No less a personality than the esteemed Cotton Mather, in his Magnalia Christi Americana, retold the story as related to him by Gloucester’s minister John Emerson.
That evening, the garrison’s inhabitants heard the sounds of tramping feet outside. Babson chased the men he saw into the Harbor Swamp (where Burnham’s Field is today), but his pursuit proved fruitless. The next evening, the chase was repeated, with Babson ranging out on a sortie after the intruders, only to be chased back to the safety of the blockhouse by what he described as armed Frenchmen.
Several nights later, the garrison’s inhabitants again heard unexplained noises which to them sounded as if stones were being thrown at the barn. Babson and John Brown attempted to shoot at men fleeing into the cornfields but were unable to hit their mark. This pattern continued for several more nights.
On the 14th of July, after nearly two weeks of continuous harassment by the spectral visitors, Babson, Brown, and several other men at the garrison saw six French and Indians in the area. Babson took aim at two of them but his gun missed fire. The militiamen on the other side of the swamp saw three men, one wearing a white waistcoat, emerge from the swamp. Babson, who by now had joined his comrades, fired on them and saw them fall. One of the soldiers exclaimed that they had killed them, and no sooner had he remarked, the three rose up and fled apparently unharmed by Babson’s bullets. As they fled, they fired on the Gloucestermen, and a running gunfight ensued. They were unable to apprehend the raiders, who vanished into the swamp, but the Gloucestermen reported that they heard hushed discussions in what they believed to be an unknown tongue.
It’s hard to imagine Gloucester as it was in the twilight of the seventeenth century, when it was still swampy and forested. The unimproved wilderness was, in the Puritan mind, the haven of the Devil. And it seemed to Babson that the Devil must have had some hand in the goings on of the last several days.
At daybreak on the following day, one of the intruders boldly approached the fence of the garrison. Isaac Prince, armed with a long gun charged with swan shot, fired at him. The shot had no effect and the intruder vanished. By now, the bewildered inhabitants of the garrison must have suspected something supernatural was afoot. Ebenezer Babson set off to spread the alarm in the Town, a mile and a half away. When he was hardly half a mile from the garrison he was set upon and shot at by four men. Babson returned fire and took cover behind a hemlock tree to reload his gun. His assailants let go another volley, and one ball struck the tree. Babson fired at them again and the raiders vanished. Babson, with a party of six armed men from the Harbor found Babson’s hemlock and dug the bullet from it. They tracked the intruders through the forest and encountered several of them, one of whom had his hair tied up in the style of Indian warriors, and the other attired like a French woodsman. They fled under the fire of the Harbor men, and were lost in the forest.
Ezekiel Day and several other men from the garrison formed a scouting party and set out to track the intruders. In a fresh meadow, two and a half miles from any house, they encountered an Indian in blue clothing. Upon perceiving the scouting party, he ran; another appeared, and when the Gloucestermen gave chase, he too ran and vanished. John Hammond reported that their quarry appeared to be French and Indians.
On July 17, three or four of the mysterious intruders approached the garrison, but the defenders could not get a clear shot at them. Meanwhile, Richard Dolliver and Benjamin Ellery we’re out hunting the raiders and came upon a number of them, which Ellery supposed to be about eleven, near John Rowe’s abandoned home. They were circling the house and hitting the side of it with a stick. Dolliver fired at them and they dispersed.
The following day, having been a fortnight since the troubles began and as they had persisted unabated during that time, Major Appleton of Ipswich, with a detachment of sixty militiamen, was sent to assist the men in Gloucester. John Day went with the Ipswich and Gloucester soldiers; guns were heard being fired in the swamp, and the troopers went to investigate. One man, in blue, with bushy hair, thought to be an Indian, was seen and chased, but they could not shoot him on account of the thickets. The Gloucester and Ipswich men attempted to follow him, but were unable to find his tracks despite the muddy ground.
Ebenezer Babson was in the woods on July 25 getting his cattle when he spied several of the intruders. He attempted to shoot them, but his piece missed fire a dozen times. The men, at least one of whom was armed, approached Babson, but did not molest him. The men disappeared. Upon his return home, Babson had no trouble discharging his gun.
Reverend Emerson alluded to further encounters with these mysterious visitors, but did not give any more details in his letter to Mather. And just like they arrived, the spectral intruders were no more. Emerson believed them to be agents of the Devil sent to menace the Province.
Ebenezer Babson’s involvement with the spectral world would not end with the cessation of the phantom assaults on Gloucester. In September of 1692, he swore a complaint against Margaret (Skillings) Prince of Gloucester and Elizabeth (Austin) Dicer of Piscataqua, formerly of Gloucester, for bewitching his mother Elinor and Mary, the wife of William Sargent. Elinor Babson, with Elizabeth Hubbard and Mary Warren, was also a witness against Margaret Prince when she was indicted for committing acts of witchcraft against Elizabeth Booth of Salem.
Good Morning Gloucester 