by Graeme Davis
THE SKULL IN THE WALL
A skull is built into the wall above the door of the court-house at Goshen, New York. It was taken from a coffin unearthed in 1842, when the foundation of the building was laid. People said there was no doubt about it: only Claudius Smith could have worn that skull, and he deserved to be publicly pilloried in that manner. Before the Revolutionary War, Smith was a farmer in Monroe, New York, and being prosperous enough to feel the king’s taxes no burden, to say nothing of his jealousy of the advantage that an independent government would be to the hopes of his poorer neighbors, he declared for the King. After the declaration of independence had been published, his sympathies were illustrated in an unpleasantly practical manner by gathering a troop of other Tories about him, and, emboldened by the absence of most of the men of his vicinage in the Colonial Army, he began to harass the country as grievously in foray as the Red-Coats were doing in open field.
He pillaged houses and barns, then burned them; he insulted women, he drove away cattle and horses, he killed several persons who had undertaken to defend their property. His “campaigns” were managed with such secrecy that nobody knew when or whence to look for him. His murder of Major Nathaniel Strong, of Blooming Grove, roused indignation to such a point that a united effort was made to catch him, a money reward for success acting as a stimulus to the vigilance of the hunters, and at last he was captured on Long Island. He was sent back to Goshen, tried, convicted, and on January 22, 1779, was hanged, with five of his band. The bodies of the culprits were buried in the jail-yard, on the spot where the court-house stands, and old residents identified Smith’s skeleton, when it was accidentally exhumed, by its uncommon size. A farmer from an adjacent town made off with a thigh bone, and a mason clapped mortar into the empty skull and cemented it into the wall, where it long remained.
THE GREEN PICTURE
In a cellar in Green Street, Schenectady, there appeared, some years ago, the silhouette of a human form, painted on the floor in mold. It was swept and scrubbed away, but presently it was there again, and month by month, after each removal, it returned: a mass of fluffy mold, always in the shape of a recumbent man. When it was found that the house stood on the site of the old Dutch burial ground, the gossips fitted this and that together and concluded that the mold was planted by a spirit whose mortal part was put to rest a century and more ago, on the spot covered by the house, and that the spirit took this way of apprising people that they were trespassing on its grave. Others held that foul play had been done, and that a corpse, hastily and shallowly buried, was yielding itself back to the damp cellar in vegetable form, before its resolution into simpler elements. But a darker meaning was that it was the outline of a vampire that vainly strove to leave its grave and could not, because a virtuous spell had been worked about the place.
A vampire is a dead man who walks about seeking for those whose blood he can suck, for only by supplying new life to its cold limbs can he keep the privilege of moving about the earth. He fights his way from his coffin, and those who meet his gray and stiffened shape, with fishy eyes and blackened mouth, lurking by open windows, biding his time to steal in and drink up a human life, fly from him in terror and disgust. In northern Rhode Island those who die of consumption are believed to be victims of vampires who work by charm, draining the blood by slow draughts as they lie in their graves. To lay this monster he must be taken up and burned; at least, his heart must be; and he must be disinterred in the daytime when he is asleep and unaware. If he died with blood in his heart he has this power of nightly resurrection. As late as 1892 the ceremony of heart-burning was performed at Exeter, Rhode Island, to save the family of a dead woman that was threatened with the same disease that removed her, namely, consumption. But the Schenectady vampire has yielded up all his substance, and the green picture is no more.
THE SALEM WOLF
Howard Pyle
1909
Howard Pyle is best known today for his colorful illustrations of pirates and knights, and for his collection The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, which is still in print almost 140 years after its first publication. More than any other artist, he is responsible for the popular image of the pirate that lives on in film and illustration.
Starting as an illustrator for New York magazines such as Harper’s Weekly, he went on to teach illustration, eventually founding his own school in Wilmington, Delaware, which is now on the National Register of Historic Places. His students there included N. C. Wyeth—arguably the second-most influential illustrator of pirate tales in the world—and many other artists whose work created the so-called golden age of American illustration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
In 1909, Pyle took up mural painting, which was a popular form of public art at the time. He painted The Battle of Nashville for the Minnesota State Capitol and other murals for courthouses in New Jersey. The following year, he went with his family to Italy, intending to study the old masters, but suffered from poor health for a year before dying of a kidney infection at the age of fifty-eight.
First published in Harper’s Monthly in December 1909, “The Salem Wolf” is a tale of a werewolf and a witch’s curse, as powerful as any European werewolf tale from the Middle Ages but perfectly translated to its Colonial American setting.
I
These things happened in the year when the witches were so malignant at Salem, and the trouble began over a crock of cider.
Deacon Graves and Jerusha and little Ichabod and old Patrick Duncan were in the cider-shed at the time. Granny Whitlow came to the cider-press, bringing with her a great stoneware crock, and she begged for a crockful of cider.
