Haunted Cosmos - The Dusty Tome: Salem, Part II

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

Enjoy this third installment of our inter-season sneak peeks at our Patreon-exclusive show: The Dusty Tome.Love Haunted Cosmos? Get access to our exclusive show, The Dusty Tome, early ad-free access to main episodes, monthly AMA's, and livestreams with Ben and Brian by becoming a patron of the show: https://www.patreon.com/c/HauntedCosmosBuy the Haunted Cosmos book: https://www.newchristendompress.com/cosmos PS: It's also available as an audiobook!In this episode, Ben talks more about the Salem Witch Trials. This episode is sponsored by Joe Garrisi with Backwards Planning Financial. Content Joe today to talk about managing your wealth.Hey! Since you're still reading this, why don't you grab some special coffee here. And since you are still reading (why though?), pick up a ticket to this year's New Christendom Press Conference. It's happening in June in Ogden, UT and Brian and I will be doing a live haunted cosmos recording sesh. Support the show

and welcome to this third installment of our off-season break, where we are exploring some previous episodes of the dusty tome that looked deep into the topic of witches and specifically the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts. We hope that you all enjoyed part one of the official Salem study. And this is part two, and that means that after this episode, there are only three more weeks of the off-season

from the main show of Haunted Cosmos. So we hope that you're all gearing up for a fun season three. we certainly are, but until then, enjoy the show. And if you like what you hear, consider signing up to become a patron. Every patron that signs up, no matter their tier level, will get immediate access to every backlogged episode of the Dusty Tome. That's over 40-plus Dusty Tome episodes. So, again, consider signing up if you like it.

But at any rate, we're glad that you're here. Enjoy. Witchcraft, or the twisted and evil and improper use of supernatural power, has been around since days before words were ever even written, or so it seems. For example, long ago, it probably seems like many worlds ago to many of us, the patriarch Jacob took he and his household into the land of Egypt. A famine had been assaulting the region for many years, and the aging servant of Jehovah was nearing the end of his rope and his wits. But by some miraculous turn of divine providence, Old Israel himself had learned that his most beloved son, Joseph, the one he thought was long dead, was actually alive and was ruling in Egypt, second in command to Pharaoh himself.

And Joseph had bid his father and his brothers and all of their household with them to come to Egypt so that they might dwell in a land of security and sustenance. Thus began the nation of Israel's long sojourn in the land of Egypt, the land of Goshen. Long would be their stay in this fertile place along the banks of the Nile Delta, and near the end of it, it would grow hard and tiresome. The Egyptians grew threatened by the blessing and growth of Israel. Perhaps they'd even grown envious of God's people. And so they put the Hebrews to forced labor, driving them like oxen,

demanding they make bricks while failing to provide them with straw. Indeed, anguish ensued for Jacob's progeny, and in their anguish they called upon the God of their father, and God heard their plea. Long before the sojourn in Egypt turned sour, when Joseph and his brothers were still alive, Joseph had intuited that someday his people would have to leave Egypt. Indeed, they would do well to. After all, Joseph had heard his father's instruction and wisdom.

He knew that Goshen and Egypt wasn't the land that the God of heaven had promised them. No, Canaan was. And so in an act of prophecy, Joseph demanded that all his descendants take care to make sure his bones went with them whenever the time came for them to leave. And some 400 years later, as God's people cried out for help, that time came. A man, raised as an Egyptian but born a Hebrew, strode back into Egypt after a self-imposed exile with a weighty charge hanging on his shoulders. At once, he and his brother marched into the throne room of Pharaoh, who, we can imagine, was probably not so pleased to see his long-lost adopted relative. And the man demanded that Pharaoh let God's people go into the wilderness, that they might

worship the Lord. And so the first recorded and confirmed wizarding battle began between Moses and the Magi of Egypt. God's servant and spokesman to his people, empowered by the Holy Spirit, faced off against Pharaoh's greatest witches. The rest is some of the greatest history the world has ever seen, and it is history we all know very well. May it never grow mundane to us. Since we know it so well, I'm not going to belabor the point and retell it here, except for a couple things. You see, sometimes we don't realize just how catechized by modernity we've all been. We think that

accepting 10 supernatural plagues falling upon Egypt from Jehovah as literal history is enough to curb any accusations of being materialists. And in a sense, that is very true. The problem is that it's not the whole story. It wasn't just 10 random plagues. No, there were 10 plagues that were judgments on not just Egypt, but the Egyptian gods, the Egyptian pantheon. And now we begin to see where those Egyptian magi received their power from. The first plague, when you stop and consider it, is perhaps the most brutal, apart from the tenth. You see, Pharaoh's heart grew hard and stubborn in response to the Lord's command to let the Hebrews go. Not daunted by the failure of the Egyptian monarch to obey the living God, Moses stepped out of the court and trod down to the banks of Egypt's lifeline, the Nile.

If any ancient civilization had a single Achilles heel, Egypt most certainly did in the Nile River. Everyone depended on it for life and sustenance. In many ways, the Nile was itself a god to the people. They worshipped the god named Hapi annually as he gave them the regular Nile flood that they relied heavily upon for ongoing and excellent crop yield. And so, Moses stood upon the skirts of Hapis's flowing garments of water, and in the sight of Pharaoh himself raised his staff and struck the river with sovereign force from on high. Immediately, a change was noticed.

A stench rose up from the river as the water which just before had flowed a greenish blue, turned to a deep and foreboding crimson. The Nile, Hapi, Egypt's lifeline, had turned to blood. Pharaoh, in a moment of desperate madness and wrath, demanded his magi do the same, and they did, just as Jehovah intended. He desired to judge the land and he was absolutely not done. Now that the Nile, Hopi, was dead. The Lord moved on to another demon god he could put to open shame.

And here we begin to pick up the threads from last week, threads of divine decree that will carry us through time and space until we arrive once more in the small village of Salem. For the second plague against Egypt, after God had poured the blood of Hopi into the Nile River and killed it, Jehovah used a curious agent to carry out his wrath. Frogs. From the water that had just turned back from a red onyx blood

came countless frogs that tore into Egyptian homes and beds and tables. The people couldn't walk without stepping on to the slimy and squishy backs of frogs. Though this may seem random, it's far from it. The Egyptians had gods or goddesses for nearly everything that can be considered a major part of someone's life. And the forms the members of this devilish pantheon took were just as varied as the roles they served. One of these goddesses, named Haket, took the form of a frogwoman, chimera. A woman's body robed in divine color. but with the head and face of an amphibious frog.

The symbolism here runs quite deep. Remember how Hapi was the god of the annual flooding of the Nile? Well, the Egyptians noticed that as the river flooded, thousands more frogs than normal would be found close to their homes. The widening banks and increased activity of the water correlated to increased rates of mating for the local frog population. The Nile's blessed flood came directly partnered with an increased presence of frogs in the land.

And so because of this, the frog became Egypt's most potent symbol of fertility. Therefore, Hecquette, the goddess of fertility, took the form of a frog. As a side note before continuing, consider further the end of this picture of divine wrath. Jehovah killed the river god, poisoning the water by turning it to blood that flooded the land. From the deceased river came innumerable frogs like deformed chileged. children from a poisoned womb. And though the Egyptians held the frog sacred in honor of Hecette, they stomped on them, unable to avoid killing the creatures. Jehovah judged Hequette and Egypt by forcing the Egyptians' hands into killing the symbol that represented their goddess.

Oh, the wisdom of God. But back to Hecette, because she was not just a fertility goddess. You see, one of the chief goals of any practice of witchcraft is to commune with the dead, but an even deeper goal of black magic, one that is the roots of all sorts of evil, is to avoid death altogether. Many practitioners of witchcraft and black magic throughout history have operated under the openly stated goal of immortality or resurrection. The Egyptian magi, the witches of Egypt, were no different. And who was their patron-repribate goddess of resurrection?

