more weight--halloween edition.
![Image](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V84o1dplALg/Wjk2wMMQv7I/AAAAAAAAAZI/FwzWMmxfQlMgRi19wFKENsksHJfCJTSIACLcBGAs/s640/halloween.jpg)
My older children, especially Zachary, are fond of one particular legend from the Salem witch trials. In 1692, Ann Putnam, Jr., Marcy Lewis, Abigail Williams, Elizabeth Hubbard, and Mary Walcott (five girls, in a way, all teenagers) accused Giles Corey of being a witch. At this point in the dark unfolding of accusations, hangings, and the dissolution of family and town alike, the trial was a well-oiled machine. Wiitches could save themselves from hanging only by perversely confessing to being a witch and providing a set of convincing details, most of which were borrowed from the storyline provided by Tituba, a woman who was enslaved by the minister of Salem, who, once accused, held the courtroom rapt with her stories of meeting the devil in the woods at night, signing his book, and (my favorite detail) suffering when a small yellow bird lit between her fingers and sharply pecked at her. When she spoke of the bird, the accusing girls writhed in pain, "seeing" the same bird fli