Reverend Deodat Lawson was the minister of Salem Village from 1684 to 1688. He believed that several members of his family may have previously died there under "the malicious operations of the infernal powers".

After hearing about the Salem witch trials

Salem witch trials

The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings before county court trials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in the counties of Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex in colonial Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693...

 in 1692, he returned in March of that year to find out what was happening. His courtroom

Courtroom

A courtroom is the actual enclosed space in which a judge regularly holds court.The schedule of official court proceedings is called a docket; the term is also synonymous with a court's caseload as a whole.-Courtroom design:-United States:...

 observations from March and April were recorded in a 10-page pamphlet entitled A Brief and True Narrative of Some Remarkable Passages Relating to Sundry Persons Afflicted by Witchcraft, at Salem Village and published by Benjamin Harris

Benjamin Harris (publisher)

Benjamin Harris an English publisher, a figure of the Popish Plot in England who then moved to New England as an early journalist...

 of Boston, Massachusetts. These descriptions bring a new aspect to the surviving court records of the events.