Killing the Witches: Review

Bill O’Reilly has become famous for his “Killing” series. I’ve read Killing Lincoln, Killing Jesus, and Killing Kennedy. Some of the later titles haven’t really captured my attention too much, and “Killing the Witches” was the same. But my former adult piano student enjoyed it, so I decided to give it a try.

First, the book’s title is a bit misleading. You would probably expect the book to be all about the Salem witch trials. But, that’s only about the first 1/3 of the book. After that, there’s a part about the Founding Fathers, particularly Ben Franklin. And finally, there’s part about Ronald Hunkeler, a teen whose demon possession and exorcisms around 1950 formed the basis for the book and movie, “The Exorcist.”

Some things I noted as I read —

• Contrary to popular belief, no witches were burned in Salem. They were all hanged.
• Life in Puritan New England was pretty harsh. Some of the items banned: “Mixt” dances (“Is this a time for Jigs and Galiards?” I had to chuckle because I’ve played a few galiards and they seemed pretty innocent to me), “stage-plays,” maypoles, drinking, gambling, and pagan Christmas celebrations.
• The Salem witch goings-on occurred mainly in 1692, 200 years after Columbus sailed to the New World. At the time of the witch trials, life expectancy in the colonies was 65, much higher than in England. I found it interesting that life expectancy here would have been higher than in ostensibly more civilized England.
• Increase and Cotton Mather were a father-son pastor who were behind a lot of the witch trials. It seems that a group of teen girls accused some local people (mainly women) of being witches. As they saw that their accusations were taken seriously and that many of these women were killed, they became emboldened and accused more and more of witchcraft. In addition to preaching, Cotton Mather wrote prodigiously and published more book and essays than anyone else in US history. His knowledge of “science” was highly respected, even though this seems inexplicable given his condoning of all the killing of “witches.” I had to think of Dr. Fauci and the way he had the chutzpah to equate himself with “science.”
• One of those accused of witchcraft was a 4-year-old girl named Dorothy Good. After being locked up for several weeks, she confesses and accuses her mother of being a witch. Dorothy is set free while her mother is hanged.
• During the witch trials, those on trial often learned that proclaiming themselves guilty often saved their lives. This was the beginning of the concept of plea bargaining, which is used a lot today. They were also more likely to survive if they could name others as “witches.”
• I found the whole section on Hunkeler and his supposed demon-possession very interesting. I didn’t know much if anything about it.

Overall, this book felt like a bit of a miss and a mess to me. I’m not sure of the “big picture” connections O’Reilly wanted us to make among the three parts of the book. It kind of felt like he planned a book on the Salem witch trials but realized that he didn’t have enough material, so decided to tack on the other parts. These books are always best-sellers, so you can’t really fault O’Reilly for making hay while the sun shines and pumping out as many as he can.

There are frequent cliff hangers — “but things will get even worse” — followed by the next chapter going backward rather than forward in time. The whole book being written in the present tense felt jarring to me as well.

I found the Salem section to be hard to follow in parts, with many side characters and names brought in which were hard to keep track of. I’m just not sure of the point of the Founding Fathers part.

If any of these three topics interest you, check this book out. You may enjoy it more than I did.