Introduction

In 1733 a mansion in Plymouth, Massachusetts, was haunted by a poltergeist, making itself noticeable to the inhabitants through “inexplicable groans”, the rattling of furniture, and a glowing, “Pale Blewish Light” (qtd. in Winiarski, “Pale” 507). The ghost, identified as the previous owner of the house and the current owner’s former son-in-law, Thompson Phillips, generated considerable interest among the population of the New England town. More significantly, the haunting caused all the tenants of the house to move from the property and to refuse to pay their rent due to the disturbances suffered. The enraged landlord, Josiah Cotton, claimed the whole occurrence to be nothing more than a scam perpetrated by one of his tenants, John Clark, who had been upset about the living arrangements in the house. As gawkers and neighbors contin- ued to discourage new tenants, Cotton’s already mounting financial troubles increased and eventually he sued Clark for slander (cf. Winiarski, “Pale” 508). Not satisfied with or convinced of the prospect of justice in court and irritated that “unthinking People” took “Appearances for Realities” (qtd. in Winiarski, “Pale” 511), Cotton simultaneously opened another front against the perceived superstition raging in his hometown. He commenced writing a philosophical and theological refutation of apparitions, witchcraft and rev- enant souls (cf. Winiarski, “Pale” 516). It contained arguments derived from personal correspondence, magazines and learned scholars on the subject, as well as a collection of supernatural frauds and delusions. Cotton identified popular literature, chief among them Joseph Glanvill’s (1636–1680) Saducismus Triumphatus (published in 1681), as the main instigator of credulity in the “many Stories of Witches, Apparitions, & haunted Houses” (qtd. in Winiarski, “Pale” 512) prevalent among the uneducated of his town. In order to counter these he drew from “transatlantic intellectual currents” (Winiarski, “Pale” 516) of contemporary scholarship, which he considered sorely ignored in his hometown. Unfortunately for Cotton, both his essay and his lawsuit came to naught, as the jury accepted the claims of supernatural disturbances as legiti- mate reasons for the tenants’ behavior and he subsequently discontinued his writing (cf. 502). Were one to follow Cotton’s appraisal of the whole affair, one might consid- er it an example of an intellectual skeptic struggling against the superstitions of the “Common People” (qtd. in Winiarski, “Pale” 512). Upon closer inspec- tion, however, this argument is revealed as overly reductionist for a number of reasons, as Douglas Winiarski has meticulously reconstructed. As a grand- son of the preeminent Puritan theologian John Cotton (1585–1652), Josiah

Cotton himself believed in divine interventions, for example that comets and earthquakes were signs of providential disfavor (cf. Winiarski, “Pale” 520–21). Such interpretations of natural phenomena were widely discouraged in the 18th century intellectual circles of England, for whose stronger influence the later Cotton longed, and far more appropriate to 17th century New England Congregationalism. Nor did his experience with the tenants give him occasion for a change of faith. He believed that a fire that burned several houses in 1742 was divine judgment for the disruption in Plymouth congregations by reviv- alists during the ‘First Great Awakening’ (cf. 520). Although he maintained that his providentialist faith was altogether distinct from the superstitions of his neighbors, it nonetheless speaks of a worldview in which “unseen causal forces were plausible, even rational, explanations for paranormal phenomena” (Winiarski, “Pale” 522). This was not entirely unlike the opinions which he so readily dismissed as “simple” (qtd. in Winiarski, “Pale” 518). Furthermore, the result of the trial as well as recorded testimonies by the witnesses reveals a far more diverse response to the apparitions across all so- cial stations. Cotton, a prominent member of the community, faced a jury of his peers, who nonetheless accepted that spirits at the very least posed a rea- sonable explanation for the occurrences (cf. Winiarski, “Pale” 517–19). The witnesses to the phenomena, fairly well educated members of the middle class, exhibited a certain degree of skeptic inquiry when first encountering the nois- es and lights. Therefore, as Winiarski concludes, “no theme is more evident in surviving courtroom testimonies than their repeated efforts to test, ana- lyze, debate, and draw inferences about the things they had seen and heard” (Winiarski, “Pale” 522). Instead of a static divide between the sophisticated, skeptical elite and the uneducated, credulous rabble, there existed “a range of popular responses to wonder – some excited, others critical and probing, others dismissive” (519). Looking beyond the microcosm of Plymouth society, it is somewhat ironic that Cotton specifically accused Glanvill of encouraging unreasonable belief in unproven narratives of spirits and apparitions. After all, Glanvill had been a founding member of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge and one of the foremost propagators and defenders of natural philosophy. The Saducismus Triumphatus consequently brought the full ap- paratus of empirical methodology to bear on the subject of apparitions and witchcraft, and found at least some reports thereof credible. Primarily intend- ed to demonstrate the existence of a spiritual world, Glanvill’s empirical efforts thus contributed to a stricter distinction between proven supernatural occurrences and frauds, delusions and superstitions, a feat Cotton himself aspired to, even if his beliefs were different. Yet as both the Saducismus and Cotton’s