“What else is woman but a foe to friendship, a domestic danger? She is an imperfect animal, she always deceives. She is a liar by nature.”
– The Malleus Maleficarum, the “Hammer of Witches”, 1486
SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS
ARRIVAL
It’s a cold autumn day when I arrive in Salem, but it’s not October. Dead leaves coat the streets, the air is chilled, pumpkins remain on display. Only a mere week after Halloween, Salem still brims with its somber fall atmosphere. Only one thing is missing – the crowds.
The October crowds are extreme, so visiting outside these crowds greatly impacts one’s visit. Salem’s self-branding as “Witch City” has guaranteed it a mass influx of tourists during October, when the masses descend and clog up the town’s tiny streets. Salem seems to know that it’s created a logistical nightmare, cautioning visitors that parking is non-existent, hotel rooms are full, events are sold out. Yet, the crowds still come.
They come, because as much as Witch City may be re-thinking its self-created dilemma, it also knows that there is no separating the idea of witches from Halloween. People are willing to stand in the lines, sit in the traffic, and over-pay for cramped hotel rooms. So powerful is the allure of the witch.
As I walk the quiet streets, I can’t help but wonder why more people don’t just visit during the off-season (basically any time outside October). Not only haven’t I had to deal with traffic jams or exorbitant room rates, but the calm atmosphere allows the space to explore and delve beyond the tackiness.
Outside the chaos of Halloween, I’m able to look beneath the surface. I’m able to dig beyond the town’s gimmicky branding and see what else Salem has to offer. Perhaps most importantly, I’m able to reflect on the town’s dark history, and able to make sense of what that history tries to warn.
1692
Often, the idea of a place far surpasses the reality of that place. But if an idea is strong enough, people will gravitate toward it, regardless of whether the actual experience measures up.
Salem is enjoyable enough – it has a peaceful harbor, cobblestone streets, old Federal-style houses. But all of this can be found in towns throughout New England; people come to Salem for witches. Walk down almost any street in town, and the appetite for the supernatural becomes abundantly clear. There’s store after store selling all manner of the occult – tarot cards and vampire fangs, spell books and cauldrons. There’s even a shop devoted exclusively to wands.
The gimmicks provide some brief amusement, sure. In one shop, I flip thru a book titled ”Hex Your Ex”, and I buy a few too many pens shaped like broomsticks. But when I look beyond the modern branding of Salem and instead to its very real history, it’s clear that its actual past has little to do with witchcraft, and everything to do with human behavior.
I start to realize that there’s a lot I don’t know about what led to the witch trials of 1692. I learn that at the time, Salem was experiencing an ominous mix of bad economics, uncertain leadership, and a population divided on how to move forward. A dark feeling hangs over me, as it sounds all too familiar.
It’s 1692, and Salem Town and Salem Village are at a standstill, a fork in the road. Set against a backdrop of anxiety over an unknown future – fear and resentment begins to boil. Reason and logic fast disappear, and vengeance begins to write the law.
People turn on each other, accusations become both entertainment and a way to settle personal scores. People are bored with the mundane, yet fearful of the unknown. They want certainty, a return to the past, a feeling of control. And in a world where certainty and control can’t be found, they’re determined to create such things anyway.
In the midst of the maelstrom, an egotistical, but ever-strategic minister is hungry for control. He knows that a key ingredient is necessary to harness such power. He needs a target. A clear cause of the problem, a clear blame for life’s misfortunes. He needs a trusted enemy.
To both absorb collective fear and to bring the village under his control, he needs a devil incarnate, an ultimate villain. And so…enter the villain. Enter the witch.
THE WITCH IS IN
Since people come to Witch City for witches, a ready supply eagerly waits to meet the demand. A plentiful array of ”modern day witches” are never more than a few steps away, promising all manner of help and healing should you walk through their door. Many claim a long line of witch ancestry, and vow to predict the unknown of what lies ahead. Against my better judgement, I decide to part with 75 dollars to see what one of these witches has to tell me about life, love, and the future.
When I arrive, the first thing she tells me is that she’s running late. She asks me to come back at 5 instead of 4, that she’s behind schedule. I immediately self-question my decision to part with my 75 dollars. But as I’ve already resigned myself to the error, I nod and agree to her request. I’ll come back at 5.
Except when 5 rolls around, she’s still behind schedule. She explains, though not apologetically, that she’s been extra busy today and got overbooked. She tells me to sit in the waiting area, and points over at a few chairs encircled by red velvet rope. A cat saunters out from a back room and I pass the time in its company, slowly earning the cat’s trust until he finally lets me pet him.
When the witch finally bids farewell to her current customer, she calls me over to her table. I notice that its covered in little wrapped candies. “Have one, have one,” she says to me. “Eat, eat!”
She quickly gathers up the tarot cards scattered across the table from the last session and has me shuffle them. Her over-teased, dyed black hair makes it hard to notice her eyes, but when I do I see that they never quite land on mine. She immediately starts talking, fast, throwing out a series of names and asking if I know who they are.