That was in October before she was hanged for a witch, and she was already in ill odor with all God-fearing men and women. It was known by many that she had an evil eye, and that her malignant soul was as black as a coal and fit for nothing but hell-fire.
Deacon Graves was a stanch professor, and an upright believer in the gospel. “You’ll get no cider here,” says he. “Begone!” says he, “for I am a friend of God, and you are a friend of the devil.”
Then up spoke old Patrick Duncan. He was born in Scotland and had fought in Poland with Douglas under King Karl Gustav of Sweden. It is known that the Scotch and Polish witches and warlocks are the worst in the world, and Patrick Duncan knew more about them and their ways than you could find in a book. “Master,” says he, “you had best give her the cider, or else she’ll maybe cast the evil eye on the whole pressing.”
Then Granny Whitlow laughed very wickedly. “Do you speak of the evil eye?” says she. “Well, then, he may keep his cider, and he may take my black curse along with it,” and with that she went out of the shed and left them. But she did not go far—only to the cow-house, and there sat down by the wall with her crock beside her.
By and by Patrick Duncan looked out from the door of the cider-shed and espied her where she sat. “Look, look, Master Graves!” says he. “Yonder sits the witch by the cow-house. Best drive her away, or else she will cast the evil eye upon the cattle.”
So Deacon Graves went out to where Granny Whitlow sat and caught her by the arm, and lifted her to her feet, and says he: “Get you gone, witch! What mischief are you brewing here? Get you gone, I say!” Therewith, still holding her tight by the arm, he haled her down to the gate and thrust her out into the road. As he thrust her out she stumbled and fell, and her crock rolled into the ditch beside the road.
But she scrambled, very quickly up from the dusty road, and so got to her feet. She spat upon the ground, and shook her fist at Deacon Graves (all skin and bone it was, and withered like a dead leaf). “Ah!” cries she, “would you treat me so! Well, then, you’ll be sorry for this; for I curse you once!—I curse you twice!—I curse you thrice! And if I’m sorry to-day, may you be sorry to-morrow!”
Thus she said, and then she went away down the road, leaving her crock in the ditch where it had fallen.
That was how the trouble began, and that w
as how Granny Whitlow came to set the evil eye upon Deacon Graves—upon him and his. In less than a fort-night afterward the best cow was taken with hollow-horn, and though they bored holes in both horns with a gimlet, yet the poor beast died inside of four hours.
That was the first curse come true.
A week afterward the Deacon’s fine gray mare was bogged in the ditch in the lower pasture, and sprung her shoulder so that she was never good for anything afterward.
That was the second curse come true.
But the third curse was bitter and black to the very bottom.
II
Deacon Graves had a daughter named Miriam. When she fell sick no one knew what ailed her. She grew very strange and wild, and if anybody asked her what ailed her she would maybe scream out, or fall to weeping, or else she would fall into a furious rage, as though seized with a phrensy.
She was a likely girl, with eyes as black as sloes, and black hair, and black eyebrows, and red cheeks, and red lips, and teeth as white as those of a dog. She was promised to Abijah Butler, the son of Aaron Butler the cordwainer. and he came up from town twice or thrice a week to court her.
He saw, as everybody else saw, that she was not as she had been, but was grown very strange and wild. For a while he kept his thoughts to himself, but at last things grew so dark that he spoke very plainly to the girl’s father and mother about the matter. “’Tis my belief,” says he, “that Granny Whitlow has bewitched her.” And neither Deacon Graves nor Dame Graves could find any word to deny what he said.
One Sabbath day Abijah came out from town in the afternoon, and Miriam was in bed. Nothing seemed to ail her, but she would not get up out of bed, but lay there all day, staring at the ceiling and saying nothing. Then Abijah stood up, and he said: “It is high time to do something about this business. If I am to marry Miriam, I must first know what it is ails her.”
Dame Graves says: “We none of us know what ails her. We’ve given her mustard, and sulphur, and boneset, and nothing does her any good.”
“Well,” says Abijah Butler, “what I said stays where I stuck it. Unless I know what is the matter with Miriam, all is off between us, and I am away.”
So Abijah Butler, and Deacon Graves, and Dame Graves, and Patrick Duncan, all four, went to the room where Miriam lay. There she was lying in bed and still as a log; but the moment they set foot in the room she cried out very loud and shrill, and snatched the coverlet over her head. Then she fell to shrieking and screaming as though she had gone mad, bidding them go away and let her lie in peace.
Deacon Graves went to the bedside and caught her very tight by the arm. “Be still!” says he. “Be still, or I will whip you!” and therewith she immediately fell silent, and lay trembling like any leaf.
