Soon after the commencement of prosecutions, suspicion alighted on one of more refinement, intelligence, efficiency, godliness, and respectability than the females first arrested. Martha, wife of Giles Corey,—aged, prayerful, but bright; disbelieving in any witchcraft; doubting the existence of any witches; discountenancing searches for any,—said that the eyes of the magistrates were blinded, and that she could open them. She possessed spiritual and theological knowledge uncommon in her day and vicinity, and must have held beliefs and convictions derived from other sources than those at which her neighbors obtained their supplies. She was aloof from the prevalent delusion devil-ward.
Though a church member, a woman of prayer, of reputed, and doubtless of genuine, piety, Martha Corey was very early sensed by the Anns Putnam, mother and daughter, as the source of emanations which tortured them. Therefore she must be a witch. Grounds for such conclusion were not necessarily fanciful and fallacious. When and where natural outworkings from mediumistic properties and conditions were mistaken for symptoms of witchcraft, Martha Corey might easily be convicted of diabolism. We credit the allegation of Ann Putnam the younger that she was annoyed and afflicted by Mrs. Corey even while the two were miles apart. But we decline to admit that Mrs. Corey necessarily or probably had any voluntary connection with the girl’s sufferings. Either unintelligent natural forces attracted the woman’s effluvia to Ann, or else Tituba’s “tall man,” or some other hidden intelligent being, formed connections and applied processes which brought elements of these two persons into conjunction, and thus produced in the girl intense physical disturbances and sufferings, and attendant liberation of her inner perceptive faculties.
Ann’s uncle, Edward Putnam, together with Ezekiel Cheever, because of the girl’s repeated outcries upon Mrs. Corey, only just one week after the sending of Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osburn to jail, concluded to make a call upon sister Corey, who was “in church covenant” with them, and learn from her own lips what she would say relative to the suspicions that had been raised concerning her.
These just and considerate men,—for they were such,—probably seeing the possibility that the child might be mistaken as to the person who was causing her to suffer, very properly called upon Ann when they were about to start on their way to the woman’s residence, and asked the suffering girl to describe the dress Mrs. Corey was then wearing. Their obvious design was to test the accuracy of the child’s perceptions. But that purpose was not accomplished. The child pleaded inability to see, and stated that blindness was put upon her just then by the accused woman herself. The sequel indicates that Mrs. Corey foresensed the visit she was about to receive, imbibed knowledge of the intended test, and of action to thwart its success. Though dwelling and being miles apart as physical persons, those two females may have then been practically together as spirits, and have mutually sensed the thoughts, acts, and conditions of each other as far as each avoided intentional concealment. All of Ann’s statements may have been in strict accordance with facts actually witnessed and experienced by her inner self. There is no need to assume that she feigned or falsified at all, even if no invisible personal operators were concerned in what then transpired; and certainly not, if Tituba’s “tall man” and his associates were then present and acting, as they may have been. Perhaps invisible actors, holding both of these impressible subjects under psychological control, either imparted to, or withheld from either of them, just such knowledge and perceptions as would further the purposes of the operators—which may have been either simply a manifestation of their own powers, or an intimation to the adroit men that they were undertaking to deal with something which it would not be easy to outwit or thwart. Also other and very different purposes may have actuated them.
Some spirits, at some times, have ability, through some mortal lips, to express their thoughts to the embodied, and to wreathe their own emotions over faces they borrow, even while the spirit, the selfhood, of the mortal form usurped is conscious of what is being done through it. Remember that the form of the conscious Agassiz was, against his own will, made to obey Townshend’s mind. Perhaps Madam Corey’s expressions of thoughts and emotions were sometimes prompted, and at other times modified by an unseen intelligence temporarily cohabiting with her own.
When the two brethren of the church, going forth on their solemn, self-imposed mission, had arrived at her home, Madam Corey welcomed them with a smile; notwithstanding she possessed and expressed very exact knowledge of the ominous nature and the purpose of their call. Her saluting words were, “I know what you are come for. You are come to talk with me about being a witch; but I am none. I cannot help other people’s talking of me.” This probably had reference to Ann Putnam’s saying that she was afflicted by this speaker. She soon asked the men whether Ann, whose accusations had prompted their call, “had described the clothes she then wore.” Learning that her dress had not been described, “a smile came over her face.” Somebody’s consciousness of power, issuing from her form, to obscure the child’s vision, probably expressed itself in that smile; and the reflection that the child was operated upon by forces within or action through Mrs. Corey’s own form, and therefore not necessarily by the devil, and inference thence that the girl was not necessarily bewitched, was followed by her saying, “she did not think there were any witches.” She knew enough of spiritual things to enable her to observe the broad distinction, overlooked by her cotemporaries, that may exist between some spirits and the devil; and also between persons whose inner senses were cognizant of spirit presence and action as naturally as the outer eye was of the sunlight, between these and such other human beings, could there be any such, and she thought there could not, who made a covenant with the devil, which covenant was a necessary preliminary to being a witch. “She,” very reasonably, “did not think there were any” such “witches;” and only such were sought for by her visitors and the startled public.
This woman was intelligent, courteous, and devout—was capable of understanding that witch, as then defined, necessarily meant a person who had voluntarily entered into a distinct compact with a factitious devil. Her sensings in spirit spheres found no native-born monstrosity there, and she could say in good conscience that she did not believe there existed any such witches as her visitors and fellow church members were on the hunt for. At the same time she may have known, probably did know, that her own spirit and the spirit of little Ann Putnam could come into such communings as would give them accurate and conscious mutual perception of many unspoken thoughts and experiences in each other.
Mrs. Corey, as we view her, was very mediumistic, and was also a woman whose habitual aspirations were after things true, pure, and excellent. But no amount of good or bad moral and religious qualities either constitutes or nullifies ability for mutual visibility and rapport between mediumistic persons. All such are impressible more by virtue of their organisms and native properties, external and internal, than by any intellectual and moral acquisitions, whether good or bad.
Properties issuing from Mrs. Corey’s system probably pinched and otherwise tortured Ann Putnam; the girl knew their special mundane issuance, and innocently gave utterance to the knowledge. She did so innocently and in good faith. But the divulgence of facts often brings fearful sequences.
When clear-headed logicians, being also conscientious and true men, as well as holders of undoubting faith that none but covenanted devotees to a wily devil could obtain knowledge and work harm by mysterious processes,—when such men took this case into careful consideration, the facts stated by the girl were to them proof that Mrs. Corey was the devil’s minion, and therefore must be consigned to a witch’s doom—death.