and influence, let’s just say he really dropped the football with the whole witchcraft thing. Just totally beefed it. Cotton seems to have spent most of his life trying to live up to his father’s legacy, so of course he wrote his own account of the supernatural in 1689, when he was 26 years old, cleverly titled Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions. Which is essentially just like his dad’s sensational warning against the unseen world, but Cotton manages to put his own unpleasant spin on the whole thing. Cotton really hates witches, and that comes through in his writing in a big way, both here in Memorable Providences and later in his accounts of Salem’s witch trials. He just seems to have some strong feelings about women, and most of them aren’t great. He actually reminds me a lot of Samuel Parris in that he gives off this air of believing that he’s the underappreciated genius in the room at all times, and anyone who doesn’t think so is obviously wrong. He also shares Parris’ spiritual paranoia, which is all over Memorable Providences. Like his father’s book, Memorable Providences is presented as a warning of sorts, both against the Devil and the dangers of skepticism. In an age where empiricism was gaining popularity in lieu of religious devotion, the Mathers aimed to give the haters “concrete” and “irrefutable” evidence of the supernatural. The bulk of the book is devoted to the case of the bewitchment of the Goodwin children of Boston, which resulted in the execution of an Irish woman, Goody Glover. According to Mather, the trouble started in the summer of 1688, when the oldest daughter of John Goodwin confronted the family’s washerwoman over some missing linens.

[[MUSIC: Somber]]

An argument ensued between the washerwoman’s mother (Goody Glover) and Goodwin’s daughter, after which Goodwin’s daughter began having intense fits that Cotton describes as being more extreme than epilepsy or even, quote, “The Diseases of Astonishment”. Soon after this incident, three of the girl’s siblings (four in total of the six Goodwin kids) also began to display signs of bewitchment, as diagnosed by several doctors. The afflicted children generally displayed a lack of control over their bodies. They would scream and flail about, their joints would suddenly lock up, they would contort their bodies into frightening positions, they would open their mouths unnaturally wide and stick their tongues out further than seemed possible, they would bend over backwards where their heads would almost touch the floor, their necks would snap to the side with such intensity that onlookers thought they would break. They complained of feeling pins stuck into their skin or knives slashing at their bodies. They also would lose their senses, being randomly struck blind, deaf, or mute. This apparently often happened during prayer. You know, that good Exorcist shit. They did have breaks from their torment, though. Cotton notes that the children were released from their afflictions around nine or ten every night, at which time they would eat and sleep, and then the whole ordeal would start over in the morning. It wasn’t long before the Goodwin’s neighbor, the washerwoman’s mother, Goody Glover was arrested on suspicion of witchcraft. Now, at this point in the account Cotton has already referred to this woman as “ignorant” and “scandalous” with a dead husband who was “miserable” because of his marriage, and if that’s too subtle for your taste, Cotton straight up calls her a “hag”. Glover confessed to being a witch during her trial and was found guilty, though reading Cotton’s report, the confession is wonky at best. Sure, Glover gave some suspicious answers during her testimony, the children were greatly afflicted in her presence, and there were some dolls or poppets found in her home that were presented to the court. But also she was an old Irish woman who was probably not in her best state of mind. She was a Catholic, whom the Puritans often associated with idolatry and witchcraft, and she was speaking to the court through a translator, since she could not speak English well, which Cotton attributes to some sort of “charm” placed on her before the trial. It’s not difficult to see how some of her answers could have come from sheer confusion. Cotton mentions that she talked about communing with her spirits or saints, noting that in Irish the word was the same for both. She was also unable to say the Lord’s Prayer in English. She had it down in Latin and in Irish, but since she couldn’t carry over into English, she was obviously a witch. Goody Glover was hanged in Boston on November 16th, 1688. Before her execution, she said that her death would not stop the Goodwin children’s afflictions. And wouldn’t you know it, she was right! Three of the four children continued to be afflicted until spring of 1689, but Cotton still considered the whole thing a big win for the church. This incident would likely have been fresh in the memories of the people of Salem in 1692, especially those with young, vulnerable children. In fact, in Reverend John Hale of Beverly’s account of Betty and Abigail’s afflictions, he writes that he won’t go into too much detail about them, given that they were just like those of the Goodwin children.

There are two big things we can learn from Providences, both Remarkable and Memorable. First is their blueprint for bewitchment. Both accounts clearly lay out what possession looks like, and these descriptions clearly had an impact on later incidents. They’re like the 17th century WebMD symptom checker for witchcraft. You look into it enough and you can convince yourself that you’re dying, but instead of an obscure cancer that’s killing you, it’s the old woman across town. The second takeaway is this idea that not only is the Devil out there and actively wreaking havoc on earth, but that no one is safe from possession or diabolical destruction.

[[MUSIC: Reflective]]

Uncertainty was a huge part of life for the average Puritan in the Massachusetts Bay Colony- physically and spiritually. Will there be enough food to last us through the winter? Will there be enough firewood? Will the natives come out of the woods to burn the village down? Are there witches living amongst us? Will my soul be saved? And the answer is always this sort of half shrug. Who knows? God knows, but He’s not telling you. The best you can do is keep your head down, work hard, and try not to get yourself mixed up in anything too sinister. But even then, evil doesn’t discriminate. Demonic possession, invisible rock-throwing demons, witches- according to the church, according to the Mathers, they’re all real. It’s happened before, and it could happen to you.

And now it was all happening again, in the house of the minister of Salem Village. If experience had taught the Puritans anything, the next step was clear. If there was any hope of curing the girls and bringing back any semblance of normalcy, they would have to go straight to the source.

They would need to find the witch.

[[MUSIC: “Our Names Engraved” by Blue Dot Sessions]]

Remarkable Providences was written, researched, and performed by me, Kate Devorak. It was produced by Dan Manning, and recorded by Chad Ellis. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions. Find us on Twitter @RemarkablePod, and everywhere else @RemarkableProvidences. For transcripts and links to everything, visit us at whisperforge.org/remarkableprovidences

Rate and review, and if you’d like to help pay my jailers’ fees, you can visit our Patreon.

Thanks for listening, and remember, the devil’s in the details.