The New World Times

     No one had ever seen anything like this in Salem Village. One girl flailed her arms and twisted her body into a knot. Another screamed nonsense for hours. A third girl threw a Holy Bible at her father, the minister. It seemed as if another was being choked and pinched by an invisible force. These acts, over the past few months, have begun a terrible and mysterious chapter in this community’s history.

     To better understand this turmoil that has brought the trials of many and the hangings of 19 people, The New World Times has interviewed four of the young girls who are at the heart of these events. In the community, people have not been able to fully agree on what has really happened to the girls. Some say they are making up their symptoms purely to get attention. Others say they are the victims of a terrible conspiracy of witchcraft against our pious society. Perhaps the girls themselves will help get to the bottom of this troubling mystery. Here are their words:

 

Q: Betty Parris, you were the first girl in Salem Village to fall ill. Is it true that you practiced fortune telling this past winter before this all began?

BP: I only tried it to see my fate, to see whether there is anything to look forward to in my future. A servant, Tituba, taught it to me. She showed me how to use egg white in a glass of water and look for the image that was created in the glass. I swear I saw a coffin. I worry what this might mean, yet it is not my fault for I am only nine. It must be the doing of witches who hurt me so.

Q: How does it feel, Betty, when they hurt you? What goes through your head in that moment?

BP: It all started at the beginning of this year. I kept forgetting things. I could not concentrate. Then it got worse. My father Samuel Parris, who is the best minister that we have ever had, was telling me not to act naughty at church, and I suddenly found myself barking like a dog. I do not know what it is. It is not me I swear. It was the Devil and his witches. When I hear prayers I want to scream. An invisible force makes me act this way.

Q: Abigail Williams, you are an orphan who currently lives with your relatives, the Parris’s. You began experiencing trauma around the same that Betty did. Do you think you somehow caught it from her?

AW: Of course I did not catch it from another victim. It was out of either of our control. The witches did it. Tituba did it. Sarah Osborne did it. Sarah Good did it. There were others too - 40 witches I saw drinking blood in a spectral vision. I told the court that too. And if people had to go to jail, so be it.

Q: How can you be sure that these certain women did this to you?

AW: I know it was them. It was their face in a bird's body pecking me from above and below. They will get their justice, even if they must be hanged. Besides, these people are either against our society or strangers to it. Would it not make sense for them to be hurting me this way?

Q: What was it like to appear before the people you accused in a courtroom?

A: It was terrible. I could feel their pinches and pokes with every move they made. I even fell down and had fits -- that was all their witchcraft power.

Q. Have you ever read a book that the Parris family has in their library? It is a big book, made a few years ago, called: “Memorable Providences,” about witchcraft and a washerwoman named Goody Glover. Some people think you may have seen the book and gotten some ideas from it. How do you respond to these accusations?

AW: I have never heard of such a book. I am only 11. How would I have read such a thing?

Q: How was your life before all of this happened?

AW: To be honest, it was a little tough. I am an orphan. The minister and his wife have never treated me that well. And the only person who I can talk with these days is Betty. Besides, we had war last year with the Indians. That may have been how my parents disappeared but I am not even sure myself. They are just gone. Now I am lonely and scared.

Q: Ann Putnam, you were the third girl to become afflicted. Some people in Salem have noticed that the people you accused of witchcraft are your family’s enemies. Is this a coincidence?

AP: I do not know what you are implying. I believe that these people haunt me because our families have disagreed in the past. Even my mother will tell you that I have been bewitched for this reason. She has seen the spirits too.

Q: Mary Warren, at 21, you are the eldest girl to be afflicted. How did it feel to be oldest?

MW: Well, sometimes it has been a little awkward. I feel like I am out of place. Maybe I am the only one taking this the way an adult would.

Q: How do you feel about your home life?

MW: I live with the Proctors for I am an orphan. They have forced me to be a servant. Also, I do not think they believe me when I tell them about these spiritual attacks I am having. It seems like they are doubters of the trials that have gone on. They are doubters of me, I suppose.

Q: As the oldest afflicted girl, how do you feel about the younger girls?

MW: As I think about it now, I think that the other girls are lying. They are only doing this for attention. They want to show their power. They are faking. I am the only one who is actually having fits. Just me.

Q: That is a change in what you have said in the past. Let us see what the other girls have to say about this.

AW, BP, AP (in unison): She said what? How dare she? Her own words prove it: She has been the witch all along.

Q: Okay, okay, thank you, all four of you, for your time.

 

     These questions and answers paint a new picture of what the afflicted girls of Salem Village are really like. These girls all have something in common: some sort of struggle in their life before they became afflicted. Many of them are orphans, have been mistreated by guardians, or have strict rules in their households. From their answers, the girls make it clear that they see themselves as victims. They avoid any suggestions that they may have had a role in doing anything wrong. Yet there is a split among the group. When Mary Warren is asked how she felt about the other, younger girls, she seems to turn against them. In the past, she has not shown any signs of disbelief in her fellow afflicted girls, but now says that the others have been lying all along. As soon as Mary does this, the other girls turn on her and say that she is a witch. These interviews help the community get a better understanding of the circumstances that have almost ripped this place apart. But they still leave more questions for the girls and many others to answer. For Salem to survive these perplexing times, the people must gain trust to break free from the devil's hand.      

 

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A Postscript from The New World Times, around 15 years later:

In the years after this interview, the Salem Witch Trials had ended and the four girls’ lives, and their ideas had changed dramatically. Here is what became of each of them:

Betty Parris went to live with her cousin, Samuel Shelvey, because her mother did not want her to be involved in witches anymore.

Abigail Williams left Salem to travel down the East Coast. She may have become a prostitute and some say she died at the age of seventeen.

Mary Warren was later accused of witchcraft herself and after that her fate was not known.

     Ann Putnam may have led the most surprising life after the trials. In 1706, she stood in a church as her pastor, J. Green, read an apology from her aloud:

“I desire to be humbled before God for that sad and humbling providence that befell my father’s family in the year about ’92; that I, then being in my childhood, should, by such a providence of God, be made an instrument for the accusing of several persons of a grievous crime, whereby their lives were taken away from them, whom now I have just grounds and good reason to believe they were innocent persons; and that it was a great delusion of Satan that deceived me in that sad time, whereby I justly fear I have been instrumental, with others, though ignorantly and unwittingly, to bring upon myself and this land the guilt of innocent blood; though what was said or done by me against any person I can truly and uprightly say, before God and man, I did it not out of any anger, malice, or ill-will to any person, for I had no such thing against one of them; but what I did was ignorantly, being deluded by Satan. And particularly, as I was a chief instrument of accusing of Goodwife Nurse and her two sisters, I desire to lie in the dust, and to be humbled for it, in that I was a cause, with others, of so sad a calamity to them and their families; for which cause I desire to lie in the dust, and earnestly beg forgiveness of God, and from all those unto whom I have given just cause of sorrow and offence, whose relations were taken away or accused.”

     The striking thing about this statement from Ann Putnam was that while she apologized for her part in the trials, she still did not fully blame herself. She blamed Satan, she blamed religion. In her apology, Ann cleverly puts Satan at fault, for she knows that in Salem this tactic will surely work.