As we walked from our classroom through the hall to recess, I delivered the big news to my fellow sixth graders who surrounded me: Did you know that I am related to one of the witches who was hanged during the Salem Witch Trials? It’s true–my dad told me the whole story last night. I’m related to a woman who was accused of being a witch! On an ordinary sixth grade day in autumn, news of this sort was a genuine show-stopper. Literally. Sixth-graders clogged the traffic flow to the recess door when they stopped me to get the rest of the scoop.

You are joking, right? You aren’t really related to a witch–are you? How does your dad know this? She was hanged? You aren’t REALLY related to a witch. . . 

This was the stuff that childhood dreams are made of. I garnered instant celebrity status and was chosen by the captain of the kickball team who had “first pick” that day. Perhaps I had inherited powers that would catapult our team to victory. Perhaps I could read the other players’ minds, anticipating which way a player would kick the ball. Perhaps I was gifted in ways my classmates had never begun to imagine.

Or perhaps this was some sort of genetic justification of my own idiosyncrasies and propensity for the unusual. Come to think of it, I did have an odd sense of humor at times and a definite penchant for solitude, even as a child. Not to mention the fact that I rarely missed an episode of the television show Bewitched. 

According to Wikipedia (my second claim to fame–an ancestor that made Wikipedia!), Anne Greenslade Pudeator was a well-to-do septuagenarian widow who was accused of and convicted of witchcraft in the Salem Witch Trials  in colonial Massachusetts. She was executed by hanging. Anne married Thomas Greenslade and had five children before Thomas’s death in 1674. Having worked as a nurse and midwife, she was hired by Jacob Pudeator to care for his ailing, alcoholic wife who died in the following year. Anne then married Jacob who died in 1682 and left her with money and property.

Some have speculated that her status as a woman of means was reason enough for the afflicted girls of Salem and other villagers to target her as a witch. Her accusers cited the following offenses:

• forcing a girl to sign the Devil’s Book
• bewitching and causing a neighbor’s death
• appearing in spectral form to the afflicted girls
• having witchcraft materials in her home (grease, she claimed, for making soap)
• torturing others with pins and causing a man to fall from a tree
• killing Jacob Pudeator and his first wife
• turning herself into a bird and flying around the village

She was accused by two of the afflicted girls, Mary Warren and Ann Putnam Jr., as well as John Best Jr. and Sr. and Samuel Pickworth. On September 19, 1692, she was sentenced to death along with Alice Parker, Dorcas Hoar, Mary Bradbury, and Mary Easty. Then on October 2, she was hanged on Gallows Hill in Salem Town.

Eighteen years later, the General Court reversed the convictions of those victims whose families had advocated in their behalf. Anne’s conviction, however, was not reversed at this time. It wasn’t until 1957 that Anne was finally exonerated by the Massachusetts General Court. Her exoneration was due largely to the efforts of Lee Greenslit, a midwestern textbook publisher and my father’s relative. [My paternal grandmother was a Greenslit.]

In an article which appeared on September 11, 1954 in the New Yorker Magazine, Lee Greenslit explained that the name Greenslit was far more commonly known as Greenslade during colonial times. As an amateur genealogist, he hit the mother lode when he discovered this fact and was able to trace his lineage back to Anne Greenslade Pudeator and the Salem Witch Trials.

There are many theories about why these Salem girls–the afflicted ones–accused their family, friends, and neighbors of consorting with the Devil. These theories surrounding the girls’ fits and strange behavior range from stress, asthma, boredom, epilepsy, delusional psychosis, to convulsive ergotism, a disease from the ergot fungus that invades damp, warm rye grain. Regardless of the cause(s), the girls’ claims of witchery resulted in the deaths of 24 villagers: 19 were hanged, 1 was pressed to death, and 4 died during imprisonment.

According to USLEGAL.com, spectral evidence refers to a witness testimony that the accused person’s spirit or spectral shape appeared to him/her witness in a dream at the time the accused person’s physical body was at another location. It was accepted in the courts during the Salem Witch Trials. The evidence was accepted on the basis that the devil and his minions were powerful enough to send their spirits, or specters, to pure, religious people in order to lead them astray.

