🎃A Salem Witch's guide to Visiting Salem 2021🎃

 I'm a Salem witch who's lived in Salem since high school and been a local historian for about 20 years. So many people ask what to do when they visit I decided to make a list to copy and paste because I'm lazy lol! 🤷‍♀️♥️ (Also please keep in mind there's tons more than this, think of this as a quick guide to get you started)

UPDATED FOR 2021

🎃A Salem Witch's guide to Visiting Salem🎃

- Food - 🥣🍔🍨☕

Cafes - Gulu Gulu, Red Line, and Jaho

Breakfast - Ugly Mug Diner, Red's, Fountain Place, and the Hawthorne Hotel

Best vegetarian options - Life Alive, Passage to India, Paprika Grill (falafel), Jodi Bee's bakery, vegan pizza at Flying Saucer

Seafood - for most fresh and fancy go to Turner's, for laid back go to Lobster Shanty, for ocean views there are three restaurants on Pickering Wharf

Ice cream - Maria's Sweet Somethings, Captain Dusty's, Melt, Goodnight Fatty's (late night cookies with vegan chocolate ice cream!)

Best for fancy dates - The Roof at Hotel Salem, Opus, Ledger, Antique Table

All other restaurants are good too and most have options for all dietary requirements. I'm vegetarian and eat everywhere in town. 

- Tours - 🚶🏿‍♀️🚶🚶‍♀️🚶🏿‍♀️🚶🏼🚶🏾‍♂️👻

Number one rated tour in Salem:

Satanic Salem Walking Tours, check out reviews and get tickets here https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g60954-d18925409-Reviews-Satanic_Salem_Walking_Tours-Salem_Massachusetts.html

Want ghosts? - I recommend Spellbound Tours, and Salem Night Tours 

Tired? - Salem Trolley is very relaxing and goes outside of the downtown historic district to places some tourists don't see

- Museums - 🏢🏰💀🏫

The Satanic Temple headquarter's Salem Art Gallery for pictures with the famous Baphomet statue

The Salem Witch Museum is the most historically accurate of the witch museums. All of the witch museums were built in the seventies so they are a little cheesy but fun.

The Halloween Museum is cute and nostalgic

The House of Seven Gables is technically the first tourist attraction in the city and tries to offer something more classy and old school

The Witch Board Museum has an amazing collection of Ouija boards

The Burlesque Museum is a new interesting addition to the city

Count Orlok's Nightmare Gallery is everyone's favorite monster museum

The Peabody Essex Museum is super fancy and not touristy at all and could take a whole day to go through

The Pirate Museum is my favorite cheesy tourist attraction because of how campy it is. Some people hate it and I'm like lighten up! 🤣

As far as historic sites and homes are considered, if you are a true history nerd and visiting Salem you should already be aware there are tons in the city and get researching which ones you want to visit!! Three websites have good lists for that stuff, the Salem witch Museum, the national Park service, and the Peabody Essex Museum. There's just so much. 

If it seems overwhelming you should definitely take some tours.

- Shopping - 🛍️🧹🪄

Best tourist items - Trolley Depot, Salem Wax Museum/Witch Village gift shop, Salem Witch Museum gift shop, Flying Monkey t shirts, Witches Tees

Best witch shops - Enchanted, Hermetic Arts Learning Center, Artemisia Botanicals, Pyramid Books

Best goth/weird/oddities/random shops - Hive and Forge, Die with Your Boots On, Witch City Consignment and Thrift, Bewitched in Salem, Remember Salem

Also in the center of the city is the Army Barracks, an army surplus store full of extremely useful things like last minute rain gear, boots, socks, hand warmers and foot warmers, etc.

- Other random tourist advice -

(This advice applies mostly for October)

-Parking sucks in Salem. It just does. I'm sorry. 😔 The parking meters are easy to pay from the website at least nowadays you don't have to keep running back. When it gets busy private lots price gauge so the two city owned garages are good

-Bathrooms are difficult to find, easiest are at The Visitor's Center

-Don't overplan your trip. Give yourself time to wander. 

- Be skeptical and open minded. Read descriptions of things carefully. There aren't many tourist traps in Salem but some things are confusing. 

Mr Rogers and Death Rituals by Witches

A Salem Witch's Review of The VVitch

Local historians, business owners, and witches were invited to a special early screening of The Witch at Cinema Salem followed by a panel with the director, Robert Eggers, and the star of the movie Anya Taylor-Joy along with a few of our local Salem experts.

(Left to right: Danvers town archivist Richard Trask, author of The Lace Reader Brunonia Barry, Anya Taylor Joy who plays Thomasin, Director Robert Eggers, and local historian, professor, and author Tad Baker)

I loved this movie too much to give the ending away, but in order to write this review I'll have to reveal one spoiler that happens within the first few minutes. From the trailers it seems like the baby going missing is the pivotal moment of the entire film and in a way it is. But the baby is dead. Thankfully this film spares the gore, but we know it's dead right from the beginning and there is no doubt about it. We know because we watched a naked old witch take a knife to his innocent body, grind him up in a mortar and pestle and bathe in his blood.

