Haunted Cemeteries Page 12

  Unfortunately, the arrests did nothing to stop the antics of Parris and Williams. By March, Ann Putnam Jr., Elizabeth Hubbard, and several other children began exhibiting the same symptoms. The infection was spreading.

  Perhaps more upsetting was the finger-pointing that followed. Allegations were made against Rebecca Nurse and Martha Corey. The people of Salem were flabbergasted, perplexed—and worried. Both women were respected citizens and devout members of their respective churches (Rebecca in Salem Village, Martha in Salem Town). How could they be witches? And if they had been turned to the Dark Side, the same could be true for anyone.

  In April, Williams, Putnam, and Mercy Lewis accused Martha Corey’s eighty-one-year-old husband, Giles (who was also a full member of the Salem Town church), of being in league with Satan. Putnam swore that Giles’s demonic spirit had appeared in her home and tried to get her to inscribe her name in the devil’s book. Further, she said she was haunted by the spectre of a man who had died in Corey’s house. (According to some sources, Putnam also swore that Corey had killed the man.)

  Lewis’s testimony was even more damning. On April 14 she stated:

  I saw the Apparition of Giles Corey come and afflict me urging me to write in his book and so he continued most dreadfully to hurt me by times beating me & almost breaking my back tell the day of his examination he did affect and tortor me greviously and also several times sense urging me vehemently to write in his book and I verily believe in my heart that Giles Corey is a dreadful wizard for sense he had been in prison he or his appearance has come and most greviously tormented me.

  Corey had been born in England in 1611, where he most probably married his first wife, Margaret. After her death he remarried, to Mary Bright, who died in 1684. He married a third time, to Martha, in 1690, two years before the troubles in Salem began. Martha had a son from a previous marriage; Corey had daughters from his union with Margaret. The Corey farm was about five miles southwest of Salem, in what today is Peabody.

  Like all those accused of witchcraft, Corey was brought before the local magistrates. He was examined by the tribunal, which read the charges against him. When he refused to enter a plea, he was thrown into jail, where his seventy-year-old wife was already imprisoned. They remained there, wasting away, for five interminable months.

  Much was going on in the outside world, however. The pace of accusations had picked up. Neighbor was testifying against neighbor. By June more than 150 people from what are today Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex Counties were arrested for witchcraft and incarcerated. Others were accused but managed to escape the authorities.

  Trials were conducted in a number of communities, but the most famous were those held in Salem Town. In May, Sir William Phips, governor of the Massachusetts Colony, ordered that a Court of Oyer and Terminer be created to quickly “hear and determine” the cases. There would be little presented in the way of new evidence. The accusations, the reports of the prisoners’ initial examinations, and the original testimony against them were, for the most part, entered into the record as proven evidence.

  The first to be brought before the court was Bridget Bishop, who was tried, convicted, and sentenced in a single day. She was hanged on Gallows Hill two days later, June 10.

  Soon after, the Rev. Cotton Mather, an influential Puritan minister from Boston and a friend of many of the justices, advised the court that spectral evidence (that is to say, claims by the girls that they were being visited and attacked by invisible spirits) was enough for a grand jury to issue arrest warrants, but it should not be admissible during the actual trials. His admonition was ignored.

  On July 19, five women, including Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Good, were hanged. On August 19, five more people were hanged, including John Proctor, who was the central character of playwright Arthur Miller’s 1953 version of the witchcraft trials, The Crucible. The life of Proctor’s wife, Elizabeth, was spared. Though convicted, she was pregnant, so her execution was stayed until after the baby’s birth. The hanging was never carried out. Her son was born in jail, but in the end, she was set free.

  On September 9, Martha Corey, along with five others, was sentenced to die, but Giles wasn’t one of them. When brought before the court, he again refused to answer the charges against him and “stood mute.” By law he could not be tried, condemned, and executed until he entered a plea.

