Thoughts on Salem Present, Salem Past, and Witch Cakes

Danvers and Salem, MA

I literally sat with—I mean, “in”—Salem’s history when I took this picture from the cellar of the Salem Village Parsonage, where the witch hysteria started. The house that used to stand above this cellar was occupied in 1692 by Reverend Samuel Parrish, his family—including first witch accusers Betty Parrish and Abigail Williams—and his slaves, John Indian and Tituba.

I live 10 miles from Salem, Massachusetts, the self-proclaimed Halloween Capital of the World. Every October, this picturesque seaside city of 45,000 swells with half a million visitors eager to partake in Salem’s Haunted Happenings. Officially, these happenings include: parties! parades! vendor fairs! walking tours! museums! attractions! and special events!

Unofficially, you’ll also experience:

• Massive crowds of costumed people, not all of whom behave like good guests!

• For example, people who overindulge in whatever witches’ brew the local bar is serving, then puke into the bushes or on to your shoes!

• A pervasive and nose-curdling blend of incense and pot!

• The spookiest Happening of all: an eyeball-popping, profanity-inducing profusion of traffic that’s guaranteed to bring out the devil in anyone unfortunate enough to operate a vehicle in the Salem vicinity during the month of October.

Since I now refuse to go to Salem between 9/15 and 11/10, I did not take this picture of the 2022 crowd. Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images did. This is what I mean by “massive crowds.”

But, hey, good for Salem! In 1800, Salem was one of America’s largest and wealthiest cities. After being ravaged by a massive fire in 1914 and losing most of its manufacturing during the first half of the 20th century, Salem embraced its “Witch City” moniker. An impressive ability to capitalize on the worldwide fascination with the 1692 Witch Trials has brought renewed vitality and a much-needed revenue stream into the city during the past several decades.

Good for Salem’s small businesses, its tour guides, its restaurants and coffee shops, its museums and haunted harbor cruises.

Good for its “modern Pagan and Witch communities,” who have the freedom to worship whatever they wish.

Good for all the Salem visitors who enjoy dressing up in costumes, and, for a few hours, escaping the Shitshow That is the Real World in 2023.

Now that Salem is the undisputed “Halloween Capital of the World,” it’s time to retire the “Witch City” moniker on which its modern fame and fortune was built and stick with the Halloween thing. The witch thing? It disrespects and dishonors what happened to the women and men accused of practicing witchcraft in 1692.

Think about what occurred during Salem’s annus horribilis:

• More than 150 people in Salem and the surrounding area were accused of being witches.

• Fourteen women and five men accused of witchcraft were put to death by hanging. One man was pressed to death by having heavy stones piled on him until he couldn’t breathe.

• At least 5 people succumbed in rat-and-disease-infested jails while awaiting trial.

• Thousands of people lost friends and/or family members to the witch hunt.

• Dozens of families pulled up stakes and left Salem in search of more welcoming places to live. Hence, “New Salem” out in central Mass.

I completely respect people’s desire to party; in fact, I traveled from Chicago to the Halloween Capital of the World back in the late 90s. However, anticipating the World’s Biggest and Best Halloween Party was better than the reality.

Here’s what I remember about that trip to Salem:

• The traffic.

• The crowds.

• The Arctic weather that forced me to zip my coat and cover my totally groovy go-go dancer outfit, with the exception of my freezing, fishnet-stockinged calves.

• Scampering across wet rocks and falling into the Atlantic Ocean the next morning.

Theoretically, if I’d arrived in a helicopter, gone to a private party, worn a warmer costume, and didn’t fall into the ocean, I could’ve had the time of my life.

And, no, I didn’t give the people accused of witchcraft a single thought.

Last week, my older, crowd-averse, history-nerd self drove to the town of Danvers, MA, for a glimpse into the world of the accused. In January of 1692, “strange events began to take place in the Salem Village parsonage,” the remains of which were my intended destination.

What, you may ask, does Danvers have to do with this? What is now downtown Salem was called “Salem Town” in the 1600s, while present-day Danvers was the rural area known as “Salem Village.”

The Halloweeniest things I saw while walking from my car to the Salem Village Parsonage were a gray cat on a leash and a disturbing doll's head.

