We need to talk about Salem, Massachusetts

I can't be the only person bothered by this.

Oct 27, 2022

As much as I’d like to give the impression that I live a glamorous life of writing novels and essays and random Substack posts by day and attending glittering parties with Pulitzer prize winners and drunk poets and Reese Witherspoon by night «pick my book for your club, Reese, pick my book for your club!» the fact is, I spend much of my time writing so-called content (i.e. blog posts, articles, whitepapers, ebooks, etc.) for corporate clients.

As an expert in the content field, I happen to know that seasonal content is an effective way to boost engagement, build brand loyalty, and attract and retain ~~customers~~ readers. So, here’s a seasonal post, just in time for Halloween, about Salem, Massachusetts. Actually, it’s more like a rant. A seasonal rant. Except it SHOULDN’T be considered seasonal, as I shall explain.

We live about a half an hour away from Salem, and go there fairly often to take our kiddo Elm to their LGBTQ youth group meetings. It’s a cool little city with some nice shops and restaurants and, as of a couple of years ago, a groovy cannabis dispensary. Not that I would ever, EVER frequent such a place (cough, cough, wheeze, hack, cough).

Mostly, though, what Salem is known for, of course, are the infamous witch trials of 1692-93, when 200 people, mostly women, in and around Salem were accused of witchcraft. Thirty of those tried were found guilty, and of those, twenty were executed.

Many of the accusers were teenage girls, who had convinced themselves, and managed to convince others, that they were possessed by the devil, or that they saw their neighbor Goody Goodwife dancing around a cauldron or whatever. This 100% tracks with what I know about teenage girls. If TikTok had existed back then, there would have been videos of teenage girls having convulsive fits going viral all over the place, and pretty soon half the Zoomers in the country would be claiming they were the victims of witches. I can just imagine the profile bios: she/her/hers, BTS stan, hexed by Hester Moody.

I’m not quite sure why the men in charge actually took the accusations of a bunch of raving teenagers seriously; I suppose it was just a good excuse to persecute women who did horrid, ungodly things like “read” or “not have children,” and men who just seemed a little “off,” and to strike the fear of the Lord into people on a more general level.

In any case, the whole thing was the perfect storm of mass hysteria, religious extremism, misogyny, fearmongering, racism (the first person accused of witchcraft, who was seen as the instigator, was Tituba, an enslaved indigenous woman from Barbados) and puberty.

It was a dark and regrettable chapter in American history. And you live in the Boston area, or have ever visited Salem, you know that that history is alive and very, VERY well in “Witch City,” as it is (soooooo creatively) known. You can’t walk more than a few yards without running into some witch-themed attraction or point of interest. Some of it is historical—plaques commemorating the victims of the witch trials and museum exhibits describing and analyzing what happened. But most of it isn’t.

Join the 700,000 tourists who flock to Salem each year and you can stop into any one of a zillion shops selling witch tchotchkes, witchcraft and related supplies (crystals, herbs, tarot card sets, etc.) and cheap witch hats to sport during your visit. You can snap a selfie with the statue of Samantha from the TV show Bewitched, erected when the 2005 movie version was filmed in town. You can take a walking tour with a current day, practicing witch who will teach you about the history of witchcraft around the world and school you on why all the stereotypes about witches are patriarchal bullshit. (This, actually, would be pretty cool.) Travel to the outskirts of town, and you can see the old houses used for exterior shots in Hocus Pocus.

But witches are just the beginning. You can also take a tour of Salem’s supposedly haunted sites, led by a theater major wearing a black cloak, carrying a lantern, and speaking in a bad British accent. You can pay $49.95 to attend a séance and summon the spirits of the dead. And if you’re brave enough to join the throngs who visit in October, you can walk down the pedestrian mall and see all manner of people decked out as witches, ghosts, zombies, monsters, and—for reasons unclear—Captain Jack Sparrow.

Basically, Salem has evolved into the all-things-spooky capital of the world, and the the go-to destination for Halloween.

But do you see what the problem is with this? DOES ANYBODY BUT ME SEE IT?

Let’s go back to those witch trials, shall we?

200 people accused, 30 people imprisoned, and 20 people killed for allegedly being witches. But were they witches? No. That’s the whole point.

THEY WEREN’T FUCKING WITCHES.

Nobody danced with the devil. Nobody cast spells on teenage girls. Nobody performed magic that caused their neigbhors’ livestock to die.

Did some of them do a little light herbal medicine? Almost definitely! It’s what people did! Were some of them superstitious? Did some of them have cats? Were some of them perhaps a little…odd? Very possibly! But they WERE. NOT. WITCHES! That’s why the whole thing was so stupidly tragic. There was nothing more haunted or supernatural or creepy about Salem than any other Olde New England town—except the fact that everyone had gone batshit crazy over the idea of witchcraft.

But now, more than three-hundred years later, the city where all those poor people were tortured and killed is raking in millions of dollars by acting as if they actually were witches—that, in fact, the whole city was chock full of them—along with ghosts and ghouls and spirit mediums and, apparently, pirates that talk like Keith Richards.

Consider this: if you walk down Washington Street in downtown Salem, you will encounter a plaque marking the place where a man named Giles Corey was pressed to death for refusing to plead guilty to witchcraft. PRESSED TO DEATH. As in, rocks and boulders placed upon his body, one after another, until he died. Imagine if he knew that someday, thousands of tourists and inebriated bachelorettes in souvenir witch hats would be following theater majors past the site of his brutal murder, learning about all the spoooooooky ghosts and witches of Salem?

My heart breaks. Just like Giles Corey’s non-witch bones did.

So. Now you see, I hope, why a post about Salem should NOT be considered seasonal content. And why Salem should, by rights, not be called “Witch City” but “Senseless Persecution of People who Weren’t Witches City” or “17th Century Religious Nut Jobs City.”

But, alas, it is and always shall be Witch City, because we’re stupid, and Salem needs the money, and jeez, quit being so literal, Jane. It’s fun! Don’t you like witches? And ghosts? And Halloween? And spooky stuff?

Yes, yes I do.

But they have nothing to do with Salem.

Happy Halloween.

I am also not actually a witch. Don’t kill me, please.

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Jane’s Calamity

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