Having a strong historical identity for your town can be a mixed blessing. If you're Hershey, Pa., you know that tourists expect everything to be made of chocolate. If you're Salem, Mass., you are reduced to putting a flying-witch emblem on your police cars and firetrucks. Salem. The Witch City. Halloween Capital of the World. Stay for a spell. Not everybody in town is entirely comfortable with the quaintifying of one of the more ghastly and appalling episodes in American Colonial history, but it sure is good for business. There's a Witch Museum, a Witch History Museum, a Witch Dungeon Museum (with live trial re-enactment), a Witch Village and a Wax Museum of Witches and Seafarers where you get a "free informational graveyard scroll." You can get a discount at the wax museum and witch village, "managed and staffed by practicing witches," when you buy the Salem Hysteria Pass. Almost all the gift shops have a supernatural theme. Instead of Things 'N Stuff or Aunt Ibby's Itsy Bitsy Attic, the kazillion gift shoppes in Salem have names like Black Paw, The Broom Closet and The Magic Parlor ("Fang Capital of the World"). And when you've scored your fangs, there are plenty of spooky walking tours to orient you to the historical sites and amuse the locals, who think it is hilarious that you have paid money to stumble around in the dark behind a cloaked community-theater actress with a lantern. On the tour I took, we heard about the ghost of a vicious witch-era sheriff who has hair like Diana Ross' and must spend eternity tormented by the smell of coffee and doughnuts coming from the Dunkin' next door.

Also, we learned how to tell if your household ghost is an ordinary stair-haunter you can cope with on your own or a nasty, aggressive spirit who's gotten into your walls and closets and requires a visit from a spiritual Orkin man. Unfortunately, Salem's cemeteries are closed after sunset, so we had to hear about how Giles Cory was pressed to death while overlooking the scene of his demise from the driveway of a bingo hall with a lively game in progress. In all the show biz and witch kitsch, it's easy to lose the thread of what actually went on in Salem in 1692. And that's bad, because those who forget history are doomed to sit through repeated high school productions of "The Crucible."

View: Full Article | Source: Post Gazette

Mmm.. I love Salem. It was such a great town to visit.

I very much want to go back for Halloween again.

I would love to explore many of those places mentioned in at article.

and then there is Laurie Cabot, Salem's Official Witch

Link

I delivered to most of those places when I was in the trucking business and let me tell you; most of them are just tacky and touristy as all get-out. It's got some atmosphere to it and all, but like most tourist oriented places, it's not what it's cracked up to be..
Not to mention that the whole "Salem" witch trials ordeal didn't even happen in what is now the Town of Salem. It actually happened in Danvers; which is a few miles away..