Whatever Happened To Elizabeth Knapp?

The Possession Diaries Part VI

The case of Elizabeth Knapp’s possession was unusual in the sense that it was recorded and analysed from a more scientific point of view.

Elizabeth was a servant in Reverend Samuel Willard’s household and the daughter of a farmer.

Reverend Willard was a well-known preacher in the church of Groton, a Puritan town in Massachusetts near Boston in America. In Elizabeth’s lifetime, Groton was part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was extremely religious and expected its women to perform difficult manual labour.

Elizabeth’s strange behaviour became an issue because Willard was famous for his sermons about damnation and obeying God.

One sermon he gave said that the young people of Groton had to be very careful because:

“although God is ready to receive them, the Devil is ready to endeavor them”.

When Elizabeth began showing signs of possession, Willard approached the circumstances scientifically, which was a rare outlook for the 1600s in New England.

Willard called for a doctor on a few occasions in an attempt to find a mundane cure for Elizabeth’s symptoms. After the doctor was unable to explain her fits, he declared that Elizabeth was possessed.

Throughout the ordeal, Elizabeth appeared to have her worst fits when Samuel Willard was in the same room as her.

Willard meticulously took notes on Elizabeth Knapp’s symptoms every day, from the evening when she first developed erratic behaviour (Monday, October the 30th, 1671) until January the 12th, 1672.

To begin with, Elizabeth suffered pains throughout her body. They often caused her to clutch areas of her body such as her leg, breast, or neck, and shout loudly, usually about being or feeling strangled.

She would experience violent mood swings, sometimes laughing to the point of hysteria, crying, or screaming. After this she began to hallucinate.

Several times, she claimed to see two individuals pacing around her. She said there was a man floating around her bed.

Elizabeth also suffered from fits, usually at night, where she convulsed on the ground. Then she tried to throw herself into the fire.

Sam Willard noted that on the first Sabbath day after her symptoms first started, the 16 year-old girl’s movements turned more aggressive — leaping, and twisting her body to the extent that three to four people had to hold her down. As she threw these fits, she shouted the words: “money, money, sin and misery, misery!”

Sam Willard then wrote that on the evening of November 2nd, 1671, Elizabeth confessed that she had met up with the Devil, which was a common thing in most possession cases. She said she had kept meeting the Devil for three years, during which he had kept promising her money, youth, ease from labour, and the ability to travel the world.

She then said the Devil presented her with a book of blood covenants which had been signed by other women. She also claimed that the Devil had tried to persuade her to commit suicide and murder (Sam Willard and his family included in the potential victims) but she couldn’t bring herself to do such things.

Elizabeth continued having convulsions and apparitions of the Devil and other spirits until the evening of November the 28th, when she convulsed for 48 hours.

After this she was catatonic until the night of December 8th, when she confessed that, after being assaulted by the Devil a few times, she agreed to a pact with him, and let him “into her bed.”

Sam Willard’s account of the possession stated that Elizabeth, through December

“goes in and out of violent fits, one much worse than the next, she talks in a strange, deep voice, and makes animal sounds.”

During those weeks, Willard wrote that the Devil, “talked through (Elizabeth’s) body”, calling him a “rogue” minister.

Sam Willard’s entries ceased until January the 10th in 1672, when he wrote that he met with Elizabeth again.

She confessed to him that the Devil was controlling her body and that he was more powerful than she was. She said he also seized her speech and that she didn’t have control over the things she said.

The following night she descended into a fit of weeping and called out for Samuel Willard’s presence.

“(These fits) held her till late in the night…as long as [Willard] tarried, which was more than an hour. I left her in them. And thus she continues speechless to this instant January 15.”

After that night, Reverend Willard ended his notes on the possession of Elizabeth Knapp, saying he would leave the matter to “more learned, aged, and judicious” people than he was.

He concluded his account with four points, giving his final opinion about the validity of Elizabeth’s possession:

1) Knapp’s distemper in no way can be counterfeit on the grounds that it was physically impossible to fake such actions.

2) Due to the length and power of her fits, he believed them to be diabolical rather than of natural cause.

3) Though many folks were skeptical that the Devil was talking through the girl, Willard was convinced. He said that on several occasions she talked with her mouth shut, her throat swelling like a balloon, and the voices he heard were not her own.

4) He said he highly doubted that Miss Knapp made a bargain with the Devil as she was too contradictory with the facts concerning her meetings with that entity.

In 1676, four years later, Groton was attacked by four hundred Native Americans, and most of its buildings were decimated.

Sam Willard then went on to deliver several sermons in Salem village during the Salem Witch Trials in 1692, and discredited evidence of conviction for a few of the women during those trials. Elizabeth Knapp’s possession had been very similar to those in Salem, though they occurred twenty years later.

Samuel Willard sent correspondence to the Puritan minister Cotton Mather, who published his account of Elizabeth Knapp’s possession in his “Magnalia Christi Americana.”

After he stopped writing entries in his journal, it has been a mystery as to what became of Elizabeth Knapp.

In the second volume of The Nighthunter series, the character of Elka Wyverg has certain parallels with Elizabeth Knapp, except she is fourteen years old and has a younger brother, and though her body isn’t possessed, she is living with a curse that causes her to summon Ghosts in response to any type of stress. In her world, Ghosts are dangerous entities that feed on people’s neurological energies until they die, or fall into a state close to death.

Children who have this curse or ability are demonised and sent into exile for being different… and dangerous.

You can find the first Nighthunter novel here:

Other parts of The Possession Diaries: