#salemwitchtrials

On June 10, 1692, Bridget Bishop, a colonial American woman from Salem, Massachusetts, was executed by hanging after being accused of witchcraft. She became the first person to be put to death during the Salem witch trials, a wave of mass hysteria and legal persecution that would soon engulf the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Bishop, who was around 60 years old at the time of her death, had previously faced accusations of witchcraft but had been acquitted years earlier. However, during the heightened fear and religious fervor of 1692, she was arrested again and brought before the special Court of Oyer and Terminer. She was convicted largely on spectral evidence and questionable testimony.

Categories: Nonfiction, US History, 17th Century, Puritanism, Witches and Witch-hunts

Ratings: 3.25 on GR (20k ratings), my rating 3 stars ✨

My Summary + Thoughts ⤵️

Presented by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, this book is a lengthy exposition of what scholars and historians know and theorize about the infamous Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s.

In the colonial Massachusetts lands, the witch trials resulted from a town’s mass hysteria involving people claiming possession by devil or knowledge of those working with demonic forces. Puritan sensibilities made this accusation detrimental to one’s reputation… and eventually, their lives and freedom.

Topics this book substantially covers:

• Salem: what was the town like?

• Church + Religion: What was its importance in Salem and how did town politics get involved in the church?

• Members of Community: Relevant people such as prominent families, those afflicted with bewitching, those accused of witchcraft, the authorities + ministers, skeptics.

• The Bewitching: How the first young girls acted and theories held by community, Tituba’s involvement, getting info about the accused from known people to strangers from afar

• Accused: interrogators/investigators, jailing and its conditions, trial and jurors + accusations & defenses

• Symbols: Things the puritans described as signs of guilt or trouble, including their elaborate stories of the accused’s antics and seeing black cats, red books, brooms, different types of animals, etc.

• Hysteria & Sociology: the social contagion + mass hysteria of the witch-hunt and high profile cases. Some theories on why this happened.

And much more. The book fills in gaps and bridges material with details contextualizing the trials. Anything from pointing out influences of feuding families to describing PTSD from Indian attacks, the book provides some padding to the sources. At some points, it’s a bit of a slog because it takes a lot of winding away from the point it’s making, but in all, a decent collection of info presented in a narrative style.

Chapter 2:

Jake was definitely with Amber.

She was straddling his crotch like his dick was her source of everlasting life. Her red catsuit and her devil horns were stripped and zipped down from her head and shoulders. Jake slipped his hand beneath the clasp of her bra sticking his tongue down her throat like he was feeding a baby bird. I slammed the garage door behind me and they both stopped and stared at me.

“E? Is that you?” he stumbled forward, throwing her to the floor. She dropped with a loud thud. He scrambled to cover his crotch. “E it’s not what it looks like. I’m just really drunk and she just wanted to give me water.”

My world became dizzy like my vision was hazy from too much heat. My head began to warm up and my cheeks flushed. I was too stunned to speak, so I turned on my heel and walked toward the first place that could give me peace and quiet; the woods. I began seeing red. There was nothing to say. There was nothing else to do but walk and walk into the night. Or was there?

I immediately ran back to the garage door and spat “Fuck you, Jake! Fuck you and you can go to hell! Enjoy an STD from slut-Zilla! I fucking hope you rot in hell and you two just fucking die together because you’re perfect together. Take it up the ass, Jake. Your dick’s small. You suck at kissing and Amber fucked your dad!”

Amber’s eyeliner ran down her cheeks. “I-I-I was just…”

“E, wait! You have to let me explain!”

“Fuck you, Jake!”

“You’re not hot enough to act like this!”

The house suddenly became silent with white noise with so many teens drinking, playing pool, playing darts, beer pong, and stripping naked in the pool. I push past the smell of weed and the naked boys with horse masks kicking a soccer ball in the living room. I shove past everyone until I see nothing but forest. The music of the party could barely be heard as I ran further and further through the trees and far from the backyard of Jake’s house until I was standing behind completely alone. He was supposed to be my first. My lungs were full of hot air and I could barely breathe. My heart…was broken. It was supposed to be special. My hands searched for my phone.

