Baltrusis - Ghosts of Salem: haunts of the witch city

Published by Haunted America

A Division of The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403

www.historypress.net

Copyright 2014 by Sam Baltrusis

All rights reserved

Cover: The Witch House, which was investigated by the Travel Channels Ghost Adventures, is Salems last structure standing with direct ties to the hysteria of 1692. Home of judge Jonathan Corwin, a magistrate with the Court of Oyer and Terminer, the structure dates back to 1675 and is an icon of Americas tortured past.

First published 2014

e-book edition 2014

ISBN 978.1.62584.928.1

Library of Congress CIP data applied for.

print edition ISBN 978.1.62619.397.0

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to my spirit squad from Boston Haunts and Cambridge Haunts, including Ashley Shakespeare, Hank Fay, Meaghan Dutton-Blask and Nick Cox for helping me rouse the dead and give a voice to those long departed. My third ghost tour in the Witch City helped shape the tone and lore featured in Ghosts of Salem. The team at Witch Mansion deserves a supernatural slap on the back for hosting the tour. Major thanks to the handful of paranormal investigators and researchers who helped make Ghosts of Salem a reality, including Nick Groff from Ghost Adventures, Tim Maguire from the Salem Night Tour, Adam Page from F.I.N.D. Paranormal, Rachel Hoffman, Tina Storer and James DePaul from Paranormal Xpeditions, Elizabeth Peterson and Eric Fiahlo from the Witch House, John Denley from Boneyard Productions, Sarah-Frankie Carter from Steps Through 1692, Peter Horne from Cinema Salem, author Margaret Press and the entire research staff at the Salem Public Library. I would like to thank Andrew Warburton, my eagle-eyed Agent Scully and research assistant, who helped uncover some of the skeletal secrets featured in this monstrous project. Thanks to my mother, Deborah Hughes Dutcher, for being there when I need her most and my friend Joe Keville for his continued support. I would also like to thank Tabitha Dulla from The History Press for her support during the process of putting this book together. Special thanks to H.P. Lovecraft for his creative use of Arkham-inspired phrases and Stephen King for terrifying me as a kid with the horror classic The Shining.

INTRODUCTION

The dead love Salem. Known for its annual Halloween Haunted Happenings gathering, its no surprise that the historic Massachusetts seaport is considered to be one of New Englands most haunted destinations. With city officials emphasizing its not-so-dark past, tourists from all over the world seem to focus on the wicked intrigue surrounding the 1692 witch trials.

As far as the paranormal, the city is considered to be hallowed ground.

Originally called Naumkeag, Salem means peace. However, as its historical legacy dictates, the city was anything but peaceful during the late seventeenth century. In fact, when landowner Giles Corey was pressed to death over a two-day period, he allegedly cursed the sheriff and the city. Over the years, his specter has allegedly been spotted preceding disasters in Salem, including the fire that destroyed most of the downtown area in June 1914. Based on my research, a majority of the hauntings conjured up in Salem over the citys tumultuous three-hundred-year-old history have ties to disaster, specifically the one-hundred-year-old fire that virtually annihilated the once prosperous North Shore seaport.

Cursed? Salem is full of secrets.

It also suffers from a bit of an identity disorder. After several years giving historical-based ghost tours and researching the finale of my Ghosts of book trilogy, I came to realize that Salem somehow manages to embrace its dark, witch trials past while simultaneously shutting a door on it.

The citys dualities are at war: Light versus dark. Truth versus fiction. Witches versus zombies. On the one hand, there seems to be a push to pretend that Salems maritime past was a golden age, but in actual fact, its history is soaked in blood. Theres also an intense denial associated with the Witch City brand.

All aboard? Ghostly image from 1910 of the Boston and Maine Railroad depot formerly in Salems Riley Plaza. Four years later, the Great Fire of 1914 virtually annihilated the North Shore city destroying an estimated 1,376 buildings and possibly leaving what paranormal investigators call an aura of disaster. Courtesy of the Detroit Publishing Co.

Tourists favor it. Locals dont.

When it comes to the spirit of Salem, non-witch businesses try desperately to showcase the citys sleepy, New England charm, as if to suggest that yes, Salem is just like any other North Shore village. Historically, its a hidden gem. However, if you spend more than a few hours digging beneath its architecturally stunning exterior and touristy maritime haunts, the city is anything but normal.

Salem is a city full of witches and ghosts.

My first experiences in Salem go back a few decades to the early 90s. Of course, I visited every Halloween during college. I loved the specters and spectacles. I walked around, usually with a group of friends, and returned with a few spooky stories to share with the others at the dormitory. It was the place to go every October.

After returning to Boston in 2007, I started visiting Salem throughout the year. Its spirits called me. And I found myself secretly hopping on the train if I needed to recharge my batteries. Theres an inexplicable energy in the city. Some say its hidden beneath the hard, Puritan soil. Its magical at first. Its only if you stay too long that the spark short-circuits.

As a recovering X-Files junkie, Ive always been more of an Agent Scully than David Duchovnys Mulder. However, after a string of unexplained paranormal encounters over the years, I must admit that Ive become more of a believer than a skeptic. However, Ive approached Ghosts of Salem as a journalist and left no gravestone unturned when it came to digging up the historical dirt on each so-called haunting.

Ive spent years investigating alleged accounts of paranormal activity at sites all over New England. Ive collected a slew of reports from these supposedly haunted locales, and the mission was to give readers a contemporary take on Salems bevy of site-specific legends. Ghosts of Salem is, in essence, a supernatural-themed travel guide written with a historical lens. Based on my research, the city is a hotbed of paranormal activity.

Incidentally, I have first-hand experience with many of the haunts in the book. My first ghost tour experience in Salem was an impromptu trek on Mollie Stewarts Spellbound tour in 2010. I remember peeking into the windows of the allegedly haunted Joshua Ward House, convinced I saw a spirit looking out of the second-floor window. It turned out to be a bust of George Washington. Soon after writing my first book,