Salem Witch Trials sites
The 1692 trials: 20 executions and a town permanently haunted by its own past — Gallows Hill, the Witch House, and the Old Burying Point.
Case File No. 002
FILE 01 The Legend
In 1692, mass hysteria in Salem Village sent 19 people to the gallows and one to death by pressing, over seven accused 'witches' dead in jail — all on spectral evidence from young girls' fits. The court's own reversal a year later, and judge Samuel Sewall's 1697 public apology, marked the case as a permanent warning. Modern Salem built its identity on the tragedy: the Witch Museum, the Burying Point cemetery where judge John Hathorne lies, and the 1992 memorial standing where the hanged were denied burial.
FILE 02 The Sightings Log
Visitors to the Old Burying Point report cold hands and camera failure at the Hathorne family plot; the Witch House (judge Corwin's home) produces reports of a dark figure at an upstairs window. In October the whole town leans in — but the core reports (children's voices near the memorial, unease in the cemetery) predate the tourism era.
FILE 03 The Skeptic’s File
Nothing supernatural happened in Salem in 1692 — that is the scholarly consensus, and the tragedy is entirely human: Ergot poisoning theories remain unproven, but community panic, property disputes and wartime trauma fully explain the trials. The ghosts are heritage-theater atop a real atrocity. Salem's power is that it needs no ghosts: 19 documented hangings on spectral evidence are worse than any haunting.