The Salem Witch Hunt's Four-Legged Victims

Claim A says Two dogs were killed as suspected witches in Salem's hysteria. Claim B says Two cats were hanged as witches in Salem's hysteria. Claim A is true, and Claim B is completely made up.

The 1692 witch panic didn't stop at humans. According to accounts from the period, colonists in Andover and Salem Village killed two dogs believed to be tied to the devil.

One story comes from minister Increase Mather's 1693 book Cases of Conscience. He reported that a bewitched woman complained she was thrown into fits by the look of a dog. The dog was shot.

Mather had an odd take on it. Since the dog died so easily, he reasoned, "this dog was no Devil." His account is secondhand, though, passed along by "credible persons" he never named.

The second dog, according to historian Marilynne Roach's chronicle, belonged to a different kind of tale. Afflicted girls claimed the invisible spirit of John Bradstreet was riding and tormenting the animal. The dog was treated as a victim of witchcraft, yet it was killed anyway.

Historians note that the official trial records don't mention any dogs, so these stories come from letters and later accounts, not courtroom transcripts.

As for cats, no record shows two of them being hanged as witches in Salem. The animals known to have been killed in the hysteria were dogs, not cats.

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