Spooky Fun in Salem, MA  (May, 2003)

By The Cranky Yankee 

(photos by C. LeBeau)

Salem, MA is a place I’ve always wanted to visit but never went.  Friends and associates are always surprised when I tell them I’ve never been there.  Some people in New England have probably visited the place as a school field trip.  This was the case with my hubby, The joey Zone, oh-so-many centuries ago when he was teenager.  But as for me, this was a new adventure!

The planned trip was for three days and two nights, Memorial Day weekend, staying at the lovely Clipper Ship Inn…not a fancy place, but clean, inexpensive, and relatively close to downtown Salem.  They are cat lovers at the Inn with several felines in residence, so if you stay there, stop and pet the kitties!  As those of you who live in the northeast know, the weather that Memorial Day weekend sucked.  Cold and rainy, but we made the most of it.  It actually worked in our favor as Salem was not crowded and we got a lot of personal service, something we would not have gotten had it been the height of tourist season.

We did the whole tourist thing; shopping, snapping photos, shopping, graveyards, restaurants, guided tours, and more shopping.  But we didn’t get too tourist-y, staying away from obvious traps such as the Witch’s Dungeon, the Wax Museum, the Pirate Museum, and the various “haunted houses” like “Terror On the Wharf” and “Dracula’s Castle.” 

And the fun started as we were driving through Peabody going into Salem.  Trying to see through the pouring rain and navigating narrow streets, I spied a sign that made me almost drive off the road.  It was a package store called Bunghole Liquors!  [Note: for those of you who are non-New Englanders, a package store or a “packy” is a colloquialism for a liquor store.]   There’s another Bunghole Liquors right on Derby Street in Salem, just down from the main tourist area.  In fact, the one on Derby St. is the original.  We never made it into the establishment, and I’m sorry I never took a picture.  We found out later that it has a long and colorful history.  The building was once a funeral parlor and doubled as a speakeasy during Prohibition! 

One of our first stops was the House of Seven Gables (H7G).  Like Mark Twain is all over Hartford, Nathanial Hawthorne is all over Salem.  You couldn’t swing a dead rat without hitting his mug somewhere.  And if you were like me, you were tortured by his writings during high school, so excuse me if I don’t wax poetic over his books.  Paintings of him at various stages in his life are hanging through-out H7G.  I am no fan of his, but I have to say, he was a good looking guy when he was young.  Every woman checking out his pix commented, “Oh, those blue eyes!”  Yessir, old Hawthorne was a babe-o-matic!  Bet they don’t tell you that in high school!  The H7G was very cool with old furniture, a secret staircase, and lots of nooks and crannys (like a Thomas’ English Muffin).  I like checking out how people lived in the “old days.”

Another historic place we visited was Judge Corwin’s house, otherwise known as the Witch House.  It was another old colonial building dating back to the 1600s like the H7G.  What was cool about this house was that they didn’t rope off the rooms like H7G…you could actually walk around in them and around the old furniture.  I like old houses (we live in a 250 year old colonial house ourselves).  But unlike Hawthorne, Judge Corwin was not a babe…he’s the guy responsible for making Salem the tourist attraction it is today; he ordered the execution of 16 people on the charges of witchcraft.

Of course, we did a lot of shopping...we found the one used book store in town and spent much money there.  I got some great Elvis Presley books there (I had to go all the way to Salem to get books on the King…go figure!).  We visited many other sites around town including the merchant ship Friendship and the wharfs.  While visiting the Roger Conant statue, we noticed holes in it.  We were told later that they were bullet holes.  A curmudgeon who hated tourism in town, had too much to drink one night and took pot-shots at the statue!

We did visit Laurie Cabot's shop...She’s the “Official Witch” of Salem, in case you didn’t know.  She was there, but I didn't talk to her...too many people around.  I did buy a little voodoo poppet as a joke for a co-worker.  Cabot’s daughter runs a Victorian store in the downtown area.  Since Joey likes Victorian design, he wanted to check it out.  The clerk behind the counter turned out to be a local club Goth and realized we knew a lot of Goths from the CT & NY area.  The girl talked our ear off, but we got some good Goth gossip.

