A visit to Salem, Massachusetts is a very strange experience. Particularly for a visitor interested primarily in the dark histories Salem-20 executions (murders) committed by the Puritan leaders on account of Witchcraft and the devil. Salem is an old town in our young nation, and a central chapter of its story is a sad one worth remembering, without romance or spectacle.
In Salem, that’s not easy to do.
Having thought much about the earliest versions of American Christianity, and written about the Puritans of the Mass. Bay Colony and The Salem Witch Trials at some length, I’ve always been eager to make trip to Salem from my Midwest home. Recently, my friend Bethany relocated to Boston, and the long-awaited visit to Salem to remember that terrible American hysteria was finally undertaken. We went to Salem to encounter history and embrace tourism. I went to find out about the accused witches in 1692. It never occurred to me to wonder what it meant to be called a witch in 2013.
What I found in Salem was not what I expected, though that’s likely due as much to my mistaken expectations as it is to Salem’s pop culture marketing plan and modern witch community. We looked for the somber history it seems the Witch Trials deserve, and we found it. But only a little of it. The cemetery in the center of town, for example, forces one to consider the past. Bodies laid to rest almost 350 years ago, the stones worn smooth by centuries of rain, snow, and the touch of hands seeking out the past.
Adjoining the graves are 20 benches in a park, commemorating the 20 executed in the Witch Trials. Nineteen were hanged, one man was pressed to death by stone. The memorial is perhaps the city’s best attempt to bring the reality of the Witch Trials to bear up on those who come to town. Carved into the walkway in the park are the words of the accused-”God knows, I am innocent”-a hard cry to read among the names of men and women (mostly women) killed in the name of God.
We visited Nathaniel Hawthorne’s birthplace, and the House of Seven Gables, standing yet and gabled as ever. We chatted about Young Goodman Brown, and Hawthorne’s struggle to reconcile his forebears’ participation in the horrors of the past. 
Mostly, though, we talked about how Salem is a harbor of kitsch built on the ruins of history. We sought out some reminder of the terrible interplay of religion and fear and the consequences of a culture that forbade imagination and play. We sought out physical history that could inform and complete the written histories we had read. We sought an understanding of what it meant to be a “witch” in Salem, in 1692.
We mostly found witches of a more modern fashion. The witches of Halloween and popular culture, all proudly displayed in wonderful, meretricious fashion. There’s a shop named Halloween Town, which unfortunately had no relationship to Jack Skellington. There’s another store selling only Harry Potter related goods. Books and movies and scarves for the Houses of Hogwarts. Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans and joke products from the Weasley twins’ shop. Harmless family fun of the witchy kind.
But there is also in Salem witches of the other sort. The kind of witches for which I don’t really have the vocabulary to describe. The kind that make certain parents nervous. The word Wicca floats around the shops of Salem, and Occult. I suppose that’s what we’re talking about. Historically speaking I can provide context and meaning to these words, Wicca and Occult. But contemporary Wicca practitioners, I have to admit, seem kind of ridiculous. To me, it means nothing.
As always, this is irrelevant. What is outside my ken still makes its way through the world. Apparently Salem’s swimming in witches. And they run shop after shoppe.
Small shops on main-street with names like Crow Haven and Magic Parlor and HEX. Selling potions and crystals and stones and little bags of powders and spices and books on spells. Magic shops smelling of incense and overseen by steam-punked women with ample cleavage flowing from black tied corsets. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t unusual. I’ve been to Hot Topic and the curio shoppes of suburban malls all over this country. Where black clad ladies manage stores behind glass encased counters with pewter sculpted dragon statues embedded with quartz. Such places don’t carry any historical burden. In Salem, this all seemed a little off. The ladies sold the occasional pin and bumper-sticker, as patrons like me and Bethany awkwardly browsed the more exotic goods for purchase, curious but always with a laugh.
These shops all had more specialized services as well. Palm readings, psychics, tarot card readers.
Bethany and I spent a moment eavesdropping on a tarot reading shielded only by a hanging sheet before we realized how inappropriate such behavior was. Tarot cards can’t actually tell someone their future-I’m fairly confident-but who are we to project our skepticism through that barrier?
What a place, Salem, MA in 2013. By attempting to maintain the dual identity-historically educational and tourist kitsch-the city appeared at risk of losing its grasp on both. Or so it seemed to me. But only for a short time.
I wanted to buy a stupid souvenir in Salem, so we browsed quite a few of these shops-of the magical variety, as well as the kitsch kind-looking for the ridiculous tourist purchase (it turned out to be a mug reading “Witch You Were Here”). While we did so we worked hard to reconcile these two experiences: the reality of women and men murdered by their sensible leaders and a modern city, invested in witchcraft as a marketing scheme and way of life. After about 4 hours in town, in a way I still can’t really pinpoint, these diverse elements started to come together.
Our conversation circled and circled, back to Young Goodman Brown and the Devil and forcing discomfort on others. We covered Harry Potter and its rejection by the crazier Evangelicals. And how Salem’s wand shop (yes, wands only), must drive that same segment of Evangelical America which finds J.K. Rowling a gateway to the occult out of their minds.
Some in the US have never shaken our Puritan past. For many, actually, such things as magic shops and Harry Potter result from the work of the Devil. Literally. There must be many more Americans today who think the Devil works in the places like Salem then there are Wiccan practicing witches, right? So I asked Bethany, anyway. She shrugged at the question.
The idea of a witch, today, means almost nothing to me. I cannot reconcile ‘being a witch’ with much beyond the pop culture referents for witches and witchcraft: Buffy’s Willow and Tara, for example, or the witches and wizards of the fantasy genre. I do know that it has nothing to do with the Salem Witch Trials, those who were falsely accused and unspeakably executed in 1692. Still, there’s some value, to me-a visitor for one day only- in the confrontation being waged by these cultures. If some folks believe this is spiritual warfare, I thought it much more commercial warfare: the battle for the dollars and minds of isolated kids and tourist families.
Salem’s overtly commercial embrace of a community that can’t be reconciled by a logical person like me, and will never be embraced by those who instill fear as the central mode of education, has a place in our country. Value comes from the work of reconciling such things.
Since I belong to neither of these communities, I enjoy the clash. And, at least on the Salem side, this witchcraft seems mostly harmless. While we visited, The Witches Education League was sponsoring civic pride events, and city beautification. There is to be found in their yard-signs only enjoyment and pleasure. CITY WIDE CITY PRIDE. SPONSORED BY THE WITCHES EDUCATION LEAGUE. If that doesn’t make you smile, I don’t what what will.
When we pulled into Salem that morning, the first thing we saw was a small political rally. A few people on the main intersection holding signs for their ward councilman of choice. This councilman happened to be named McCarthy, and the irony was too rich to pass up. Bethany asked one of the sign-holders if he thought it at all strange that he was voting for a politician named McCarthy in a place known across the world for its witch trials. 
The thought hadn’t occurred to him. But we chatted about witches, and Salem, and McCarthyism for a minute or two. He said: “They say there’s 1000 witches living in Salem now.” When I heard him my only thought was: How do you take a census of witches? Who exactly are they counting?
But when we left eight hours later, I found it just a little comforting to think of these witches in Salem. The history isn’t offended. And if the some other Americans are, well, that’s their own problem. Not the devil’s.
