The Demons Of Newbury

For the Puritans to doubt the existence of Satan and his imps would have been as blasphemous as doubting the existence of God hmself, and they saw each event either as a divine providence or as evidence of the presence of the devil and his minions.

These excerpts from Cotton Mather's many accounts of the struggle between good and evil in Massachusetts show just how real the devil and the spirits of darkness seemed to the colonists. Mather got the details by conducting a survery, sponsored by Harvard College, of New England ministers.

Given the witch-hunting temperment of the times, it is not surprising that there flourished an abundand lore of witches, demons and wonders, from what Cotton Mather called 'The Invisible World.'
Here is one account:

In the year 1679, the house of William Morse of Newbury, was 'infested with demons after a most horrid manner, " Cotton Mather writes.

Bricks, sticks and stones were thrown at the Morse farmhouse by an invisible hand, and while the family sat at supper, ashes were heaped on their plates and on their heads. When Morse tried to write, his inkhorn was snatched away and his cap was torn from his head. The demons pulled his hair, pinched and scratched him, stole his shoes, pricked him with awls and needles, and pelted him with clods of frozen cow manure. Mrs. Morse's milk pails were also befouled with dung, and she was imprisoned in the cellar when an invisible hand shut the trapdoor on her and pulled a table on top of it.

A little boy belonging to the family suffered most from one demon's molestations. He was flug about until it seemed his brains would be beaten out, hurled into the kitchen fire, pricked on the back with a fork, an iron spindle, and knives.
When possessed, he barked like a dog and then clucked.
The specter snatched food from him and doused him with the contents of the chamber pot.

The child complained that a man called Paul appeared to him and was the cause of it all.
On one occasion the boy disappeared entirely, until at last he was found 'creeping on one side, sadly dumb and lame'.
When he was able to express himself, he said that 'Paul had carried him over the top of the house and hurled him against a cartwheel in the barn.' And indeed, traces of barley from the barn floor were found clinging to his garments.

Before these torments came to an end, the invisible hand that did all these things began to put on an astonishing visibility. Witnesses were able to see a ghostly fist beating Morse and saw a vision of a black child. Later, they heard a drumming on the boards and a voice that sang "Revenge! Revenge! Sweet is revenge!"
Now they called upon God for help. Whereupon there followed a mournful note, several times uttering these expressions, "Alas! Alas! We knock no more, we knock no more!" and there was an end to it all.