Brian O'Connell

Witch Hunt - history told in music, sound, and story

Music EN ↓ 6 episodes

The history of the 1692 Salem Witch Trials told through music and story-telling in a format recalling an old time radio drama with a modern experimental prog-rock twist. Witch Hunt borrows freely from original sources of information from the time of the trials such as letters, books, poems, transcriptions of the trials themselves, as well as melodies from the Puritan hymn books. The music is highly original art-rock ranging from soft ambient soundscapes to heavy power riffs with many other stops along the way. The narrator provides a story teller voice that weaves a historical thread throughou...

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Author

Brian O'Connell

Episodes

Episode 6 - A Gospel Woman 31.10.2024 31:38

https://www.patreon.com/Witch_Hunt This episode tells the story of Martha Corey, the fourth person accused of witchcraft. She was the wife of Giles Corey who is famously known for being crushed under a door while asking for “more weight”. The accusations against Martha marked the beginning of a dramatic escalation of the hysteria. The first three women accused of witchcraft in the Essex County hys...

Episode 5 - Examinations 30.10.2023 37:59

https://www.patreon.com/Witch_Hunt The three suspected witches are now in custody in Salem Village and are publicly examined by colonial magistrates at the Meeting House. The first two suspects, local beggar woman Sarah Good and the scandalous but frail Sarah Osborn, deny being witches and blame others. The third suspect, Rev. Parris' Native American slave Tituba, begins like the others by de...

Episode 4 - Accusations 27.10.2022 21:40

https://www.patreon.com/Witch_Hunt The hysterical and violent fits of the young girls in Salem Village spreads from the family of Minister Samuel Parris to that of Thomas Putnam, the head household of one of the most powerful families in the village. When Elizabeth Hubbard, niece of the local doctor, begins to have fits the door is opened for legal action, as the other girls were too young to be w...

Episode 3 - Fits 09.03.2021 27:14

https://www.patreon.com/Witch_Hunt During the extremely cold winter of 1692 an intense frustration has been building in Salem Village, a small farming community up the road from the more prosperous and worldly port city of Salem Town. Many factors are coalescing into a perfect storm: the repressive nature of the Calvinistic Puritan church, the limited prospects for girls and young women, the vill...

Episode 2 - The City on a Hill 31.10.2020 23:12

https://www.patreon.com/Witch_Hunt Samuel Parris takes on the job as minister to Salem Village, a marginalized farming community split by rivalry and controversy. Salem Village is overshadowed by the larger and much more prosperous Salem Town, one of the two largest towns in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The colony is ruled by the Puritans, who have broken away from the Church of England and colon...

Episode 1 - Tituba's Journey 29.09.2020 25:37

https://www.patreon.com/Witch_Hunt This is the story of an Arawak woman called Tituba: how she was kidnapped by the English from South America when she was just a young girl and enslaved. Growing up on a plantation in Barbados, she absorbed multiple cultural influences from her fellow enslaved Africans and her English mistress. Her inner world becomes a confluence of Arawak, West African, and Engl...