Hakhet. Haket, the fertility goddess, was also the goddess of resurrection, necromancy, and sorcery. The Greeks knew this, and so they gave their goddess of the same powers a similar name, perhaps one directly inspired by the Hellenistic Egyptians. Hakatei. God's judgment on Egypt was most certainly a judgment on Pharaoh and his wicked peoples, who not only blasphemed him, but also harmed his people and treated them harshly, but it was also a judgment on Egypt's gods,

and therefore indirectly a judgment on her witches. Interestingly, Pharaoh's magicians are able to match all of Moses's displays of power for quite a while. They turned their staffs into serpents just as he did, and we all know they were dragons. They turned water into blood just as he did. They even made hordes of frogs spring out of the Nile, just like Moses did. But after the frogs came up, a clear symbol of Egypt's goddess of fertility and sorcery being put to open shame by Jehovah. Their powers ran dry. Once Hequette was judged, the Egyptian sorcerers could not reproduce any of the signs that Moses brought about by God's power.

And thus, God's judgment on witchcraft was rendered complete. leading up to his words to Moses and Israel in Leviticus 2027. A man or woman who is a medium or necromancer shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones. Their blood shall be upon them. How has witchcraft survived through the ages? What I'm asking is, it seems like witchcraft had a massive gap in prominence from about the time of the Witch of Indoor in the Book of Samuel,

right up to the European witch hunts that began with the start of the world of, the Renaissance. But is this true? Was there really this big gap of inactivity? Well, in a word, no. You see, records of witches remain very prominent all through ancient records, though sometimes they're difficult to find, but think of the Oracle of Delphi for one very mainstream example. As the first Christendom swept through Europe, the polarizing nature of magic in general began to make itself known. There are basically two overarching categories of magic, light, or white, and dark or black. White magic is the practice of twisting the arm of the supernatural in such a way that you or someone else benefits positively from it. Think of the witch cake from

last week's episode. It's a charm used to try and help someone escape the bewitching influence of someone who's practicing black magic, which of course is the abuse of the supernatural to achieve objectively nefarious and malicious ends towards others. As Christianity, dominated Europe in the Middle Ages, the documented practice of black magic virtually vanished completely. Almost no records exist of any witchcraft being even close to mainstream on the mainland of the European continent. Naturally, as Christianity's influence waned with the onset of the Renaissance, enlightenment, and romanticism, the documented practice of black magic once again reared its ugly head and witch trials came with it. But this isn't the story for the entire

world, or even for the larger region of Northern Europe in her islands. As we continue following the thread laid down by the story of God's showdown with Hequette, please allow me to take us through the northern marches of Iceland, the island of witches. Due to its isolated place in the world and its proclivity to grow quite cold and dark for large swathes of the year, though let's not forget, it also grows quite warm and full of light too. Iceland did not suffer under the same influence influences as the mainland or island of Britain at the same time. Things changed slowly in Iceland. So, the initial culture of the Norse Viking settlers proved to be a robust one,

with looming threads remaining even through its eventual Christianization and up into the present day. One of these cultural practices that Iceland is known for is the use and abuse of magic to sundry and oftentimes unpleasant ends. The manipulation of the supernatural, the communion of the dead, the seeking out of someone to sell someone's soul to so that they might never have to see death, which is an ironic deal for both parties if you think about it, found its zenith in the Norse peoples of Iceland. And one of the chief means by which Icelanders would seek these ends for themselves or others was the practice of using runes.

