THE CURSE OF
GILES COREY
Giles Corey was a central figure in the Salem witch trials of 1692 (and a character in Arthur Miller’s 1953 play about the trials, The Crucible). Corey got caught up in the mass hysteria of accusing people of witchcraft, and he paid for it with his life. But according to local lore…Corey had his revenge.
BEWITCHED, BOTHERED, AND BEWILDERED
In the spring of 1692, a handful of girls in Salem, Massachusetts, started acting strangely, falling into convulsive fits and screaming jags. During one of these episodes, the girls claimed to be possessed by the devil…and then they accused several Salem women of being witches, in cahoots with Satan. As absurd as this sounds, the local government and church officials believed the girls were telling the truth—it would explain their odd behavior—and also, they weren’t far removed from the strict, God-fearing Puritans who’d settled the area about 60 years earlier.
That began one of the darker events in American history: the Salem witch trials. Over the course of 1692, more than 200 men, women, and children were accused of witchcraft. Many, obviously unable to prove that they were not witches, were convicted and executed. Nineteen people—most of them women—were hanged on Gallows Hill.
Before they could be prosecuted in the formal Court of Oyer and Terminer, the accused had to endure a brutal public “examination” before local magistrates—essentially a trial before the trial where the so-called witches had to answer for themselves. A local man, an 80-year-old farmer named Giles Corey, attended some of those examinations, watching judges and ministers berate young women who were accused by other young women of using evil magic.
A RANDOM BIT OF FACTINESS
It wasn’t just humans who were tried for witchcraft in Salem. Seventeenth-century conventional wisdom held that witches kept an animal “familiar” (a supernatural spirit in the guise of an animal) to help them carry out their evil deeds. Result: dogs and cats were accused of witchcraft, and a few were even executed for it. One of the first women accused was a slave named Tituba, who admitted to using dark magic against two cats that had threatened her. In another case, two dogs were put down for suspicion of witchcraft, although one was found not-guilty after its death.
The good old days? 3 popular ice cream flavors in the 1700s were: asparagus, parmesan, and oyster.
PERHAPS THERE’S A MORE REASONABLE EXPLANATION
Corey’s wife, Martha, also attended the examinations…until she started to feel that it was all nonsense. She urged her husband to stop supporting the tribunals and reportedly tried to get him to stop attending them by hiding his horse’s saddle. But in the hysterical environment of Salem at the time, all of that behavior looked suspicious—the only reason Martha Corey would be against the witch trials is if she herself were a witch. On March 21, 1692, Martha Corey was arrested by the sheriff of Salem on suspicion of witchcraft. Two days later, Giles Corey testified against her at an examination—his wife being a witch would explain why their ox suddenly got sick, or why he’d spotted her silently praying in front of the fire at night. (She must have been praying to Satan.)
Then, on April 18, 1692, the man who had pinpointed supposed witchery in his own wife was himself accused of witchcraft by five local women. Now he started to believe that all this witchcraft stuff was a sham. During Corey’s examination, his hands were tied to prevent him from doing any witchcraft inside the courtroom, but he refused to give any more evidence of his wife’s “evil” ways or admit to any wrongdoing of his own. Corey failed the examination, and his case advanced to a full trial that September. He pleaded not guilty to all charges but used a defense tactic called “standing mute”—he remained silent at every question from prosecutors and judges. That stopped the trial dead in its tracks.
BOARD ’EM
Under the English law that governed the colonies in 1692, the court was forced to respond to a prisoner who stood mute with peine forte et dure, “strong and harsh punishment.” Corey’s punishment: Sheriff George Corwin ordered him tortured. On September 17, 1692, the defendant was marched to an empty field next to the Salem jail, stripped of his clothes, and laid out on the ground. Authorities then placed a board on Corey, and on top of that board, heavy stones. Over the course of three days, they added more and more stones, increasing the crushing weight on Corey. When given the chance to make the pain go away, either by owning up to his “crimes” or agreeing to stop standing mute, Corey replied, “More weight!” On September 19, Corey died. (Cause of death: “Crushed by heavy stones.”)
Before his execution, Corey prepared for the future. Knowing he’d either be killed for standing mute, or, if he went to trial, railroaded into a conviction for witchcraft and hanged, he deeded his land to his adult children. Under the law at the time, the sheriff could seize the property of anyone with a conviction, but Corey’s canny arrangement got around that. Nevertheless, after Corey was executed by the colonial government (as was Martha Corey), Sheriff Corwin extorted payment from Corey’s children, threatening to seize the family’s estate if they didn’t pay him 11 pounds and six shillings. They paid up, having to sell their livestock and most of their possessions to do so.
Popes can’t be organ donors because “their bodies belong to the Church.”
But did Corey actually get the upper hand over the cruel sheriff who tortured and killed him, and then extorted his children? In addition to cries of “More weight!” as he lay under heavy rocks, some say Corey also shouted, “Damn you! I curse you and Salem!” in the direction of Sheriff Corwin. No one knows if that’s true, but here’s one thing that is known: In 1696 Corwin dropped dead of a heart attack.
Nearly 300 years later, in 1978, Essex County sheriff Robert Cahill suffered a heart attack and a stroke. He survived, but doctors were unable to determine the cause of his ailments. Greatly weakened by his health problems, Cahill retired and focused his energies on becoming a local historian. In the course of his research, he learned that every sheriff after Corwin had an office in the Salem jail, which overlooked the spot where Corey was crushed to death. He also discovered that every man who served as sheriff after Corwin either died in office or had to retire early because of heart- or blood-related issues. Apparently Corey hadn’t cursed one sheriff of Essex County… he’d cursed all of them.
THERE’S A NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN
Despite Cahill’s claims, Salem’s death records from the 1700s and early 1800s are spotty at best. But there are a number of confirmed early exits for the sheriffs. In 1919 Sheriff Samuel A. Johnson died in office. So did Sheriff Arthur Wells in 1932, and his son, Sheriff Earl Wells, in 1964. Cahill’s successor, Charles Reardon, seemingly beat the curse…because the sheriff’s physical office was moved to a new prison in nearby Middleton. But in 1996 Reardon had to resign from office after pleading guilty to corruption charges.
According to local folklore, not only did Corey curse Salem, but his spirit still hangs around to make sure his words took effect. Over the years, there have been numerous eyewitness accounts of an elderly man wandering around the Howard Street Cemetery, Corey’s “resting” place. Several people claimed to have seen him in 1914… right after a fire destroyed dozens of buildings in Salem. And that fire started very near Gallows Hill…the place where Martha Corey was hanged for witchcraft in 1692.
“It’s easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one’s neighbor.” —Eric Hoffer
First hip-hop song to win the Best Original Song Oscar: Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” from 8 Mile (2003).