Martha Carrier.
The faculties and manifestations which nearly two centuries ago were deemed to constitute witchcraft, and the mode of eliciting proof of that crime then, stand forth very conspicuously in the history of the wife and children of Thomas Carrier of Andover.
The Examination of Martha Carrier, May 31, 1692.
“Q. Abigail Williams, who hurts you? A. Goody Carrier of Andover.
“Q. Elizabeth Hubbard, who hurts you? A. Goody Carrier.
“Q. Susan Sheldon, who hurts you? A. Goody Carrier; she bites me, pinches me, and tells me she would cut my throat if I did not sign her book. Mary Walcott said she afflicted her, and brought the book to her.
“Q. What do you say to this you are charged with? A. I have not done it. Susan Sheldon cried, she looks upon the black man. Ann Putnam complained of a pin stuck in her. Q. What black man is that? A. I know none. Mary Warren cried out she was pricked. Q. What black man did you see? A. I saw no black man but your own presence. Q. Can you look upon these and not knock them down? A. They will dissemble if I look upon them. You see you look upon them and they fall down. A. It is false; the devil is a liar. I looked upon none since I came into the room. Susan Sheldon cried out in a trance, I wonder what could you murder thirteen persons! Mary Walcott testified the same: that there lay thirteen ghosts! All the afflicted fell into intolerable outcries and agonies. Elizabeth Hubbard and Ann Putnam testified the same: that she had killed thirteen at Andover. A. It is a shameful thing that you should mind these folks, who are out of their wits. Q. Do not you see them? A. If I do speak you will not believe me. You do see them, said the accusers. A. You lie; I am wronged. There is a black man whispering in her ear, said many of the afflicted. Mercy Lewis in a violent fit, was well, upon the examinant’s grasping her arm. The tortures of the afflicted were so great that there was no enduring of it, so that she was ordered away, and to be bound hand and foot with all expedition; the afflicted in the mean while almost killed, to the great trouble of all spectators, magistrates, and others.
“Note. As soon as she was well bound they all had strange and sudden ease. Mary Walcott told the magistrates, that this woman told her, she had been a witch this forty years.”
The foregoing record shows the fearful ordeal to which any one might be subjected upon whom an accusation of witchcraft fell, and the hopelessness of escape where spectral evidence was admitted and held to be reliable. Here was a woman who, it seems, had been conscious of spirit presence with her for “forty years,” and her constitutional properties which permitted this were so luminous in the spiritual atmosphere, or medium of vision by inner eyes, that the clairvoyant girls readily caught sight of her, readily felt influences from her, and therefore accused her of tormenting them.