Carved into stone, the Norse and Germanic runes would serve to mark whatever monument they were on as a talisman, a pillar of memorial and power that marked the bond between the human end user and whatever dark entity he or she was trying to partner with. After having carved the runes into the stone, the witch would somehow cut themselves, using the pouring blood from their arm to fill the runic grooves that were just made in the rock, immortalizing the act as the witch quite literally poured his or her life into their work. As the red beads filled each crevice, the witch would speak an incantation, sealing the spell into the ruins and giving power to the message he was seeking to send

to the demonic gods of his land. A curse on neighboring crops, a disease falling upon a household, the death of another villager, the resurrection of a lost loved one, the immortality, of one's self, all of these motivations and more were what lay behind these acts of necromancy and sorcery mixed with self-mutilation. One stanza from the Homoval saga provides a striking example of just how ordinary this idea and practice must have been to so many. In the story, the god Odin speaks and remembers our particular spell, saying, quote, I know a 12th one. If I see up in a tree a dangling corpse in a noose, I can so carve and color the ruins that the man walks and talks with me." As the Reformation finally reached the shores of the island of witches, its influence wavered

and was almost completely stalled, but eventually the Protestants won the island for Christ, and witchcraft became fully outlawed. And yet some spark of the old strange fire clearly remained in the hearts of the island's people, because today, in our enlightened modern world, world that supposedly has no room for the old gods, the neo-pagan practices of yore are making a vengeful return. To this day, a community of thousands of Icelanders ascribe themselves to the ancient Icelandic mythological religion of Asatru. Some of the practitioners continue in the old antiquated sorcery that marked the old days of the island as truly and obviously dark. But mostly the modern pagans perform their ceremonies

in an attempt at appeasing the earth, nature. These people play with forces they know nothing of, summoning things that cannot be easily unsummed, but then brush away any critique as useless and paranoid because really they claim they're only interested in preserving and worshipping nature, who is their God. And thus we find our way to the predominant genre of witchcraft in Wicca that we see today,

one that is focused on Mother Earth, Gaia, the serpent woman in the belly of the dirt to whom we all, according to them, owe our undying allegiance. But while this seems a more palatable take on the return of witchcraft, one more sensitive to modern sensibilities, the question must be asked, if we believe there is real demonic power behind these things and practices, however harmless they may seem in the grand scheme of things now,

what is the end of this modern wicca? What's the end game? or to put it more succinctly, in what direction is it headed? I've been known to define modern witchcraft as the abuse of something in nature, or nature as a whole, in order to achieve some end that is contrary to nature. And I think in our modern day this definition can serve us quite well, but of course this is clearly a limited definition. It's not the full story.

In the following tale, the last cobblestone that we have to lay as we follow a winding path back to 1690 Salem. Is proof enough of that? Do you guys know that I'm going to be turning 40 this year? What? What? Yeah, looking back, one of my biggest regrets is that I didn't know the basics of investing.

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Whether you have millions in assets or just starting to invest, Joe Garrison will help you reach your goals to grow the kingdom and leave a good legacy for your generations. Visit backwards planning financial.com. That's backwards planning financial.com or call 615-767-2-55 to speak with Joe to prepare for the future. As the resurgence of witchcraft began in earnest, following the emotional and mental bankruptcy afforded to all those who invested in the Enlightenment, a new practice of theirs began to be

warned about in villages all throughout Europe. The Witch's Sabbath is what they called it. It was a title meant to designate something they already believed was happening for all times. time. Basically, the witches of any local area would pick periodic days in which they would all gather in the wilderness or woods together in order to collectively commune with demons, participating in macab rituals and heinous acts that everyone thought would be best not mentioned in decent company. Whether this was a proper title that represented an official practice of witches is somewhat beside the point. It became a thing that many people fully believed was happening, and it was one that they hated with perfect hatred. The Puritans that feature so prominently in the Salem

narrative are no different. They hated the Witch's Sabbath. Remember how we talked about their view of the woods surrounding their settlements as being a devil's playground when they first came to settle the new world? That idea is very practically connected to this one. And so they viewed any who spent an abnormal amount of time in the woods alone with great suspicion, especially if they were women, thinking that they might be engaging in witches' sabbaths, bringing evil and wrath upon their land from God. Frankly, the witch's Sabbath has never been confirmed as a common practice among those who profess to be witches. However, a recent headline has called this idea back into the forefront of our minds, forcing us to reckon with the fact that maybe, just maybe, the hyper-conservative

Puritans in their contemporaries were actually right to fear this rumor. Vice. Corinne Stanhope, a 36-year-old woman living near the Powell River in Canada, recently had her name strewn all over the news because of some unsettling things she discovered on her property. Self-described as a lover and student of nature, Stanhope had been horseback riding near her home when the mother of three stumbled upon a freshly dead deer carcass. While most, dry heaving at the quickly forming smell of rot, would probably spur into a trot and get downwind from the thing as quick as possible, Stanhope enlisted the help of her grandfather to instead drag the carcass back into their property.