“Tina,” I take two deep breaths; my lungs feeling the fire grow within. “Tina. Tina.”

I grabbed my phone from my pocket and scrolled through my contacts. Dad. Mom. Tina. I scrolled back to Mom and took a deep hard look at her number. Wiping the tears coming from my eyes, I wanted to tell her what happened. But after hearing the whole ‘strong woman’ speech, this was something for my sister to help me with.

The phone rang.

And rang.

“Hello?

“T-Tina…”

“E?”

“T-Tina, you were right. You were right about everything! He was fucking her and I caught them. You were right about everything!”

“E, what happened? Did he do anal?”

I stomped my foot on the ground,” Tina please, you have to listen to me.”

“Stop talking like a fucking psycho! What happened? I can barely hear you! You’re breaking up!”

“He’s a dog! He’s a fucking dog! He is dead to me, T. Dead!”

“I-I can’t—hear—you!”

“Tina!” I screamed into the screen. “Fuck.”

My tears were allowed to fall freely once I was out of the woods and standing on the sandy pebbly beach. I wiped my nose. Be tough. Be strong. Nobody wants a sobbing mess on a night like this. Sniffing, I went to the edge of the pond and threw my basket into the black water screaming. I know my mom told me to be a strong woman but here I was crying over a boy; what a great birthday. I’m sure she would be proud of her little girl. The feeling of heartbreak and embarrassment felt nauseating and my head swam with possibilities it could bring, good or bad. 

My phone rang.

Mom.

“Mom?” I gasp, exhaling a big sigh of relief. Trying to catch my breath, I smile into the phone, “Mom, I’m so glad you called me.”

Thank god!

“Evey! I called Tina. Where are you?” she exclaimed loudly in a panicky voice. “Are you safe? Are you hurt?”

“Mom, I walked off. I saw Jake. I needed some air. It’s really stupid. I just want to come home.”

“Where are you? Are you safe?”

“I-I’m near the river. What’s wrong? You don’t sound right.”

Static came through the speaker. A rough noise came bellowing from my phone like a horn. Her voice faded until there was silence. The noise became a boom making me flinch and drop my phone.

“Mom!” I shouted louder this time, then I suddenly see a shadow move in the woods seen from the corner of my eye. I narrow my eyes to get a better look at this shadowy figure. The air turned ice cold and the hairs stood up on my neck.

“Hello?”

A gust of wind emerged from the woods towards me in a powerful gust. I could see my breath, it was so cold.

“Evey!” her voice came through the rough static. “R-Run, Evey! She’s c-c-oming!”

I knelt to the ground holding my phone,” Mom! What’s happening? Who’s coming?”

“E! E! Get back in the fucking house. Whatever she says she is lying to you! She’s a trickster Evey! She’s trying to take you away!”

Goosebumps prickled over my arms as the cold air had turned into snowflakes, softly falling from the sky. The lake water beside me began to transform into one giant iceberg. The leaves and flowers began to crisp, turn black, and crack into pieces. It was a tall shadowy figure standing against the trees almost as if this thing was wearing a large black coat over its head. My heart raced to watch this thing suddenly move as if it were made of clay, shaping and morphing into a face. It was mom standing against the trees.

“Evey!” my mother’s voice rang through the phone.

I couldn’t take my eyes away from this…thing. Mom, or whatever it was, began to slowly walk into the woods as slowly and as dimly as a shadow. Soon her arms and shoulders were visible to the point where her body figure stood amongst the trees, walking backward, never taking her eyes off of me. A voice in the back of my mind told me to follow her to wherever she was leading me. Her eyes weren’t her eyes, they were black, black as midnight. I took another step forward realizing I was halfway across the frozen lake. My stomach twisted in tiny knots thinking of the worst.

“Evey, come home…”

Its voice sounded so serene. So calm. But another voice came from behind, I turned my head to see my real mother.

My mother, my real mother came running and holding a hand against the wind erupting in a violent storm coming from the clouds circling above the lake pushing the leaves into a swirling vortex. She was still in her black dress with Tina by her side. She raised her voice waving her arms but I couldn’t hear her. I couldn’t hear any of them. The only thing I could see was the shadow and the only thing I could hear was…indistinct whispers. Whispers in all different voices but coming from only one person; her. I followed her farther out onto the lake, under the moonlight, until the darkness was so complete I was sure that I was lost until I saw her walk between a blanket of fog, steadily into thin air.