  Historians have speculated that Giles was avoiding a trial because he thought if he were found guilty—which he undoubtedly would have been—his land would be confiscated by the state and not turned over to his heirs. Legally that was not supposed to happen, but the fact was that many of those who were convicted did lose their property. Regardless of his motivation, Corey’s act of defiance clearly showed his contempt for the judges and the proceedings.

  Unfortunately, there was no prohibition against trying to force a plea or a confession out of a prisoner. As a result, the court issued one of the most historic and barbarous rulings in North American jurisprudence: They ordered Corey to undergo peine forte et dure, or pressing, in an attempt to make him talk. It was torture pure and simple. Heavy stones would be placed on top of his chest until either he pleaded or the weight broke his rib cage and killed him. Either way, it was a win-win situation for the prosecution.

  On the morning of September 19, Giles Corey was stripped naked and dragged from prison to an open field. A shallow pit had been dug, into which a large piece of wood was placed. George Corwin, the Essex County sheriff, ordered Corey to lie down on the board, and another plank was placed on top of him.

  First one rock, then two more were placed on the board, then dozens. At any time while the stones and bricks were being stacked on top, Corey could have stopped the torment by entering a plea. But he refused to speak. Despite the unthinkable pain he endured, he remained silent. For three days the stalemate continued. Finally, on September 22, the end seemed near. Corey had not eaten or drunk in days. His face was red and swollen, his mouth parched. Corwin saw the old man’s lips moving and sensed victory. He knelt on the ground and moved close to the victim’s lips. He was expecting the prisoner to relent, or confess, or beg for mercy.

  But instead he heard the two words that have echoed down through the centuries:

  “More weight!”

  Then, in his dying breath, Corey called out, “I curse you, sheriff, and I curse all of Salem.”

  And with that, the load finally took its toll. The man’s bones and lungs collapsed. Giles Corey was dead. He was buried where he lay, in an unmarked grave. That same day, eight more people, including Corey’s beloved wife, Martha, were hanged.

  On October 3, the Rev. Increase Mather added his voice to that of his son Cotton and condemned the use of spectral evidence in court. Five days later, Governor Phips, who had been largely absent throughout the summer and was appalled when he found out what had been going on in Salem, commanded that such testimony was no longer admissible in trials. On October 29, he disbanded the Court of Oyer and Terminer altogether.

  Perhaps the townspeople had lost their bloodlust. Or maybe they finally realized that all the girls’ and villagers’ testimony, much of which had already been recanted, had been a lie.

  In November, a Superior Court was put in place to hear all the remaining cases. By the end of January 1693, all but three prisoners had been set free because spectral evidence was the only proof that had ever been brought against them. Those last three were convicted but were later released as well.

  No executions were carried out after that last terrible day in late September 1692. In all, nineteen people (fourteen women and five men) had been hanged. Four more prisoners had died in jail awaiting trial or execution. And poor Giles Corey had suffered a gruesome, agonizing death under a pile of stones. To this day, he remains the only person in American history to be pressed to death under court order.

  And the rest of the story? Before the end of the century, at least a dozen jurists asked their churches for forgiveness for their part in the blood
bath. As for the girls who started the whole mess, it’s thought that Abigail Williams died within a few years. Betty Parris got married and reared five children. In 1706, Ann Putnam Jr. asked to be forgiven when she joined the Salem Village church, but she never admitted any deliberate deception. She vowed that she had been tricked by the devil into accusing innocent people.

  In the two decades after the trials, many survivors (or their relatives) filed petitions to reverse the convictions of those who had been found guilty but managed to survive the mania. Three reversals were approved in 1703; twenty-two more petitions were granted in 1711. Monetary compensation was also provided for survivors. In 1957, the State of Massachusetts formally exonerated everyone else who had been convicted of witchcraft, and on October 31, 2001— Halloween—the state officially pardoned five of the women by name.

  The mass hysteria has long passed. Almost no buildings or sites associated with the 1692 trials are still standing. The courthouse and jails are gone. So too are the gibbets on Gallows Hill. The exact location of the original scaffold is lost in memory, as are the gravesites of most of those hanged for witchcraft (although many are thought to be somewhere on Gallows Hill).