The first thing that struck me about this movie was the sound - the musical score sounds like broken string instruments made from dead trees - and the moments of abrupt silence. From the first scenes where we witness the family (who's surname we never learn) being banished from the unnamed colony, rolling away in a cart and settling an isolated plot in a far off place, the strange music sets a chaotic and unnerving pace. Along with the incessant creepy puritanical praying it's enough to help begin to immerse you into their perspective, particularly the teenage daughter Thomasin played by Anya Taylor-Joy, who it ends up is the protagonist..

Set in the 1630s, director Robert Eggers said he imagined their new settlement was located somewhere in southern New Hampshire and repeatedly discussed how important historical accuracy was while filming. Winning the award for directing in a US dramatic role at Sundance, his attention to detail payed off and A24 picked up his film for national distribution immediately afterwards. Taylor-Joy described how funny it was for her to try on her meticulously accurate clothing for the first time saying "It would take like four people to dress someone!", Eggers described building period houses on the set and how he knew historians would criticize the way the wood was cut when it showed up so he had it all done over by hand, the language that the actors use is so authentic it will be difficult for some people to understand, even the title of the film uses the more historically accurate version of the letter w - which was often printed as VV when in upper case in titles. At a screening full of experts on colonial New England and the Puritans there was barely a complaint, but you could see Eggers really cared about the accuracy in the way he jokingly pointed out a couple flaws to us.

The one thing that is not historically accurate is the film's depiction of witchcraft, well in a way. It's not accurate to what witchcraft is today and what it's based on, and that was the biggest relief of the night. See, it's historically accurate to the idea of what a witch would be in the minds of these people during this time period. It's a great approach and something many films about new England and witches never even attempt. Where many writers and directors make the mistake of conflating the ideas of modern pagan based witchcraft with devil worship and Christian superstition from the middle ages and early modern era, this movie never crosses that line and masterfully creates the purely fictional and fantastical version of witchcraft that, to the Puritans was very very real. It's clear Eggers researched actual witch trials and based his concept for on the accuser's strange testimonies and confessions extracted through torture. Although, when asked he stated that he didn't read too much of the Salem witch trials but more about the many European witch crazes.

To religious fanatics like this the edge of the woods was a portal into evil, unbaptized babies go to hell, the devil was an actual entity, and when he shows up he tries to force you to sign his book. To fanatics like this a witch covers herself in flying ointment made with the baby's blood, mounts her riding pole, and flies into the full moon to the black sabbath. This is not a goofy bumbling hag, this is the first ACTUAL scary witch in a film in decades. To the local witches in the theater that was the biggest relief of the night, nothing in the film was offensive towards modern witches because this was very clearly based on the twisted fears of the time.

Most importantly, immersing us in the desolate cold landscape helps us to understand the most terrifying belief of all - when bad things happen there is always someone to blame.

Their hard life is earned and even the kids, especially Thomasin, toil on the farm. Of course when the baby goes missing under her care, mistrust in her is the first reaction of the rest of the family. They blame themselves and each other as the film escalates slowly at first - the corn being blighted, animals and the young children acting strangely, an egg being stillborn - and for a brief time we almost forget that the witch is real. Maybe their fear and paranoia will destroy them on its own like it did in 1692 in Salem. Maybe there wasn't a witch, maybe the accusations against Thomasin are true, maybe it's the father or the mother that is evil.

But that is short-lived, and the witch appears again to lure the adolescent son as a beautiful temptress, emerging from her hobbit hole leg first.

As things get weirder and weirder the pace set at the beginning - of tension and release in music, quick scene changes, and manic fluctuations in character demeanor - stays pretty constant. So the dramatic effect of a hard rain is enough to set your nerves on edge and when the characters really do start freaking out we are shocked but not surprised. We've been brought into their tiny world and know what they fear is real.

The real star of the movie, Charlie the goat plays Black Phillip (and he has a twitter).

Ask A Salem Witch: Is Salem too Touristy?

Many people have a difficult time understanding how something as terrible as The Salem Witch Trials can be commercialized in our modern tourist industry.

Converting to Witchcraft - Ask A Salem Witch [Video]

Victims of witchcraft hysteria like in Salem in 1692 have been accused of converting to witchcraft in many strange ways - spitting on the cross, signing the Devil's book, and even kissing his ass!

But how does a real witch do it?

The Difference between Wicca and Witchcraft - Ask a Salem Witch [VIDEO]

This is one of the most common questions a witch can get.

Many times, people will refer to me as a Wiccan, which I am not, and I wont even bother correcting them because I am so sick of explaining the difference. 

Real Witches Use Eye of Newt and Tongue of Dog??

It's something most people hear about but never actually consider - if witches are real, do we actually use the strange ingredients you hear about in fairy tales and literature?

Should we lock up our pets?? What does this mean? WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!? :p

But seriously, Tom the Tour Guide explains:

That's right, no need to worry. In fact, I'm even a vegetarian witch and my black cat's name is Brachleagh! Here's a video of him being annoyed with me: