I’ve always had a fascination with Salem, Massachusetts. I don’t know if it was the original Hocus Pocus (it takes place in Salem) or my general love of Halloween combined with my love of history and small New England towns. But whatever the reason, I’ve always been fascinated with the town and its history. Non-fiction books. Fictional plays. Podcasts. Personal visits. I’ll take it all.
And as I just mentioned, I love Halloween. Witches and pumpkins and trick-or-treating, all of it.
Separately, the revelry of Halloween and the allure of Salem are wonderful. But for some reason, when they’re combined, I find it…odd. Uncomfortable? Maybe not uncomfortable. Perhaps awkward is a better choice.
I’m currently reading JW Ocker’s superb travelogue/history book A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts. Ocker is a master storyteller. He recounts an October he, his wife, and his two children spent soaking-in Salem and its surrounding area. He notes that modern Salem proper is not where all of the action was: neighboring modern Danvers was actually the infamous Salem Town back in 1692. He relates a town — a series of towns — steadfastly dedicated to keeping their history alive and celebrating their identity. And I admire that.
What I find….awkward — I believe we settled on awkward — is the revelry of witches and witchcraft in Salem. The corny logos of stereotypical witch caricatures, hat and broom and all, used to sell ice cream. Adorning official city property. Modern-day revelers dressed as witches and partying in the streets. Witch souvenirs galore. It’s an entire industry. A sort of witch-themed version of Disney World. And of course it’s hard to blame Salem — it’s what they’re known for and it must be a significant source of income for the town and its residents.
But there’s something…awkward here, right? Lost in the revelry and caricatures and chintzy souvenirs is the fact that these women (and men), the inspiration of all of this gaudiness, weren’t witches. They were persecuted. Brutally. By neighbors who wanted their land or had personal grudges or merely fell under the spell of mass delusion. Family members turning on family members. People hanged by the neck until dead. Crushed under heavy rocks and refusing to confess to witchcraft to the very end. Even those who survived had their reputations destroyed or lost friends or loved ones. Mass hysteria and unspeakable cruelty cost innocent people everything. It was that shameful chapter of a town’s history that made it infamous and associated it forever with witches.
And that legacy is memorialized today by….witch-themed keychains and people partying in witch costumes. I can’t imagine having my entire life being ruined or even ended by neighborhood accusations of me being some monster, only for people in the future to come to my neighborhood to party while dressed like that monster and buy cheap monster souvenirs. For the neighborhood to build an entire industry around cheesy and fun representations of the monster I was accused of being on the gallows.
And to be clear, I’m not really blaming the locals here. Ocker’s book recounts wonderful, multi-decade efforts by locals to preserve the history of the victims. Salem and Danvers have memorials to the victims. And the people of Salem are just trying to make a living, capitalizing on tourism just as anywhere else would.
But I think it would behoove visitors to take a moment in between buying a witch keychain and partying at the Halloween parade to remember that the people whose tragic demise made the town infamous were not caricatures or mythical creatures. They were people — real people. Innocent people. Elderly women with families. Husbands and wives and fathers and mothers. People who lost their lives because of false accusations and community score-settling. Take some time to remember that the Salem witch trials aren’t just the inspiration for a parade or a town logo.
Rather, they’re a warning of what happens when neighbors cruelly turn on one another. Of what happens when we lose our basic human decency and instead let selfishness, pettiness, and hysterical fanaticism take control of us. Because we are not above the people of the past — we’re just as human as they were. Not witches or monsters. Just humans who can, under the right (or rather wrong) circumstances, resort to being unbelievably cruel to one another.