Witch Hunt
#1 of Fear Trilogy
Setting: Salem Town, Massachusetts, 1693
The air was tense as the three accused witches were brought to appear before the jury. Having neither the money or room to build a courthouse, the Puritans were forced to use a hill lit by torches as their courthouse. Everything about this trial was designed to intimidate Ms. Good, Mrs. Osbourne, and their slave Tetuba as they climbed up the hill surrounded by barristers and the strongest men of the colony so they could not use their witchcraft to escape. Outsiders in their own village, these three poor, illiterate New Englanders were not well-liked in this highly-superstitous, theocratic Puritan colony. These ordeals had begun a year earlier when they were all ordered to appear before the magistrates and forced to languish in jail for over a year.
The first prisoner Sarah Good was a beggar for a while, who would ask for money and shelter during the cold New England winter, before settling for permanent, albeit low-paying employment as a washer-woman. Sarah Osbourne, was the vixen wife of an indentured servant fox who had entered into a contract to work for a wealthy landowner for seven years to pay for the voyage across the Atlantic. And the last Tetuba was a panther from Africa who was brought over as a slave. Though all three were illiterate and hated in the community, this panther was the least-educated and most-reviled for her foreign upbringing.
And so the three found themselves before the harsh eyes of the lion who would serve as the chief judge in all trials of witchcraft, Magistrate William Stoughton. He would preside over this outdoor trial of the three accused women who were thought to be witches. An expert in the field of government, he had studied under Oliver Cromwell, leader of the English Puritans, before coming to America to lead this colony.
"In my province of Salem Town, there have been many God-fearing men who have come forward with explanations as to the sudden epilepsy of many children in this village as well as several others in the outlying towns. You, Good, Osbourne, and Tetuba stand accused of witchcraft, which caused their epilepsy. What pray tell do you say in your defense?", the lion asked. The vixens and panther were struck dumb by these wild accusations but even if they could speak, nothing that these semi-literates could say would stop the magistrates and judges from condeming them to death, or worse some painful impassable trial which would either kill them or prove to the community they were witches. There was nothing they could do to win this trial- the judge even accepted spectral evidence- the testimony of someone who found that Good and Osbourne were witches becuase he had a dream saying they were.
The faces of these Puritan citizens who had showed up for the trial, once handsome and pleasant to look at, through the eyes of the accused, now had become twisted and grotesque. Their eyes cast down a silent disapproval of these accused witches- they were the outsiders and scapegoats of society, bearing the blame for everything that had befallen this community. The Indian attacks, the failure to secure an adequate harvest, the unseasonal cold weather in August, the mayor's inability to father a child- everything could be blamed on witches, or at least that's what they had been taught in thew churches. Just as the torches set up to light the hill, their eyes were burning a hole straight into the soul of the accused. In trying to protect the town from devilry, the magistrates had themselves become devils with their quick accusations, irrational beliefs, and complete refusal to follow the established English law.
And even if by some miracle they were found innocent of being witches, the mob would sentence the foxes and the panther to death anyway. Very soon, these unassuming, peaceful villagers who fled England on grounds of the religious persecution there would kill many of their own kind in months marked by madness and insanity using the same religious persecution they had hoped to escape. These churchgoing New Englanders who on the outside appeared trustful and content wanted nothing more on this night to purge the outsiders, the ones who they didn't care too much for. Soon, the three condemned witches and the others who were singled out for being witches were made to eat contaminated and rotten food, drink noxious mixtures, and executed in the most bizarre and cruel ways. As Tituba, Ms. Good, and Mrs. Osbourne were sentenced to the gallows like many other reviled citizens in Salem as well, on their dying breath they prayed that the New England colonies would come back to their senses.
In the modern day, we find that the spirit of those prosecutors who sentenced those poor foxes and that panther to death and who would believe someone was a witch by the way he/she reacted when fed a disgusting beverage made of fermented urine is still alive today. We hear it in radio show hosts who say that immigrants are responsible for destroying America, we hear it in pulpits where to this day, pastors repeat the centuries-old fallacy of witches kidnapping and eating children and holding wild orgies on the full moon. We see it on TV when books get banned, movies aren't shown, scholars can't make their speeches because they're controversial, and the history books are revised to blot out the very occurrence of these witch hunts which took place over three centuries ago.
And yet these commentators, these radio hosts, these ministers who are so quick to judge and quick to anger will be the last ones to understand the effects of their ignorance and prejudice and fear. All three of these traits walk hand-in-hand.