Now, bear with me, this isn't a story of Stanhope being a witch herself. Now, what she did was set up the carcass in front of some trail cameras that she had peppered around her yard. She was hoping that the free and fresh enough kill would attract some big wildlife into her land that she could take pictures of. Unfortunately, she got far more than she bargained for. The next morning, Stanhope and her grandpa excitedly checked the pictures from the previous night. To their utter shock and horror, it was not a bear or mountain lion they saw creep up to the carcass,

but rather two women. And the women, blurred by the low resolution of the camera, were wearing only thin loincloths and wigs of jet black hair over apparently blonde hair underneath. Frankly, they both appeared roughed and ragged. And the dark twilight and cool northern air, the women, appearing to be almost ritualistic in their behavior, crept carefully to the dead deer, knelt down beside it, and began to eat. As one appeared to rip into the bloodied flesh with her nails, another slowly raised a bloody hoof up to her mouth and kissed it.

Now for all intents and purposes, this is the behavior of witches. At the very least, it's the behavior of some who may be completely possessed by evil forces, but they engage in the activity in the pictures as if it's sacred to them, as if they invited it. Though disheveled, they don't seem to be out of control or out of wits. At any rate, the camera recorded the two women for many minutes as they feasted on this carcass before finally, seemingly content with whatever their dark and twisted meal had accomplished for them or something else, they left. This horrible rendezvous of the night,

this modern Witch's Sabbath, whether the women were possessed or no, occurred only two minutes' walk away from Stanhope's house. The reason I bring this story up is multifaceted. One, it reveals in visceral imagery, just how relevant this topic is to all of us today. I believe stories like these are already common,

but will only become far more common and more mainstream as witchcraft continues its meteoric resurgence in the modern world. But another reason for exposing ourselves to this macabre tale is that it contextualizes what the people of Salem feared might be going on in the darkness of the tree line. They had heard stories, some of them even far more gruesome than what we just heard about what witches did in the forest at night. And not only did they feel compelled to Christianize

the land to rid it of this heinous and brutal ugliness. But they also felt the urgent need to nip any whiff of this behavior in the bud for the sake of their own children. Now, what I'm saying assumes that everyone's motivations in the Salem incident were pure, and I admit that this is a big assumption. But for now, we're going to read the story sympathetically and leave conclusions on motive for later. With all of that, we return to Salem.

servant Tituba sat dejected in the drawing room of the Paris home. Her little friend, Betty Paris, upon eating the witch cake the native woman had made, quickly began accusing her of being the one to bewitch Betty and her cousin, Abigail Williams. But was it true? Was Tituba's apparent sorrow a facade attempting to placate the ire of these onlookers who had the power to ensure she paid for her crimes? Well, this question will have to wait. For now there are new characters that we must introduce to the story. The man who was most instrumental in acquiring Reverend Sam Paris

as the minister of Salem Village, besides Paris himself, was a prominent leader of the village named Thomas Putnam. Putnam was part of an up-and-coming class of mercantile elites that had a singular goal of setting Salem Village on the map as a commercial success in its own right. Putnam's goal and the goal of other local leaders like him

was to gain the village's civil independence from the larger and more centrally located Salem town in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1688, Mr. Putnam invited the Reverend Paris to preach in Salem Village's church. Putnam had known Paris in his earlier life as a merchant and respected the man. When the need to find a new village minister arose, Putnam immediately recalled how someone told him that Paris had left the merchant world behind to pursue the calling of a divine. Eventually, as we all know, Putnam was able to bring Paris

