Killing the Witches: The Horror of Salem, Massachusetts by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard. Narrated by Robert Petkoff. Macmillan Audio, 2023. 9 hours (approx.).
It's the Christmas season and that means witches. No? Well, too bad. I’m doing witches anyway, because my library hold finally arrived after 8 weeks: Bill O’Reilly’s Killing the Witches: The Horror of Salem, Massachusetts.
O’Reilly is best known as a conservative commentator, so let’s address the elephant in the room right away. The book is not political but for a single “Author’s Note” wherein he and co-author Martin Dugard compare the witch trials to modern day cancel culture. It’s hard to blame them, however; the parallels are obvious … and frightening. Outside of this five-minute segment the book sticks to history.
In the Killing series Dugard and O’Reilly present “compelling narratives of the true events surrounding the deaths and destruction” of various historical figures and nations, according to Macmillan Publishers’ website. I agree with Macmillan’s description: Killing the Witches was compelling, indeed. Unfortunately, roughly half the book isn’t about witches.
The authors go through the history of the Salem trials, but they exhaust the topic in about 15 out of 32 chapters. The second half of the book mainly deals with the founding of America beginning with a long review of Benjamin Franklin’s early life. There is an attempt to link the founding of America to the infamous trails. Franklin, for example, took the pseudonym Silence Dogood as a “slap” at witch-hunter Cotton Mather. Also, Franklin’s brother, James, founded a newspaper that would “take on the religious elite in Boston” (i.e., Mather). Ideas such as freedom of religion and disestablishmentarianism are purportedly inspired by the witch hysteria. But these connections aren’t made well and are really ancillary to the topic. And so, one starts to ask himself, “What does any of this have to do with witches?”
I suspect that focusing on Salem rather than witch hunts more generally (Europe’s lasted longer and were more widespread) narrowed the scope of their book too much and, so, it had to be padded with detours into other topics.
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One such detour is the story of how William Peter Blatty created The Exorcist. O’Reilly and Dugard start with the real-life events of a boy named Ronald Hunkeler who, in 1949, was allegedly possessed by the devil. An exorcism was performed by two Jesuit priests, an event reported by The Washington Post. Blatty eventually obtained a diary kept by one of the priests that detailed Hunkeler’s exorcism. That diary became the basis for the book, which in turn became the famous 1973 film.
All very well and good, but I must repeat, “What does any of this have to do with witches?” A more accurate subtitle for Killing the Witches would be The Legacy of Salem or some such thing, as the writers spend as much time on the purported repercussions of the witch craze as they do on the craze itself.
Sticking strictly to the factual events, as O’Reilly and Dugard did, prevents the book from attempting to answer interesting and nagging questions. For one, what in human psychology caused this to happen? For another, what are we to make of the fact that the primary perpetrators of the witch hoax were girls? These questions are particularly relevant today given the parallels to cancel culture, which also seems to be young female driven.
So, if you want to learn about the Salem witch trials and prefer your history delivered in the form of “compelling narratives,” then Killing the Witches is a serviceable option. However, there are other books on the topic that are probably just as good.
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