Visiting Salem

Everything I loved and hated about the ‘witch city’

Salem Massachusetts has something for everyone.

If you’re someone who loves Halloween and all things spooky, Salem is probably on your travel list. If you’re someone who is interested in crystals, tarot, and lean toward the witchy vibes? Salem is probably on your travel list. And if you’re just someone who’s a real history buff with a love of learning about our past? Well, Salem’s probably on your travel list.

The Witch House - one of the last standing structures with ties back to the witch trials

Like most girls of a certain age, I was obsessed with the idea of visiting Salem Massachusetts. Witches were big in the 90s what with movies and tv shows like Hocus Pocus, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, The Craft, and Practical Magic coming out during some of my most formative years. They weren’t all set in Salem but it’s significance was referenced enough to leave an impression. After making it to high school and becoming mildly obsessed with Arthur Miller’s The Crucible when we had to read it junior year, visiting Salem became a major bucket list item for me.

Fast forward a cool almost 20 years and my dream finally came true. Early last September (2023) I made a one day stop in Salem during a family road trip up to Acadia National Park. After hours of driving and an overnight stay just outside of Salem proper (cause no matter how much I wanted to visit I wasn’t gonna spend double the entire trip’s budget on two nights at a price gouged hotel) we made it into Salem in the middle of a Sunday morning.

Salem is a cute town. It’s on the water, the architecture and homes are all really beautiful, and I just always love seeing a place that is so damn old and historic. The day we went it was blue skies and sunshine and also a thousand degrees. I know we all like to pretend September is automatic fall vibes but technically for most of the month it’s still summer and our day in Salem was a pretty sweaty one.

Speaking of September and fall vibes, I honestly (and probably foolishly) didn’t expect to see so many people in Salem the first weekend in September. October? Absolutely, of course. But the beginning of September? No thank you. There were bodies EVERYWHERE. Driving around an unfamiliar town is harrowing in the best of circumstances, but attempting to navigate the roads while swarms of people crossed the street willy nilly was its own hell.

Now, overall, I was pretty disappointed in Salem but I’m not sure if it’s gonna be for the reasons you’d think. Sure, it was crowded and we had a whole experience in their mall of discovering dollops of human shit on the floor of the hallway leading to the bathroom that was not on our list of attractions to visit that day. But no, these moments happen in travel and can be dealt with or laughed about later. The real issue I had when visiting Salem was how I felt.

The memorial stone for Giles Corey, the man who actually did get stoned (pressed) in Salem.

At least 25 people died during the witch trials in Salem between 1692 and 1693. Twenty-five real, living people, murdered by religious zealots caught up in a hysteria led by a patriarchal need to squash anyone (mostly women) with the gall to question their authority and their rules. So, there was something really weird to me about walking on the same streets these things happened on only now it’s full of shops selling witch’s brooms, Hocus Pocus merch, and shirts that say “I got stoned in Salem.”

I get it. Progress happens. Obviously I wouldn’t expect this town to stay wallowing in its tragic past and I also wouldn’t say I tend to be easily offended by jokes or situations that make light of tragedy but for some reason, the whole time we walked around the town I kept getting the ick. It can be argued that by now glorifying the very thing that got people killed in the 1690s (alleged witchcraft) on the same land those injustices took place could be a way to give a big fuck you to the patriarchy but part of me also wonders if it’s not kind of distasteful to those that lost their lives due to a misguided belief that those who may practice witchcraft (which it was never proven that any of the victims actually were) were in league with the devil, to flaunt witch hats and spell books next to the site of their memorial or not terribly far from where so many were hanged at Proctor’s Ledge?

Obviously, the issues I had with Salem are mine and don’t mean a damn thing to anyone else. In general, I’m a big fan of all things witch related including the practice of witchcraft so truly nobody is more surprised by my reaction to my visit than I am. If you’ve visited Salem and loved it and thought the vibe was great, that’s wonderful, I’m glad you had a good time and enjoyed yourself! But if you haven’t visited before, I don’t think it hurts to read about the good and the bad of visiting this town so you can feel better prepared than I did. I also acknowledge that my disappointment in Salem is partially my own fault for building this place up in my head for so many years. It’s rare that something you dream of will ever be as good as you imagined.

Allison’s House from Hocus Pocus showed up so suddenly I almost missed it entirely.

But were there things I enjoyed about Salem? Absolutely. I thought the Witch Trial Memorial not far from Essex Street was excellent and I appreciated walking around the Old Burying Point Cemetery attached to it. I loved seeing the Witch House which is one of the last standing structures with direct ties to the witch trials and also, in my opinion, one of the coolest looking houses ever. Finding some of the settings from Hocus Pocus WAS interesting mostly because something like Allison’s house was just on a random block in some neighborhood that we happened to drive by by accident while looking for the Witch House. We got some decent cookies from a local late-night bakery, Goodnight Fatty and saw some cool art as part of a public exhibition called the “Lady of Salem” which showcases a number of figureheads decorated by different artists on display to honor Salem’s maritime past. We even went to the Satanic Temple, headquartered in Salem, to visit the original goat Baphomet. Something that would 100% have gotten us labeled as witches.

If given the opportunity, I might go back to Salem. Since we were only there one day we didn’t have the chance to check out any museums or tours and with the crowds it would have been impossible to get to all the ones I would have wanted to anyway. I think it’s possible going there, knowing what I do now, I could have a better experience than I did the first time. And I would definitely go well before the autumnal months. Salem will likely always have a place in my 16 year old heart from all of the media I consumed about it but next time around, I’ll leave the rose colored glasses at home and remember that it’s still just a town, no matter what happened there centuries ago.

Have you visited Salem before? What were your thoughts? Did you love it? Did you get the ick the same way I did? Pros and cons? I’d love to hear your experiences, good and bad, in the comments below!