“Mom?” I called out, clutching the collar of my cloak tighter, protecting my face from the wind.

There was no answer, only more wind and a raging storm coming closer and closer until thunder and lightning broke the roar. Leaves whipped against my face while the lightning struck across the sky in bolts so big it shook the earth, and I shook.

“Mom!” I called out, kneeling to the ground, smashing my hands against the cold dirt. “Mom! Tina!”

The bolts of lightning momentarily lit my path of trees, leaves, and a figure standing among all of it. Somewhere Tina was calling my name and I was calling hers too, trying to find each other in these woods. Crescendos rang in my head until finally all together—it stopped. A silence so sudden I thought I had gone deaf. As soon as I opened my eyes, the world outside the circle was raging as violently as anything I’d ever seen.

Was I in some sort of bubble?

It was as serene and tranquil inside this invisible bubble. I stood up and saw Mom, smiling, with black eyes, standing next to the tree in a black dress and I wanted to say something to her, call out to her for help, and to come back with me to the house—until she disappeared. It’s almost as if the tree opened its mouth to eat her.

“Mom!?” I brought my hand to the tree, trying to find her. “Tina!?”

I bang my fists against the trunk and raked my nails across the hardwood, trying to understand what happened.

“Tina!” I screamed, realizing the lake was gone. I was standing on a pebbly beach and the lake had completely disappeared.

A voice reminds me to breathe, I inhale and a powerful feeling enters my lungs reaching higher and higher up into my head. It was a high feeling that I’d never felt before. A newfound strength rises and moves inside me, like a fire, and it’s getting stronger. With outstretched arms I feel the suction, being pulled into the dark mouth of the void and soon filled with warmth and reverence.

In a matter of minutes, the windy night sky transformed into a bright day. I’m falling, falling, and falling. The ground screams as it comes in contact with my face, I see a flash of white and red, I taste blood on my lip and the pain swells. My ribcage is pounding. I breathe, cough, and roll on my back looking at the sky. I flutter my eyes open and it takes a few seconds to adjust. Birds are in the trees while a cloud blissfully moves across the sky and the sun is warm against my skin.

What the hell just happened?

“Evey! Evey!” a voice, someone’s voice… Mom’s voice whispers in my head. “Evey, he needs you…”

“Mom?”

“He needs you…”

My face still hurts when I stand up and walk towards her voice, wobbling into the woods, reaching out for support. I have to get Tina, find Tina, and get the hell out of here and this nightmare will be over. Suddenly the whiplash sets in and all the contents in my stomach burst from my mouth in a fountain into the bushes leaving the sting of stomach acid lingering in the back of my throat and nose. My world suddenly becomes 2, then 3, then 4 images swirling across my eyesight in a kaleidoscope turning in circles. My knees turn into marshmallows as I fall back into the dirt and my world goes black.

2 Days Later:

I wake up in a cold sweat and kick off my covers, panting as if I ran a marathon. My body aches. I push the bed covers off of me. The furs and pelts fall into a heap on the floor. Sunlight pours in the windows and a rooster crows outside somewhere leaving me paralyzed in my place.

“Mom…” I mumble, holding a hand to my head. “Mom. Mom?”

Was I hungover?

“Be still,” a voice came from the dark, it was a man’s voice. His fingers come in contact with my head. “You’ve been asleep for nearly 2 days.”

His face looks blurry, like big blots of black paint in my vision moving across the room. My head is still swimming and my legs can’t stop shaking. I’ve never felt this way in my entire life.

“Dad?” I murmur, holding my fingers to my lips. “Dad, I had a bad dream.”

There was a pause before the man gently asks,” What’s your name?”

My tongue feels like an alien body in my mouth, dry and making disgusting noises as I try to speak,” Evey…”

Am I in the hospital? Through my lashes, he peers closer. My legs stop shaking and I finally see his face.

“Where am I,” I ask, barely whispering.

