Today in Salem: 30yo Timothy Swan is feeling stabbed and burned by a pack of witches’ specters swarming into his father’s house. The witches prick and squeeze poppets, burn him with a tobacco pipe, and stab his knee with a hot iron spindle. A dark-haired man in a high-crowned hat, clearly the Devil, cheers them on.
The real-life confessors will say they were wreaking revenge, probably for a young woman who says he’d pulled her upstairs in her own home and raped her, with one arm pressed across her throat so she wouldn’t scream. She became pregnant, and when the paternity case went to court he was ordered to pay child support.
Still, the judges didn’t entirely believe her. Why hadn’t she reported it right away? Then there was her claim that she’d become pregnant from just one encounter – which everyone knew was impossible. And she was known around Salem to be very promiscuous.
Well. If the court won’t punish him, the witches will. Some are the specters of young women, some are older aunts and mothers, and a couple are wizards. It won’t be the last time they attack.
WHO was Timothy Swan?
A 30-year-old rapist. Case files: Timothy Swan