The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-09-22
WITCHES HILL FAMOUS IN 1881
 STILL BARREN
Scenes of Executions Be cause of Quaint Belief in
 Early Years.

Trnbuilt upon today. as in 1891, is -he dark hill in old quaint Salem
 called Witches Hill. In 1891 it was
 called Gallows Hill Of dlsquietlng
 aspect is the old black cliff. Here the
 terrible executions took place, where girls as innocent as a flower, and dear
 home loving women of hearts of gold
 were tortured and hanged for witch
 craft. The witch was believed to
 be literally possessed of the devil. to
 draw her powers from Satan. and to
 have communicated with unseen spir-
 it's to the detriment of the community.
 For curing the village diseases. or for
 cooking better than her neiChbor, a
 woman was tried, condemned, hanged.
 Persecution has always seemed to
 be one of the idiCsynCraCies of the
 human mind. Its roots are in intpler-
 ance. and in absence of breadth of
 view. The executions, by the revered
 Puritans. for so-caIleI witchcraft were
 as absurd as CromwclI's massacre of
 the Irish in Drogheda. Today. Sept.
 p, celebrates the peculiarly horrible
 executions in old Salem, Mass, in 1892 of two women and seven men for
 ''vitchcraft" One of them was
 pressed slowly to death because she
 stood mute with horror before her
 judges. Let us look into the matter
 a bit. The subject is absorbingly in teresting; DemonoIoEy. It was called Black Magic in the Middle Ages. That there is a power outside of our Five Senses, sometimes intelligently perceived by rarely gifted persons possessing a Sixth Sense, cannot be disputed. from authentic records. Solid English clergymen have testi- fled to seeing for one dismaying sec Ond the Banshee. that mysterious spirit---the White Lady attached to ancient Irish families and warns by
 a cry of a coming disaster. The mag netic Orient is permeated with Magic and with charms against the Evil Eye" etc. In Holy Scripture the rulers of Israel were warned Ey God Himself, in terms of sorrowful irony, to beware of those having a fla miliar spirit, and to resort only to the lying Cod for counsel From the Seventh Century on woman figures largely in the accusations for witch 1 craft, because of love-potions admin istered to distracted, females. In New England. in 1891, there was a shock ing outburst of fanatirism under that upright man Cotton AIather. "a man who was as one-sided as a wall. Fan aticism is unreasoning zeal. Salem founded in 1926 by the Puritan set i tiers, was shaken from it's libeTty-pOle { to it's last dooTstone. It assumed an | ever-active form, encouraged. alas. by | the cletgy. Epidemic diseases were attributed to witChCraft. EEil spirits ! had entered into tbe body of this wo-
 man, or of that woman, all through Salem it ran. Denial, protest, plead l ling. were in vain. Guiltless women were tried, tortured, hanged, and per | haps for no other reason than that | they had been seen gazing steadily | towards a beautiful setting sun The | Puritan Fathers should have been | fOaled in Ireland, and have added to their other virtues a sense of humor! | Our own Hawthorne seized upon this | interesting question of Magic. % | Magnetism" the undoubted truth of ! hypnotism. and in his novels and tales | he treated it with a masters skin | The House of the Seven Gables still | stands in old. weird Salem. from which Hawthorne drew an immortal | Inspiration.