  There are a few “relics” left from the days of the trials. Rebecca Nurse’s homestead in Danvers is open as a museum. Judge Jonathan Corwin’s house in Salem, where many of the accused had been physically examined for “witches’ marks,” can also be visited. (Such marks—ordinary moles, warts, bumps on the skin, discolored patches, or other skin abnormalities, especially ones that were insensitive—were believed to be points where the accused had been touched by Satan.)

  Then there are the graveyards.

  The Charter Street Cemetery was opened in 1637, making it the first burial grounds in Salem and one of the oldest in the United States. Among the 347 identified graves are those for two of the trial judges, Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne. It’s also where guests can find the bones of Giles Corey’s second wife, Mary.

  But the graveyard that’s haunted, Howard Street Cemetery, is about four blocks away. Even though it wasn’t established until 1801, more than a century after the Salem trials, it’s visited by one of the tragedy’s most famous victims: none other than Giles Corey himself.

  Why would he return to a graveyard that didn’t exist when he was alive? It’s assumed that the ground where Corey was pressed and buried later became part of the Howard Street Cemetery or was very close by.

  Through the years, visitors to the graveyard have said they’ve seen an apparition (which they’ve assumed to be Corey’s) floating among the headstones. Others have said they’ve felt his clammy touch.

  And what about his curse? Supposedly many of the sheriffs since George Corwin have either died of heart attacks or suffered from other heart conditions. There are unconfirmed reports that some of them have woken to find Corey’s ghost in their bedrooms. A few also felt pressure on their chests as they lay in bed, which didn’t stop until the phantom disappeared.

  But don’t forget: Corey didn’t just curse the constable. He cursed the whole town. Rumor has it that he manifests before any great disaster strikes. For example, many people said they saw his spectre just prior to the Great Salem Fire that destroyed much of the city—more than 1,350 buildings—on June 25, 1914. The question is: Does Corey’s ghost herald such devastation, or does he cause it?

  Even with forty thousand inhabitants, Salem remains a quaint New England city. Its historical waterfront, homes, and downtown make for a peaceful, relaxing holiday, except for the month of October when Wicca-related mayhem takes over the community—much of it officially sanctioned by tourist officials as part of the annual “Halloween Happenings” festivities.

  When you visit, by all means stop by the Corwin House, Gallows Hill, and the Old Burying Grounds. Check out the Salem Witch Museum. But also take a quiet stroll among the tombstones and markers in the Howard Street Cemetery. If Giles Corey is in the mood, he may provide you with a first-hand link to Salem’s infamous past.

  Chapter 19

  The York Village Witch

  Just because hundreds of people were falsely accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, that doesn’t mean the Dark Arts weren’t being performed in New England. A hundred years later, the apprehensive citizens of a Maine hamlet spread such rumors about one of their own. Has she returned to plead her case?

  York Village, also known as Old York, is one of four small communities that make up the popular summer resort town of York, in the southeast corner of Maine. (The others are York Harbor, York Beach, and Cape Neddick.) But in the 1600s it was just another tiny British settlement trying to make a foothold in the New World.

  Along with everything else came the foibles and prejudices of the day, including the fear of witchcraft. York Village was far from alone. That infamous bastion of seventeenth- century intolerance, Salem, Massachusetts, was only forty-six miles down the road.

  Cindy, an aficionado of ghost stories and tales of the supernatural, had visited the few Salem sites remaining from the days of its witchcraft trials. But now, on holiday with her family in York Beach, she decided to take an afternoon to visit the carefully preserved historical buildings at old York Village—as well as the grave of Mary Nasson, who was suspected of being a witch.

  Cindy didn’t believe in witchcraft. Yes, she knew there was a Mother Earth–centric religion called Wicca, but that was something else entirely. What she disputed was whether the clichéd “pointed hat–ride on a broomstick” kind of old crone popularized by fairy tales ever really existed.

