Community Corner
Truth Or Tale: The Mount Holly Witch Trials
Patch is looking into urban legends and spooky bits around the Garden State. Take a journey with us into the upside down.
MOUNT HOLLY, NJ — Anyone who lives in the Garden State has heard rumors of haunted happenings and urban folklore close to home. In fact, there was an entire magazine, Weird NJ, devoted to them.
Patch is taking up the task of exploring these myths throughout October in the hopes compiling a master list comprised of the best of the unexplained throughout New Jersey. Today we are discussing the Mount Holly Witch Trials.
About 40 years after the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, more sorcery came under fire in Mount Holly, New Jersey.
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According to an article published in the Oct. 22, 1730, issue of the Pennsylvania Gazette, a wizard and a witch were put on trial for controlling the local farm life, including making a “sheep dance in an uncommon manner” and “causing hogs to sing and speak in psalms.”
The wizard and the witch were put to a series of tasks by about 300 townspeople. Two townspeople were set about facing the same tasks as a way for the mob to show they were being fair. When set upon water, one of the townspeople sank while the other three floated, leading the woman to proclaim that she must have been cursed by witches. The article doesn’t describe the end result of the trials.
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The article has since been deemed a hoax that was perpetrated by Benjamin Franklin, who owned the Pennsylvania Gazette at the time the article was published. He was the only contributor to the paper at the time, but he wrote under multiple names to make it appear as though more people contributed to his publication than actually did. It is believed he did it as a parody of Puritan beliefs, although the Yale edition of Franklin's papers disputes the certainty of his authorship.
The below are videos of the "Witches Well," where the witch trials are alleged to have taken place.
So what do you think readers? Buy it or boot it? Is the story of the Mount Holly Witch Trials real? Maybe you have another, even scarier tale of your own to share. Drop them in our comments or send them to anthony.bellano@patch.com.
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