Cotton Mather enjoyed his cachet and influence as a religious leader of the Puritan Church. And he was a very prolific writer. He published more than 450 books and pamphlets over the course of his life, most of which are now forgotten.

But history will never forget his book, Memorable Providences, published in 1689. It’s a true story about children in Boston who fell under the spell of a wicked witch named Ann Glover.

Ann Glover and her daughter, Mary, worked as housekeepers for the Goodwin family. One day, the Goodwin’s 13-year-old daughter, Martha, accused Mary of stealing laundry. Ann felt outraged and got into a hellacious argument with the Goodwin children. Then she cast a spell upon them.

The Goodwin children soon became ill and began falling into mysterious fits and seizures.

A doctor determined they had been bewitched by Ann Glover. She was arrested, tried, and hanged. But at the gallows she cackled a sinister warning. According to Memorable Providences, she prophesied that the children would never recover from their spell, and claimed that she wasn’t the only witch in the colony. There were many others.

Memorable Providences exposed the devil’s dirty deeds, forcing Lucifer to leave Boston and seek more fertile ground elsewhere. And so Ann Glover was the last witch to be hanged in Boston.

The Prince of Darkness’ search brought him to the little village of Salem. The citizens there hated each other. A feud had broken out a few years before. People took sides. They quarreled. They brawled. Things got personal, and more and more controversies erupted. These Puritans were pious, but piety alone could not stop them from fighting amongst each other.

Satan arrived, surveyed this situation, and felt very pleased his evil influence had taken such a hold. Everyone was at each other’s throats. Everyone that is, except the children. Children are too innocent to fall under the devil’s influence. They don’t know how to hate, the way adults do.

The devil pondered, while playing with his pitchfork and twitching his tail. Something had to be done about those dratted children.

The children of Salem were a happy, playful lot, before the devil and his diablerie descended upon this unsuspecting town. Note: The dioramas in the photos of this post can be found at the Salem Witch Museum, in Salem, Massachusetts.

Sarah Good was deeply in debt, impoverished, and kind of annoying to her neighbors, from whom she frequently begged. And she had all the audacity to question Puritan values. Satan saw an opportunity for bad in Good. He transformed himself into a man dressed in black and approached her in the night. He offered to help her with her financial situation if she would become a witch and cast spells on children. She agreed, and she also agreed to help Satan recruit other women who had been reduced to beggary.

Soon young girls all over Salem were falling into fits and seizures. They became tormented by unseen forces that pinched and stabbed them, causing them to shriek in pain. These fits were caused by spells the new witches had cast upon the poor kids.

These erstwhile happy little kiddies fell under the spell of hexes, and became possessed by the spirits of demons. Which is the only reason why kids would ever behave crazy, weird and stupid.

But the men of Salem were wise, in spite of their bickering ways. They, with their families, had read Memorable Providences, and thus were very familiar with the workings of witchcraft. Yep, they knew a thing or two. It was all right there in that book by the esteemed Cotton Mather, that they had read to their wives and kids. So it didn’t take long for them to conclude that all these fits and seizures were the results of bewitchings.

And the afflicted girls knew who their tormentors were. Cotton Mather’s book taught that the witches who hexed them would appear to them in the night, in the form of specters, or apparitions. And indeed they did, just like the book said.

In no time, Sarah Good and several other women were identified by the young girls. They were arrested, tried and convicted. And this bad Good witch was hanged with four others on July 29, 1692.

These condemned witches are being carted off to the gallows. Their distress is evident, but they should have thought about these consequences before they made their deals with the devil.

The devil was undaunted by these hangings. He kept busy, continually recruiting more servants of evil to replace those who had been uncovered.

He found Martha Corey. Unlike Sarah Good, she was a devout churchgoer. But she was vulnerable to the devil’s wiles due to her way of thinking freely, and being blunt and abrasive with others. He convinced her to go about claiming that the children were lying, and that there was no such thing as witches, and to denounce the witch trials.

A couple of children overheard Martha Corey calling them liars. They discussed this with each other and it occurred to them that she must be a witch. So they identified her to the authorities, and she was arrested, tried, convicted and hanged.

Rebecca Nurse was one of the most pious, well-respected members of her community. But she was old and nearly deaf, and her difficulty hearing often led to misunderstandings. The devil took advantage of her hearing disability. He appeared to her one evening, in the form of a doctor. Then he convinced her to sign away her soul, letting her believe she was actually getting rid of a mole.

Shortly after this she got into a dispute with a neighbor concerning some pigs. Or were they wigs? Whatever, the exchange was awkward and left her neighbor feeling bewildered and pissed off. Very quickly it became apparent that Rebecca Nurse was no pious saint. She was really a witch.

She was arrested, tried and found not guilty. So she was tried again. This time she failed to hear a critical question accurately, and gave the wrong answer. It resulted in a conviction, and Satan was defeated. She was sentenced to death and hanged.

A couple of good and pious citizens of Salem, giving some condemned witches a piece of their mind. Little did they suspect, until the Rebecca Nurse case, that they too could be fooled into following Satan.

