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Satan’s Imps As the Halloween season is upon us, many people are flocking to Salem, Massachusetts, home of all things witchy. Of course, we all know of that terrible time between February of 1692 and May of 1693 when 30 people of Salem were found guilty of witchcraft, 19 were hanged for their ‘crime’, and one man, Giles Corey, was crushed to death. Not too much later in time, in the Poquanticut neighborhood of Easton, odd supernatural events sometimes occurred, and some residents of the neighborhood were believed to be practitioners of the ‘black arts’. It was rumored that mill owner Nathan Selee was clairvoyant and that sometimes the imps of Satan ran his sawmill at night. On one occasion Mr. Selee was asked to read the fortune of a daughter of Stimson Williams, but on that particular day he declined to use his mysterious power. He later said to another man present that if she could see what the next week would bring her, she would not have asked to have her fortune told. She died the next week. (Chaffin). A friend and I visited the site of Nathan Selee’s sawmill, which had been out of use for 50 years at the time of Chaffin’s writing (1886). Of course, nothing is left except some walls and other stone ruins, but it was an interesting visit. As we walked into the woods from Mill Street the ground became wetter and eventually, we came upon a small pond and the Poquanticut Brook. The remains of the mill site are located between Mill Street and Possum Run Road.  Sign on Mill Street at the corner with Rockland Street.  Poquanticut Brook. Source of the waterpower for Nathan Selee’s mill.  Stonework associated with the mill. Pond on the right. Nathan Selee, who Chaffin called "an able and worthy man", had a sister, Thankful (Selee) Buck, who was reputed to be a witch. It’s said she spoke incantations at midnight with her daughters and may have done something like ‘scrying’ as she poured water from one pan to another. Scrying involves seeing the future in a reflective surface.
Whatever happened or didn’t happen, no serious harm seems to have been done though stories abound, and it appears a good number of the citizens of Easton were believers. The day we visited the mill site was sunny and benign but we both agreed that it might be a different story in the darkness and lonesomeness of a long ago October eve. Rough dirt roads, no streetlights, no house lights, neighbors few and far between. I can almost hear the old mill now, mysteriously running in the darkest of night. Anne Wooster Drury [email protected] Comments are closed.
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