Halloween Capital of America

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Photo: Mandelbrot

On the morn­ing of August 19, 1692, in the vil­lage of Boxford, Massachusetts, my col­lat­eral or puta­tive ances­tor Rebecca Eames was arrested and taken in chains to the town of Salem, fif­teen miles away, to be inter­ro­gated in the pres­ence of three young women pur­ported in the indict­ment to have been afflicted, tor­tured, con­sumed, wasted and tor­mented in sundry acts of witch­craft per­formed by the spec­tral body of Rebecca Eames. She had also been observed con­sort­ing with the Devil, a short, dark-complected man wear­ing a black hat and car­ry­ing a book under his arm. Her response to the ques­tions put to her that Friday after­noon was taken down in writ­ing by a local tai­lor recruited more for his nim­ble fin­gers than for his abil­ity to con­strue a sen­tence. Rebecca said that for two or three months she had been in the snare of the Devil — and the tai­lor, whose name was Ezekiel Cheever, wrote it down — the Devil, who appeared to her not as a man but as a small, ugly black horse; she knew not but that he might come once a day as a mouse or a rat; she knew not but that he per­suaded her to fol­low his wicked ways and renounce God and Christ; she knew not but that she gave him soul and body, but she would not own that she had been bap­tized by him. She said, and the tai­lor wrote it down, that she had afflicted Mary Warrin and Timothy Swan by stick­ing of pins, but would not own that she had signed the Devil’s book when he would have had her do it, although when the mag­is­trate asked, Did not the Devil threaten to tear you in pieces? she answered, Yes, he threat­ened to tear me in pieces.