![]() ![]() The MBTA commuter train bypassed Salem Station, parking lots were closed to incoming traffic, and all of the city’s Haunted Happenings were canceled. This year, to control the numbers of spook-seekers who still, despite a global pandemic, tried to throng Salem’s graveyards and historic streets around Halloween, the city essentially shut down to tourists. Salem would really, really like you to stay home this Halloween Tumble down that rabbit hole and you’ll miss all the beauty, modernity, breath-of-fresh-air fun, and wonderfully weird experiences Salem offers. But falling into the trap of thinking that the Witch Trials are the most interesting part about Salem is the traveler’s most egregious mistake. Though the witch hysteria-which grew out of a cauldron of social unrest that included xenophobia, misogyny, and greed-lasted just fifteen months, it accounts for the vast majority of the city’s tourism appeal. It also has zero-tolerance policy for intolerance, learned the hard way, through those infamous Witch Trials. Still, it manages to balance a small-town feel with worldliness, thanks to an eclectic, sometimes oddball, mix of people, businesses, and cultural institution. With about 42,000 residents in its 8 square miles, Salem is hardly a sprawling metropolis. (It’s mostly men’s names here this was a time when women, even if they ran their households, were rarely landowners themselves.) And the brick-bedecked downtown, where most of the action happens, has a vastly different feel, even if a bit of New England crustiness still clings around its edges. A walk down Chestnut Street, in the McIntire District, especially at twilight, yields a number of lighter yet still historically significant homes and other buildings, many with placards that identify the year it was built and the original owner. While Salem does have its fair share of gray and brown architecture-we can thank its Colonial founders and their somber sense of style for that-there’s a lot more to this city than structures like the House of the Seven Gables, which brood over landscape. House of the Seven Gables, made famous in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s eponymous novel. I held these images in my mind as we crossed the bridge over the North River, fully expecting more of the same. ![]() I had a vague recollection of lots of gray and brown architecture, maple trees heavy with orange leaves, and. I’d visited Salem on a middle-school field trip to learn about the Witch Trials history, and again in college, when a cousin who attended nearby Merrimack College suggested we go there for Halloween, because, you know, witches. Until one weekend when, on a whim, we drove into Salem. But at the time, I’d pretty much written off the entire region as staid and patrician. I admit now that this was largely in my own mind. Somehow coastal Massachusetts felt more old-fashioned, more upscale, even snobbier than the coast of my home state, let alone the Land of Crocs and Fleece, aka the upper Hudson Valley, where I currently live. Besides, wasn’t it more than a little like the sandy, boulder-strewn coast of Rhode Island, where I grew up? There were dozens of historic landmarks to check out, more parks and conservation areas than we could count, and hundreds of restaurants. Moving there, he assured me, as we picked our way over rocky shorelines and through heritage gardens blooming with delicate spring flowers, would be an excellent new adventure. ![]() A few years ago, my husband took a new job in Eastern Massachusetts.
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