ABSTRACT
Neither Enlightenment scepticism, nor the disapproval of Christian ministers had by any means eradicated popular belief in magic, the occult or supernatural involvement in human life by the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Rev. Frederick H. Quitman (1760-1832), a Lutheran pastor in Rhinebeck, New York, was sufficiently alarmed by the extent of the "bondage of superstition" in his neighbourhood that he set about exposing it and explaining away incidents on which occult beliefs fed.
