1692 Salem

08/21/2024

On August 21, 1692:
* Specters of Mary Witheredge and her mother, Sarah Buckley, allegedly assailed Jane Hutchinson, wife of rapier-wielding Benjamin.
* Mary and Philip English escaped custody and began a journey to New York, viewed as a safe haven for witchcraft suspects. Family tradition states that they were helped by Revs. Joshua Moody and Samuel Willard.

08/20/2024

08/20/2024

Happy Supper Blue Moon from Salem!
The whole photos are even better if you click on them. I should have shared them individually.

08/19/2024

https://youtu.be/p1R6JSOJ1Ao?si=BlCqo_rTC28V_uMh

John and Elizabeth Proctor owned a Farm and Tavern on Ipswich Road in Salem, Ma. They were both skeptics of the witch hysteria that had taken hold of Salem i...

08/19/2024

https://youtu.be/pZC5k0HjLmg?si=T9xhJ-x35FXrAEdS

Susannah Martin was a sharp-tongued and strong-willed woman who had been accused of being a witch for almost 30 years. On May 2, 1692, At the age of 71, she ...

08/19/2024

https://youtu.be/MHjDRtU1FkI?si=5KlsYN6GeQKdK8JU

On May 4, 1692, George Burroughs was arrested for witchcraft. On May 9, he was brought in for questioning. This is the story of his trial.For more informatio...

08/19/2024

https://youtu.be/PplA8OELTK4?si=iY9H26BWV22FjtTw

On May 10, 1692, George Jacobs was arrested on the charge on practicing Witchcraft. This is the story of his trial.For more information about the 1692 Salem ...

08/19/2024

https://youtu.be/h-HjHw3PEYk?si=_ECXP19ESIjF5iEv

John Willard was first accused of practicing witchcraft on Sunday, April 24, 1692, by Ann Putnam Jr. On May 10th, Magistrates John Hathorne and Jonathan Corw...

08/19/2024

August 19, 1692, George Burroughs, Martha Carrier, George Jacobs, John Proctor and John Willard were executed on Proctor’s Ledge.

08/19/2024

On this day, in the year 1692, John Proctor, John Willard, Reverend George Burroughs, George Jacobs Sr., and Martha Carrier were executed for the crime of witchcraft.

The stories of several of the innocent people executed on this day highlight the danger faced by those who openly criticized the witch trial proceedings. John Proctor was a local farmer who had openly criticized the witch trials when his servant became afflicted. Proctor openly informed a neighbor he believed the witnesses “should all be had to the whipping post” and said he would “thresh the devil” out of his own afflicted servant. Initially, John Willard was a deputy constable who assisted with locating and arrested suspected witches. However, after interacting with both the accusers and accused, Willard had a change of heart and refused to continue assisting with arrests. Willard would soon find himself accused and flee, temporarily avoiding capture. George Jacobs Sr., an 80-year-old man who walked with two canes, had been skeptical of the trials since the beginning. When confronted by the magistrates during his examination, Jacobs refused to confess, instead asserting “Well burn me or hang me! I will stand in the truth of Christ.”

This was the third hanging date during the Salem witch trials, and unfortunately would not be the last. As we remember these stories today, let us reflect on the bravery of those who refused to backdown in the face of injustice.

Though the definitive gravesites for the victims of the Salem witch trials remain unknown, several markers have been placed around Essex County, marking likely places of burial or serving as memorial stones. Discovered in the nineteenth century, exhumed in the 20th century, and reinterred to the Rebecca Nurse Homestead in the 1990s, the gravestone pictured here marks the presumed final resting place of George Jacobs Sr.

08/19/2024

Awesome and this is my hubby’s Birthday!! Tomorrow!! 🌙🐦‍⬛💜

08/18/2024

This is one of the stops on our tour!

Built around 1727, the Ropes Mansion is a historic Georgian-style mansion in Salem, Mass. The house is a two and ½ story building with a wood clapboard exterior and a slate-shingled gamble roof and is located on a one acre plot of land on Essex Street. The architect of the…

08/18/2024

On August 19th, five innocent people, four of them men, wil be executed as witches on Proctor’s Ledge.

On August 19th, 1692, five innocent people were hanged for witchcraft. They were Rev. George Burroughs, Martha Carrier, George Jacobs Sr., John Proctor, and ...

08/18/2024

This looks awesome! If you are in town when it is happening, maybe take our tour and end the night here!

Have you ever watched Hocus Pocus and wished you could be at the Town Hall celebrating Halloween with the Sanderson Sisters? Well, now you can!

For the first time this year, we are having an
“I PUT A SPELL ON YOU MASQUERADE”- Halloween Costume Party, right here in Salem, MA in the very iconic shooting location used in the movie.

