The short answer is money. Halloween in Salem is a cash grab circus side show. Do not trust the history most tour guides give you. Some guides are excellent and really care about the history, and they'll treat it with respect. Other guides are terrible and they'll entertain you, but aside from a few main points, you won't get much history.

There are also some sites cough witch dungeon cough that are abysmal pits of historical despair that just vomit ghost stories they pass as history.

And there actually is some history written about all this. Emerson W. Baker's book A Storm of Witchcraft discusses the development of Salem's tourism industry. It's really only been since the 1970s that Salem has been a destination. There were elements of the "witch city" culture throughout, but it's only much more recent.

(Side note- praise a deity of your choosing that the carnival rides are no longer using the lot across the street from the 17th c. cemetery in October. You can now stroll through the historic gravestones without the scent of fried dough wafting through the crowd of 100 people littering, climbing on gravestones, and forgetting that cemetaries are solemn places.)

One element that changes it and brings in the witch kitsch industry is Laurie Cabot and her witches. They practice witchcraft as their religious belief (some identify as Wiccan, some not), and all that is fine- you do you. However, there is no effort to separate modern witchcraft which has it's own history and identity from historical witchcraft. Many of Cabot's followers and those who take her classes leave thinking the victims of Salem were their predecessors. They were not. Witchcraft in 1692 was literally making a deal with the devil. Witchcraft today is a lot of the spells and herbs and all that you can buy nearly every other store front on Essex Street.

When I was a tour guide, a woman who paid $250 per potion class tried to argue her history from Cabot's nonsense to my years of research. She even said I could learn a lot from Cabot- about modern witchcraft, sure, 17th century, no. I'm not sure how accurate the price is today, but that's what this woman admitted paying, so someone is making a lot of money on this industry.

There are places that do a good job. The Witch House is a favorite of mine. The name sounds like another tourist trap, but it was the home of one of the judges and the nickname had been used as early as the 19th century. The guides I know there are knowledgeable and respectful of the history, and often times remorseful that they have to participate in the chaos that is October.

(Do not trust the trolley or most guides on the Witch House. No trials took place there. When I worked at the House a guide from a different tour location told me 'Don't tell me that because that's not what I tell my groups'.)

The problem is that this commercialism brings in so much money, there is limited incentive to change it or try to be better. You can still go to the Witch "History" "Museum" and learn about the ghost of Giles Corey causing the fire of 1914 out of revenge for his death in 1692. You can still hear guides give credibility to the absurd ergot poisoning theory that let's visitors leave thinking it was LSD and not human agency that killed the victims of the trials.

All the money means you can't do too much. When I was a guide I was told I had to play nice meaning I couldn't endorse locations over others or discourage tourists from certain attractions. My tone of voice and long pauses gave away my opinions, but I couldn't say it. Every site needs visitors from the other attractions advertising and sending them over. The good sites are city owned or national parks or not as conveniently located. If you don't play nice, you can't sustain yourself. But now that I'm not working there and am a grad student in Virginia, I don't have to play nice and can tell you that nearly every major witch attraction in Salem is a horrendous mountain of crap.

And I couldn't fit these two things in my rant but they're equally valid- in the past 2 years two tourist related things happened. The Witch Dungeon "Museum" agreed to replace their 1970s mannequin in black face and an enterprising man was publically shamed enough to cancel a live reenactment of the hanging of Bridget Bishop on the anniversary of her execution.

Hey all,

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