This Article Originally Ran On Blumhouse.com
There is a point in just about every society where the population becomes convinced that witches are real. Some of the bits and bobs may change about - not every culture buys into the flying on broomsticks deal, but more than one did. Luckily, most of the world has gone through it’s witch phase and moved on to other things that can be used to ostracize women who dare speak their mind. Things that don’t include state sanctioned burnings at the stake.
These days, those of us fortunate to live in countries that have figured out that no amount of eye of newt will lead to a spell working tend to laugh at the societies that still buy into all that evil witchcraft mumbo jumbo. It’s as if we forget that our own stupid past where we figured a woman was into Satan if she weighed more than a Bible. We tend to think of these frighteningly true stories in the same way we think of TV shows - fun tales where nothing really happened.
For Mary Webster, there was no fun tale. Only what must have been great fear.
Mary Webster made three grave mistakes in her life. She wasn’t religious, she was poor, and she lived in Hadley Massachusetts in the tail end of the seventeenth century. Mary married William Webster in 1670 and moved to Hadley. Poverty and a tendency to miss church was enough for the people of Hadley to single the Websters out. The townspeople, being huge assholes, would verbally abuse Mary Webster. Shock of shockers, this made Mary kind of despise her neighbors. Her moodiness and straight up rage towards the townsfolk of Hadley was enough for everyone to make a choice - blame Mary for everything.
The people of Hadley figured out that Mary was a witch pretty quick. There were some black cats around, and the only explanation for them had to be that Mary gave birth to these evil felines after “having congress” with the Devil (“having congress” is what our ancestors used to call “fucking” because they were way more couth than us uncouth people of today). Sometimes, cattle would get stuck in mud and the crappy ranchers would blame Mary for the mud existing. On at least one occasion, a cattle wrangler, annoyed by some mud, entered Mary’s home and threatened to beat her is she didn’t free his cows.
The straw that broke the camel for the people of Hadley was when Mary went and turned herself into a chicken. As the story goes, some Hadley peeps were having a nice evening when a chicken fell through their chimney and landed in a boiling pot. The chicken got out of the pot and scooted off, leaving the house.
The next day, Mary had a burn on her arm. Clearly the only answer was that Mary had went chicken.
Tired of Mary Webster’s mud making, chicken transforming ways, the town of Hadley sent her to Boston, claiming that she was a witch. The Court of Assistants in Boston, who handled all the fun witch cases, looked over the evidence against Mary and made the following decision, as written in the court records:
Mary Webster was now called and brought to the bar, and was indicted. To which indictment she pleaded not guilty, making no exception against any of the jury, leaving herself to be tried by God and the country. The indictment and evidences in the case were read and committed to the jury, and the jury brought in their verdict that they found her -- not guilty
Freed by the Court of Assistants, Mary Webster went home. This did not sit well with the people of Hadley.
Not long after, in the winter of 1684, as the snow fell over Hadley Massachusetts, so did Phillip Smith. According to Cotton Mather’s MAGNALIA CHRISTI AMERICANA, Smith was “aged about fifty years, a son of eminently virtuous parents, a deacon of a church in Hadley, a member of the General Court, a justice in the county Court, a select man for the affairs of the town, a lieutenant of the troop, and which crowns all, a man for devotion, sanctity, gravity, and all that was honest, exceeding exemplary.”
Smith became suddenly ill, suffering from seizures and screaming uncontrollably. He complained that he could feel nails being pressed into his arm when he wasn’t speaking in an unknown language. Once, he claimed there was a woman in the room that no one else could see. That woman, who Smith called “the ill woman” was, according to the people of Hadley, Mary Webster. The Court of Assistants may have been fooled by Mary, but the assholes of Hadley weren’t!
A few of the Hadley men made their way to Mary’s house on a snowy night to try out the theory. They began banging on Mary’s door and causing other annoyances on her land, causing Mary to rush about screaming at them.
When the men returned to Phillip Smith’s house, they were told that while they were gone, Smith rested peacefully. The theory, in their idiotic minds, proved true - they had caused Mary to stop working her witchcraft on Smith. There was, for these morons, only one thing to do… Mary had to die.
The men, who Cotton called “brisk men” (I add that info because I find the term “brisk men” funny and I wanted to get in one more joke before we get to the horrible stuff) returned to Mary’s home and dragged her out into the cold.
They beat Mary bloody
They spit on her
They shouted obscenities at her.
When the group tired of beating Mary, they took her to a tree, slung a rope over a thick branch, and hung her. They watched as Mary kicked and fought, her mouth open wide as she tried to breath, her eyes bulging and her face turning blue as her blood found itself unable to reach her brain. They watched as Mary Webster, a woman who’s only crime was not going to church, stopped kicking. They watched as Mary Webster stop trying to breath. They watched as Mary Webster died.
When mary went limp, the men cut her down and rolled her body around in the snow. They left Mary’s lifeless body there for the animals to feast on and returned to the town where everyone knew what they had done. Where everyone approved of their murder.
"Phillip Smith died that night. I don’t know what ailed him, but I know what didn’t"
- Mary Webster.
The next morning, as the townspeople grieved over the death of one of their own (an asshole) Mary Webster walked into town, still covered in snow, still very much alive.
Mary Webster died eleven years later in 1696, four years after the Salem Witch Trials. The people of Hadley, possibly because they figured if hanging her didn’t work, nothing was going to kill Mary, moved on to blaming other things for their problems.
Margaret Atwood, a novelist and poet of great renown, happens to be related to Mary Webster. Atwood write a seven stanza poem about her ancestor, which she titled HALF-HANGED MARY. The entirety of the poem is, not surprisingly, fantastic, and I suggest you give it a read, but I’m not going to reprint the full thing here. Instead, I will leave you with my favorite bit…
Before, I was not a witch.
But now I am one.