The Woman Who May Have Inspired Hocus Pocus

April 2024 ยท 2 minute read

The real Sarah Cloyce was no stranger to the horrors of witchcraft accusation. Born Sarah Towne in Salem in 1637, she had six children with her first husband, a blacksmith (via The Salem Witch Museum). When she was widowed, she was left financially destitute and "warned" out of the Topsfield community where she and her family lived. She remarried, to Peter Cloyce of Salem Village, and had another daughter, named Hepzibah. Her own mother, Joanna Towne, had been accused of witchcraft 20 years before Cloyce herself was accused.

Cloyce raised suspicions in the Puritan community after her sister, the elderly Rebecca Nurse, was accused of witchcraft. After Nurse was imprisoned, Cloyce attended Sunday meeting. The Reverend Samuel Parris announced that he would be addressing the existence of the devil and insinuated that he would be talking about Cloyce's older sibling. The 44-year-old Cloyce stood up and left the meeting house and raised eyebrows immediately. According to essayist and author Stacy Schiff in her book "The Witches: Salem, 1692," she may have slammed the heavy latched door, but some believed that the wind simply blew it mysteriously behind her.

Several weeks later, an slaved person named John Indian claimed that a "spectral" version of Cloyce had hovered over him in the church aisles and bit him to drink his blood. An 11-year-old in the congregation added that Cloyce had done the same to her and a warrant was issued for Cloyce's arrest. Cloyce spent nine months in prison before she was released. She died at the age of 66.

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