Sometime around January 15th, I think,
my younger cousin Betty and I began to have these strange seizing fits.
No one can figure out why these things are happening. My neighbor
Beverly described them like this, “The children were bitten and pinched by
invisible agents; their arms, necks, and backs turned this way and that way,
and returned back again, so as it was impossible for them to do of themselves,
and beyond the power of any Epileptick Fit, or natural Disease to effect. Sometimes they were taken dumb, their mouths
stopped, their throats choaked, their limbs wracked and tormented so as might
move an heart of stone, to sympathize with them, with bowels of compassion for
them.” After a period of several weeks
my uncle finally called for Doctor Griggs to take a look what’s wrong. He said, “They are under an evil hand.” All of the neighbors took this diagnose as
“we are bewitched.” Being the very
religious man he was, my uncle started to fast and pray for several weeks. He also brought in other individuals in the
community to fast and prayer with him. When
the weeks of praying and fasting did not work, our neighbor, Mary Sibley, told
our Indian slave, Tituba, to make a witchcake.
Neither Betty nor I knew what a witchcake was, but when we did it
disgusted us. Tituba took our pee and
mixed it with rye and then fed it to our family dog. From what I understand, because our dog ate
the witchcake, it means there is a witch causing our seizing fits. Now the question was, who is the witch doing
this to us? After thinking about the
question, the answer seemed obvious. Who
knew the most about witchcraft? Who had
known how to make a witchcake?
Tituba! It all made sense now,
she had bewitching us from inside our own house. I had to tell uncle! We had to remove this witch from our house.
