October 18, 2005:
Continuing yesterday's report detailing the highlights of my trip to Salem, Massachusetts, today we dig a little deeper into what the town has to offer. Granted, witch shops and oddball souvenirs are always attractive, but few who make the long pilgrimage to Salem would do it just for that. It's a town built on history, or at least, on interpretations of history, or at least, on something resembling history. Even more prominent than the junk stores and candy shops is the endless array of museums, walking tours, art galleries and other exhibits that all seek to shed light on the famous Salem Witch Trials of the late 1600s.
For those who don't know the story, I'll try to sum it up the generalities. Because of everything from psychopathic daughters to kangaroo courts, a whole bunch of people were wrongly accused of witchcraft and, among other things, sentenced to death by hanging. Whether anyone in or near the trials practiced "witchcraft" was almost immaterial -- it was the hysteria itself that became the epidemic. Completely everyday citizens found themselves accused of devilish interactions at the drop of a hat, and as evil judges and placating juries and big bad people required no evidence to convict those charged, it got to the point where someone could legally "off" their enemies simply by pointing at them and screaming, "WIIIIITCH!" The court sessions are the stuff of legend and, in the wake of the trials, collectively brought more skepticism toward the judicial system than there'd ever been before. This really wasn't about the occult and/or witchcraft. It was about people being fucked by the system in an era long before they have a forum to create rap hits about it.
The statute of limitations on turning exploitation into education can be debated forever and a day, but no matter which side you stand on, Salem's constant retelling (with visuals!!) of those sordid events is morbidly interesting. While there are a great many attractions that either romanticize the truth or outright make up stories, certain sights seek to provide the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The "Salem Witch Dungeon Museum," for the most part, plays it straight. It's one of the better attractions in the city, both for its veritable age and for its ability to quietly capture the macabre ambiance that all who vacation here were searching for.
The Witch Dungeon has two distinct advantages over its competing museums. One, it's in a really old, scary house that looks totally sincere and not at all like a modified version of mansion slabbed up in '95. Two, it's located just far away enough from the saturated tourist streets to make it feel more legit and less like someplace where one could "get ya hot popcorn here." As a bonus third advantage, it's one of the few places in the city that allows still photography as a spoken rule, and that's really all it takes to get your witch dungeon museum on X-E.
So, we ponied up six bucks each and got herded into the gift shop, which doubles as a waiting area between shows. Now that's just screwed up. If I didn't like gift shops so much, I'd be pissed. They keep you crammed in there for a good fifteen minutes, and if it wasn't so crowded with sweaty sorcerers, you'd have no choice but to buy a collectible spoon or a collectible bell or "U PUT A SPELL ON ME" Valentine's Day candy hearts left over from last season. Leave the capitalism to the good Christians.
Finally, we were ushered into what could've either been a church or a concert hall for fading oldies stars and were presented with a short play based on the trials of the 1600s. Everyone was in what I assume to be the appropriate garb, though for what it's worth, whatever they were all wearing looked a lot like the outfits I'd stick on my generic pilgrims whenever we had to "draw Thanksgiving" back in grade school. The play was brief, but if at all on the mark, it gave us a good idea of how stupid people were in the times before MTV sprung up and maked them all smartest. The ladies reenacted the threat of "spectral evidence," that being the idea that the accusers didn't need to actually prove anything. If they said that a "witch" was making them see "demons," that's all it took to get the "witch" on a "noose." Nobody else had to see the demon, nor anything else resembling hard evidence.
Course, there were far more accused witches that those notable for being hung -- men, women and children alike. The Salem Witch Dungeon Museum is based on the layout of an actual witch dungeon found several decades ago in the city, and as we sat there wondering how a church at all resembled a witch dungeon, the scantily clad lizard women hit us with brooms until we ran downstairs into...well, a witch dungeon.
Dimly lit and ghoulishly recreated, I admit that the images can't possibly do the place justice -- it's a lot different when you're not looking at the dungeon through the power of a camera flash. The story goes like this: When someone was suspected of witchcraft, they were thrown in the dungeon. Rich people had enough room to sit and were granted a straw mat to sleep on, but the poor often found themselves chained in cells so small that they could only remain in an upright position. All prisoners were kept in total darkness, usually forced to remain there until a "confession" could be tortured out of them. The facts and figures of the Salem Witch Trials are often exaggerated and sometimes even just completely made up, but this is all true -- it really happened. As the recreated dungeon was intended to represent the exact cell sizes and schemes of the real deal, the cotton cobwebs seen lining the ceiling in the photo above are by no means an indication of how creepy this place actually was.
That's a better indication. Again, a camera's flash is the ruination of ambiance. As you creep through the dungeon, there's oodles of cells stacked with nightmare-inducing mannequins, which judging by their prominence in Salem must be the city's top import. There's something absolutely ungodly about these mannequins, and they're all over the place in Salem. I always had the sense that the various figures' eyes were following me as I walked, but that's just one of the unfortunate side effects of getting absolutely tanked before going to a witch dungeon museum. Because of their positioning, it was hard to take pictures of some of the scarier cells. One cell in particular featured a Samara-ish girl with crazy eyes and I am absolutely positive that she's standing behind me right now.
Of course, there's the requisite actress running between the cells to freak out anyone silly enough to prematurely write her off as just another mannequin, so on top of trampling on top of people in the crowded darkness, you stand a good chance of being pissed on by a terrified little kid. Okay, so the whole girl-running-around-screaming-BOO thing might seem a little exploitive, but they made up for it by not playing genericchambermusic.mp3 over stereo speakers on repeat.
Ah, there's my good pal Giles Corey. This isn't the most flattering monument to the brazen old bastard, but it makes its point. See, Giles was accused of witchcraft, and being overwhelming appalled at the miscarriage of justice, he refused to enter a plea during his trial. So, they piled rocks on him. Rock after rock after heavy ass rock, and Giles still wouldn't budge. He preferred death over confessing to a "crime" he never committed, and sadly, that's exactly what happened. Though the man must've been considered positively insane in his time, he's now thought of as a rare voice of truth and reason during a terrible period in history. Eventually immortalized in a string of clever "GILES ROCKS" bumper stickers, Giles Corey's story rhymes, and Giles Corey's story remains one of the Salem Witch Trials' most heartbreakingly heroic tales.
One of the final sights in the Salem Witch Dungeon Museum is this...the tree. Starring several unfortunate mannequins, some fresh, some made to look like rotting corpses, some appearing quite like potato sack Jason from Friday the 13th: Part 2. Though everything up to this point required a modicum of effort to see (meaning little kids too scared to look through the cell bars didn't have to), the evil tree was in plain view, impossible to miss. I like to think that there hasn't been an October evening in the past decade that didn't feature at least one kid having teary nightmares over the sight of this thing, but then, I'm always trying to come up with excuses to believe children are going to sleep crying. It's kind of my thing.
Course, it's a lot darker in there than the pictures suggest. Most of you have digital cameras now, and you're probably familiar with the little viewscreen that briefly displays how your picture came out after you snap the mega button. I took a few pictures of the tree, and since it's normally so dark, I couldn't help wondering if there were actually more mannequins in my photos than there were on the tree. Actually, since the viewscreen on the camera is so tiny, I couldn't help wondering if the extra "mannequins" were really extra "animated zombie ghosts" just waiting to make pie of my intestines. In other words, I left the Salem Witch Dungeon Museum on a high note.
Walking up the stairs to the designated exits, guests can escape through a creaky side door that leads onto what appeared to be a sidewalk full of spikes or, alternatively, through the gift shop. These son of a bitches really want to get rid of those collectible spoons, but I forgive them, because they showed me a dusty old mannequin covered in rocks. I mean, because they taught me stuff.
