This work republishes a skeptical contemporary account of witchcraft prosecutions in New England, juxtaposing the original author's critiques of sensational narratives with extensive documentary materials, depositions, and polemical arguments opposing reliance on spectral evidence. The editor supplies a prefatory apparatus, annotations, corrected typography, and genealogical and publishing history to clarify textual variants and context while preserving much of the original orthography. The edition therefore combines the author's trenchant rebuttals of prevailing beliefs about invisible agents with an annotated text designed to help readers follow the evidence, reasoning, and rhetorical strategies deployed against accepted accounts of the prosecutions.