This scene opened by the illness of two girls, a daughter and niece of Mr. Parvis, the minister of Salem, who fell under an affliction similar to that of the Goodwins.  Their mouths were stopped, their throats choked, their limbs racked, thorns were stuck into their flesh, and pins were ejected from their stomachs.  An Indian and his wife, servants of the family, endeavouring, by some spell of their own, to discover by whom the fatal charm had been imposed on their master’s children, drew themselves under suspicion, and were hanged.  The judges and juries persevered, encouraged by the discovery of these poor Indians’ guilt, and hoping they might thus expel from the colony the authors of such practices.  They acted, says Mather, the historian, under a conscientious wish to do justly; but the cases of witchcraft and possession increased as if they were transmitted by contagion, and the same sort of spectral evidence being received which had occasioned the condemnation of the Indian woman Titu, became generally fatal.  The afflicted persons failed not to see the spectres, as they were termed, of the persons by whom they were tormented.  Against this species of evidence no alibi could be offered, because it was admitted, as we have said elsewhere, that the real persons of the accused were not there present; and everything rested upon the assumption that the afflicted persons were telling the truth, since their evidence could not be redargued.  These spectres were generally represented as offering their victims a book, on signing which they would be freed from their torments.  Sometimes the devil appeared in person, and added his own eloquence to move the afflicted persons to consent.

At first, as seems natural enough, the poor and miserable alone were involved; but presently, when such evidence was admitted as incontrovertible, the afflicted began to see the spectral appearances of persons of higher condition and of irreproachable lives, some of whom were arrested, some made their escape, while several were executed.  The more that suffered the greater became the number of afflicted persons, and the wider and the more numerous were the denunciations against supposed witches.  The accused were of all ages.  A child of five years old was indicted by some of the afflicted, who imagined they saw this juvenile wizard active in tormenting them, and appealed to the mark of little teeth on their bodies, where they stated it had bitten them.  A poor dog was also hanged as having been alleged to be busy in this infernal persecution.  These gross insults on common reason occasioned a revulsion in public feeling, but not till many lives had been sacrificed.  By this means nineteen men and women were executed, besides a stouthearted man named Cory, who refused to plead, and was accordingly pressed to death according to the old law.  On this horrible occasion a circumstance took place disgusting to humanity, which must yet be told, to show how superstition can steel the heart of a man against the misery of his fellow-creature.  The dying man, in the mortal agony, thrust out his tongue, which the sheriff crammed with his cane back again into his mouth.  Eight persons were condemned besides those who had actually suffered, and no less than two hundred were in prison and under examination.