The Salem Witchcraft, the Planchette Mystery, and Modern Spiritualism / With Dr. Doddridge's Dream

The work opens with a detailed review of the seventeenth-century witchcraft prosecutions in a New England town, assembling depositions, profiles of key actors, and a careful historiographical account while tracing social, religious, and physiological explanations for the panic and its decline. Subsequent essays examine planchette phenomena and modern spiritualism, reporting observed manifestations, surveying proposed explanations — human ideomotor action, electricity, demonic agency, ambient mentality, and communications from the departed — and weighing moral and theological implications. The volume adds practical remarks on planchette use, a compact history of spiritualist activity, scriptural reflections on communion with the dead, and a brief appended dream narrative with editorial notes.