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We were up and running early. We had breakfast at the inn, and Robin joined us for breakfast around 8:45 am. Breakfast was wonderful, a perfect start for the upcoming adventure.
We drove over to Colleen’s home, and she drove us to Salem (the spooky place).
Salem, Massachusetts, is a historic coastal city north of Boston, best known for the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, when fear and accusations led to the execution of 20 people. Today, Salem is a popular tourist destination with museums, historic homes, waterfront areas, and a strong focus on Halloween and witch-trial history.
Salem also has an important maritime past, once serving as a major trading port in early America. Key attractions include the Salem Witch Museum, The House of the Seven Gables, Peabody Essex Museum, and historic downtown Salem.
From the fourth floor of the parking structure, I captured the local church, one of many!! I now know why they call this “The Granite State”.
We headed to the Salem Witch Trial Museum. The Salem Witch Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, explains the history of the 1692 Salem Witch Trials, when fear, superstition, and accusations led to the imprisonment and execution of innocent people.
The museum’s main exhibit uses dramatic narration, lighting, and life-sized figures to tell the story of the trials. It also features an exhibit on how ideas about “witches” have changed over time, highlighting connections to stereotypes, fear, and scapegoating.
Overall, the museum presents the witch trials as a warning about mass hysteria, injustice, and the dangers of accusing others without evidence.
After a short wait, we headed inside through the gift store.
Inside the theater, a narrator explained many displays.
The Salem Witch Trials started in 1692 in Salem Village, Massachusetts, when several young girls began having strange fits—screaming, contorting their bodies, and claiming they were being harmed by invisible forces.
The first girls involved were Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, who lived in the household of the local minister, Samuel Parris. When doctors could not explain their symptoms, some people concluded they were victims of witchcraft.
Under pressure, the girls accused several people of bewitching them, including:
- Tituba, an enslaved woman in the Parris household
- Sarah Good, a poor woman
- Sarah Osborne, an older woman involved in local disputes
These accusations spread quickly because Salem was already full of religious fear, local conflicts, political tension, disease, war anxiety, and suspicion of outsiders. Once the legal authorities accepted “spectral evidence”—claims that a person’s spirit had attacked someone—the accusations grew into a much larger panic.
We departed the museum and headed to lunch at Rockafellas. On the way, we stopped at several gift stores.
Terrance Marchino, Kevin Marchino, and David McKillop founded Rockafellas, which opened in the famous Daniel Low Building in 2003. Their outdoor café can host up to 240 guests during the warmer months.
Members of Salem’s First Church laid the Daniel Low Building cornerstone on April 27, 1826. Beneath the cornerstone, members of Salem’s First Church deposited a silver plate bearing the names of the congregation’s past and current ministers. Silver remained an important part of the building’s history.
From the beginning, the church used the building’s second floor for worship and rented the ground floor to various commercial ventures to help pay for construction and maintenance. Tenants included a crockery, glass, and china shop owned by William Bowditch, a dry goods store owned by Edwin Ide, and a ladies’ furnishing store owned by John P. Peabody. In the 1860s and 1870s, the National Exchange Bank was the tenant, adding the vault and double-depth windows, features still in place today.
In 1867, Daniel Low opened his jewelry business in a corner room, but soon took over the entire first floor. Low started the mail-order business in 1892 after his company began manufacturing and selling a silver souvenir witch spoon and advertised it in many national publications. The response to that item prompted him to create one of the first mail-order catalogs. Low died in 1911 and was succeeded by his son Seth, who ran the business until he died in 1939, and by Seth’s widow, Florence, until the mid-1950s. Created a grand staircase between the first and second floors, which has since been demolished.
Inside, we had several Halloween drinks. We staggered back to the car (Colleen was the DD, so she didn’t drink anything).
Their food was excellent, and the waitress was very funny!
The drinks were interesting but lacked any serious alcohol.
Colleen and Robin kept the conversation funny. They are good girls!!!
We loved the ceiling decorations!
I loved the “Butterbeer”!!
Swirling it up makes it look different!
After our drinks, we hopped back towards the car and stopped several more times to take pictures and visit shops!
Mary kept frightening the ghouls.
We enjoyed seeing people in costume well before October 31st. Salem is an interesting town!!
The street was fenced off from traffic because a large parade is planned tomorrow. Mary liked talking to the spooks along the way!
We headed home and passed many old homes dating back hundreds of years.
We stopped at Colleen’s home and picked up our car while Colleen took Robin to urgent care for a rash on her hands.
Mary and I went to the inn and had some wine and a cup of tea before heading upstairs
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