into the village as her minister, but it was not without some level of difficulty. Another leader of the town, a man named John Porter, was opposed to Paris becoming the new minister. Now, full disclosure, this opposition had little to do with the reverence qualification or skill. Rather, Porter was opposed to him being minister because Porter was opposed on nearly all points to Putnam. The two of them were heads of the most influential families in the village and had been vying for the position of Top Dog for some time by 1692, when the witching events began in the Paris home. In his effort to undermine Putnam's recommendation

for the man who would lead the village in pointing their lives towards heaven, Porter hoped to gain credibility from the town by flexing his power of persuasion over the rest of the village elders. Now, of course, he failed to accomplish this. And many believe that this was just another nail in the coffin, perhaps one of the final ones, of Putnam and Porter's increasingly public animosity towards one another.

Some believe that this openly secret feud between the two city leaders played a major role in what comes next. For the first raving accusations of Tituba by the crazed and worsening Betty Paris, almost exactly coincided with the apparent bewitching of five other townsgirls. John Putnam's daughter, Anne Putnam, Mercy Lewis, Mary Walcott, Mary Warren, and Elizabeth Hubbard. All of the girls participated in an unprecedented and horrifying display of bewitching, which included much of what Betty and Abigail had already been suffering, convulsions, contortions, etc., but also carried new symptoms along with it. The girls began barking like dogs.

Some of them speaking in evil-sounding tongues and letting other world again, guttural sounds escape from their mouths. The girls attempted to hurt themselves repeatedly in graphic displays of reckless abandon and lack of care for one's well-being. In fact, Anne Putnam, when all was said and done with the trials, continued to decline in her health until her untimely death in 1716. After she passed, her doctor cited the long-continued strain, kept upon her muscular and nervous organization during the witchcraft scenes as utterly destructive to her physical constitution. The girls described visions of crone women flying through the winter mist in the dusk skies of their home. They raved on about being visited by three specters in the form of three

women in the night who threatened them with harm upon harm were they to resist the evil influence that had befallen them. Finally, the girls began to echo the accusations levied against Tituba by Betty Paris and Abigail Williams, claiming her as one of the nighttime sprites that was so frequently afflicting them. They said that Tituba had shared stories with them of how liberating it was to give oneself over to the devil's charms, accepting his power over others for the small price of one's soul in return. Some of them even claimed to have been shown by Tituba how the deal is made when alone in the woods with the woman. However, the girls also claimed that Titippa was not alone in her witching.

The two other specters were also known to the townsfolk, and what's more, already had an air of degenerate suspicion lingering over them. With the eyes of all fixed upon them, with the eyes of the powerful and influential Thomas Putnam fixed upon them in horror, the girls, with little Anne Putnam at their head, accused Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne of witchcraft. Two Saras and a Tituba. An unholy triad of witches had descended upon the quiet and cold village, and thus we have the first lineup of defendant and plaintiff. With Thomas Putnam and Reverend Paris fully believing the claims of the girls, a trial was inevitable.

Great authority was now given to the testimonies of seven children, and justice would have to be reckoned. Putnam, along with three friends and colleagues, charged on horseback from Salem Village to Salem Town to press formal charges of witchcraft against the women. Upon reception of the charges, Good, Osborne, and Tituba were immediately taken into custody by the authority of county magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hawthorne. The two justices ordered an examination for the following day, and after subduing the talkative crowd of curious townfolk, began their interrogation of Tituba.

We will end with the transcript of her examination. Please join us next week for part three of our look into the incident in Salem as we begin to tackle the actual trials and how what began as a smaller and historically negligible affair quickly spiraled out of control for everyone involved. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your support. And remember, do not partake in the works of darkness. Instead, expose them. Who is to blame here?

Is it witches? Is it greedy and overzealous village leaders? Is it petty and jealous young girls? Well, we're going to have to be slow to say one way or another. But in light of that admonition from Paul, we will do our very best to find out. The examination of Tituba dated March 1, 1692. Why do you hurt these poor children?

