The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft and Conflict in Early New England

The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft and Conflict in Early New England
ISBN-10
0230606830
ISBN-13
9780230606838
Category
History
Pages
256
Language
English
Published
2007-10-02
Publisher
St. Martin's Press
Author
Emerson W. Baker

Description

In 1682, ten years before the infamous Salem witch trials, the town of Great Island, New Hampshire, was plagued by mysterious events: strange, demonic noises; unexplainable movement of objects; and hundreds of stones that rained upon a local tavern and appeared at random inside its walls. Town residents blamed what they called "Lithobolia" or "the stone-throwing devil." In this lively account, Emerson Baker shows how witchcraft hysteria overtook one town and spawned copycat incidents elsewhere in New England, prefiguring the horrors of Salem. In the process, he illuminates a cross-section of colonial society and overturns many popular assumptions about witchcraft in the seventeenth century.

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