I've decided to (try) do a short post every day this week through Halloween since I've been terribly neglectful of the Halloween (Samhain) side of this site.
Today I'm going to share my trip to Salem, Massachusetts, including a visit to Sleepy Hollow, New York and Fall River, Massachusetts (yes, Lizzie Borden's Fall River).
We decided to take the bucket list trip to Salem, Massachusetts...something I've wanted to do for a long time. It was an experience for sure.
First stop...Sleepy Hollow, New York. We had planned to get there early enough to visit Washington Irving's grave in the cemetery, but we ran into a ton of problems on the road and it was closed when we arrived. Still, it was cool to actually be where the legendary story was set.
Our first day in Salem, we walked down Essex Street and stopped at the famous Witch House. We decided not to take the tour because it's two stories and no elevator. Not good for the accessibility challenged. That being said, just seeing the house was enough. The Witch House, home of Judge Jonathan Corwin, is the only structure still standing in Salem with direct ties to the Witchcraft Trials of 1692. He was one of the various judges to preside over the trials.
On the second day (night), we visited Fall River, Massachusetts to see the Lizzie Borden house. We took the night time Ghost Tour, which took us around various places in Salem that Lizzie frequented, and where other tragedies occurred, including the Great Fire of 1843, started by two boys playing with a small cannon which ignited a pile of wood shavings, and the Granite Mill Fire on Sept. 19, 1874 which took the lives of twenty-three women and children working in the mill. We also saw the Catholic church that the Borden's maid attended, and the church Lizzie attended before her accusation and acquittal in the murders. The final part of the tour was to see the first floor of the Borden house itself. It was surreal to be where it actually happened, but also macabre, as we saw actual autopsy photos of the Borden murder victims. There was a lot of rage in those murders. In all, it was a great tour. I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about the Borden case, but I actually learned even more on the tour. We also ventured to the Fall River cemetery and visited the graves of Lizzie and her family. Despite what happened, they are all buried beside each other.
Our third and fourth days we spent in Salem. On Thursday, we visited the House of the Seven Gables. We did not take the tour due to cost, and accessibility, but again, seeing the outside was enough. It was wharf side so it was awesome seeing the ocean too. We visited some of the shops. I really wanted to visit the shop of the official witch of Salem, Laurie Cabot, which is called Enchanted. I picked up some crystals/gemstones and a cool wood box to store them in. It was a very cool shop.
That night, we had tickets to the Salem Witch Museum. It was definitely an experience, but if you already know a lot about the Salem Witch Trials (as I do), I say skip it. On our final day, we visited Count Orlock's Nightmare Gallery which is a wax museum of all the horror characters from film going back to the early horror films of the 1920s and 30s. It was short, overcrowded, and overpriced, but the wax figures were excellently done so we enjoyed it.
The final stops of our visit were the most interesting and worthwhile. The Salem Witch Trials: Reckoning and Reclaiming exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum was amazing. Here's a little bit about the exhibit (read more at the link above):
"More than 300 years after the Salem witch trials, the personal tragedies and grievous wrongs that occurred still provoke reflection as we continue to reckon with the experiences of those involved. In this exhibition, learn more about factors that fueled the storied crisis, including individuals who rose to defend those unjustly accused, and explore two creative responses by contemporary artists with ancestral links to the trials. Both projects directly speak to the historical trauma evident in the authentic 17th-century documents and objects on view and provide a powerful connection between past and present.
The fashion designer Alexander McQueen’s Fall/Winter 2007 collection In Memory of Elizabeth How, 1692 was based on research into his ancestor Elizabeth How, one of the first women to be condemned and hanged as a witch in July 1692. McQueen’s work reclaims How’s power and memory from the false accusation that led to her unjust execution. He also mined historic symbols of witchcraft, paganism, religious persecution, and magic as potent inspiration for his fashion design."
This was a truly amazing exhibit and I learned some things about the trials I had not originally known. Such a tragedy in American history.
After the museum, we visited the Salem Witch Trials Memorial. "Located just off Charter Street, on Liberty Street, is Salem’s simple yet dramatic memorial to the 20 victims of the witch trials of 1692. Four foot high granite walls surround three sides, with granite benches representing each victim cantilevered inward from the wall. Etched on each bench is a name, means of execution, and execution date. One can read, on the stone threshold of the memorial, words of the accused taken directly from court transcripts. Visitors will note that the words – among them, “God knows I am innocent” – are cut off in mid-sentence, representing lives cut short and indifference to the protestations of innocence."
We drove around Salem, visiting and photographing Nathaniel Hawthorne's statue, various sites from the film, Hocus Pocus, the entrance to the Rebecca Nurse Homestead (Rebecca Nurse was a 71-year-old grandmother and wife of a local artisan when she was accused of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials. She was executed in 1692 and fully exonerated less than 20 years later.)...
and the actual site of the hangings, Proctor's Ledge.
"For many years it was believed that the nineteen innocent people who were executed in Salem in 1692 were hanged at the summit of Gallows Hill, on the edge of town to the west. The exact site was not memorialized; after all, this was a shameful event that Salem residents wanted to leave in the past. Maps of 1700 Salem show “Gallows Hill” but no marker for the execution site.
In 1921, local historian Sidney Perley believed he had located the spot of the executions, near the base of the hill on Proctor’s Ledge. His conclusion led the City of Salem to purchase part of Proctor’s Ledge in 1936, calling it “Witch Memorial Land.” No memorial was built, however, and until 2016, most people still believed the executions took place at the summit.
A team of researchers began to reconsider all of the evidence in 2010, and eventually concluded that Perley was right. The real execution spot was confirmed as Proctor’s Ledge in January of 2016. Part of the evidence included 1692 eyewitness accounts of nearby neighbors, who were able to see the hangings from their homes."
This was quite the memorable visit. I do hope to go back to Salem one day so I can visit parts I didn't get to this time. We shall see what the future holds.
I have a public album of all the photos we took on our trip. You can take a look here.
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