Susannah Sheldon, a refugee from Maine, was eighteen years of age during the time of the witchcraft crisis at Salem Village. As one of the core group of allegedly afflicted girls, Sheldon made claims of afflictions for the first time during the last week of April of 1692. Four days following the accusation that Minister George Burroughs was the leader of the suspected witches, Sheldon allegedly began experiencing “strange spectral encounters"
and on April 24th identified the wealthy New England merchant, Philip English, as her tormentor. Sheldon was the first to accuse Philip English and the Boston merchant, Hezekiah Usher of witchcraft and throughout the crisis, she claimed to experience afflictions caused by Goody Buckley, Bridget Bishop

Bridget Bishop

Bridget Bishop was the first person executed for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials of 1692....

, Mary English, Martha Corey

Martha Corey

Martha Corey was accused of being a witch during the 1692 Salem witch trials.The community was surprised to see Corey accused, as she was known for her piety and dedicated church attendance. However, she had never shown support for the witch trials, since she did not believe witches existed...

, John Willard

John Willard

John Willard, born no later than 1672, was one of the people executed for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts, during the Salem witch trials of 1692. He was hanged on Gallows Hill on August 19. At the time of the first allegations of witchcraft Willard was serving as a constable in the village of...

, Sarah Good

Sarah Good

Sarah Good Born in Salem Village , Massachusetts, was accused of witchcraft in 1692. It has been proved in multiple ways that Sarah Good was falsely accused of witchcraft. She was accused only because of economical and political biases from the families of the accusers...

, Lydia Dustin, John Proctor

John Proctor

John Proctor was a farmer in 17th century Massachusetts. He married three women in his life, and divorced the first two. The last one he married was Elizabeth Proctor, who gave birth to two children, William and Sarah...

, Elizabeth Proctor

Elizabeth Proctor

Elizabeth Proctor was accused of witchcraft in the Salem Witch Trials. She was the third wife of John Proctor, and remarried after his execution. Part of her life was fictitiously dramatized as part of Arthur Miller's play The Crucible and later adaptations.-Early life:Elizabeth was the daughter...

, Phillip and Mary English, and George Burroughs

George Burroughs

George Burroughs , American Congregational pastor, graduated from Harvard College in 1670, and became the minister of Salem Village in 1680, a charge which he held until 1683. He lived at Falmouth until it was destroyed by natives in 1690. Burroughs then moved to Wells, Maine...

. Altogether, Sheldon filed twenty-four legal complaints against her alleged tormentors.

Symptoms

Throughout the trial, Sheldon allegedly experienced apparitions from specters attempting to persuade her to sign the devil’s book, visions from the dead, visual manifestations from familiars of snakes and yellow birds on her tormentors, and symptoms of feeling physically choked and having her hands bound so tight that she could not free herself. In an attempt to diagnose the symptoms claimed to have been experienced by the girls, scholars have attributed the torments to a variety of causes, giving such explanations as include fraud, ergot poisoning, hysteria, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). One such scholar, Mary Beth Norton, argues that Sheldon experienced PTSD because of her connection to the Indian wars on the Maine frontier. Sheldon was a young child during the confrontation at Black Point garrison in 1675, and Norton speculates Sheldon would have developed PTSD from living through the Indian conflict, the death agonies of her uncle Arthur, the grief of her mother and aunt, and the death of her older brother Godfrey in July of 1690.