In a 1692 essay titled "A Brand Pluck'd out of the Burning," Cotton Mather described the possession of a young woman named Mercy Short. Mather had taken her into his home and observed one of her fits and conversations with evil spirits:
Reader, If thou hadst a Desire to have seen a Picture of Hell, it was visible in the doleful Circumstances of Mercy Short! Here was one lying in Outer Darkness, haunted with the Divel and his Angels, deprived of all common Comforts, tortured with most cruciating Fires, Wounded with a thousand Pains all over, and cured immediately, that the Pains of those Wounds might bee repeated.
Her Discourses to Them were some of the most Surprising Things imaginable, and incredibly beyond what might have been expected, from one of her small Education or Experience. In the Times of her Tortures, Little came from...