Then Deacon Graves, still holding her tight by the arm, says to her, “What ails you?” And she said, speaking very weak and faint from under the bed coverlet, “Nothing ails me.” Says he, “Tell me, are you bewitched?” and to that, she said nothing. Then he says, “Tell me who has bewitched you?” but still she would say nothing. He says, “Tell me who has bewitched you, or I will whip you.”
At that she began crying under the coverlet, but still she would not say anything. Then Deacon Graves says, “Tell me, was it Granny Whitlow who bewitched you?” and at that she said “Yes.”
After that they got the whole story from her by piecemeal. This was what she told them:
One day she was turning the bread in the oven. The kitchen door was open, and a great black cat came running in.
She struck at the cat with the bread-peel, but the creature paid no heed to her, but ran around and around the room. Then she grew frightened of the cat and climbed up on the dough-trough. The cat ran around and around the kitchen so fast that her head spun. Then the cat was gone, and Granny Whitlow stood there in the kitchen looking at her. Granny Whitlow’s eyes burned like live coals, and she said, “Move your arm!” and Miriam tried to move her arm and could not do so. Then Granny Whitlow said, “Move your other arm!” and Miriam could not move that either. She could not move a single hair, but was like one in a dream, who tries to move and cannot. Then Granny Whitlow plucked three hairs out of her own head and came to Miriam where she sat on the dough-trough; and she tied the three hairs about the girl’s little finger. “Now you are one of us,” says she, and after that she went out of the kitchen, and Miriam came down from the dough-trough. Ever since that she had been bewitched.
This was the story she told, and after she had ended, her father tried to say something to her. At first he could not say anything, but could only swallow and swallow as though a nut stuck in his throat. Then at last he says—speaking in a voice as dry as a husk, “Tell me, have you ever been to the Devil’s Meeting House?”
At that Miriam began to cry out very loud from under the coverlet. Deacon Graves says, ‘’Tell me the truth, or I will whip you!” Thereupon Miriam from under the coverlet said, “Yes—once or twice.” He says, “Who took you?” and she says, “It was Granny Whitlow took me.”
Then Deacon Graves says, “Let me see your hand.” And the girl reached her hand out from under the coverlet. They all looked, and, lo! there was a ring of hair tied about her little finger.
Dame Graves took a pair of scissors and cut the hairs, and after that they all went out of the room and left her. They sat for a while together in the kitchen, and were more happy than they had been for a long time, for they all thought that now that the hair ring was cut from her finger Miriam would be herself again.
By and by, Abijah Butler went home, and after he had gone, Dame Graves says to the Deacon: “You should not have asked Miriam about going to the Devil’s Meeting House, and that before Abijah Butler. Who knows what he thinks! He might never come back again, and then where would we find another husband for the girl?” But Abijah Butler was wonderfully in love with Miriam, and even this, and worse than this, did not drive him away from her.
After that time, Miriam Graves was better for two or three days; then she became once more as wild as ever. By this they all knew either that the witchcraft had struck into her bones so that she could not rid herself of it, or else that she had been bewitched again. So a week or so after that (it was then about the middle of November) Deacon Graves went to town and saw Dominie Mather and told him the whole story from beginning to end, just as it was and without hiding anything.
When Granny Whitlow was tried for witchcraft, a great many things were testified against her that had never been known before.
A little girl named Ann Greenfield testified that she had one time been down in Bedloe’s Swamp, and that she had there seen Granny Whitlow sitting at the root of a tree, stark and stiff as though she were dead. Little Ann said that she was very much afraid, but she did not run away. She said that, she stood and looked at Granny Whitlow, and by and by she saw something that came running very fast. It looked like a mouse running very fast among the leaves. She said it ran to Granny Whitlow, and ran up her breast and into her mouth, and then Granny Whitlow came to life again and opened her eyes. The little girl said that Granny Whitlow did not see her, but rose and went somewhere into the swamp.
Another girl, named Mercy Nailor, testified that she had once seen Granny Whitlow riding across Fielding’s Clearing in the dusk seated astride of a goat as black as coal. Mercy Nailor afterward withdrew her testimony, and confessed that it was not true. But Ann Greenfield’s testimony was true, and several other things that were testified were true, for they were never withdrawn.
Deacon Graves was in the crowd when Granny Whitlow rode to the gallows in the hangman’s cart. She saw him where he stood, and called out to him from the cart. “Ah, Deacon!” says she, “is that you? And so you have come to see me hanged, have you? Well, then, look to yourself: the third curse is still on you, and something worse than hanging will happen to you before the year is out.”
Shortly after that she was hanged.
They all thought that, now Granny Whitlow was hanged,
Miriam would be released from the witchcraft that tormented her, but she was not. Things went from bad to worse with her, for, by and by, they found that she would run away at night, no one knew whither. They set a watch upon her, but if they did but wink two or three times, lo! she would be gone.