In spectral evidence, the admission of victims’ conjectures is governed only by the limits of their fears and imaginations, whether or not objectively proven facts are forthcoming to justify them. [State v. Dustin, 122 N.H. 544, 551 (N.H. 1982)]

 Spectral evidence was not only accepted in the courts but was often the only evidence provided in the trials of those accused of witchery. And it was more than enough to secure a conviction. You could simply claim that you saw the specter of another in a dream or vision and that the physical body of this individual was present at another place. You could claim that this specter flew, coerced someone to sign their name in the Devil’s Book, or caused another to harm him/herself or another. In truth, you could claim anything, and this claim–limited only by fear and imagination–would pass legal muster.

The Sanctuary of Spectral Evidence is a name-it-and-claim-it-safe-place. From the safety of your dedicated space, you can make claims–any claims–and sit back with a beverage of your choice to watch the fireworks. You don’t like your neighbor, your employer, your legislator, your teacher, your doctor, your parent, spouse or relative? Name an offense and let the accusation wound as it will. And if an individual is genuinely offenseless? Create an offense. The more outlandish, unbelievable, and unjustifiable, the better. Name it and claim it. It is just that simple–and just that deadly.

The Sanctuary of Spectral Evidence is an equal opportunity employer. You can be a libertarian or librarian. You can be a vegetarian or a veterinarian, a Parisian, a Philadelphian, or a Poughkeepsian. All are welcome, and qualifications are graciously waived. If you can accuse, if you seek to wound, you can work your accusational magic alongside other passionate employees. Health care and retirement packages are commensurate with your accusational prowess and experience.

Actually, spectral evidence has nothing to do with evidence, and everything to do with specters. If there is a ghost of a chance that the accused has said or done or felt something, one can face the judge and jury with confidence: Here is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help me God. 

In the Sanctuary of Spectral Evidence today, social media reigns. One can launch accusations into cyberspace from the safety of home, office, or wherever a smart phone may travel. Where once we would have cried foul at such groundless accusations, today we may shrug and mutter But what can you do? Such is the way of the world now. 

But when a 13 year old in Missouri takes her life after weeks of public shaming through Facebook and Instagram, it is we who should be shamed for our careless acquiescence at such acts. Today, as in the past, spectral evidence kills. At best, it robs unsuspecting, undeserving individuals of hope and kills their faith in humanity; at worst, it robs the world of precious lives.

Years ago, a student told our class that he admired a coach because–in the coach’s words–he meant what he said, and said what he meant. When the rest of his class nodded approvingly, I asked: Is it admirable to simply say what you mean and mean what you say? Anything you say and anything you mean? Just say it with conviction and passion? So I could say that it is o.k. to steal my friend’s car, I could mean it, and this would be admirable?

Silence. The class just looked at me until I persisted: This would be admirable? This would be o.k.? Finally, a student admitted that she’d never thought about this perspective. Others looked on, the foundation of this smug aphorism crumbling before their very eyes. Where there is no logic, there is no value or truth.

Logic and sufficient, relevant evidence matter deeply. Yet, those who live in the Sanctuary of Spectral Evidence don’t know this. Or they simply don’t care. For them, there is no need for opening or closing arguments, for witnesses and cross-examinations. They don’t need to make their case, and there are no documents, depositions or photos to enter into evidence. The accused never take the stand, and judgment comes quickly and without contention. Name it and claim it, baby.

As much as we look back on the Salem Witch Trials with awe and horror, we should look first at the log in our own eyes. Spectral evidence of the modern sort abounds. We may not hang, press, or drown the accused today, but we punish and wound them nonetheless. We try them through social media, through the press, and through gossip. And the accused are left broken with their hearts in their hands, their reputations in tatters.

Anne Greenslade Pudeator was guilty of nothing but living during a period in which a group of afflicted girls held her fate in their hands. But in the Sanctuary of Spectral Evidence, those girls could confidently wield their power. When there is no need for evidence or logic, accusation rules in this vacuum.

As a descendant of Anne Greenslade Pudeator, I can take heart in Lee Greenslit’s resolve and ultimate success in clearing the family name. Though I can no longer blame my weird sense of humor on Anne nor claim any special mind-reading powers. My celebrity status was memorable but short-lived.

Still, witch hunts continue, and there are afflicted girls, boys, men, and women too countless to name. They take sanctuary in spectral evidence and the power it affords them. We need more Lee Greenslits who will doggedly pursue the truth, a truth founded in real evidence. The Anne Greenslade Pudeators of the world deserve no less.