When October Calls Me Back to Salem

I’ve already been to Salem, but my first trip there was probably a little different from the way most people experience the city. I wasn’t really chasing Halloween attractions, costume shops, psychic readings, or the busier tourist side of Salem. I was much more interested in the history surrounding the witch trials and, more specifically, the places connected to the actual people and events of 1692.

That interest eventually took me outside of modern Salem and into Danvers, which was once Salem Village. That was probably one of the most interesting parts of the trip for me because it changed the way I pictured the entire story. When most of us hear “Salem witch trials,” we naturally imagine everything happening in the streets of the Salem we know today. Once you start visiting the old sites in Danvers, though, you realize that much of the story began in a far more rural setting, among farms, families, church disagreements, property disputes, and neighbors who had known one another for years.

I visited places connected to that older history and found myself much more interested in the quiet locations than I expected to be. Some historic places almost work against your expectations because there really isn’t much to see at first glance. You might be looking at a foundation, an old piece of land, a cemetery, or a house surrounded by a modern neighborhood. There are no flashing signs telling you that something important happened there, and that simplicity can actually make the experience more powerful.

I think that is what I enjoyed most about my first trip. I wasn’t trying to convince myself that every old building was haunted or that something supernatural was following me around. I was interested in standing in a place and thinking about what had actually happened there. When you know the history, an otherwise ordinary patch of ground starts to feel different. You begin mentally removing the cars, newer houses, paved roads, and everything else that separates the present from the past.

Danvers especially gave me that feeling. Seeing places connected with Salem Village made the people involved in the trials feel less like names from a history book. They had homes. They had neighbors. They worked, argued, worried about money, raised families, went to church, and probably expected most days to be fairly ordinary. None of them knew that more than three hundred years later people would still be studying their words and traveling across the country to visit places connected with their lives.

That is the part of history that has always interested me. We know what happens next, but the people living through it never did.

My first visit, however, also left me curious about a completely different side of Salem. I saw the historic Salem I had gone there looking for, but I still haven’t really experienced the city when October is in full swing. With fall getting closer, I’ve been thinking more and more about going back and seeing what Salem feels like when the city fully embraces the strange identity it has developed around Halloween, witchcraft, folklore, and the supernatural.

There is something fascinating about the contradiction Salem represents today. In 1692, accusing someone of being a witch could destroy that person’s life. The accusation could lead to imprisonment, the loss of reputation, separation from family, and eventually death. Today, Salem proudly embraces the name “Witch City,” and people travel there specifically because of it. Modern witches openly practice their beliefs, shops sell books about magic and the occult, psychic readings are easy to find, and witch imagery appears almost everywhere.

That transformation alone is worth thinking about. The same word that once inspired fear eventually became one of the city’s most recognizable identities.

I’m interested in seeing that version of Salem because I think there is a kind of mysticism surrounding the city that goes beyond whether or not someone believes in ghosts. Certain places seem to accumulate stories over time, and those stories affect the way we experience them. An old house feels different once you know who lived there. A cemetery feels different when you realize some of the stones have been standing there for centuries. A street can look perfectly ordinary until you learn what happened on the ground beneath it.

You can explain that feeling without invoking anything supernatural, but I’m not sure that makes it less interesting. In some ways, history itself creates the atmosphere.

October probably adds another layer to that. The days are getting shorter, the air begins to cool, leaves start collecting along sidewalks, and darkness comes earlier. Put all of that into a city already filled with old buildings, narrow streets, cemeteries, maritime history, witch-trial sites, ghost stories, and modern occult culture, and I can understand why people become so attached to Salem in the fall.

This time around, I want to experience more of that side of the city. I want to see the streets when the ghost tours are moving through them at night and the storefronts are lit up. I want to wander through the unusual shops, see the costumes, experience the crowds, and probably come home with something I absolutely did not need to buy.

At the same time, I know I’ll eventually want to get away from the busiest parts of town again. That is usually where I find the things I remember most. I’ll probably end up walking toward the waterfront, finding an old cemetery, or returning to one of the historical places that interested me the first time. I may even make another trip into Danvers, because now that I understand the difference between Salem Town and Salem Village, it is difficult for me to think about one without the other.

I’m also curious to see whether Salem actually feels different in October or whether I’m simply expecting it to. That is part of the fun for me. I don’t need to arrive believing that I’m going to see a ghost or experience something paranormal. I actually prefer leaving a little room for uncertainty.

If I’m standing inside a three-hundred-year-old house and hear the floor creak upstairs, I understand perfectly well that old houses make noise. I’m still going to look upstairs.

That middle ground between believing everything and dismissing everything is probably where my interest in mysticism comes from. I enjoy the possibility that not every old story needs to be solved completely. Sometimes the unanswered part is what keeps us interested.

My first trip to Salem was mostly about understanding the history beneath the modern city. I went looking for old Salem Village, the witch-trial sites, the memorials, and the places connected to people whose names have survived for centuries. I came away feeling like I understood the story a little better, but I also realized there was another version of Salem I had barely explored.

This October, I want to go back for that version.

I want to experience the city when history, Halloween, modern witchcraft, tourism, folklore, and plain old New England autumn all seem to overlap at once. I’m sure some of it will be crowded, commercial, and probably a little ridiculous, but that is part of Salem too.

More than anything, I’m looking forward to seeing how the city feels when October settles over it. I’ve already gone there looking for the past. This time, I want to see what Salem has become because of it.

— Linden Harroway