American Witches by Susan Fair

Author:Susan Fair
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2016-07-18T16:00:00+00:00

Well, that was unexpected. The Mathers’ baby had been cut open and examined. The first official autopsy performed in America, on little Elizabeth Kelly in 1662, was most likely Mather’s inspiration for the autopsy, such as it was, on his infant. Kelly’s autopsy had revealed no discernible cause of death, which proved, according to the physician who carried it out, that witchcraft was the cause of death. Mather’s infant’s autopsy had revealed the opposite—gross deformity of the internal organs—and somehow this too meant witchcraft. But probably the most interesting aspect of this particular autopsy was the conveniently unnamed person who performed it. Many historians believe it was most likely done by a man who had studied physiology at Harvard, practiced medicine as a sort of amateur hobby, and wrote pamphlets and books on the subject of health: none other than the grieving father, Cotton Mather, himself.

At any rate, having finally outdone themselves with this especially macabre trick, the demons finally began to tire of the whole affair. One night Mather listened as the girl held a lively exchange with her unseen tormentors, who huffily told her, “Go and be damned, we can do no more!” Mercy, channeling some of the saintliness she was picking up from Rev. Mather, no doubt, retorted, “O ye cursed wretches; is that your blessing? Well after all the wrong that you have done to me, I do not wish that any one of you may be damned; I wish you may all be saved, if that be possible. However, in the name of the blessed Lord Jesus Christ, be gone, let me be no more troubled with you.” Mather wrote, “Upon that, they flew away immediately.” Whew.

In his diary, Mather modestly noted what had caused the demons to skidaddle. The tenacious demons had outlasted everyone, he wrote; the townspeople were “now either too weary or too busy” to keep up the onslaught of prayer on Mercy’s behalf. Only one man remained to take on the fiends of the Haunted Chamber: the hero of the story, Cotton Mather. “I did alone in my study fast and pray for her deliverance. And unto my amazement … she was finally and forever delivered from the hands of evil angels.” He would not have long to savor his triumph, however, before the witches would strike again.

A Hard Master

When the witch craze had wound down and something resembling reason descended on Salem, folks naturally started looking for someone to blame. Most fingers pointed right at Samuel Parris. “He started it,” inhabitants of the embarrassed town seemed to agree of the reverend from whose home the witchcraft accusations had first emerged.

Meanwhile, as everyone was “looking over there,” Cotton Mather got into some more witchcraft action. In the autumn of 1693, another teenage girl from Cotton’s congregation came down with a bad case of possession. Cotton and Increase persisted in believing in witchcraft and that it needed to be dealt with severely, but, they diplomatically added, dealt with cautiously. The newly possessed

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