Witch City is thriving.
More than three hundred years after the witch trials, here is the city motto: Salem—Still Making History.
Located a forty-minute drive from Boston, Salem is now a city of forty-five thousand people. Yet a million tourists from around the world show up each year. In fact, it is estimated that more than $100 million is spent annually in Witch City by people enthralled with its past.
Halloween and the “Haunted Happenings” is the busiest and most profitable holiday. This is the largest celebration of Halloween on the planet, with parades and shows and exhibitions to scare the children. In fact, some believe that Salem’s history has become a cult situation. The city fathers aggressively protect the image of Salem, so as to not disturb the money flow.*
Tourist revenue centers on the 1692 executions. Some experiences are historic, like the Salem Heritage Trail, taking visitors past the Witch Trials Memorial and the Witch House on Essex Street, once home to “hanging judge” Jonathan Corwin. Disney is also involved. The movie Hocus Pocus was filmed on location in Salem and is marketed to children. In addition, a statue of Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery stands in the center of town, in honor of the television show that filmed several episodes of one season in Salem. This was a gift to the city of Salem by the TV Land network as a way to promote its new program lineup, including Bewitched. At the time, the nine-foot-tall, three-thousand-pound bronze statue was a controversial gift because people felt it made light of the tragedy of the witch trials.
That sentiment has changed.
“This bronze beauty has quickly become a staple in our magical city,” reads Salem tourism board literature.
Predictably, Salem is now saturated with modern witches and warlocks. The city is a haven for men and women who practice the black arts or at least pretend to. The Witch City Mall sells séances, psychic readings, and future predictions with tarot cards. Other business owners throughout Salem promote themselves as psychics, vampires, and proponents of “witchcraft and magic.” The pentagram, the mark of the Devil, is featured prominently on signs. Obviously, all this present commerce trades on the gruesome deaths of twenty innocent individuals.
But that is in the past.
Salem’s true legacy is kept well hidden. “By European standards this was a very small witch hunt,” notes Professor Emerson W. Baker, a historian from Salem State University and one of the leading proponents of remembering those executed in the witch trials. “There were outbreaks in Germany where more than three thousand people died. Yet no one calls Cologne the Witch City.
“We think of Salem this way because the trials were a fall from grace. Before then, Salem was literally the city upon a hill, a model of Christian charity. To see its daughters accusing mothers and grandmothers of witchcraft was a real blow to the reputation of the town,” Baker told us.
Even now, the witch trials divide Salem due to efforts to promote the city as a scary but benign tourist destination. The locals are split between those who enjoy the crowds—particularly the profit center of Halloween—and citizens upset about the city making a fortune on the back of murder.
Adds Professor Baker, “The town is not reconciled to that.”
In 1711, Massachusetts began awarding money for restitution to the families that were harmed during the witch hunts. That continued until the 1740s. The process was known as restoration of “innocency.” In every case, those requesting compensation received it.
Then there’s the matter of religion. There were no real witches in Salem in 1692, but a large godless community has descended on the town. Salem is still home to a strong Congregationalist Church population, yet an estimated 10 percent of the residents call themselves Wiccans—followers of modern neo-pagan rites. Many of these worshippers were not born in Salem but have traveled here to make a home.
“Some say it is because of the witch trials and the symbolism of living in a town known for witchcraft,” says Baker. Noting that Salem calls itself a “No Place to Hate” community. welcoming all people, all races, all backgrounds, and all lifestyles, he adds, “Others come to Salem because it is now a place of religious freedom and toleration. A town that rushed to judgment in 1692 has learned to be more tolerant. Most of these Wicca[ns] come seeking a place where people aren’t judged. It has become the Wicca[n], neo-pagan, haunted happenings destination.”
Professor Baker adds that until the influx of tourism, the post-industrial city where the board game Monopoly originated was in decline. Salem had begun using the label “Witch City” in 1892, before the two hundredth anniversary of the trials. Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, first performed in 1953, used the witch trials as an allegory for the McCarthy era. But extensive marketing of that name didn’t begin until 1970, the year Bewitched was filmed in Salem.
Yet as the popularity of promoting witches proved a financial boon to the city, more questions were raised about honoring those executed in the trials. In addition to kitsch and crystals, those visiting Salem can also find prominent memorials. In 1992, Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel dedicated the Salem Witch Trials Memorial, a three-sided granite wall with stone benches displaying the names and execution dates of the victims.
Twenty-five years later, on July 25, 2017, a new memorial was dedicated at Proctor’s Ledge, site of the hangings at the bottom of Gallows Hill. This is the place where the victims took their last breaths. But the monument is often overlooked because there are few parking spaces. The city asks visitors to avoid Gallows Hill, reminding them they will be towed if they park at the nearby Walgreen’s drugstore.
Which is a lot better than being hanged.
Yet people come anyway. Some leave offerings. New Age folks prefer crystals. Other visitors leave notes, many written with great emotion to honor the fallen. A very active community of victims’ descendants is still emotional about the witch hunt.
“Descendants are effusive in their thanks for the memorial at Gallows Hill,” says Professor Baker. “Many descendants say their visit was the conclusion of unfinished business.”
Baker himself was shocked to discover, while doing research on the topic, that he is related to a witch hunt victim.
And he does not think that is unusual.
“The witch trial is all-encompassing,” he says. “The people of Salem had children, then their children had children, and through the centuries those generations married and moved away, their families spreading across the nation.
“If you dig deep enough into your family tree, you will most likely find that you are related to someone who took part in the Salem witch trials. Even if your descendants were not born in the United States, they might have married someone with a connection. Three hundred and thirty years after the trials, that’s a lot of generations.
“It’s our American story.”
The professor’s words are true. The Salem witch trials are a unique part of US history. There is no question the Puritans lost their way and committed atrocities, but justice did ultimately prevail and a terrible situation was used for good as the Constitution prohibits an established or official church. The First Amendment guarantees religious freedom. There is no prohibition of fanaticism. In modern times, Salem has turned what was a dark experience into a prosperous one. Yes, citizens are divided over that prosperity, but it is relatively harmless at this point. There is no question that Salem would not be an affluent suburb if not for the witch legacy.
History, as they say, is complicated. For every horror, a benefit emerges. In totality, the province of Massachusetts Bay paved the way for the abolitionist movement that sought to free slaves. The lessons learned at Salem were part of that—demonstrating man’s inhumanity to man.
Also, the city acknowledges that the definition of a “witch hunt” has expanded to include the “social targeting” that is now a part of modern society. In fact, the Salem Witch Museum exhibits actually tell visitors about the role of social and political witch hunts throughout history and in contemporary life.
The Salem Award for Human Rights and Social Justice was established in 1992 to recognize individuals or groups who are confronting fear and fighting injustice.
So the witches did not die completely in vain. The course of the most powerful nation on earth was changed by the murders at Salem. Americans today can worship as they please, with no government intrusion.
We the people can also make up our own minds about good, evil, God, and the Devil. Americans possess the absolute right to believe or not believe.
Something witch hunters and demons of all types cannot be happy about.