While settling New England in the 17th century, the Puritans brought an eccentric panoply of customs and beliefs, including an unshakable faith in the menace of Satan and his agents on Earth — witches, both female and male.
As Stacy Schiff meticulously chronicles in her sumptuous new work, "The Witches," the Salem scare of 1692 began in the austere residence of the village minister but then rapidly engulfed the Massachusetts countryside.
In her retelling we hear a kind of colonial primal scream, a uniquely American blend of religion and paranoia, "a little story that becomes a big one, much more than our national campfire story, the gothic, genie-releasing crack-up on the way to the Constitution."
Early in the year, the Rev. Samuel Parris' young daughter and niece showed signs of supernatural affliction, moaning and thrashing about one moment, silent and still the next.
Soon other girls were complaining of similar symptoms and accusing fellow villagers of ghostly visitations, ceaseless torments. The colony elders — among them William Stoughton, chief magistrate and Schiff's chief villain — convened hearings to figure out what the hell was going on.
When Parris' slave, Tituba, offered a colorful account of yellow birds and rides on poles, the girls followed her lead: "From Tituba's on down, the Salem testimony explodes with invigorating, over-the-rainbow intensity. … the girls appear starved for color, expressionist splashes of which light up their testimonies, nearly conjuring ruby slippers."
By summer the Salem jail had filled with witches of both genders and all ages, from a toddler to a grandmother. The hysteria radiated outward, snaring other communities, such as Andover and Ipswich.
As Schiff moves into the trials and convictions, her narrative slows down, its language tightening beneath a surfeit of detail: Cotton Mather's self-serving observations, Stoughton's cruel reversal of Rebecca Nurse's acquittal.