His whole demeanor tells me he wants something else, something important, besides knowing my name. I could feel it. The man nods his head pouring water into a cup before placing a hand against my head. He kneels up to leave the room for a moment to return holding a plate of food with a young girl walking beside him. She pulls back a hand before momentarily touching my head informing the man there was no sign of fever. They both look at each other for a moment before stepping out of the room to have a private discussion. He even closes the door. I wipe the crap out of my eyes and take a better look at the room. It’s…not home, that’s for sure. I sit up from bed to look at the beef and bread sitting on the bed table. My appetite is the least of my worries. I can hear the man and the woman argue outside my room before momentarily entering and it looks like the woman had the last word. He moves a chair in front of me.

“Evey,” he begins gently, pausing for a moment, looking back at the woman as if he was getting impatient with acting polite. “What business did you have in the woods?”

I rub my head against my hands, fuck I need some painkillers right now.

He’s waiting eagerly in his chair, tugging on a hair from his chin,” What business did you have in the woods?”

“What?” I whisper. “Oh my god, where am I? Are my parents here?”

It’s his last nerve and he stands from his chair,” The woods! You’ve been sleeping and speaking folly in your sleep. What did you—“

“Why were you alone out there?” the girl asks, holding his shoulder. She pushed him back behind her, separating us. “Especially all alone. You could have ended up in the belly of a bear or at the hands of savages.”

“Bears? There are no bears in Salem,” I look at her through my lashes. My head is still spinning, “I was just… looking for my mom. I just want to go home.”

“Your mother?” the man narrows his eyes,” That deep in the woods? No bears in Salem? Our guest must have struck their head harder than we expected.”

After splashing water over my face, I got a better look at them now and my mouth dropped. My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach when I saw… whatever they were wearing. I saw the room. I saw and tried to digest where I was.

What in the fuck happened in the past 2 days!?

The girl rolls her eyes,” You must excuse Mr. Alden, I think the girl is quite parched, don’t you think? She must not be thinking quite clearly. Fetch her water please?”

Everyone in the room knew it was a tactic for him to leave the room which I would enjoy instead of receiving his suspicious glares. He kneeled from his chair and shut the door behind him. I wasn’t getting that water, was I? The girl put on a kind smile on her face and for a moment we both stared at each other, not knowing what else to say.

So, I was going to break the ice.

“Who are you?”

“Who are you?”

We both blurted out.

She straightened her back, “Anne Hale, it is nice to meet you, Evey…?”

“Blackwood, Evey Blackwood,” I nodded my head, rising from the bed and looking out the window. “Where… W-Where am I?”

A rooster screams somewhere in the distance as I look out the window. I see a group of pigs point their snouts in the mud while men and women wearing—whatever the hell it is they’re wearing—walking. Women hold baskets of fruit and bread and walk with their children while the men talk to each other in groups. The rooster’s scream jostles me back to reality and Anne comes up behind me.

“Evey, what is it? Are you ill?” she stepped closer.

I pull my hair into a messy ball on top of my head and grab my shoes at the foot of the bed wiping tears coming down my cheek. Anne is already grabbing the tray of food and closing the shutter window, rushing after me. This house is smaller than I expected, turning around a corner wall into the main living room. On instinct, I touched the wall for a light switch but there were none. There was no sign of modern technology, flat-screen TV, electric outlets, or any sign of indoor plumbing. Warning signs ring in my head as I take a deep breath and open the door to the outside world, but it’s nothing that I expect. I can’t take another step forward and my hand tightens around the door knob.

This is a dream, wake up.

“Wake up,” I repeat out loud, closing my eyes hard, and opening. “Wake up…”

I let go of the doorknob and step out into this different world. I don’t recognize anything! Or anyone! Anne is behind me trying to decide whether to let me wander like a poisoned sheep or help me back inside the house before I lose my mind.

“Wake up…” I repeat, louder this time.

“Oh, dear.”

Anne steps in to hold my shoulder and try to lead me back to the house trying to ignore the people stopping in their tracks to whisper among themselves. She tries to tell me to return to the house, but as soon as I see the body of…--- a body? My blood freezes, instantly, shackling me to the ground in invisible chains as I see the body of a woman hanging from a noose on a platform in the middle of the town. My bottom lip trembles, my stomach sucking up against my spine, while my memory is reeling in every detail of the corpse in high definition. She wore a black dress with a black bonnet over her drooping head with a red apron covered in something stinky, hanging limp as a doll.

