YOUR WITCH HUNT BEGINS HERE
THE TRUTH OF THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS REVEALED IN UNPARALLELED DETAIL
READING LIST
Here are a few of Frances Hill's most popular books.
A DELUSION OF SATAN
Frances Hill's best seller.
This unsurpassed popular history of the Salem witch trials is essential reading for students from high school to university and anyone among the general public with an interest in the tragic episode.
Well researched and highly readable, it offers a driving narrative with riveting details
HUNTING FOR WITCHES
A visitors guide to the Salem Witch Trials (second edition)
This guidebook offers a concise, highly readable 70-page account of the Salem witch trials as well as invaluable information on places linked to the episode accessible to visitors. The book was updated in 2019 to give reliable details on all the relevant sites, buildings and museums of interest to anyone intrigued by the events of 1692. It’s a must for any visitor to Salem, Danvers and their many towns nearby.
Telling the story of the witch trials from beginning to end by means of excerpts from contemporary narratives linked by the compiler’s clarifying text. It also provides a variety of witch hunt documents such as transcripts of the examinations of suspected witches, eyewitness accounts of “Satanic influence,” and the testimony of those who retained their reason and defied the madness.
THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS READER
A must for all students of the witch trials.
Boston leaders of Puritan Massachusetts in 1692 and the Bush administration in 2004 mandated torture, false imprisonment and judicial murder to forward their own ends under a smokescreen of uninformed approval from the people they were meant to protect. The parallels between the Salem Witch Trials and George W. Bush’s Iraq War are startling and sobering.
SUCH MEN ARE DANGEROUS
THE FANATICS OF 1692 & 2004
This engrossing novel uses the original Witch Trials sources to blend both familiar and less well-known aspects of the witch hunt with fictional characters and plot lines, casting new light on the abuses of magistrates’ and ministers’ power which drove the episode to its tragic conclusion. The book’s hero, George Burroughs, was a true-life pastor in Salem Village, and later Maine, demonised as a alleged leader of witches.
DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL
FILM & TELEVISION
WITCHES OF SALEM: TV SERIES
This excellent docu-drama about the Salem Witch Trials uses Frances Hill's A Delusion of Satan as its chief source. The author takes part in each of four episodes, popping up at regular intervals to make telling comments.
The series faithfully takes the viewer through the strange and terrifying developments in Salem Village in 1692, using short dramatic scenes between lucid explanations from expert talking heads, to the show trials in Salem Town and the final tragic consequences.
Hundreds of innocent people were imprisoned in the vilest imaginable conditions. Twenty hand-picked victims lost their lives, nineteen by hanging and one by being pressed to death, as a result of the manipulation of an already biased, flawed justice system.
WHERE TO WATCH
SALEM WITCH TRIALS: FILM
Frances Hill was the historical consultant for this 2002 movie, later a 2-part CBS mini-series, starring Kirstie Alley, Shirley McClaine, Rebecca de Mornay, Alan Bates and Peter Ustinov
Lengthy transatlantic phone calls with the celebrated screen writer Maria Nation were held on the plot, characters and setting of the Salem witch hunt. Nation needed to assess the possibilities of unrecorded turns of events in Salem in 1692 that would help reveal the heart of the story. And, in the same quest for the truth, she wanted to learn more about the gritty realities of life in Puritan New England.
Salem Witch Trials may seem long, detailed and too subtle for action movie audiences but is a feast for those with a genuine interest in this darkest episode of American colonial history. John Leonard of New York magazine described it as “shrewdly cast, sharply written and subtly shot.”
WHERE TO WATCH
