Easter 2021 in Salem

Salem greets you like an unremembered dream. Once you move through all the usual clutter that wraps itself around most American cities and towns, you arrive at the core of the thing and it’s like seeing a cousin you haven’t met but whose familial features are quite recognizable.  

Just around the corner from a local head shop, you’ll find a memorial – the Salem witch trial memorial stone bench. Each of the stone benches is in remembrance of one of the people killed in the warmer months of 1692.

Sarah Osborne was the first to go. She rarely attended church and showed little interest in blending with her neighbors. She was arrested and died in jail in May of that revelatory year.

Bridget Bishop was the first to be executed. She was hung. (Nineteen of the twenty executed. Giles Corey was crushed under stones until he died for refusing to plea.) 

Tituba was one of the first to be accused. A slave of mysterious origins, she was put on trial. Her master, Rev. Samuel Paris, said she had signed pacts with the devil, was seen flying in the air on a stick, and had ungodly visions. She passed some time in prison but was not hung nor crushed. She gave coerced testimony, was released from prison and disappeared from the historical record.

Go to the memorials today and you’ll find flowers strewn about. You’ll see candles, some burning, others long melted. Small, perfumed tributes to the origins of this country.

If you let yourself be available for it, Salem is giving. So it made sense to begin a journey into the ghosts of early America here, where mysterious passions led to many unnecessary deaths in a time of disease and uncertainty.  

This is the first in a series of three podcast episodes that will introduce listeners to some early American ghosts.

Episode page on this website here.

Apple Podcasts here.

Spotify here.