In the summer of 1682, George Walton’s household on Great Island in New Hampshire became the subject of reports of flying stones, damaged windows, displaced tools and unexplained noises. Richard Chamberlain, a provincial official lodging there, later presented the disturbances as evidence of witchcraft and spirits. His Lithobolia, published in London in 1698 under the initials R. C., is a detailed claim of personal observation. It also preserves scepticism and accusation within a community already divided over land.
The house, the author and the surviving accounts
Great Island is the locality now known as New Castle, near Portsmouth. Chamberlain identifies Walton as his landlord and presents himself as an eyewitness who lived with the family throughout the main disturbances. The pamphlet’s title describes roughly a quarter of a year of stone throwing. Its year of printing, 1698, should not be mistaken for the date of the events.
The source trail reaches closer to the episode than the late pamphlet alone. Increase Mather’s Illustrious Providences, published in 1684, includes an account beginning on 11 June 1682 and naming Walton’s household and the provincial secretary. George Lincoln Burr’s 1914 edition reproduces both that earlier account and Lithobolia, together with editorial notes about surviving records. Mather’s version was transmitted through the Portsmouth minister Joshua Moodey and may draw on the same household testimony. Similarity between the versions should therefore not be treated as wholly independent corroboration.
Burr’s introduction places Chamberlain within the controversy over Robert Mason’s claims to New Hampshire land. The secretary and Walton were not detached observers outside local disputes. That historical setting does not by itself explain the stone throwing, but it matters when assessing accusations against neighbours and the confidence with which the author identifies supernatural enemies.
The first night: stones outside and inside
Chamberlain begins with a Sunday night at about ten o’clock. Walton had gone to inspect a gate between his land and John Amazeen’s, which had been pulled from its hinges. Stones were then said to strike the house, porch and people near it. Chamberlain says he rose from bed, joined the household and looked for throwers in bright moonlight without finding anyone. Mather’s earlier account supplies the date, 11 June 1682.
The company withdrew indoors, where Chamberlain reports stones falling near them, doors being struck from inside and a large hammer passing close above him. He describes windows forced outwards while some stones fell back into the room, household vessels struck and candlesticks knocked from a table. These are his descriptions of trajectories and damage, not measurements made under controlled observation.
He also describes placing stones in numbered pairs on a table and finding some missing after turning away to inspect another disturbance. After going to bed, he was awakened by impacts near his chamber and was shown a stone said to weigh eight and a half pounds. He inferred a series of rebounds from marks found the next morning. That distinction between what he heard, what others showed him and what he inferred is present in the narrative itself.
A disturbance that follows household work
The account expands beyond a single haunted room. Tools reportedly moved in the kitchen; stones appeared in fields where Walton’s men worked; and the disturbance accompanied journeys by boat towards Great Bay. A hat used to collect stones disappeared from between two trees and was later found elsewhere. A stirrup, anchor and setting-pole were among objects described as displaced during work and travel.
One boat episode has a specifically reported physical cause: a plug was missing from the bottom, allowing water in. Chamberlain attributes its removal to malicious witchcraft, but identifying an absent plug does not establish who removed it. The event illustrates how an observed problem and the author’s proposed supernatural agency are joined in his explanation.
Other passages are explicitly second-hand. Young people reported a black cat during the disturbance, and two granddaughters said they saw what looked like a hand throwing stones from a window. Chamberlain insists that a search excluded an ordinary thrower. These remain accounts transmitted through him; they do not supply an independently observed apparition whose identity can now be established.
Named witnesses and repeated injury claims
Chamberlain includes a memorandum naming visitors who, he says, attested to seeing stones arrive in the fields and house without a visible thrower. The list includes Samuel Jennings, described as governor of West Jersey, Walter Clark of Rhode Island, Captain Walter Barefoot, merchants and members of the Hussey family. Their geographical origins do not move this case to those places: the alleged observations occurred at Walton’s Great Island property.
A printed witness list is useful evidence of the testimony Chamberlain sought to assemble. It is not equivalent to separate modern interviews, and the pamphlet does not allow every observation to be reconstructed from each named person’s own surviving account. Burr’s annotations identify several people and explain the political and religious connections among them.
The journal reports severe disturbances in late June, including many small stones striking Chamberlain, larger ones landing gently nearby, broken glass and repeated knocks. In July and August, Walton, workers and visitors were said to receive painful blows. The narrative describes bruising and damaged harvesting tools. These injuries are attributed reports in the historical text; this article has no independent medical evidence establishing their cause.
Counter-magic and a contested accusation
The family attempted a remedy advised by others: heating a vessel containing urine and bent pins in the belief that it would punish the responsible witch. According to Chamberlain, successive stones damaged the vessel until the attempt failed. The passage documents the household’s response and beliefs. It does not show that the procedure identified or harmed a supernatural culprit.
The author links the affair to an elderly neighbouring woman who disputed Walton’s possession of land. Burr’s notes identify her as Hannah Jones and reproduce evidence that she complained about Walton’s accusations and damage to her pasture. He also cites testimony about mutual accusations: Walton called her a witch, and she was reported to have called him a wizard and threatened to throw stones at him.
These records reveal an active conflict, rather than an uncontested finding that a neighbour practised witchcraft. Burr states that there is no record supporting Chamberlain’s suggestion that she had previously been detected as a witch. The accusations should not be repeated as proof against her. Nor does a reported threat, by itself, establish responsibility for every event described in the household.
The ending, the governor’s doubts and the limits of the record
Chamberlain describes quieter intervals followed by fresh disturbances, with the last main episode in early September as Walton travelled to Portsmouth to attend the council. He says Walton showed the council president an injured head. The pamphlet’s opening, however, acknowledges that the incoming governor regarded the affair as boys’ mischief, an explanation Chamberlain rejected. Disbelief was therefore part of the case from the period itself.
Mather’s 1684 account adds reports of tools being carried away the following spring, while saying the disturbance had diminished. This places limited further claims in 1683 without extending the main stone-throwing journal indefinitely. Burr cautions that the surviving records do not establish what final order the court made about the witchcraft accusation. His suggestion that Jones was not punished is an inference from the sources, rather than a reproduced verdict.
The strongest historical conclusion is that Walton’s household generated detailed, circulating reports, preserved through a near-contemporary compilation and a later first-person pamphlet. The sources document the reported disturbances, competing interpretations and social setting. They do not establish a spirit as the cause, identify a proven human perpetrator, or justify treating the accused neighbour as guilty.
Location and sources
The map pin is an approximate New Castle town reference, rounded from the U.S. Census Gazetteer. It represents the Great Island locality, not Walton’s former house, a private property or every field and boat journey in the narrative. It is not a visitor destination.
Read the original 1698 Lithobolia scan and Burr’s Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases, 1648–1706 (1914): Mather’s Walton account at pages 34–37; Burr’s introduction at 55–57; and the complete Lithobolia text and notes at 58–77. The Huntington catalogue confirms the original title and 1698 publication. Coordinates derive from the 2025 Census county-subdivision Gazetteer. Sources checked 10 November 2026.