Was it Witchcraft, or Ordinary Angry Neighbors?

 

One thing’s for sure; George Walton, 67 and a Quaker, was unpopular amongst his neighbors.  Salem State College history professor Emerson Baker has written a book detailing cases of witchcraft hysteria in New England during the colonial period. But objects raining from the sky, from frogs and squids, to things like rocks or slime, have a long history in paranormal studies. 

All of a sudden, late on a moonlit June night, the assault began.

Flying rocks – hundreds of them. Some the size of apples; some weighing as much as 8 pounds; others blazing hot, as if retrieved from a fire.

During the four-hour onslaught, launched by invisible attackers, stones pummeled the tavern walls, coming in like a horizontal rain. They plummeted down the chimney. They seemed to clatter out of nowhere on the ceiling. They shattered windows.

The attack ceased at dawn, but others spontaneously erupted – always rocks, always thrown by unseen hands – over the summer of 1682 on Great Island, a boxy, 512-acre spot of land now known as New Castle, N.H.