On a moonlit night in June 1682, tavern owner George Walton and several companions walked toward his home on Great Island (now New Castle) when they were hit with flying rocks, some as big as fists, that seemed to appear out of nowhere.
The unknown and unseen assailant bombarded Walton’s house, tavern, farm, and person with rocks and bricks sporadically over the next three months.
Walton concluded that he had been targeted by a witch who employed the services of a lithobolia, or stone-throwing devil. He publicly accused his neighbor, the elderly widow Hannah Jones, but the case never went to trial.
The Walton and Jones families had a long history of conflict over a property boundary, although Walton, as a large landowner, Quaker, and royalist, had many enemies in the Portsmouth area. Copycat stone-throwing incidents occurred in Berwick, Maine, and Hartford, Conn., later that same year.
N.H. Historical Society