Note 5 — Chapter VI · PIN-HOLES IN THE CURTAIN.
Reading edition
Similar occurrences are related by Cotton Mather to have taken place in Boston in 1693. Six witnesses, whose affidavits he gives, namely, Samuel Aves, Robert Earle, John Wilkins, Dan Williams, Thomas Thornton, and William Hudson, testify to having repeatedly seen Margaret Rule lifted from her bed up near to the ceiling by an invisible force. It is a cheap way of getting rid of such testimony to say that the witnesses were false or incompetent. The present writer could name at least six witnesses of his own acquaintance now living, gentlemen of character, intelligence, sound senses and sound judgment, who will testify to having seen similar occurrences. The other phenomena, related as witnessed by Peek, are such as hundreds of intelligent men and women in the United States will confirm by their testimony. Indeed, the number of believers in these phenomena may be now fairly reckoned at more than three million.