Killing the Witches: The Horror of Salem, Massachusetts

O’Reilly and Dugard do not use this term, but their description of the Salem Witch Trials is nonetheless an archetypical example of a moral panic. This is defined as a period of widespread fear that some sort of outsider or subversive influence is on the brink of turning the social order upside down. More often than not, the threat is understood to be aimed at children, who are then viewed as vulnerable and incapable of making their own decisions. The threat is usually all-encompassing and vague in order to give it unlimited dimensions. It may be a set of ideas, possibly involving supernatural forces, which are at once invisible and everywhere. Examples include the McCarthy era in 1950s America, when fears grew about the domestic threat of communism in the United States, and the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, when now-discredited sources posited a vast conspiracy of Satan worshippers who were planning to kidnap and murder children.

The Puritans were a group of English Christians who believed in living strictly according to the teachings of the Bible. They organized themselves into independent communities centered around their churches, with ministers playing key roles not only in spiritual matters but also in governance.