It was mid-winter as the year 1691 became 1692 when a pair of girls started acting very

strangely.

The girls were cousins who happened to live in the same household, one being the daughter

and the other the niece of the Reverend Samuel Paris, the minister who led the Puritan

congregation in Salem Village, Massachusetts.

The odd behavior was first noticed in the Reverend's young daughter, Elizabeth, or Betty

Paris, who was only nine years old at the time.

Little Betty started staring off into space for long stretches as if in a hypnotic trance.

She soon evolved into even more distressing episodes where she would crawl around the

floor on all fours, bark like a dog, and make strange choking sounds.

Soon her older cousin, the 13-year-old Abigail Williams, started exhibiting the same bizarre

behaviors.

A contemporary observer, one Robert Califf, would record that Betty and Abigail, quote,

began to act in a strange and unusual manner by getting into holes, creeping under chairs

and stools, and to use sundry odd postures and antichestures, uttering foolish, ridiculous

speeches, which neither they themselves nor any other could make sense of, end quote.

There's something deeply unsettling about the idea of a little girl in a disassociative

state getting into a hole or creeping under a chair, just squatting there, babbling.

As might be expected, the girl's parents were deeply disturbed by all of this, so they

call the local physician to come and examine Betty and Abigail.

The doctor, usually identified as Dr. William Griggs, carefully evaluated the two girls and

found nothing physiologically wrong with them.

...