"In the Shadow of Salem" by Richard Hite
While the witch hysteria in Salem was playing on everyone's fears and superstitions at the time, a lesser-known mania was taking place in another town close by. Andover, Massachusetts was a small town under the protection of the English Crown. Founded in 1646, the town was founded by residents of nearby Ipswich and Newbury. Andover was a relatively quiet town King Phillip's War put settlers on edge.
There was another period of unrest that plagued the residents of the town. This time the threat was supernatural. While many throughout the United States and the rest of the world are familiar with the Salem Witch Trials, there are a lot of people who don't know of a similar infamous event in nearby Andover.
In the summer of 1692, Elizabeth Ballard fell ill and showed no signs of recovering. At the behest of neighbors, Elizabeth's husband Joseph called on the girls of Salem who had been victims of witchcraft's curse to examine his wife and cure her if possible. What the girls would discover was a mysterious, powerful force that threatened to give the entire town over to the Devil. The girls' discovery and the following mayhem are the subjects of Richard Hite's "In the Shadow of Salem". Hite's work tells of the trials of thirty two Andover citizens who were brought before Dudley Bradstreet, Andover's Justice of the Peace. Bradstreet's presiding over the Andover trials was much like that of the trials in Salem, with people testifying to seemingly supernatural occurrences and many injuries and illnesses that can not be explained, even by the doctors of the time.
"Shadow" contributes to a well-known chapter in the history of Massachusetts, particularly the commonwealth's North Shore. What Hite does with his book is he calls the reader's attention to the same public outbreaks that occurred in other parts of Massachusetts, not just the famed "Witch City".
The subject is a fascinating one, and it has captivated history lovers for centuries. The book talks of town leaders and everyday people getting caught up in scandals that seem to arise from nothing more than gossip and a case or two of hypochondria, but the book does get bogged down in tracing family trees and relationships that span between influential families. Incidents, described pages at a time, tell of people marrying into families and those families dealing with the intricacies of gossip and rumor that can typically plague a small town. Hite's book is thoroughly researched and this book could serve as a valuable research material, but the laundry list of names of everyone in the trials, accused, accusers, or just witnesses and spectators, make this a difficult book to read at times.
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