Anne came up behind me, swallowing a sob, “I know how you feel. It’s an abominable thing; she didn’t deserve a fate such as this. I am as disgusted as you are,” Anne looked upon the hanging body with grief before scowling at the ground. “It’s madness. Complete and utter madness.”

“Anne!” a voice came from behind us, but I was too frozen to move or look who was talking. The smell of death was right in front of me and the sight of it was there too.

“Anne! What is she doing out here? If any of the selectmen or your father spy her prowling out here dressed like that then it’ll be a swift walk to the gallows! For all of us!”

Instantly, I feel my body being moved from the streets and back into the house. As soon as the door closes behind us, I suddenly feel relief, the world had gotten much smaller and composed of a single room with Anne and his man here with me. I could finally breathe. He shoves a glass of muck water in my hands and has a private word with Anne in the other room, while I decompress from shock. They’re speaking to each other, arguing even, as two parents would over their troubled child.

I’ve never seen something like that before.

In fact, no one should.

But this is Salem, only centuries before anyone I knew was born. Fucking time travel. I sniffle, wiping the tears away from my eyes. The word witch comes to mind and I’m hoping against all the odds that I’m not the century I think I am. That woman’s dead face, her blue dead face wasn’t leaving my mind, the image was still flashing in my head. What’s wrong with these people!? A rooster screams from outside the window reminding me what’s out there and I can’t help but feel alone like I’ve never been alone before.

Please, someone save me!

Anybody!

On The Sea:

It began with a dead blue girlchild, no older than two or three years, lying amongst the festering rats, intertwined among the bodies of her siblings and mother and father. Lifting her eyelids her eyes were white, riddled with red veins, milky, evident of unnatural death. The ship did not rock, nor did it stir, refusing to voyage any further in these deep waters lucidly sitting among the fog underneath the full moon. But it was not the water creatures beneath that disturbed the great witch-hunter Reverend Mather, nor were its dead passengers, but the evil that resided on this ship, living largely on the dead souls it served itself. With a heavy boot, he pushed her body on her back revealing her worm face slick with sea slime, pouring water from her lips, rotting in her bones. The poor girl never had a chance. The Captain, in his state of selfishness, urged the Reverend to return back to the deck explaining a strangeness spreading throughout the ship but Increase, coiled and brazenly angry, snarled and pushed the Captain away from him. The serious matter was not being understood by the Captain, but how could he understand, he had not dealt with forces such as these. Forcefully disregarding his orders to return—only an insidious truth and discovery has been revealed.

“Reverend! These are not your quarters; please return out of this foul place. It has been 7 days becalmed, no wind, with our food and water diminishing.”

“Foul, it is indeed,” the Reverend hissed looking out over the ocean. 

His gloved hand moved the head of an unconscious man back and forth as if checking the head of cabbage, checking, rechecking, dismissing then moving on to the next poor soul that would never live to see another day on this ship nor on land.

The Captain gazed upon the poor souls with a grimace, “Is all of this meant for a purpose?”

“Does this…” he lifted the body of a boy, limp, blue, frozen from his spot. Lifting the body with both arms and shoving it into the Captain’s arms with a shove, sending him trembling in his place. Increase pointed to the boy’s face, dead, cold, and tragic. “Need purpose?”

The Captain huffed, circling in front of him. “We are hopeless. This ship is becalmed between lands, we are stuck.”

“This ship is spelled,” growled Increase, ruling across the floor back and forth, not looking at the Captain, but looking at the faces of the diseased, snarling, feeling, smelling, knowing a demon lurked somewhere here, now, taunting him. Never go weak or weaponless into the darkness and Increase will do just that.

“It’s here.”

The Captain stepped closer, cautious to give the strict Reverend his space, “What’s here?”

Quickly, he fetched his book from his pocket, gripping the leather bind with intense vigor it ought to crumble into dust, and he, at last, gazed upon the Captain, “Make no mistake—I will find him.”