“Who’s Carmela?” she blurts out. “You know Carmela?”
“Umm…Soprano?” I ask, confused, as that’s the only one that rings a bell.
But she doesn’t hear me. She’s onto the next name, and the next, all in rapid fire, not giving me the chance to say yes or no. Carmela turns to Michael, who turns into Nick, who turns into Sarah, until eventually it seems that she’s covered every possible name, every possible possibility.
When it becomes awkwardly clear that I’m not going to confirm knowing any of these people, she switches gears. “Well, they know you,” she tells me, in a tone of perfected confidence. “And they’re worried about you. But don’t worry – they’re going to help you. All will be well!”
She starts to rush things from there. She tells me that I won’t need a full session, as only good things are coming my way and that there’s really nothing more to say about it. I’m even told that she’ll take 50 dollars instead of 75, a good will discount for the abbreviated visit.
It’s well past 5 now, past closing, and I can tell that she wants to go home. She’s run out of names and stamina, and doesn’t want to play this game with me any longer, which is fine with me. I take the deal. I hand over the 50 dollars, take one of the candies for the road, and stop to pet the cat goodbye before I leave. I notice the ‘Closed’ sign flipping on the front door before I’m even down the steps.
SEVEN GABLES
Wanting to get away from fortune tellers, wax museums and all other manner of witch-related capitalism, I head toward the sea, east to the shore and the House of the Seven Gables.
The house and its grounds have a lot to say about New England history, wealth, and power – but not in an obvious way. Best known for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel of the same name, the book centers on the idea that each generation inherits the vices and mis-steps of the ones who came before it.
Walking through the house, I have to watch my head going under a door entrance, even though I’m below-average height. People were smaller back then; buildings weren’t made to accommodate our current bones. But as I walk the house’s creaking wood floors, an ominous cloud of understanding seems to follow me up the narrow stairs. An understanding that, while various aspects of life certainly change over time – people themselves really don’t.
The realities of human nature that Hawthorne was writing about have never gone away. There have always been people who know how to use fear to their advantage, who know how to hold onto wealth and power by turning a community against each other. And there have always been people who know the draw of an alluring idea, regardless of whether the facts support it or not.
Hawthorne understood all too well the depths of cruelty, jealousy and misplaced anger that lurk in the human mind. His novel warns of some basic truths, truths that are written all over Salem’s history, for those who care to look.
Hawthorne seems to be saying that nothing will change, if we don’t change. He warns that we need not fear any witch’s curse, as we curse ourselves. He’s warning that fear is the manipulator’s favorite tool, to terrorize, dehumanize, and turn neighbour against neighbour. Most ominous of all, he’s warning just how easy it is for them to do so.
PRESENT
Later that day, I’m still irritated about my encounter with the ‘witch’. I’m thinking about the nice meal I could have bought with the 50 bucks, or the gas I could have put in the car. But as I walk up to the iron gates of Salem’s witch museum, I have to remind myself that it was me who sought her out, not the other way around. Me and the many others who kept her busy enough to be overbooked.
But that’s exactly the point, about what Salem really has to say. At its core, it asks us to look beyond witches, and instead to the human being. It asks us to examine the question: Why do people do what they do?
The witch museum is outdated, its animatronic show in desperate need of a re-make. But downstairs I find a better exhibit. It’s titled as evolving perceptions of the witch, but really it’s about evolving perceptions of women. It talks of superstition and misconception – but also about fear, mistrust, and the horrifying ways that humans have chosen to treat each other throughout time.
It’s also about conflict – the battles within society, but also within our own minds. Science vs. religion, conformity vs. conscience, safety vs. the thrill. Salem shows that core aspects of human nature never really change, they just surface at different times and play out in different ways.
Salem proves that witches are real. But not the ones you’ll see on souvenir hoodies or the ones charging you 50 bucks, asking if you know Carmela. Witches have always been real, because they’ve always been our fellow neighbours, our fellow humans. Fellow parents and children and siblings who found themselves on the wrong side of a maddening herd, the wrong side of collective chaos.
As I stand there in the museum, I read the names of the nineteen victims murdered in the witch trials of 1692. I’m reminded that when fear takes hold strongly enough, logic rarely ever prevails. I’m reminded that fear has always been part of the human condition – fear of the unknown, of the future, of anything or anyone that we don’t quite understand. Everything the witch has come to represent.
My mind flashes once again to the woman who couldn’t manage her time but managed to make me 50 bucks poorer. Despite her obvious flaws, she didn’t lack for clients, and likely never will. Despite her shortcomings, she had a firm grasp on some simple truths.
She seemed to understand how fear drives human behaviour, and that in fear, there is profit to be made and power to be gained. She understood that people will always seek certainty about the future, as they wrestle with the mysteries of life. But most of all, she understood that in any time, and in any place, for reasons both benign and sinister – people will always look for a witch.
