The Morse Poltergeist of Newbury

In the winter of 1679 the quiet household of William Morse, a cobbler, and his wife Elizabeth, an elderly couple in the Massachusetts coastal town of Newbury, was overtaken by strange disturbances. The couple’s young grandson, John Stiles, lived with them. William wrote down the events at friends’ suggestion, and his “Relation” was later printed by Increase Mather in his 1684 collection of wonders, known today as Remarkable Providences. It is an early and unusually well-documented poltergeist-type case from colonial New England, and one that ended in a legal tragedy.

According to Morse’s account, on 3 December 1679 noises began on the roof and a hog appeared inside the locked house. On 8 December, stones and bricks flew through the room, a bedstead was lifted, and a cat was flung at Mrs. Morse. Ashes were thrown into food; William was struck with a bag of hops and a hammer, pinched and scratched; and the boy was tossed about and found with pins, forks and knives sticking in his back. Neighbors including Stephen Greenleaf, Thomas Rogers and George Hardy later corroborated some of the incidents. Mather himself noted that the true reason for the disturbances was “as yet not certainly known.”

Suspicion fell on Caleb Powell, a seafaring man and frequent visitor with a reputation for occult knowledge. Powell said that Elizabeth was suspected of witchcraft and that the boy was the cause of the trouble, and offered to end the disturbances if he could have him for a day; William agreed, and the house was quiet for a time. But when the boy returned and fell into fits, William accused Powell of working with the Devil and had him jailed. Powell was tried and cleared for lack of evidence. The accusation then turned on Elizabeth. In January 1680 neighbors gave depositions describing her supposed bewitching of children and livestock; she was arrested in March, held at Ipswich and Boston, and convicted in May. Governor Simon Bradstreet sentenced her to hang.

The sentence was never carried out. Her execution was repeatedly delayed, and in spring 1681 she was allowed to go home, restricted to within sixteen rods of her house, with the death sentence formally standing. William died in 1683, and the date of Elizabeth’s death is unknown. Modern historians offer a neat explanation: the historian John Demos suggests that William, by blaming Powell, tried to deflect suspicion from his wife, and Emerson Baker, in The Devil of Great Island, argues that the stone-throwing, or “lithobolia,” was the work of the mischievous grandson. A very similar case struck George Walton’s house on Great Island in New Hampshire in 1682, also recounted by Mather.

Stones and bricks thrown into and at the house, objects and furniture moving, a hog appearing in a locked house, vanished small items, and the grandson afflicted with fits and pins found in his body.

The Morse house in Newbury and its yard; the activity was reported over weeks in December 1679 and beyond.

The Morse case is a standard reference in histories of colonial New England witchcraft and in poltergeist literature, and the Salem Witch Museum includes the homestead site in its guide to local witchcraft-era places.