Andover Bewitched: Dogs Practicing Witchcraft?

Two Dogs, a Political Debate, and An Unsolved Mystery...

When I sat down to work on today’s “Andover Bewitched” entry, I was hoping to tell the story of two dogs executed in 1692 as witches. It seemed like a fascinating tale, who would have thought that pets could be witches too?  But as I dove deeper and deeper into this story, I found less and less truth… Instead, I found a complicated literary battle between several important Boston ministers after the trials. I also discovered that the story of these dogs might be entirely made up.

If you’re new to this story, you might want to start with my first “Andover Bewitched” post, which tells the whole narrative of the 1692 trials.  

Let’s start with the dogs…

Supposedly, one dog was seen being tormented by John Bradstreet, an Andover man and the brother of an important city official.  Even though the dog would have been the victim, it was put to death.  The second dog was accused by “a convulsing Andover girl” and immediately shot.¹ You can imagine that I was excited by this account — surely, if an Andover girl accused this dog, there must be a record that I could connect to our history.

There are an impressive number of articles, blogs, and stories about the pets killed during the witch trials.² Many of them come back to Martha Roach’s The Salem Witch Trials: A Day by Day Account, where she briefly describes two canine executions. This is a useful book — you’ve seen me cite it here before — and it outlines many of the important moments in the trials in Andover and beyond. 

And there are also many accounts of dogs appearing as specters, haunting the afflicted or attacking them. However, it’s clear that when they describe the Devil in the form of a dog (or a cat, or a pig, or a bird), it’s a spectral creature, not a real one. They knew the difference between a phantom animal and a real one, and they didn’t think these dogs were actually alive.

In fact, none of the 1692 trial records from Andover mention a dog’s execution, or that of any pet for that matter.

It seems that the first stories about dogs accused of witchcraft came not from the actual trials, but from these two important ministers who published accounts after the fact. Neither Increase Mather nor Robert Calef were actually present, so some of their accounts are taken from hearsay.  Their books were also part of the complicated political and literary battle happening in the aftermath of the trial. 

People have been telling and re-telling (and re-re-telling) the stories of the witch trials since 1692…

Part of why we have so many primary documents and accounts of the witch trials is that they were immediately well-known. Authors, philosophers, and religious figures alike started writing and talking about the trials as they were happening and afterwards. 

It was a key moment in the shared culture and history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony — and in how people thought about religion, community, law, and illness. We know that the witch trials were religiously charged, and threat of the Devil’s influence reigned over the accused and their accusers. I’ve also spoken at length about the challenges of the many communities scattered across the colony; suspicion of each other as well as collective action characterized 1692. The trials were also a legal event, and debates about “spectral evidence” and presumption of guilt continue to affect the legal system in the United States today. 

And I think that the people in 1692 knew then how important the trials were. People began writing and debating the events and causes right away.  Everything was at stake: twenty people were dead, and even more were deeply impacted by the trials. These authors had to explain the story of what went wrong very carefully — both to protect the judges and ministers involved in the trials, and to prevent it from happening again.

The dogs were first described in 1693, after the trials had ended… 

Increase Mather was an influential figure in Boston, as a well-known minister and one of the presidents of Harvard College.³  He wrote a book, Cases of conscience describing how to find witches, recounting the trials, and ultimately arguing against spectral evidence. He hoped that this book might prevent future outbreaks of such hysteria.⁴

A quick note on spectral evidence — Spectral evidence was a witness’ account of a spirit appearing to them. At the start of the trials, spectral evidence was considered legitimate and could be enough to convict a witch. By the end, and after many important people spoke out against it, spectral evidence was banned from the courtroom.⁵

Increase Mather’s book describes the death of a dog. This is one of the first times the story of a dog executed during the trials seems to appear.  He wrote: 

“I am told by credible persons, who say it is certainly true, that a Bewitched Person has complained that she was cast into Fits by the Look of a Dog; and that she was no more able to bear the fight of that Dog, then of the person whom she accused as Bewitching her. And that thereupon the Dog was shot to death.”⁶

But Mather was using the example of the dog to make an important point about spectral evidence: if the dog was actually the Devil, they couldn’t have killed him. Therefore, the dog couldn’t be the actual Devil… and the dog’s evil “Look” couldn’t have actually afflicted this person. 

Increase Mather was arguing that an afflicted person suddenly falling ill wasn’t enough to indict the person they accused.  Whether or not the dog actually existed wasn’t actually important to his book.

Robert Calef was another important figure, who was similarly speaking out against spectral evidence.⁷ His book, More Wonders of the Invisible World, was published in 1697.  Like Increase Mather, he argued against the trials, condemning what had happened, and casting the judges and ministers involved in a bad light. 

Calef’s book also describes a dog, somewhat more credibly. Here’s what he wrote:

“A Dog being afflicted at Salem-Village, those that had the Spectral sight being sent for, they accused Mr. John Bradstreet (Brother to the Justice) that he afflicted the said Dog… and the Dog was put to death, and was all of the Afflicted that suffered death. 

At Andover, the Afflicted complained of a Dog, as afflicting of them, and would fall into their Fits at the Dogs looking upon them; the Dog was put to death.”⁸

Like Increase, he was speaking on the risks of the trials — an innocent dog seems to have been accused and executed, even though the dog couldn’t have actually afflicted any humans.  While Calef’s account is a little bit more specific, he doesn’t name or describe the actual afflicted people (except for John Bradstreet, whose testimony doesn’t survive). There’s no way to fact-check this account, or to find out if the dogs’ story was a historical truth or a useful rhetorical embellishment.

I can easily understand why historians and writers might have retold the dogs’ stories without doubt. After all, Mather and Calef were writing within years of the trials, so their narratives seem much closer to time, and therefore closer to the truth. I think it’s important to remember that even very old records can carry a bias that clouds the truth. 

And who knows, maybe there really were dogs executed during the trials. Or, maybe the stories of dogs appearing as specters turned into a story of an actual dog in a sort of seventeenth-century phone game.⁹ What do you think?

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Thank you for reading!

If you have any questions, or if there’s any aspect of the trials you’d like to learn more about, leave a comment! I’d love to hear from you. Plus, click here to open a free Substack account, so you can like, share, and comment.

Thanks for reading!

— Toni

1. Marilynne Roach, The Salem witch trials: a day-by-day chronicle of a community under siege, (Taylor Trade Publications, 2004).

2. See for example: “Dogs and the Salem Witch Trials” and “Animals in the Salem Witch Trials.”

3. Mathew Madden, “Increase Mather,” Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive.

4. Increase Mather was arguing against his son, Cotton Mather, another outspoken figure in the Boston ministry scene.

5. “Spectral Evidence and the Salem Witch Trials”

6. Increase Mather, Cases of conscience concerning evil spirits personating men, witchcrafts, infallible proofs of guilt in such as are accused with that crime. All considered according to the scriptures, history, experience, and the judgment of many learned men, (Boston: Printed and sold by Benjamin Harris at the London Coffee-House, 1693).

7. “Robert Calef,” Encyclopedia.com.

8. Robert Calef and George Burr, Narratives of the witchcraft cases, 1648-1706 (C. Scribner's Sons, New York, 1914).

9. PS, Here’s a fun article on various animals on trial, though there are no witches in this article.