Join the witchy sisters of Salem on Friday, September 20, 2024, from 6:30-10:30pm, step through the same doorway as your favorite Halloween characters for an "on-set" event, and dance the night away to music from the 80s, 90s and today with favorite Halloween tunes and live performances in the mix at the sure to be famous"I Put a Spell on You" party

More information and tickets can also be found at:
https://tinyurl.com/salemparty2024

Jeff DePaoli

Destination Salem,
Salem's Black Hat Society
1692 Salem
Salem, Ma - The Witch City
Bewitched in Salem
Salem Witch-Hunt
Discover Salem
Salem Maritime National Historic Site
Haunted Footsteps Ghost Tours & Salem Historical Tours
Salem Maritime National Historic Site
Salem Museum of Torture

08/18/2024

08/17/2024

The Making of a WITCH: How Wealthy Merchant Philip English Became The Accused, A Play in One Act returns to St. Peter’s Chapel in three weeks!

Every Saturday from September 7 to November 2, at 4 pm and 7 pm. An historic church tour will be offered after each 35 minute performance. The chapel entrance is on Brown Street, opposite the Visitor Center and parking garage.

08/16/2024

The John Ward House and the Howard Street Cemetery.
Salem, Massachusetts

08/15/2024

On August 15, 1692:
* In Rowley, Margaret Scott's specter allegedly attacked Sarah Coleman.
* In Boxford, Samuel Wardwell's specter supposedly assaulted Martha Sprague.

08/15/2024

Examination of Elizabeth Johnson, Jr. "Elizabeth Johnson, Jr.'s confession, August the 11th 1692 before John Hathorne, Esq. and other their majesties' justices. The magistrates said to her, 'you have already confessed you are a witch. How long have you been so? A. Four Years She said the devil like a black man and Goodwife Carrier persuaded her to be a witch and that she was at Goodwife Carrier's house when they persuaded her, and they promised her she should be safe and should not be found out. They also promised her a schilling in money, but she said she never had it. She said she did not presently afflict persons, not 'til she had been baptized by the devil, which was about 3 years ago in Goodwife Carrier's well. She said she scratched the devil's book with her finger when she signed it. She said the devil never appeared to her from the time she signed 'til she was baptized After she was baptized, he appeared like two black cats She forgot what the devil said to her when she was baptized by him, but he dipped her head over in water. She owned she had been at the witches meeting and that she saw Capt. Flood there, and she said Goodwife Carrier, Goodwife Toothaker, and two of Toohaker's children. One of them was Martha Emerson. She said she saw Capt. Flood in the room when she was examined and that Goodwife Toothaker and daughter and Goodwife Carrier were there and intended to kill her, for they threatened to tear her to pieces. Being asked how old she was, she said 22 years. She said there were about six score at the witch meeting at the village that she saw. She said the occasion of her first signing the devil's book was the devil and Goodwife Carrier threatened to tear in pieces if she did not do it. She said she wrought then at said Carrier's house. She said they had bread and wine at the witch sacrament at the village, and they filled the wine out into cups to drink. She said there was a minister at that meeting, and he was a short man, and she thought his name was Burroughs. She said they agreed that time to afflict folk and to pull down the kingdom of Christ and to set up the devil's kingdom and that the first she afflicted was Benjamin Abbott or Lawrence Lacey. She said she had also afflicted Phelps' daughter. She said she knew also that Richard Carrier and Mary Lacey had afflicted by witchcraft, but she knew it not 'til a little before they ere taken up. She said she had afflicted Lawrence Lacey by sitting on his stomach and that Goodwife Carrier and Goodwife Lacey joined with her to afflict said Phelps. She said she afflicted said Phelps by poppets. She brought out 3 poppets made of rags or strips of cloth, two of them. The other was made of a birch rind. One popper had four pieces or strips of cloth wrapped one upon another, which she said was to afflict four persons with. There was thread in the middle under the rags. Lawrence Lacey and Ephraim Davis' child were told that she afflicted by pinching that poppet. A second poppet had two such pieces of rags rolled up together and 3 pins stuck into it, and she afflicted Ben Abbott, James Frye's two children, and Abraham Foster's children with that poppet and the other. She afflicted Ann Putnam with a spear and was asked whether the spear was iron or wood. She said either of them would do. She was asked where her familiar] sucked. She showed one of her knuckles of her finger and said there was one place, and it looked red. She said she had two places more where they sucked her, and women were ordered to search them out, and they found two little red specks that said Johnson said were all that there was to be seen. They were plain to be seen when they were newly sucked. One of said places was behind her arm. Richard Carrier and Mary Lacey, Jr. said they saw Goody Carrier, Lacey, and Toothaker, and the poppets. " http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/n83.html .2

08/15/2024

"Despite the possible appearance of prosperity when they purchased a large Salem Village farm in 1678, the Nurse family was for many years barely scraping by financially, and owed a sizable mortgage on the land. They frequently fell behind on their taxes, a fact that the villagers were undoubtedly aware of because the tax debts were publicly acknowledged at town meetings." - Daniel A. Gagnon, A Salem Witch https://bookshop.org/a/90227/9781594163678

08/14/2024

The House of 7 Gables, the oldest part of the house was built in 1668!
Salem, Massachusetts

08/14/2024

On August 14, 1692:
* After worship service, Samuel Parris held male church members over for a meeting to discuss certain parishioners who were no longer attending services, because their relatives had been jailed on witchcraft charges. The church members appointed a committee to speak with these relatives of Rebecca Nurse and her sisters.

08/14/2024

A few more of my favorite cover photos!

08/14/2024

A few of my favorite cover photos!