Abigail Hobbs was in company with, and made deaf by her, and knew her to be a witch.
Mary Warren had the book brought to her by Sarah Good.
Elizabeth Hubbard, Mary Walcott, Ann Putnam, Mercy Lewis, Sarah Vibber, and Abigail Williams (all of them members of the necromantic circle), were afflicted by Sarah Good, and saw her shape.
Richard Patch, William Allen, John Hughes, had her appear to them apparitionally.
This long array of names of impressibles existing in the Village at so early a time as the very first attempt to find a witchcraft-worker there, indicates that Tituba’s visitant had been an expert selector of a spot for operation. He began his work in the midst of abundant and fit materials with which to carry out a purpose to obtain close approach to, and to put forth startling action upon and among embodied mortals. It may be learned in the hereafter that he was suggester of the visible as well as of the invisible Circle which met at the parsonage; and learned, also, that his forces magnetized the members of each. That so many mediumistic ones, a large proportion of them wonderfully facile and plastic, were hunted up in “the short space of two months,” among the five hundred scattered inhabitants of that Village, is surprising. Only keen eyes and active search could have found thus many in so short a time. Germs of prophets must have been abundant there, and must have developed rapidly under the culture of the supernal gardener who discovered their abundance and quality, and took them under his special watch and care.
While under examination, Sarah Good said, “None here see the witches but the afflicted and themselves;” that is, none but the afflicted and the accused; none but the clairvoyant. By witches she meant spirits and semblances of mortals and spirits; and she said in substance none others but we who behold with our internal eyes see the hovering and operating intelligences and forms. This unschooled woman then announced a great and instructive truth. She taught that the two classes—the tortured accusers and the accused both—possessed powers of vision which other people did not; that they possessed such clairvoyance and other fitful capabilities and susceptibilities as pertained to only a quite limited number of persons, and that these physical peculiarities were the source of the existing mysteries.
It should be ever borne in mind that the powers which Mrs. Good had reference to are generally very fitful in their operations. Those who sometimes see spirits and spirit scenes are seldom able to do it at will, or with any very long continuance without interruption. The most of them might, every few minutes, say with Tituba, “I am blind now, I cannot see.”
Having stated that the accusers and accused, and only they and others constituted like them, could see the hidden persons and forces which were there acting, acted upon, or being employed in putting forth mysterious inflictions upon the distressed girls, Sarah Good forthwith charged her fellow-prisoner, Sarah Osburn, with then “hurting the children.” The fair inference is, that she saw the spirit or the apparition of her companion then seemingly at work upon the sufferers; and Mrs. Good may only have described what her inner optics were then beholding. Virtually she was confessing that she was herself clairvoyant, and consequently very near kin to a witch, if not actually one in that dreaded sisterhood. But clairvoyance pertained to the accusers also, and both sets of clear seers, if their powers were a crime, deserved like treatment.
“Looking upon them” (the afflicted children) “at the same time and not being afflicted, must consequently be a witch.” The above is from the records of her examination. Apparently she was looking upon the children while alleging that the then absent Sarah Osburn was there present and was occasioning their sufferings, while yet Mrs. Good was not herself afflicted; this was deemed proof that she was a witch. What unstated premises led to that conclusion we do not know. Our fathers had many notions pertaining to witchcraft that are now buried in oblivion, and it is often very difficult to find the reasons for their inferences. We are baffled here, and can say only that indication is furnished that under some circumstances a woman’s failure to become bewitched was proof that she was herself a witch—because she did not catch a special disease, she must already be having it.
Constable Braybrook, who had charge of her during the night between the first two days of her examination, deposed that he set three men as a guard to watch her at his own house; and that in the morning the guard informed him that “during the night Sarah Good was gone some time from them, both barefoot and barelegged.” From another source he learned that on “that same night, Elizabeth Hubbard, one of the afflicted persons, complained that Sarah Good came and afflicted her, being barefoot and barelegged, and Samuel Sibley, that was one that was attending (courting) of Elizabeth Hubbard, struck Sarah Good on the arm, as Elizabeth Hubbard said.”—Woodward’s Historical Series, No. I, p. 27.