This week on hometown ghost stories, Groton Massachusetts, a small, quiet New England village,

rolling hills, stone walls, and a ruined castle on top of a hill that is slightly steeper than it looks.

The town goes back to 1655 and some of the hauntings are just as old. There has been an inn on Main Street since 1678, older than the country itself,

and the things that happened in this place at night have made most guests check out early.

And then there's the story that most people haven't heard.

The story from 1671, 20 years before Salem, where a 16-year-old servant girl named

Elizabeth Knapp was possessed by a demon inside the home of Reverend Samuel Willard. The demon

tormented her for months, and the Reverend wrote down every interaction.

Hometown ghost stories contains serious and often distressing events and is not intended for all audiences.

Listener discretion is advised.

He demanded of her some of her blood, which she forthwith consented to and with a knife

cut her finger.

He caught the blood in his hand and then told her she must write her name in his book.

She answered she could not write, but he told her he would direct her hands,

and then took a little sharpened stick, and dipped it in the blood, and put it into her hand,

and guided it, and she wrote her it into her hand and guided it.

And she wrote her name with his help.

What was the matter she set her hand to, I could not learn from her.

But thus much, she confessed that the term of the time agreed upon with him was for seven years.

Let's set the scene for this ghost story.

1671 in the town of Groton, Massachusetts, a 16-year-old servant girl named Elizabeth

Knapp is at the house of Samuel Willard.

...