  What she did believe was that people throughout history have been persecuted for thinking or acting in unorthodox ways that made them a threat to the status quo. Beginning in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Catholic Church began to charge those who didn’t blindly obey its doctrine with heresy. Imprisonment, torture, and executions were approved under the Holy Office of the Inquisition, legalized by papal bull. Before long, the concept of witchcraft as a person being in league with the devil was cemented in the public’s mind.

  Many of the people who were accused had no quarrel with the Church and were completely innocent. Among them were the wizened country healers whose deep understanding of herbs, potions, and poultices in an age before modern medicine made them suspect by the superstitious uneducated. Even after the end of the Inquisition, “granny nurses” were often the target of whisper campaigns. And in eighteenth-century New England, one such victim was Mary Nasson.

  Mary was one of those goodly rural curers, what some called a white witch. She may not have been universally liked, but she was never publicly condemned for her practice. In fact, villagers frequently sought her services, for everything from love amulets to natural (what are now called homeopathic) medicines. At one point she was asked to perform an exorcism!

  Mary didn’t fit the conventional stereotype of a witch. She was young, pretty, and happily married with at least one child. And when she died in 1774, she was only twenty-nine.

  Her grieving husband, Samuel, buried her in the small cemetery in the village green. In an unusual move, he laid a large, flat single stone on the ground to cover the grave. He erected a stone marker at her feet—a common practice at the time—bearing the likeness of an angel’s face, halo, and wings. At the other end, of course, was the headstone, which had a chiseled portrait of Mary above a lengthy, loving epitaph.

  The inscription made no mention of Mary’s notorious reputation. But it didn’t matter. From the time she was placed beneath the ground, everyone in York Village referred to the burial site as the Witch’s Grave.

  Samuel swore that he put the unconventional slab over the grave to prevent free-roaming cattle and other animals from disturbing it. Townsfolk suspected the stone was actually there to keep the witch from getting out.

  Cindy turned off York Street onto Lindsay Road and parked in the small lot near the Old Schoolhouse. Her first stop was the visitor center, located in the Remick Barn, where she
was able to purchase her pass to enter all the museums on the grounds. As the docent handed Cindy a map, he reminded her to make sure she saw the Witch’s Grave when she went to the cemetery. More people visited it, he pointed out, than any other burial plot in the graveyard.

  “Be careful, though,” he jokingly added. “A lot of times, ravens gather around the grave. They’re her familiars, you know.”

  A huge grin beamed across the teenager’s face. Although Cindy already knew what he was talking about, she allowed him to explain that a familiar was a demon, disguised in the form of a common animal such as a cat or a crow, which acted as a witch’s go-between with Satan. It was clear to Cindy that the young man loved telling the old wives’ tale.

  “And don’t forget to lay your hands on the giant slab over poor Mary. It gets pretty hot . . . I mean compared to the other stone markers there. I think it’s because”—the man leaned in close to finish the sentence in a mock conspiratorial tone—“she’s a witch!”

  Cindy laughed and thanked him. He was probably a summer intern, a local who enjoyed sharing his town’s folklore with strangers.

  “I’ll be sure to give her your ‘Hello,’” Cindy promised as she stepped back into the midday sun and began her rounds.

  She had her day cut out for her. There were nine structures on the property, seven of them listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and almost all of them dated from the mid-1700s. She decided to start at the far end of the village on the other side of the York River, at the Elizabeth Perkins House, and make her way back toward York Road. She’d finish up her day at the village green.

  The temperature had dropped comfortably by late afternoon when she finally walked across the grassy expanse into the center of the Old Burying Yard. The cemetery was the second-oldest graveyard in York, and it had been in active use from 1705 until the 1850s.

  The York Village cemetery was compact and well-tended, with its worn tombstones all standing upright and the lawn newly mown. Seventy-three graves had been identified, but surely there were many more that were unmarked and forgotten over the centuries.