After locating the short path to the Salem Village Parsonage, I went through an open gate and down a few steps into the cellar above which the parsonage—the epicenter of the witch hysteria—had once stood.

It was here that 9-year-old Betty Parrish and her 12ish-year-old cousin, Abigail Williams, started shaking and writhing and otherwise acting peculiarly. Betty’s father, Reverend Samuel Parrish, and another minister decided that witches were persecuting the girls.

This illustration of accused witches being punished is from King James VI of Scotland’s/King James I of England’s 1597 book Daemonologie, which describes how devils torment humans and also advocates witch hunts. Books like this help explain why witches were considered fact, not fantasy, by many in the 1600s.

Before you laugh or call these people backwater idiots, keep in mind that, to most people of this time and place, the existence of witches was as factual as the earth revolving around the sun is to us.

What got our forebears hot under their expansive collars was their differing views on the most authentic methods for determining whether someone was a witch. These methods ran the gamut from the old Catch-22 “if she can swim, she’s a witch and we’ll put her to death, but, if she drowns, oops! our bad, she wasn’t a witch” to poking the accused with large, sharp needles to baking a witch cake.

I need to comment on this witch cake thing, not only because of its grossness but because I’m truly confused about how it was supposed to work.

To quote from Emerson Baker’s A Storm of Witchcraft:

“Neighbor Mary Sibley instructed the Parris’ two slaves, Tituba and her husband, John Indian, to make a witch cake, to try to detect the identity of the girls’ tormenters. They baked a loaf of rye bread mixed with some urine from the afflicted girls, then fed it to the family dog. . .When the dog ate the witch cake, it was supposed to reveal the witch’s identity. Indeed, the afflicted girls soon cried out that it was Tituba who was tormenting them.”

Rye bread mixed with human urine? Ewww. I would feel sorrier for the pup had I not seen my mother’s dog eat feces. Still, who came up with THAT one? And how, and at what point in the consumption of the witch cake, would the dog reveal the witch? Did it barf out the disgusting blob of slobbery rye bread and urine at the feet of the allegedly guilty party? Did it jump up and down and run around that person? What if that person liked playing with the dog, which was merely indicating a wish to fetch and frolic, not to accuse its playmate of witchcraft?

My ruminations on the evidential properties of witch cakes and swimming vs. drowning came later, when I was driving home. Sitting in the Salem Village Parsonage cellar, I felt no ghostly presences, no horror movie chills. I simply basked in the warmth of the glorious late-October day and felt fortunate that, for as horrible as our world can be in 2023, I hadn’t lived in Salem Village in 1692.

Salem Village Parsonage was built in 1681 on top of wooden beams rather than a stone foundation. The house rotted and was torn down in 1784. The stone cellars were dug beneath the beams under half the house. The other half was where the dirt, leaves, and pine needles are in the foreground.

After I stood and scraped the gravel and fallen leaves off my jeans, I went back up the stairs and walked around the fenced area. When I looked into the other side of the cellar, I saw a pair of sneakers next to some rock cairns. I’d felt a need to visit this place. The sneaker abandoners and stone artists had felt a need to leave their mark on it. The Haunted Happenings revelers feel like enjoying themselves in a community of like-minded people seeking entertainment in a city that loves giving/selling it.

Unlike the various methods for figuring out who’s a witch and who isn’t, all of these ways of engaging with life, past and present, are equally valid—as long as people don’t drive drunk or force anyone to eat a witch cake.

But revelers? Can you spare an occasional thought for those who were executed as witches, to those who were pardoned but whose lives were ruined by the accusations in 1692? If it wasn’t for them, there would be no month-long parties, no family-friendly magic shows, no costume balls, psychic readings, or ghost tours.

There would be nothing of what Salem, Halloween Capital of the World, has become.

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Links are to some of my favorite Salem spots in those categories. There are so many more, which I hope you will explore, though I would advise visiting Salem in May or June for an optimal mix of fewer people/nice weather/plenty of things to do.

Resources:

A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience, by Emerson W. Baker, Oxford University Press, 2015.

In The Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692, by Mary Beth Norton, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2002.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/salem-village-parsonage

https://streetsofsalem.com/2022/10/18/revenues-and-reparations-in-the-witch-city/

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/09/world/europe/scotland-nicola-sturgeon-apologizes-witches.

Daphne and Cade