ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the Salem magistrates and the Court of Oyer and Terminer. It also reviews the end of the Salem witch trials with the spectral appearance of Mary Easty. On September 22, 1692, the same day she was hanged and the Court of Oyer and Terminer adjourned, the ghost of Mary Easty appeared in Wenham, Massachusetts, to a seventeen-year-old girl, Mary Herrick. Wenham, although close to Salem, had escaped the ravages of the witchcraft hysteria. William Phips reported that the Court of Oyer and Terminer had convicted more than twenty people of practicing witchcraft, and that some of the convicted had confessed their guilt. In Salem, the Superior Court handled twenty cases between January 4 and 13. Thomas Brattle characterized Oyer and Terminer Chief Justice William Stoughton as 'very zealous' in the proceedings and 'very impatient' of criticism.
