Salem: History Meets Cheese
Yesterday's drive to Salem took about two hours; it would have been shorter were it not for traffic around Boston due in part to the intermitent rain. That was a relatively small price to pay for the day of cheez-laced history that lay ahead.
We arrived just a few minutes after 10:00 AM. Our first stop on the tour was at The Griffen Theater to see a one-person show called "Something Wicked This Way Comes," purporting to be "true tales of witchcraft and the supernatural." Any time such a claim is made, silliness is bound to ensue, and we were not disappointed in this regard. The show was one yound woman delivering some very funny lines on local folklore mixed with just a hint of historical fact. She underwent numerous costume changes, and every so often the lights would go down and she'd jump out at the audience just as they were suddenly turned on. Boo! As we saw the first show of the day, the audience in this case was just LL and I. We laughed a lot whenever the "boo factor" was utilized. Even better than the show was the old woman working the lobby telling us about "mysterious auras" in photos of local modern-day witches, these having obviously been stripped in when prints were made. She was very friendly, and I honestly couldn't discern whether or not she actually believed the stuff she was telling us. I nodded and smiled, of course. This was Salem, MA, after all, one of the great citadels of Woo!
Our next destination was the Witch Dungeon Museum. The place had, as did many others, a few sets of stocks outside for the tourists to take pictures of each other, and I wasn't about to miss the opportunity to put LL in a compromising position. I think I want to get one of these babies for the house! Like many tourist attractions in Salem, history mingles with cheez here; the "museum" is on the site where witches really were held back in 1692, the original dungeons having been torn up by the telephone company in the 1950's.
A few things we learned at the Witch Dungeon Museum:
As romantic as it might sound, the "Dungeon Honeymoon" package is not worth the price! The rooms are too small and room service is incredibly rude.
If a Puritan tells you he's going to turn you on to some great classic rock, the best thing to do is run! The fellow under the rocks here is named Giles Corey, and he was about 80 years young. If there can be said to have been anything inspiring about the Salem Witch Trials, the story of Corey's death would have to be it. His torture at the hands of the Massachusetts Inquisition reminded me of some more recent events. Some things never change...
"Hanging out" had a very different meaning in 1692.
There... now, wasn't that cheezarific? Not satisfied with merely seeing the one museum, LL and I decided to buy a combination ticket to get a discount on two more of them. All things considered, it's not a bad deal to buy the combo pass. I think three of these museums in one day is about my limit, anyhow. Thus, our next stop turned out to be the Witch History Museum, which is located right in a downtown shopping center.
We were again treated to a mix of history and cheez; it's hard to tell where one stops and the other starts in Salem. Of course, thereare some places in the area that are just pure cheez... psychic cheez. For example, right next to the Witch History Museum is a shop called the Magic Parlor, where one can purchase everything from tarot readings to custom fangs to kitschy statues of sexy young witches stirring cauldrons between their legs. Hail the Goddess, for she accepts American Express! 
We had to poke around the place a bit because, you know, there are people who actually do believe in this stuff and will part with good money to pick up a "rare" spell component or a crystal that's going to make them suddenly attractive or able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. The irony of this in Salem is, of course, that just over 300 years ago a bunch of people were executed on the basis of practicing witchcraft. Today, witchcraft is big business in Salem... but it doesn't work any better for the people who sell the paraphrenalia for real than it did for the people who never even attempted to converse with the fairies and goblins! That being said, the place does have some objects for sale that are very nice simply as works of art, including a good deal of Indian statuary, which I collect myself. Not in the budget on this trip, however.
Neo-Pagan types do not, of course, have a monopoly on Woo, even in Salem. There's some Christian Woo, too, including a little place called The Vault. This appears to be a storefront for an Evangelical group, The Gathering (as in Magic: The Gathering; get it?)
The Witch History Museum itself was pretty much more of the same that was offered in the Witch Dungeon Museum but, as the name suggests, it gets into a bit more detail about the characters and events of the 1692 Witch Trials. Some of the displays were particularly amusing, too, like this one:
Rather than explaining this, I'll leave it up to the reader's imagination to figure out what's going on here.
We also checked out the New England Pirate Museum, the best of the day's three. Unfortunately, my batteries died and so I could not take pictures. I'd definitely recommend that one for anyone planning a trip to Salem, though. It's just as cheezy as the rest, but the tour guide we had seemed more enthusiastic and knowledgable than the others.
Outside of the tourist traps, the town itself is very old (by American standards) and there are old houses and cemeteries around just about every corner. For example, there's the "Witch House." It was the home of trials judge Jonathan Corwin, and it was built sometime before 1675 (when Corwin bought it). We didn't go in, but it looked interesting from the outside:
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There was also the Peabody house and garden, which was very much in bloom. LL and i took sime time to tour around the garden, but we didn't do the tour of the house itself. The structure visible in these photos isn't the Peabody house itself, but some other structure connected with it.
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By around 3:00, we were starting to get worn out and the rain began, so we decided to duck into a nearby coffee shop and see if we could catch a break and some caffeine. As it turned out, that place was itself a historic site, although it's now called Red's Sandwich Shop. The coffee was good and probably not quite 300 years old. The place was already closing by the time we got there, however, so after a quick cup o'joe, we decided to try to make one more stop for the day at the Old Burying Point Cemetery, which is one of the oldest cemeteries in the US, dating all the way back to 1637. I love old New England cemeteries, particularly the headstones with winged skulls and angel heads on them. These were in plentiful supply at this particular cemetery, where there look to be at least 500 interments dating between the 17th and mid-19th centuries.
The rain was coming down harder and harder, so as much as I wanted to tour around the cemetery, it was time to go. We hoped to beat rush hour traffic as well, but the journey back to Worcester still took a couple of hours due to repeated tie-ups. Nonetheless, we plan on going back to Salem for another dose of history-tinged cheeziness in the not-too-distant future. When my sister and her family make it here for a visit, I think we'll take them. My niece would love the place, and it'd be a good opportunity to teach her about the difference between fantasy and reality. We did notice a few people around Salem who don't seem to ever have learned that particular lesson!