What harm have they done to you? They done no harm to me. and I don't hurt them at all. Why have you done it? I've done nothing. I can't tell when the devil works. What does the devil tell you when he hurts them? No, he tells me nothing.

Do you ever see something appear in some shape? No, I never see anything. What familiarity have you with the devil? Or what is it that you converse with at all? Tell the truth. Who is it that hurts them? The devil, for aught I know? What appearance?

or how does he appear when he hurts them? With what shape or what is he like when he hurts them? Like a man, I think. Yesterday I was alone in the chamber. I saw a thing like a man that told me to serve him and told him no, I wouldn't do such a thing. Instead, it was Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne who've been hurting the children.

They told me to hurt the children and would have me if I wouldn't do it. They told me to hurt them so that they wouldn't hurt me And so at first I agreed. But then afterward, I told them that I wouldn't do it anymore. Would they have had you hurt the children last night? Yes, but I was sorry about it. And I said that I wouldn't do it anymore, but told them that I would fear God.

But why didn't you just say that from the beginning? Well, they tell me that I had done so before, and therefore I should go on. And there were four women, and then the man. But I only knew of Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good. How does the devil appear to you? One like a man, as I was going to sleep, came to me. This was when the children were first hurt. But he said he would kill the children. He said that they would never be well, and he said that he would do this if I wouldn't serve him. Is that the same man that appeared before you, that appeared last night and told you this? Yes. What other likenesses

beside a man has he appeared to you in. Sometimes like a hag, sometimes like a great black dog, four times. But what does he say to you? He tells me to serve him, and that was a good way. That was the black dog, but I told him I was afraid. He told me he would be worse than to me if I didn't serve him. What did you say to him after that? I answered that I will serve you no longer, but he told me he would do me hurt.

What other creatures have you seen? A bird. What bird? A little yellow bird. Where does he keep it? He keeps it with himself, with all the other pretty things that he has besides. What other pretty things?

Well, he hasn't showed me them yet, but he said he would show them to me tomorrow, and that if I served him, he would give me the bird. What other creatures did you see? I saw two cats, one red, another black as big as a little dog. What did the cats do? I don't know.

I've only seen him two times. What did they say? They told me to serve him. When did you see them? I saw him last night. Did they do any hurt to you or threaten you? Oh, they scratched me. When did they scratch you?

After prayer. And they scratched me because I wouldn't serve them. And when they went away, I couldn't see. but they stood before the fire. What service do they expect from you? They say to hurt the children more. Did you ever go with Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne to hurt the girls? They're very strong and pull me and make me go with them.

Where'd you go? Up to Mr. Putnam's. Where did you go then? Up to Mr. Putnam's and they make me hurt the child. Who was it that made you go? It was the man. He's very strong. And then the two women, Good and Osborne, but I'm sorry.

How did you go? What did you ride on? I rode upon a stick, and Good and Osborne behind me were taking hold of one another. I don't know how we got so far. I saw no trees of path, but was presently there. How long since you began to hurt the children? I didn't hurt them at all, but at first, he made me hurt them afterwards. Have you seen Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne ride upon a pole?

Yes, and they've held fast by me as I rode upon one too. Did you ever practice witchcraft in your own country? No, no, never before now. Did you see Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne do witchcraft? Yes, today, but that was in the morning. But did you see them do it now while you're being examined? No, no, I did not. I didn't see them do it now, but I saw them hurt at other times.

What clothes does the man appear to you in? Black clothes sometimes. Sometimes a sergeant's coat or some other color. A tall man with white hair, I think. What apparel do the other woman wear? What kind of clothes do they have? I don't know. What kind of clothes do they have?

Black silk hood with a white silk hood. under it with top knots which women i know not but but i've seen them in boston want more hunted cosmos then make your way over to patreon where you can get early access to our content as well as exclusive content in regular dusty tomes and monthly live streams with brian and myself so go to patreon.com slash haunted cosmos and sign up now