Confessing to and "familiarity with the devils, and " Mary Johnson, a servant, was executed by Connecticut officials in 1648. A wealthy Boston widow, Ann Hibbens was hanged in 1656 for casting spells on her neighbors. The case of Ann Cole, who was and "taken with very strange Fits, and " fueled an outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Hartford a generation before the notorious events at Salem.More than three hundred years later, the question and "Why? and " still haunts us. Why were these and other women likely witches - vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft and possession? Carol F. Karlsen reveals the social construction of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England and illuminates the larger contours of gender relations in that society.