Most of the witches of Salem were female, which at the time was the more vulnerable of the genders. But the devil did manage to snag a few weak males with his recruiting efforts.

The most notorious male witch was George Burroughs. He had been a minister in Salem nine years earlier. Then he made a pact with the devil. Lucifer gave him superhuman physical strength in return for stirring up just a little bit of trouble.

He induced Burroughs to get into a dispute with his parishioners over his pay, and to borrow money, and finally to skip town ahead of his creditors. The devil promised that no one would pursue him, due to their fear of his strength and fighting skills.

The minister resigned his position in 1683 and moved to the Eastland (now the state of Maine). As promised, no one gave chase. But his former parishioners and creditors never forgot him. When the witch trials began in 1692, they realized he had been a witch all along, and it occurred to them that this was why he was so strong.

So they sent a very large posse to arrest him.

His incredible physical strength made him difficult to subdue, but the posse finally managed to put this herculean witch into chains and dragged him back to Salem.

George Burroughs fought hard, using his demonic strength to knock one member of the posse out cold, before the others could restrain him with chains.

He was tried, convicted, and brought to the gallows with four other witches. But then this very gifted former minister made a spectacular bid to enlist the entire town into the league of the devil.

He stood at the gallows and gave an impassioned sermon proclaiming his innocence. It was such a fine speech that the crowd was stirred. Little did they know that Satan the devil was standing there with him, whispering the words of this persuasive talk directly into his ear.

At the end of the sermon he recited the Lord’s Prayer with elegant perfection. This astonished the crowd because everyone knew it was impossible for a witch to recite the Lord’s Prayer in such a beautiful, flawless manner.

The crowd was moved to tears, became agitated, and cries issued forth to release him and the four other witches. But the hangman saw the danger and acted quickly, sending Burroughs kicking and writhing to the bowels of Hell.

Upon witnessing this, many in the crowd murmured that an innocent man had been executed. This marked a crucial moment for Salem. The devil was gaining control.

But much to Lucifer’s chagrin, Cotton Mather happened to be one of the crowd.

Mather bravely sat on his horse before the mob and gave his own grandiloquent speech, all the while prepared to gallop away in case the speech failed. He reminded them that the devil can appear in many forms, including an Angel of Light. And he was able to correct the picture of the evil George Burroughs so well, that soon the masses were placated. The sight of Burroughs’ dangling body, twisting in the wind, left them satisfied. And they allowed the hangings of the four other witches to continue without further interruption.

The proper way to bury a witch is in a shallow, unmarked grave. Executed witches in Salem were inhumed two feet deep, sometimes with hands, feet, or other body parts protruding from the earth.

The devil felt furious about this, and began putting all the energy of Hell into his campaign. He converted dozens and dozens more into witchcraft, until soon the witches of Salem numbered in the hundreds.

But the pure souls of Salem responded in kind. The jail overflowed with newly accused, and the witch-trial court clogged. But still it plodded along as best it could, and craftsmen worked sedulously at meeting skyrocketing demand for fresh rope at the gallows.

Then the devil got a diabolical idea. He managed to convert the governor’s wife. And soon she, too, fell under the finger of accusation.

That changed everything. Governor Phips loved his wife, for she was particularly bewitching. And because he had fallen under the spell of her love potion.

He took immediate action. He dissolved the court. He then pardoned all those who were awaiting execution. And he established a new court with a new, much more merciful judge.

Soon accused witches were released in droves from the jails. As quickly as they began, the witch trials ended. And the hapless citizens of New England were left to the mercy of an army of Lucifer’s minions. Including Governor Phips’ wife.

The devil had finally defeated Cotton Mather. Memorable Providences dropped off the bestseller list.

Witches have continued to haunt America from that time forth. But they are no longer called witches. Satan, in his craftiness, has given them new forms and new behaviors. They are just as wicked as their predecessors, but they morph like a deadly virus.

In the 1940’s they took on the form of Japanese spies. We responded by interring them into concentration camps.

In the 1950’s they morphed into communists. But thanks to the heroic efforts of Joseph McCarthy (a modern-day Cotton Mather), these witches were imprisoned and blacklisted.

In the 1980’s they became deviant parents and sexually abusive daycare workers, with a large coven concentrated in Kern County, California. They molested young children and subjected them to Satanic rituals, until District Attorney Ed Jagels saved the day. 36 witches were convicted, with many spending years in prison before the devil got 34 of the convictions overturned. The other two witches died in prison before Beelzebub could help them.

Nowadays we see a large variety of witches. For instance, they manifest as illegal immigrants, raping and murdering our citizens. They’re misogynists, accused of sexual harassment without due process. And they’re members of the media, who act as enemies of the people.

Our failure to contain the devil, back in 1692, has haunted us into the 21st century. Today there are witches everywhere we turn. Who knows which of us is a witch? Maybe your neighbor. Or maybe your husband or wife. Or maybe you, yourself. Or perhaps me.

Oh no, not me. I emphatically deny it. I am innocent. I am not a witch.

Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee!

Happy Halloween!