One of the really cool things we did was go on a historic “ghost walk.”  Haunted Footsteps Ghost Tour is more than just stories around the camp fire.  The people who do this tour take you to various buildings and sites around downtown Salem and give you detailed background history on each stop as well as the related ghost story.  They do know their stuff, and the tour is well worth it.  They even do a historic graveyard tour as well.  Joey and I did the tour at 8pm when it was dark, wet and spooky.  The highlights of the tour are the Joshua Ward House, the Howard St. Burial Ground, and the Old Salem Prison.

The Joshua Ward House is supposed to be one of the most haunted buildings in America.  There was a famous incident a while back where someone took a Poloroid of one of the office workers and strange entity appeared instead (check out the pix here).  Back in the 1600s, when the witch trials were happening, what is now the Howard St. Burial Ground was just an open field.  It was here that accused witch, Giles Corey, was pressed to death (all the others were hanged).  It is said that Giles Corey still walks this plot of land just before tragedies strike Salem (check out this picture).  The Old Salem Prison is abandoned now, but it operated until 1992 under deplorable conditions. Of course, it’s allegedly haunted, too. 

One good story we heard in regards to the jail involved a haunted shoe.  While outside of the jail, near a section of the fence called “The Hell Hole,” one member of a tour group with a digital camera took a picture.  There had been all sorts of trash thrown around this fence area including an old lady’s shoe.  When the guy looked at his picture, there was a leg standing in the shoe!  The whole tour entourage beat a hasty retreat.  We heard this story Saturday night from the tour guide while standing next to the Hell Hole.  On Monday, as we were leaving Salem, we drove by the prison and I asked Joey to stop so I could take one last photo.  We walked up to the Hell Hole, and there, in the area of the Hell Hole, was an old lady’s shoe!  It wasn’t there Saturday!!!  I took a picture, but alas, when I got the film developed, there was no leg.

On Sunday, we took another tour with the Haunted Footsteps people, this time an historical walk through the Salem Burying Point where many of the town founders lay.  The woman who led us (we were the only ones who signed up that particular day and time) through the cemetery was very knowledgeable about the stones and the people buried there.  They were definitely worth our time and money. 

Later in the day, we drove out to Danvers, MA, site of the original Salem Village where the witch accusations started.  We visited the old Parsonage, home of Rev. Parris and his slave Tituba who first told Parris’ daughters stories of witchcraft and voodoo.  Not too far from the Parsonage site, is a huge memorial, the Salem Village Witchcraft Victims’ Memorial, dedicated to those who suffered and died due to the accusations of Parris’ daughters, whipped into frenzy by Tituba’s stories. 

We visited other places, too, such as Israel Putnam’s birthplace.  I’ve always loved the stories about “Old Put” and felt that Gen. Putnam should be recognized as Connecticut’s REAL state hero, not that Nathan Hale fool (he was a failed spy, forcrisesakes…he got caught!).  So I had to visit his birthplace and pay my respects.   It took awhile to find it, and when we did, were surprised to find that there was a commercial establishment on the property.  The Putnam Pantry is a candy and ice cream store right in front of the Putnam Homestead.  We didn’t get a chance to tour the Putnam house (it wasn’t open for the season yet), but we did buy candy in the Putnam Pantry.  There’s even a big portrait of Gen. Putnam in the Pantry and a poem called “Death and General Putnam” hanging in the entryway.

On the way out of Danvers, we stopped briefly at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead (she was one of the witch-craze victims).  Again, it was not open yet for the season.  We then stopped at a small cemetery just for yuks where I found a couple of old gravestones of Revolutionary soldiers.  We left Danvers in the late afternoon in the pouring rain.  Despite the wet weekend, we had a first-rate vacation.  The rain kept some of the regular tourists away, and there were times when we felt like we had the town to ourselves.  Well, maybe we shared some of that time with a ghost or two…you never know!

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